R.I.P Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson was one of my all time heros. His writing style has been often imitated, never duplicated, and his fiction and non-fitction books, as well as his journalism, are some of the funniest, most politically savvy, and truly original writings I have read anywhere.

He gave new meaning to the term 'functioning alchoholic' given that he was perpetually wasted during so many of his infamous campaign trail coverages, and for so much of his career in general, and yet churned out such brilliant work. That takes a particular kind of talent and bravado that few have.

Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and The Rum Diary are both huge inspirations to my own writing.

To commerorate his passing yesterday, I went a rented what was probably his final appearance, a documentary from last year entitled Breakfast with Hunter. I reccomend it to any other Thompson admirers.

While I have no idea what the circumstances surrounding his decision to take his own life, somehow it almost seems like an appropriate way to die: always the rebel, he would not let outside forces dictate to him when he would die, he chose when and where he was ready.

I wish he had stuck around to write a few more books, and oversee the production of the upcoming film version of The Rum Diary, but the truth is, that cat packed nine lifetimes into one, and with his voracious appetite for drugs and booze, it is amazing he lived as long as he did.

Rest in peace, Hunter S. Thompson, we will not see a writer who manages to so thoroughly reinvent journalism and prose writing as you did for a long time, if ever.