Hunter S. Thompson
gsingle33
Posts: 1
Obituary
Writers have a certain kind of madness. The ones I’ve always preferred had some mole of nature that twisted inside them just underneath the surface. Steel glances and book jacket photos glossed over this peculiar retching that ate at their brains, but you could still see it quiver behind their eyes once you both knew of the small details. These little touches of madness crept into the most mundane of things, but always in the most particular arrangement within their lives.
The specific cases are almost self-evident in their connection (Yeats-mysticism- Beats-Kerouac-spontaneous-Burroughs-drugs-Naked Lunch-Thompson-Fear-Loathing) and so the particular will prove the possession of it in the general. These people and more felt some strange pull in the backs of their brains that simply drove them to a distinct insanity and led to the birth of some of their most important works as a reaction against, or in accordance with, this lunacy.
Yeats was in a slump when his new wife offered her hand to another existence and gave him material for some of his most revolutionary work. The complexion which overgrew him was a Faustian hunger for an explanation and then his youth, both of which his occult connections offered through their extended sessions. The madness saturated him as he wrote it and after, leading to some of his most brilliantly idealized poetry which incorporated traces of that twisting. Between what he saw and what he had been told of the world there was too much slack until he created the medium which spanned the distance. The medium created a whole and Yeats wrote with the wider picture in mind, allowing forgiveness for the unbalanced equation of life and living to an older age as a result.
The Beats were exposed to Yeats and decided they didn’t like the vision of the world which was being fed to them. They decided, as Yeats did, that they should not simply accept the world as its being sold, but rather they should see it through their own vision, using their own sight. Kerouac, in particular, used his work to break down the pales and forts of reason in himself so that he could create a new method, a new way to see the world through words. He pulled down the barrier between conception and creation which bore a hole within him, releasing the madness that drove him to the end. He fell into a society in the midst of gradually valuing iconography more than any other substantive element to measure importance and impact. That was enough to invite the madness past the walls that he had opened and overtake his will.
For Burroughs, the other Beat heavily infected, it was the act of murdering his wife which opened the floodgates. His work stuttered before it happened, but afterwards only morphine and other drugs could keep his view of the world from overcoming reality completely. When he wrote about the border he walked, it showed that the difference between our reality and his grotesquery is marginal at best. It showed us that we all have this same madness brewing in the base parts of our brains, but few have the courage to look at it, let alone strive to reconcile the two. Instead most block their own insanity within a small cell and adopt the general opinion, convinced of their security and chiding what they deem a stamp of one defect on his general censure. Little do they know that these reprimands simply rename their pig as a horse in order to condemn our beast as a filthy and degrade it.
Hunter was another in the ranks amongst these madmen. The American Dream haunted him, twisted outward from somewhere deep in his mind because of the ether-like quality of its substance and the tangible advertisements on the door. He lived and wrote in the space between that Dream and reality, just under different names, and perhaps unlike any other writer, his work explored the particular madness with which he was afflicted, recognized, and held out in front of us. The particular fault that corrupted the whole and spilled onto the page made you wonder where he could be holding the mirror to give you such a clear view of what’s past the door when the ether takes shape. It’s almost as if he held a camera at arm’s length, smiled as the flash went off and captured a world with all its madness exposed and one guy in the middle of it asking, “Now what do you think?”
The madness is known, but undefined until they focus our eyes on it with genius skill. We should mourn the loss of each one of these madmen and hope that we’ll be lucky enough to have more step forward as they did and expose their madness to us, or ours to ourselves. Maybe someday we’ll figure out the writer’s dram of evil, but until then we’ll have to aspire to appreciate the asylum residents because their madness will undoubtedly take its payment in the end.
Writers have a certain kind of madness. The ones I’ve always preferred had some mole of nature that twisted inside them just underneath the surface. Steel glances and book jacket photos glossed over this peculiar retching that ate at their brains, but you could still see it quiver behind their eyes once you both knew of the small details. These little touches of madness crept into the most mundane of things, but always in the most particular arrangement within their lives.
The specific cases are almost self-evident in their connection (Yeats-mysticism- Beats-Kerouac-spontaneous-Burroughs-drugs-Naked Lunch-Thompson-Fear-Loathing) and so the particular will prove the possession of it in the general. These people and more felt some strange pull in the backs of their brains that simply drove them to a distinct insanity and led to the birth of some of their most important works as a reaction against, or in accordance with, this lunacy.
