Blasting Hunter S. Thompson

I don't like atonal jazz. Never have. When Mr. Brilliant plays Miles Davis' Agharta or Pangaea; or King Crimson's Thrak Attack, I have to at least leave the room, and sometimes the house, depending on how loud it is, because it gives me a headache.

I don't care for it, but I'd never say it's not music, nor would I say it's bad music. It just doesn't speak to me personally.

Stephen Schwartz of The Weekly Standard doesn't seem to have that ability to separate the subjective opinion from the facts. In a hatchet piece that violates the Don't Speak Ill of the Dead At Least Until the Body is Cold rule, he decides that Hunter S. Thompson's self-destructiveness gives him carte blanche to take some potshots of his own:

Thompson had much in common with Burroughs and Ginsberg. First, their products were mainly noise. Their books were reissued but now sit inertly on bookstore shelves, incapable of inspiring younger readers, or even nostalgic baby boomers, to purchase them. Thompson claimed credit for the invention of "gonzo journalism," epitomized by his great success, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, published in 1972. He will inevitably be hailed by newswriters as the creator of a genre. But if his work is taught to the young, it is as an exemplar of the madness of the '60s, not as literature or journalism. Aside from his own later works, including such trivia, bearing his signature, as The Great Shark Hunt, Generation of Swine, and Songs of the Doomed, of what did "gonzo" journalism consist? Thompson left no authorial legacy.

It has long been argued that lasting literature is an impossibility without imitation and emulation, and that although young authors often produce works ridiculously imitative of their idols, real writers grow out of such mimesis to gain recognition for their own, individual abilities. But who can imagine a youthful talent beginning with an exercise in the gonzo style? Thompson produced no others like him, for the same reason Burroughs and Ginsberg generated no schools of novel-writing or verse. One may go further and say they had nothing to teach the young, except to emit a cacophony.

Indeed, it would be one thing to say that Thompson and the others like him, such as Burroughs and Ginsberg, are dated. Even embarrassingly old-fashioned artistic works, bereft of immediacy for those who are not part of the environment from which they emerged, have the capacity for revival. But Thompson produced a clamor without content. Doubtlessly, the most pathetic aspect of the '60s phenomenon was the absolute conviction of Thompson and those who encouraged him that "living in the moment" really did count more than anything else in the world, that history never existed and that the future was their property.

When Schwartz uses the word "dated", he means "I'm just pissed that I wasn't around for all that sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, and I'm going to make everyone who was PAY FOR THEIR SINS." As for whether Thompson's work is "dated", go look at the quotes from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail that I filched from Will Pitt's obituary again, and tell me if those paragraphs are dated, or if they describe George W. Bush even more than they describe Nixon.

These wingnuts are so absolutely terrified shitless at their own sexuality, their own impulses, their own SELVES, that they've been fighting a war against what THEY PERCEIVE as "the 60's" for the last 25 years. Does anyone really believe that sex didn't exist before the 60's? That music as a barometer of social change didn't exist before the 60's? The ignorance of American sociocultural history that these people have is astounding.

In the 1920's, after a bloody war, young people abandonded the staid foxtrots and Tin Pan Alley love songs of the WWI era, embracing jazz and the Charleston. Young women abandoned corsets and hiked their hemlines. "Petting parties" ran rampant on campuses. They don't teach you about this in school. Oh, they talk about flappers and jazz and the Charleston, but they don't teach these phenomena in any kind of social context. If you read Paula Fass' excellent book on the subject, The Damned and the Beautiful. American Youth in the 1920s, you'll see that there's nothing new under the sun, and that "youth movements" such as that which took place in the 1960's are a recurring phenomenon.

It's sad to see young conservatives -- people like Ben Shapiro and their ilk. Youth is a time for exploring your boundaries; for experiencing things and making your own decisions as to what works in your own life. These young people who aren't allowing themselves to have any experiences not prescribed by a bunch of terrified middle-aged men are only cheating themselves.

I'm not saying that some of these experiences aren't phenomenally stupid, or that people like William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson lived responsibly, because they didn't. There are plenty of people who break new literary ground without drugs. But there's no getting around the fact that the drugs are an integral part of who Thompson was and how he put his ideas on paper. If Schwartz and his terrified friends don't want to read Thompson's work, don't read it. That's what's wonderful about America -- we can make choices for ourselves.

That's something that people like Stephen Schwartz have forgotten...or want to take away from themselves as well as the rest of us.

And oh, by the way? As of this writing, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is ranked #13 at Amazon.com. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 is #42. Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness--Modern History from the Sports Desk is #33.

So don't tell me Thompson doesn't speak to what people are thinking.