Hunter S. Thompson killed himself - an ultimate expression of the violence pervading much of what he wrote. His misdeeds and messy end will cloud his memory, but I hope we also remember that he gave journalism some juice. Irreverent, unyielding, sharply critical, and absolutely to the point, Thompson, a souped-up H.L. Mencken, used drugs and alcohol as fuel and lens to explore the core of culture and politics.
No one wrote like Thompson, whose greatest success came as a journalist at Rolling Stone, where he made astute and sometimes brilliant observations of what he saw around him. Rarely "objective" or "unbiased," he showed even the densest readers where he stood on most issues.
He also showed me and other young reporters in the late '60s and early '70s possibilities outside the inverted pyramid (the traditional journalism form that orders facts from most to least important) and what journalism looked like pushed beyond its limits. I wasn't sure he did journalism, but I sure liked it. I never tried to copy him, but his influence made me a sharper, edgier observer, reporter and writer.
But while he's a journalism icon, he's not everyone's journalism idol. His identification with booze and drugs aside, HST may have "opened up" journalism too much. Some trace to "new journalism" and especially Thompson some of today's journalistic shortcomings, including the blurred line with entertainment and the various fictions former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair and others have passed off as fact.
Why HST? Of all new journalists, he was most prone to exaggeration and twisted explanations of real but admittedly bizarre events. We can't attribute John Chancellor's and Edmund Muskie's seemingly inexplicable moments in the 1972 election campaign to LSD or exotic drugs, but Thompson did, in a manner that somehow shows us what it was like to be there. No other book puts readers in that campaign like Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, despite its fictions - or because of them. This produced the idea that HST's work provides deep "emotional truth," which makes up for his liberties with fact.
The notion of "emotional truth," some argue, led to an environment in which journalists find it easier to lie. But in traditional journalism circles, "emotional truth" doesn't wash. Even if it did, today's transgressions, including those of Blair, aren't to produce "emotional truth" or serve high-minded ideals; they are mostly convenient, or a superficial embellishment to make weak reporting sound better.
HST was sometimes self-indulgent in his writing, but he wasn't lazy and he didn't have to embellish. When he made something up, it was "true"; it fit right where he put it. This may not have been journalism, but it stuck you in the heart.
Thompson produced work that relied for its greatness on his unique insights and gifts, which, I think, declined dramatically in later years. His imitators, including, unfortunately, many reporting students, could never duplicate HST, no matter how much they drank, smoked or snorted. Hence, his sometimes brilliant work spawned considerable mediocre imitation. Maybe we can blame him for that, but neither Thompson nor any new journalist should take the rap for journalism's present obsession with entertainment or reporters' occasional embellishments. HST had character flaws, but he's not responsible for ours.
As one he influenced, but also one not convinced that he's the example of great journalism, I think he did what so many said they did in the '60s and '70s - expanded minds. In the end, journalism is richer because of him. Thompson, like Mencken before him, performed the valuable service of saying what had to be said, and lambasting what had to be lambasted. We as a society needed Hunter Thompson then, and despite his shortcomings, I'm glad we had him.
Today, even more, we need someone like him.
Robert Dardenne is an associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at USF St. Petersburg.