Yeats was in a slump when his new wife offered her hand to another existence and gave him material for some of his most revolutionary work. The complexion which overgrew him was a Faustian hunger for an explanation and then his youth, both of which his occult connections offered through their extended sessions. The madness saturated him as he wrote it and after, leading to some of his most brilliantly idealized poetry which incorporated traces of that twisting. Between what he saw and what he had been told of the world there was too much slack until he created the medium which spanned the distance. The medium created a whole and Yeats wrote with the wider picture in mind, allowing forgiveness for the unbalanced equation of life and living to an older age as a result.
The Beats were exposed to Yeats and decided they didn’t like the vision of the world which was being fed to them. They decided, as Yeats did, that they should not simply accept the world as its being sold, but rather they should see it through their own vision, using their own sight. Kerouac, in particular, used his work to break down the pales and forts of reason in himself so that he could create a new method, a new way to see the world through words. He pulled down the barrier between conception and creation which bore a hole within him, releasing the madness that drove him to the end. He fell into a society in the midst of gradually valuing iconography more than any other substantive element to measure importance and impact. That was enough to invite the madness past the walls that he had opened and overtake his will.
For Burroughs, the other Beat heavily infected, it was the act of murdering his wife which opened the floodgates. His work stuttered before it happened, but afterwards only morphine and other drugs could keep his view of the world from overcoming reality completely. When he wrote about the border he walked, it showed that the difference between our reality and his grotesquery is marginal at best. It showed us that we all have this same madness brewing in the base parts of our brains, but few have the courage to look at it, let alone strive to reconcile the two. Instead most block their own insanity within a small cell and adopt the general opinion, convinced of their security and chiding what they deem a stamp of one defect on his general censure. Little do they know that these reprimands simply rename their pig as a horse in order to condemn our beast as a filthy and degrade it.
Hunter was another in the ranks amongst these madmen. The American Dream haunted him, twisted outward from somewhere deep in his mind because of the ether-like quality of its substance and the tangible advertisements on the door. He lived and wrote in the space between that Dream and reality, just under different names, and perhaps unlike any other writer, his work explored the particular madness with which he was afflicted, recognized, and held out in front of us. The particular fault that corrupted the whole and spilled onto the page made you wonder where he could be holding the mirror to give you such a clear view of what’s past the door when the ether takes shape. It’s almost as if he held a camera at arm’s length, smiled as the flash went off and captured a world with all its madness exposed and one guy in the middle of it asking, “Now what do you think?”
The madness is known, but undefined until they focus our eyes on it with genius skill. We should mourn the loss of each one of these madmen and hope that we’ll be lucky enough to have more step forward as they did and expose their madness to us, or ours to ourselves. Maybe someday we’ll figure out the writer’s dram of evil, but until then we’ll have to aspire to appreciate the asylum residents because their madness will undoubtedly take its payment in the end.
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BUT let me say ths abut that-mad crazd beatiful hystricl womn can b sane n insane at the samtime.
men feel th need to b 1 or theothr.
cheah. rigt/
u thik i'm crzy but i'm not.
i'm just wize.
**********
hi hony! lov u!
Yes, Hunter was a very good writer. He should have stayed around and been for posterity the voice of dissent during the Bush era. That might have been his greatest achievement.
Not totally sure about the idea of a Yeats-Beats lineage, really. Yeats's literary engagement with Irish history is what makes him great, and however much his missus influenced him with automatic writing, it was history that gave him his material however much all that occultism offered him the means to articulate it.
“Pump Up the Volume” is the new Fourth of July
If I could BANG like Lester . . .
When I was growing up, people couldn’t help dancing to a little song by M/A/R/R/S . In three words, it was ubiquitous. But those three words don’t really do the song justice. I don’t know if it gets any credit for playing a part in the movie that shares its name. If it doesn’t then that would be fitting, as it gave very little credit to any of the dozen or so artists whose works were sampled to create it. And maybe it doesn’t deserve any credit; maybe it played no part in the movie. Who knows? Not me. What I do know is that it is not on the Pump Up the Volume soundtrack, but is on the American Psycho soundtrack, which is interesting to me.
I was driving to Boston for the Fourth. I had never driven further north than Maryland, so for me spending the holiday weekend on a road that was not located in the South was an act of independence in and of itself.
I had danced my ass off through 1987. By 1988, when the song finally hit it big here, I was thirteen and dancing in clubs. I was scared of nothing and mostly dancing to “Pump Up the Volume.”
By the time I made my trip to the North, I had learned to fear a lot of things, forgotten the song, and remembered a rumor I’d heard about the drivers “up there.”
Somewhere before Boston, I hit a town that was celebrating the holiday early and in a big way.
