Parallels with Hunter Thompson, Part 3: What the hell is wrong with Wagner’s fans?

I have devoted the last two posts to the similarities between the writer Hunter S. Thompson and Richard Wagner. I promised to explore their contrasts in this post, which is in a section below. But first, there is one more similarity I saved for this post.  I believe that the key to both of them—and the thing explains their massive contradictions—is their crushed, if never quite extinguished, idealism. I will then conclude with why I think all this is relevant in general, and specifically, to Wagner’s fans.

Idealism and Disillusionment

“Optimism and hope are different. Optimist tends to be based on the notion that there is enough evidence out there that allows us to think things are going to be better.  Whereas hope looks at the evidence and says it doesn’t look good at all.  Doesn’t look good AT ALL.  We are going to go beyond the evidence and attempt to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow us to engage in heroic actions always against the odds, no guarantees whatsoever.  That’s hope.  I’m a prisoner of hope.  I’m dying a prisoner of hope.  Though never believe that misery and despair have the last word.”¹  Cornel West

This quote perfectly captures the essence of Hunter S. Thompson and Richard Wagner’s quixotic quests to make a difference in the world in their respective centuries, despite massive odds against them and their own pessimism. 

They both lived in times of tremendous cultural and political change, and joined the tide of those who tried to create a better society. At the core of both men’s personality was sensitivity, stubbornness, and an unshakeable belief in what they considered to be right and wrong. So they both fought what they thought was the good fight.  While others disagreed with their viewpoints, their hearts were pure. Their guiding light was their ideals, which they clung to—fanatically—to the day of their deaths.

Thompson’s son Juan said of his father:

His perspective was an absolute one, lacking the shades of gray favored by so-called realists.  He believed in the darkest as well as the highest potential of the human heart… I learned both idealism and deep cynicism from him.² 

To me, Wagner’s son could have just as easily said the same thing as it readily captures the truth about Wagner.

Of all their similarities, I believe the most significant one was the pain of their disillusionment with politics and, indeed, with most people. They both begin their early adulthood with optimism that the world could change, and they could play—because of their talent and drive—a significant role in such change. Every time their hopes were dashed, bitterness ensued.  However, new hopes would emerge, only to be crushed again.  They both felt particularly intense—world-changing—pain because they were both enormously sensitive and earnest.

The beginning of Thompson’s profound disillusionment was the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  He wrote on that day to his friend, the writer William Kennedy:

There is no human being within 500 miles to whom I can communicate anything—much less the fear and loathing that is on me after today’s murder….

The killing has put me in a state of shock.  The rage is trebled.  I was not prepared at this time for the death of hope, but here it is.  Ignore it at your peril…. No matter what, today is the end of an era.  No more fair play.  From now on it is dirty pool and judo in the clinches.  The savage nuts have shattered the great myth of American decency.  They can count me in —I feel ready for a dirty game.³ 

With the rise of the youth counter-culture, Thompson did have renewed optimism, but that was shattered by the 1968 Democratic convention. He said of that event, “I went to the Democratic convention as a journalist, and returned a cold-blooded revolutionary.”⁴ 

Sandy said of this seminal event in his life:

I saw Hunter cry exactly twice in my life.  One had to do with our dog, and the other was the night he got  back from Chicago.  He broke down telling me what happened.  The police had fired tear gas into the crowd of people demonstrating at the convention, and he was right in there.  He talked about being hit, and brutally hurt, and the violence, the horror of it all.5

Hunter wrote in Rolling Stone about his transformation:

For me that week in Chicago was far worse than the worst bad acid trip I’d even heard rumors about.  It permanently altered my brain chemistry, and my first new idea—when I calmed down—was an absolute conviction that there was no possibility for any personal truce, for me, in a nation that could hatch and be proud of a malignant monster like Chicago.  Suddenly, it seemed imperative to get a grip on those who had somehow slipped into power and caused the thing to happen.⁶ 

George McGovern’s Democratic primary win brought another wave of profound optimism to Thompson, but his complete rejection by the nation was wrenching for Thompson. McGovern relates Thompson’s reaction:

The week after my campaign ended, Hunter flew into Washington for a final interview in my office.  He teared up more than once.  He took it very hard.  It was almost as though he was brokenhearted.  He alternated between fury and grief.  He could hardly look at me, he felt so miserable about what happened.⁷

George McGovern and Hunter Thompson on the campaign trail.

