"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high-powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
Before Sunday, I had no interest in a celebrity's death, other than morbid water-cooler conversation.
Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur died just prior to my teenage angst experience; John John, Jackie O. and Princess Di were more than capably mourned by my mother and every other People Magazine subscriber.
The phenomenon eluded me: Why invest all that emotion in someone we only know through supermarket tabloids, "Entertainment Tonight" and "E! True Hollywood Story"?
After one brief phone call late Sunday evening, I understood. When Hunter S. Thompson shot himself, the world lost a great writer, and I lost a hero.
Thompson's 67 years were summarized by a litany of backhanded compliments. Renowned for his terse, striking prose, lampooned for his ever-present wardrobe of fishing hats, aviator sunglasses and cigarette holders, he was praised as a founder of New Journalism and reviled as a drug-abusing, gun-toting freakshow-often in the same circles of literati.
Admittedly, it was the latter persona that first caught my attention. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" hit video stores when I was 16 or 17, and a friend swore that it was the movie to see while high as a kite.
One ill-gotten joint later, I agreed: It was one of the most bizarre, hilarious films I had ever seen. Two guys wandering around Vegas, stoned on a mobile pharmacy of pills, powders and pot appealed to every iota of my rebellious adolescent energies.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Johnny Depp's living cartoon character, Raoul Duke, was based on the exploits of an actual person. I absolutely had to read this guy's book.
So I did, and immediately felt guilty for dismissing "Vegas" as a dumb stoner film. Thompson certainly wrote with a reckless glee about topics unwelcome in polite conversation, but Jesus, could he write.
Amidst the wanton profanity and hedonistic accounts of substance abuse, Thompson packed more resonance in one sentence than most of my high-school reading assignments did in an entire chapter.
He was, quite literally, Ernest Hemingway on drugs.
Described as "a work of the imagination" rather than traditional fiction or non-fiction nomenclature, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" lived up to its billing.
As a 17-year-old boy, I was enthralled with its escapist fantasy-a sleazy, hazy road trip of epic magnitude, the likes of which a college-bound, Jesuit-schooled kid could only dream about.
Great literature is a vacation from reality, and how I cherished my time in the Red Shark with Raoul and Dr. Gonzo.
Five years later, the book remains a personal favorite. I still love Thompson's accounts of a drug culture that I will never experience. But beyond the vicarious living, his prose is what truly validates "Vegas."
Almost every sentence is a memorable quote, every paragraph a stream of carefully calculated ramblings that elicit literary bliss. Thompson often referred to writing as his ultimate vice, and his rich body of work supplies one hell of a fix.
I have never met the Good Doctor, nor did I break down in tears upon learning of his demise that many predicted would happen years ago. Still, the news hit with the force of a sucker punch to the stomach.
Suddenly, I knew why my mother cried when John Kennedy Jr.'s plane went down. I empathized with people who shed tears for Johnny Carson. Heck, I even related to my Republican friends willing to sacrifice limbs for one more term with the Gipper.
In the cult of celebrity, these modern-day deities transcend the rules of normality and become more human than human. We ordinary people, for better or worse, measure our lives by theirs.
Our famous contemporaries become spokespeople for our generation: Who we are when a hungry, young celebrity first ascends the Zeitgeist pantheon, our subsequent reactions to their reign at the top and-ultimately-how their deaths remind us of our own mortality.
Thompson was a different breed of celebrity to his younger fans, a wizened conduit to America's outlaw undertow shunned by mass society. He was a spiritual kinsman to every journalist either brave or crazy enough to tell their own stories instead of others'-objectivity be damned.
"With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he'll never know."
Hunter, thanks for opening the door.