The cars on the interstate were at a standstill, and then I heard a boom. I heard several booms and ashes began falling onto the hood of my car. Initially I thought that someone had dropped a nuclear bomb on our nation’s capital and that I was experiencing nuclear fallout first hand -- happy birthday America from your pals, the terrorist nation.
But I didn’t feel radiated, so I reasoned that, no, we weren’t being bombed. The traffic rolled a little further, and as I inched around a bend, I could see the fireworks going off in the night sky.
I have to admit that I hate to be near fireworks. Maybe it is because in my part of the country, more often than not, crazy men, lacking experience in fire safety, are the torch bearers of the whole firework tradition. There is a certain gleam in their eyes when the box is brought out. It is as if their faces are transformed by the bright colors and kooky names of the contents, blue war head launchers, red phantom crackling jets, and purple artificial satellites. They laugh when things go a little bit awry. I am sure that it is glee that I am hearing in that laughter when one goes skittering through the grass and explodes in a field.
Looking up at the sky from the safety of my vehicle, I realized two things. One that I had always needed a metaphorical Fourth, and two that I had one in my car. From now on, I was going to feel all the exhilaration of the Fourth, without the fire hazards.
I put “Pump Up the Volume” in the cd player, and out came the song’s declaration of independence: “Yo all ya home boys. . . This one‘s for you.” (like uh-huh, you know this is gonna be some hot shit). And there’s that smoky little voice telling you, “Get Down.”
Then the sounds, like a fire alarm. Repeating over and over again.
Next the shout out, “Brothers and Sisters . . . We’re going to getch-ya.” Upon hearing this, you may begin to worry. What exactly does an American mean by “We are going to get you?”
But then you forget about it because the Fourth is a sweaty holiday spent outside in the humidity and near a grill, and the sweat is a little distracting. Likewise, the metaphor needs to be sweaty. And at that point in the song, if you’re not in your car, you’re starting to sweat because your ass is moving to the beat. You just can’t help it, which explains why cheerleaders across the nation picked this song to be their theme for years. It‘s probably still going to somebody‘s cheer competition. And really, what’s more like a firecracker than a sizzling cheerleader with shiny pom-poms getting tossed into the air. It’s apropos I think.
As you are really working up your sweat, the screamers start, the lift off from the blue war head launcher.
The song commands you to boogey-down. All the while reminding you to get louder -- Pump Up The Volume, Pump Up The Volume -- the volume in your car (bedroom, basement, club) going up, up, up, a red phantom crackling jet.
And you know it’s going to explode soon. They even give you fair warning, “A-here we go. Come on,” they say.
But before it does the purple artificial satellite hangs in the air for a moment, “Rhythematic, Systematic world control, magnetic, genetic to match your soul . . . (and something that sounds like) history.”
And now the drum beats, going like this, boom, boom, boom, and then that funky, little, squiggly voice comes in. The explosion then streaming, twinkling colors.
The song ends by fading out, like ashes falling on my car‘s hood.
“Pump Up the Volume” would be our warring, rogue nation’s new Fourth of July, if I could BANG like Lester.
it's almost impossible to portray psychosis in all its horror.....you can project images and adjectives about it.....but they are just braille.....it's like blindness......I won't try to regale you with stories from my numerous psychotic episodes, because I realise that it wouldn't help you FEEL what it's like to be mad....I couldn't recreate the fear.....and in fact, it's like being in the middle of a horror film.....another simile.....but really being in some horror story is scary.....that's why even films like Conspiracy Theory resonate with me.....or Constantine (although you do get a certain kick out of it.....a certain heightened adrenaline rush.....which sometimes you can get addicted to.....imagine being addicted to teh adrenaline rush of fear)......I used to scour teh internet for stories on conspiracy theories and apocalyptic warnings.....to kind of recreate teh thrill of impending psychosis......teh total energy boost of thinking 'they ARE after you'.....but I still never ventured too far.....for example reading Burroughs.....too close for comfort.......now that I have stabilized, and am healthy (more so than for 20 years)......I want to maintain my new sanity, and don't think anything of value can be found in exploring the madness.....for myself or others.....although I am going to find a hypnotist this year sometime.....to find out why March is my bete noire......something happened to me when I was young......and I am in a position of relative safety to explore the genesis of my ailment now.....as long as it doesn't affect my health or interfere with me getting my baby back......sure it's great to be mad.....I love it sometimes.....it makes me a bit unique and different, but at the same time, it's very crippling, and my quality of life has improved since I've been well - or maybe I've been better since my quality of life has improved.....if anyone's interested in what happens to you when you become psychotic, or when you have delusions or mania, just ask me, and I'll tell you all the gory details......a lot of scary stuff......heh