 Rolling Stone writer Mikal Gilmore⁸ sums it up about as well as possible:

Thompson’s fear and loathing was about disillusion—the feelings that gnawed at you after a dream that proved only a hallucination. It was also about the terror of losing that illusion, and having no refuge.... Behind it all, Thompson was a man of morals and ideals. He had believed that American could be led to reaffirm its best principles and truths.  Following 1972, he was disabused of that notion, and almost everything he did and wrote – or just as important, didn’t write – afterward was his way of coping with that awful verity.⁹

Thompson’s friend William Geider explained why people forgave him his many excesses:

[I]nnocence and sweetness was the core of who he was. He knew the world was big and bad and ugly, and he would take it on the way a little boy takes on a demon. After you saw that up close, you felt protective and forgiving toward him. Whatever outrageous and repugnant thing he did, you were willing to write them off after seeing that. People are easily defeated by the irreconcilable pains they have in their lives, their disappointments and injures. It required a real act of heroism for Hunter to stand up and swing his sword and pound on the table his whole life, just rebelling against that pain.¹⁰

In Wagner’s life, the events that turned him from idealist to pessimist were the collapse of the revolutionary movement of 1848, and the coup d’etat orchestrated by Louis Napoléon in 1851. He went through a serious depression because of these events, only coming out of it after several years. His hope would re-emerge throughout his life, only to have it extinguished time after time, causing a new cycle of pain. Contrary to his reputation now, most of Wagner’s friends considered him at his core to be a kind and loving man. Of course that kindness could disappear quickly, as his moods always ebbed and flowed violently. They understood his outbursts were from pain; they knew his heart was in the right place so, just as with Thompson, they forgave him his excesses.

For Thompson and Wagner, both trapped by their intense idealism and moral beliefs, they were indeed prisoners of hope.

The Contrasts

For every moment of triumph, for every instant of beauty, many souls must be trampled — Hunter Thompson (who claimed it was “a crude Mongolian adage.”)¹¹

I like to think of Wagner and Thompson as conjoined, like the yin and yang; Wagner was the yin to Thompson’s yang. Or, putting it in The Ring terms, Thompson was dark-Wagner to, relatively speaking, light-Wagner.¹²

Thompson was a man’s man—very macho.  He generally didn’t reveal his sensitivities—though they were extreme—except indirectly, via his anger mostly.  Wagner, on the other hand, wore his heart on his sleeve; and his heart was very feminine.  He showed his soft side to everybody, which was part of his charm.

The young Thompson

The young Wagner

While Wagner got easily angry about a whole lot of things, and as passionate as Thompson, he wasn’t a violent man. Like Thompson, Wagner could be cruel, but he didn’t revel in it, and abhorred—at least anywhere near him—the violence that Thompson celebrated. He was always a man who recoiled from seeing any suffering, and was known for being very kind to those less fortunate than him. He could be a yeller, but was not a hitter.  He got no joy from violence, nor was he physically violent except on rare occasions.  Here is one exception in which he describes participating in an assault when he was a young man on a guy, Andre, who his friend, Frolich, disliked.  He wrote in Mein Leben:

He tried to chase him from our table by striking him with a stick: the result was a fight in which Frolich’s friends felt they must take part, though they all seemed to do so with some reluctance. A mad longing to join the fray also took possession of me. With the others I helped in knocking our poor victim about, and I even heard the sound of one terrible blow which I struck Andre on the head, whilst he fixed his eyes on me in bewilderment.

I relate this incident to atone for a sin which has weighed very heavily on my conscience ever since. I have never quite forgotten some of my thoughtless and reckless actions.13

If Thompson had any fits of conscience about his various assaults over the years, he kept them quiet. His first wife Sandy, who was one victim of his violence, asked him in a moment of tenderness if he knew where his violence came from, which they called his “monster.” Sandy quotes Thompson as saying, “It’s like this. I sense it first, and before I have completely turned around he is there. He is me.”¹⁴ That is about as close as Thompson comes to an apology.

Hunter and Sandy (and friend Paul Semonin) in their early years.

Like Thompson, Wagner was often verbally abuse to his wives; this is particular true in his early years of marriage to Minna.  However, it never got anywhere near the level that Sandy describes about Thompson. Here is her summary of their relationship from Sandy's point of view:

With Hunter, there was never a hint of a mature relationship. It was two people who couldn’t really be honest with each other, who couldn’t really communicate with each other, we weren’t working out differences, working out problems, making compromises—nothing like that. Hunter was the king, and I was the slave. I was the happy slave—until I was neither happy nor a slave.... I didn’t have friends because I couldn’t just bring them into the house, with the chaos and violence and bad tempers—you couldn’t subject your friends to that. ¹⁵

Thompson with second wife Anita, 35 years younger.
 Their marriage lasted only two years, ended by his suicide.

