Songs of the Doomed

I turn to simplicity; I turn again to purity.
- Genghis Kahn, 1221

Hunter S. Thompson wrote much of his life about the death of the American dream. He wrote the truth, or at least how he saw it.

Never apologize, never explain.

Not only was Thompson unafraid to speak the truth, his work oozed it. And not some bastardized, kowtow, I-give-a-fuck-about-what-you-think sellout version. You might not have agreed with his politics, you might not have condoned his wholesale drug and alcohol abuse, and you might have thought the guy was, well, a little weird. But here’s the crux:

HST didn’t care. He didn’t write to amuse you and he didn’t write to appease you. His was never the stuff of cookie-cutters; Thompson was the antithesis of the megalomaniacal, fat-cat executives, dealing their regurgitated crap like ruthless, greed-gorged pushers to the addicted masses.

He wrote what he believed, no matter who it might piss off, and though his work could be at once revolting and strangely satisfying, his insight bordered on genius.

I’ve written before about the sloven carpetbaggery of self-proclaimed demagogue Michael Moore, and you may have mistakenly thought this was because of a deep (or even shallow) rooted disdain for his views or his politics. Not so. As the facts would have it, I don’t necessarily agree with him, but that is not what sickens me about his worn-out rhetoric. What sickens me is the inherent, shameful dishonesty.

In reality what I seek, what I long for in this lifetime, is the truth. I’ve always believed if we could somehow harness the truth, we could find the way, whatever that way is.

So when I read someone who is unafraid to speak the truth, no matter the medium, no matter the context, I am transfixed. This is precisely why Hunter S. Thompson’s words have always spoken to me. I see through the witty, stoic, psychedelic humor to something deeper and richer and truer.

The truth, whether I have liked it or not.

And not everyone likes it. In many circles HST will continue to be viewed as a bullshit relic, a man from a lost time who could not relinquish his grasp on the 60’s or the 70’s. A political hippie who never grew up. A blown-out addict, a delusional hack.

Thing is, he may have been some of those things, a few even by his own admission. But he was also a man unafraid to seek the truth, and though he may or may not have been right, he was honest, and it is therein that the truth takes seed.

Hunter S. Thompson was a man who saw Richard Nixon as the destructor of the American dream, delusional in a belief that character equaled destiny, but still disliked Gary Trudeau—maybe the most successful Nixon lampooner of all time—so much so that he claimed he would set fire to him if they ever met (this over a Doonesbury character named “Uncle Duke”, based loosely on the Gonzo journalist).

Thompson saw the truth as soon as it raised its ugly head. In a section of Songs of the Doomed entitled "Community of Whores", Thompson wrote of the prostitution of his beloved town:

“Aspen is a big-time tourist town, and only two kinds of people live here—the Users and the Used—and the gap between them gets wider every day…now a slavish service community of pimps and middlemen where the only real question in politics is ‘How much money do you have?’”


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In the end is it any surprise that Hunter S. Thompson took his own life? Many will say it was the chronic pain (there was a recent broken leg and hip surgery). There may be some truth in that. I suffered through two months of chemo and radiation treatments that made me think I wanted to die, and I was only 37.

But I think there is more to the truth. The man lived a long life, particularly by his own standards, and yet still I don’t think he ever found the answers he was looking for. Or maybe he found the answers, but not those he was hoping for. Maybe this lifetime of digging at the scabs of society—five decades spent willingly rooting through the smegma of human existence for the truth—was enough to make him want to exit this faux stage. You may not agree with his choice, but you can’t say the man ever backed down from what he saw as reality.

He once quoted, possibly prophetically, a forgotten poet:

“All my life my heart has sought a thing I cannot name.”

The reports are Thompson did not leave a note. I disagree. He left a lifetime of them: lyrics of the soul, songs of the doomed.

Hunter Stockton Thompson, 1937 - 2005

The backseat is quiet.