The Shore is saddened by the news of Hunter S. Thompson's death. We will post some thoughts / reactions here. Feel free to send us your own.

---

I was floored. All I have are my first thoughts upon reading the news:

"Hunter S Thompson commits suicide."

My God. A headline like a punch in the gut.

Just like his books and articles--they hit hard and merciless, but never hurt quite this way.

Legs feel weak. Need to sit down.

Maybe we finally see the vulnerability, the troubled or depressed psyche behind Thompson's crazed gonzo behavior. Or maybe he just took death the way he took life: On his own terms.

I remember feeling this way when Brautigan shot himself, although his suicide was not really surprising at all, unlike HST's.

Goodbye, Duke.

- Shane Michael Guy

---

Louisville’s Word Slugger

I’ll be quite honest that I never really expected there to be any correlation between the Jim Henson’s fuzzy blue Muppet and the literary cubist also called Gonzo, but curiosity burned through me like hairspray through the Ozone. Till I read up and found that Dr. Thompson was in no way related.

Hunter S. earned a reputation as an irreverent journalist because he colored so far out of the prescribed box. During the early sixties there was still a strong, shall we call it objective idealism’ that permeated from the heart to the pen of many reporters. Perhaps this purported sentiment never existed in practice, like minded writers as Thompson ran buck wild with subjectivity.

Call him the papa bear to the Onion, Slate, Utne Reader, The Nation and last but not least (Buddha help me for mentioning him in the same sentence) the O'Reilly Factor. Nowadays we blue folks, smurfs and all, expect there to be some kind of slant, but the Louisville Word Slugger was ahead of his times.

Gonzo gave hope to millions of disenfranchised town criers all over, that proofreading was merely an afterthought, content baby is king. H-man was known to rip his stories out of his notepad and hand them in seconds before a deadline.

Thank goodness for Johnny Depp’s courage to play his part in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and Terry Gilliam’s dogged determination to give this mensch of a writer his day in the sun.  

We will all miss his unbridled enthusiasm for capturing the slippery slope of reality.

- John Gorman

PREVIOUS WORK

"INFANTILE" by Robert Zbikowski

"CRÉMATOIRE" by Robert Zbikowski

"SLOUCHED" by Anita Kane Evans

"DIEM" by Billy McSmithers

"AN ABORTED FAIRY TALE" by Joel Becker

ARCHIVES

HOME