While Wagner and Thompson did expect their wives to help them in a similar ways,¹⁶ for Wagner there was always a give and take in a way that just didn’t exist with Thompson. Wagner had real marriages, with real compromises, real—if often strained—communication (particularly with Minna). Beyond all that, Thompson was a big-time philanderer, having frequent casual sex (and some not so casual) while married.  Wagner was nothing like this as I described here.

Wagner with Cosima (25 years younger) and son Siegfried

While Wagner was not a fan of homosexual behavior, he didn’t beat any gays up and, in fact, had several gay male friends. Thompson was just a much more violent and abusive guy in all areas.

Their childhood domestic traumas were very similar, but Wagner wasn’t saddled with an alcoholic mom. And while Wagner was a wild and uncontrollable youth, he was not a vandal like Thompson.

Wagner did use drugs to help his creative process, as I described here, but much more effectively.  He never lost his artistic ability; his addictions remained within working bounds, unlike Thompson’s.

While Wagner did have focused prejudice on some groups more than others, I am quite sure he would generally agree with Thompson’s sentiment about most people, i.e that “most people are bastards, thieves, and yes—even pigfuckers.” That said, this is the one area that Thompson comes out better than Wagner, if you can ignore his violence.

Wagner’s central life passion was creating a society in which love and art were central to existence. He did overlap with Thompson’s core passion in some respects—particularly the evil of money and power— but he was not anything like the libertarian that Thompson was.

The differences between them clearly showed up in their art. Thompson chose the dark; Wagner the light. While both were deeply disillusioned, Thompson’s primary answer was comic vitriol. Partly it was to channel his pain, partly he hoped it inspired others to rebel. His works played to some of our worst emotions, particularly rage and resentment (and in this, unfortunately, he is not much different than what Limbaugh has done on the right, though Limbaugh’s fans don’t seem to notice he is primarily a comedian.)

Wagner, in contrast, though deeply alienated from the society, focused his works to illuminate the values he craved for the new society. He wanted to replace money, power and militarism as the driving forces of society, with one in which love, compassion, community and art were at the center. While the dark side of humanity is certainly integral to his work, his point was to reject it, and embrace a more ennobled future.

If they met in the flesh, I think they would have big problems with each other. Thompson would not have liked Wagner’s feminine attributes such as his frequent tears, and certainly would have mocked his taste for women’s clothes, perfume, satin, and silk. Wagner would have been scared of Thompson, and found him to be a brute. However, if they just read each other’s letters, they certainly would have recognized a kindred spirit. Thompson, in fact, was a fan of Wagner’s. He wrote here, in a piece entitled “The War Drums Roll,” that even if there was war and other insanity in the world, for him, “that’s why I live out here in the mountains with a flag on my porch and loud Wagner music blaring out of my speakers. I feel lucky, and I have plenty of ammunition.”

To be an original

I  believe their similarities show what it takes to become a true original in art, someone not chained, in Socrates’ words, to the yoke of custom and convention. To me this is a person who cannot be successfully imitated because they sear their personal brand so deeply into their work. And, yet, through their unique voice, they are still able to illuminate truths about humankind. The example of Wagner and Thompson shows the traits necessary to becoming both a successful and original artist:

• be meticulous—perfectionist—in you craft; first learn the rules so you can break them beautifully
  
• possess a creative drive that is so strong that you are willing to forego making a secure living to follow your intuitions and not the crowd.
  
• have a focused and consuming passion.
  
• have enough charisma, talent and organization to get people to do your bidding, and pay for your existence so you can concentrate of your craft.
  
• have brutal honesty and the willingness to be completely audacious.
  
• have utmost faith in your talent and ability (and have that talent and ability, of course).
  
• be endowed with tremendous energy.
  
• have the ability to live with constant stress.
  
• be able to tolerate massive amount of pain.
  

It’s not fun being an original artist. By definition it means you are doing something that no one else has done. Opposition is inevitable. What one gets from being original, according to Thompson in a 1967 letter, is “the dead-end loneliness of a man who makes his own rules.” If Thompson and Wagner are guides, this both originates from pain and creates more pain. It’s not a life anyone would choose; it comes from an inner drive that only a few extraordinary people have.  And those that become celebrated for their originality, they suffer from it.

The point of this comparison

There is no way Thompson can be separated from his works. “Gonzo journalism” is his alone, utterly unique and completely integral to this exasperating man. His work—and life—does create ambivalence in me but the fact is, I love his writing, particularly the Campaign Trail book (originally serialized in Rolling Stone magazine over the course of the campaign.) I had the same feelings as he did about Kennedy’s assassination, which still haunts me almost 50 years to the day after the event. I had the same feeling of despair at the election of Nixon, and a tremendous horror at the actions of the police against the demonstrators in Chicago, Kent State and elsewhere. This woman reacting to the killing of a student at the Kent State demonstration captures the angst of my generation:

Student gunned down by Ohio National Guard at Kent State.

