Hunter S. Thompson, R.I.P.

"He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom.
'I tell you,' he cried, 'this man has enlarged my mind.'"
– Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

For me, this quote has always been the most memorable in a literary masterpiece full of them. It's a dead-on assessment of what Joseph Conrad's character Kurtz meant to the Russian vagabond who leads Marlow to Kurtz. And of what Hunter S. Thompson has meant to me. With news of Thompson’s recent death by suicide, this passage came to mind immediately.

As best as can be derived from Thompson’s literary canon, Heart of Darkness was one of his favorite among a handful of classics – some mainstream, others not so much so – in which he found inspiration. I discovered Heart of Darkness and Conrad in general, thanks to Thompson. He also led me to a few other literary beauties through the years which proved to be of a more didactic nature than I would have originally suspected. Thompson's introduced me to the likes of Conrad and Nathanael West, and caused me to revisit and derive strange pleasures from authors I’d forgotten since my high school years … Hawthorne, Twain, Coleridge. And it was because of Hunter Thompson that I became acquainted with the one and only Sebastian Dangerfield – the protagonist in J. P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man, and one of the most delightfully repugnant characters in all of literature.

Thompson’s reputation for pharmaceutical intake and violent tendencies aside, he was able to do what some decade and a half of formal education could not: Interest me in great literature by great writers. This began in 1989 with my acquisition of The Great Shark Hunt; a book that Thompson himself called “my life's work."

Indeed, it was from within these pages that I was able to truly grasp the man and his work. Shark Hunt covers the true beginning of Thompson's writing life – from the early '60s to the late '70s – and includes the years when Thompson was at the height of his powers as a respected contemporary journalist. Two books came out of this golden age, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Today, it's easy to forget, unless you're a true Hunter Thompson aficionado and not merely a groupie, how great these books were and are, given the reputation he has acquired thanks to the cartoonish treatment he received at the hands of that pig, Gary Trudeau. Thompson openly resented Trudeau and once claimed, in so many words, that if he ever got his hands around Trudeau's neck, he may not let go.

Who can blame him? Trudeau's antics made a joke of Thompson’s literary accomplishments. Fortunately, something happened that began to correct this. In 1998, Thompson released a book called The Proud Highway, a collection of his early letters. In it, we learn of the aspiring young writer who, like Jack Kerouac, one of his heroes, wrote for himself and not for others. In reading these letters, his confidence and conviction absolutely burn.

It was at the end of ’89, after spending the year absorbing The Great Shark Hunt many times over, that I had the chance to attend one of Thompson’s “lectures.” Stepping into the Cabaret Metro that cold night in Chicago was like stepping back in time – specifically the time when Thompson was hanging out with the Hell’s Angels. The place was full of guys of all ages in biker leather; guys who knew the legend but had probably never read the books.

In we walked – me in my Polo tweeds and my date, a tall, radiant blond who seemed to catch more than a few eyes. For two hours, I kept returning to the lobby for beers, wondering if Hunter was ever going to make it. Twice a guy came on stage to announce that he was “in the limo and on the way.” Despite the yelping and howling from the seats, Hunter finally came on stage to a wild explosion of applause. Over the next hour and a half, an extremely disjointed Q&A session ensued, composed mostly of questions about drugs, motorcycles and everything except Thompson’s literary achievements. But about an hour into the evening, a guy in a blue oxford button-down shirt stood up and asked “what is your favorite book?”

Without naming titles, he heralded the genius of Conrad and Twain. Then said that “every damn one of you should read Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, but I imagine none of you will.” The next day, I owned it.

I can’t say that Hunter Thompson’s suicide surprised me, shocking and sad as it was. When ripping through The Great Shark Hunt for the first time, I came across an article Thompson had written in 1964 on Ernest Hemingway’s final days. It had been just three years since Hemingway had taken his own life with a shotgun. And if Thompson didn’t exactly rationalize the act, he certainly expressed an empathy towards it; a weird understanding of how a writer – or any creative artist – might reach this point.

Though I’ve thought about this possibility often – even as recently as the week prior to it happening – the anticipation doesn’t ease the pain of knowing that he no longer stalks the planet. But like all of us, I still have his work, and through it, his admonition to be a brighter mind, a more passionate artist and to love life more. What else could a writer ask for?

My kinship with Hunter S. Thompson has enriched my life immensely. As artist Ralph Steadman said upon hearing of his friend’s death, Thompson “enlightened” people. Yes, he did.

To quote Conrad, which Thompson so often did, “I tell you, this man has enlarged my mind.”