14:59:59

Lileks has a delightful set of arrows issued at someone who richly deserves it: the pompous, posing, Hunter Thompson. I stopped reading his cascades of woe some time ago; only someone with his drug intake could read into sporting events the grim fantasies that he does. His earlier writings are interesting because they begin After the Fall, as it were, when the Hippie Eden had already been closed off by the Cherubim. Las Vegas becomes the perfect Nod/Enoch, where the Children of Cain feed off of each other in grotesque spectacles. Taken out of that context, even that early book is nothing but the adventures of two burned-out drug worms, who go looking for sarcasm and find it, whereupon they proceed to get high a lot, rise from their stupor a couple of times, and then drift somewhere else. The Death Wish is palpable; it lies splattered on the pages like one of Ralph Steadman's illustrations.


What fascinates is why so many are willing to believe, based on impression and conjecture, that Thompson's vision of the world is the true one. Is there a degree of surety in despair? Relief in surrender? Can it be that Communists and Hippies and ANSWER-ites want only to have the world and its history rendered simply, a long march to a just oblivion/nirvana?


Peace.