Mr. Hunter S. Thompson

When I woke this morning and logged into the Internet, the first piece of news to greet me was that Hunter S. Thompson had committed suicide. I decided the first thing I, a person who admired his work immensely, should do was to write a little something.

I read “Hell’s Angels” in the Sixties when I was in high school. Many movies about biker gangs played at the drive-in theaters then. Hunter’s book was entirely different than the movies. The book appealed to me, an outsider at a large Midwestern high school. Hunter S. Thompson confirmed my suspicion there was something more out there than what I had experienced.

I read “Fear Loathing on the Campaign Trail” when I was in college in the early Seventies. Mr. Thompson once again confirmed the world was not the way I pictured it. Then I read “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” several times, the last time just last summer. The book was as refreshing as ever, a testament to exuberant talent.

What more can we ask of a writer than his writing live with us from adolescence to old age, always shock us into new ways of viewing the world, delight us with its uniqueness, and give us a place to return when the world seems too much?