Monday, February 21, 2005

 
Hunter Thompson killed himself. I was skimming the front page of the NYT and it took me a second or two after reading the headline to register it... I was already on to another headline when it hit and I gasped audibly. Not a huge surprise I guess... 67 is enough years maybe. How old was Hemingway when he shot himself? Still, it sucks that HST's dead now. It strikes me that in almost every interview or profile on him I've read, it's a requisite that the writer imitate his style. That's what an icon of letters does to people, I guess. I once wrote a short story in a fiction class at the University of Maryland in a pale imitation of F&L in LV, about me and Lynch and his cousins driving to Graceland. I stayed up all night on ritalin and cutty sark pounding it out (it wasn't very good), and in the morning, when it came time to pass 26 copies around the class, I had what I can only exaggerate as an episode of amphetamine psychosis, panicking that what I was doing amounted to plagiarism. I assume the answer to this next question is no, but then again I'm not that well-read on contemporary journalism - is there anyone working today who has anywhere near the balls he had in the 70s?


Unrelated word of advice - don't buy honey from the 99 cent store.
bq 1:54 AM

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