I hesitate to add anything to what has already been written about Hunter S. Thompson after his passing. I feel that people of his generation can better speak to his impact on American literature and culture, and knowing him best only from his occasional Page 2 column, I simply don't have the personal experience with his work. At the same time, HST still loomed large in my Page 2 world. He was the original reason it caught my eye to begin with. This MUST be a unique thing that ESPN.com is doing if Thompson is involved. Not only unique, but funny and real and above all, honest. I can't/won't say that much save a few points:
He wrote and lived with a freedom few of us will ever be courageous enough to emulate. For that, I admired him.
His style, part fiction, part journalism, part editorial was instantly recognizable, and so unique no one could copy it. He had a sense of drama and rhythm with his words that somehow made things much clearer, yet much more complex at the same time. He not only made you think, but did it in a way that you never realized how close to epiphany you came. For that, I learned from him.
He presented an America to his audience that few of us wanted to admit exists. Thompson's America was a greedy, brutal, violent place full of sex, drugs, crooks and pigfuckers. But through all his talk of impending doom, a ray of innocence and hope always shined through. A hope that one day someone, anyone will come along and make America what it should be, a place free of hypocrisy and lies, where freedom and truth could coexist. Thompson was never too afraid to hold up a mirror to American life. Sure, his was a dirty, cracked, blood-stained mirror, but it showed an image and carried a message that knocked us all out of our complacency. For that, I needed him. We all did.
Mahalo.
****
"Don't wanna be an American idiot.
Don't want a nation under the new media.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mindfuck America.
Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
Well maybe I'm the faggot America.
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along in the age of paranoia."
---Green Day