I was, like Thompson, an idealist. The first $500 I made at my first job, I sent to George McGovern’s campaign. I wanted that America, the George McGovern one, and so did Thompson, desperately. And for that, I can only love him, despite his many flaws as a human being. Thompson gave voice to my frustration, my rage, my feelings of powerlessness. Sure, he was outrageous, saying things that I would have never voiced in public or even thought. (I’m not that dark.) But, his scathingly funny attacks hit their marks time and again; he made me think, he made me laugh. He was issuing a clarion call of warning in the most provocative terms. He was also absolutely correct in the warning that the forces of the right, both in the Republican Party and the Democratic party, were gaining strength and were going to do a host of horrible things when they were in charge.

He wasn’t always a disconsolate Cassandra; hope flickers through his writings on a regular basis. If you want to see that side, read his writings on McGovern within Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972 or his reflections on Jimmy Carter’s Law Day speech in The Great Shark Hunt to see the other side of the man. This is the guy that all his friends saw underneath his bluster. When he believed in the goodness of someone, the idealist in him was on full, heart-warming display. 

Yes, as a human being, he was often as dark as his works. To live with that level of rage and frustration, it is inevitable that he would be so. A “nicer” man couldn’t have written the works. I embrace him, as all his fans do, as a complicated, contradictory, extraordinarily flawed man who working tirelessly for what he believed was right, and shone a harsh light on all that he believed was wrong.

He said of himself, and I think he pegged it, “About nine-tenths of the time I feel like an obvious fool – but the rest of the time I know I’m a saint and a hero.  I seem to be in a state of conflict at all times – most of it wasted energy.”¹⁷ I celebrate him for that 10%, and understand that without his severe discontent, his heroic side would not have existed.

Wagner was the nicer, kinder man in almost all respects and wrote ennobling works, yet he has a much worse reputation than Thompson. This is utterly insane! Most of this is because while Thompson is treated well—maybe a little too well, even—by contemporary writers and biographers, Wagner has been been reduced to a caricature, and most biographical writing is utter trash, as I wrote about here. This state of affairs—obviously—exists because of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Before the rise of Nazi Germany, he had no shortage of fans who would defend him against unfair attacks. That is no longer the case, which is a pitiful thing. He is quite deserving of understanding and celebration.

Wagner is just as entwined in his works as Thompson is in his. He had to be exactly like he was to write his works. Anyone who knows his works, and his intentions about his works, cannot reasonably separate him from them. As his friend Hans Von Wolzogen put it: “all his works and all that moves us so deeply in his works springing, as [they do], from the depths of his own human nature is an expression of his true personality and could not have been created by any other ‘self’.”¹⁸ His works are a direct manifestation of his highest ideals as well as his deepest agony. They are beautiful, wondrous works and give compelling evidence that there was much beauty in his soul (and, yes, ugliness, too.) 

So, wake up, Wagner fans, and stop running away from him.  In sum, my point is: If Thompson’s fans can understand and forgive him, what the hell is the matter with Wagner’s fans?

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End Notes

1 The quote is from Anna Deavere Smith’s extraordinary “documentary theater” piece in which she "acts" Cornel West’s quote, Twilight: Los Angles.

2 Rolling Stone magazine, September 19, 2007, Hunter Thompson tribute issue, 72

3 Brinkley, ed., Hunter S. Thompson: Proud Highway, The Gonzo Letters, Vol , Nov 22, 63. This is the first instance of Thompson using the phrase “fear and loathing” in his writing. A copy of that letter is here.

4 Brinkley, ed., Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America, The Gonzo letters, volume 2, xviii second letters

5 Wenner and Seymour ed., Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson 100

6 as quoted by Mikal Gilmore in Rolling Stone tribute, 46

7 Rolling Stone tribute, 57

8 I am not sure if this is at all relevant, but the fact that Gilmore is the brother of the mass murderer Gary Gilmore strikes me as at least interesting.

9 Rolling Stone tribute, 47

10 Rolling Stone tribute, 62

11 Proud Highway, xxxi

12 In Der Ring des Neibilungen, the god Woton acknowledges his power-hungry, if more noble, side, by calling himself Licht-Alberich to his nemisis, the completely evil Alberich, who he terms Schwarz-Alberich.

13 Wagner, Mein Leben, 75

14 Rolling Stone tribute, 52

15 Gonzo, 220

16 I would love to do a quote-by-quote parallel of all their similarities, but it would be book length. Here is just one example, illustrating my assertion. This is how Wagner explained the role of his wife: “She has relieved the pressure of daily life, and keeps watch over my tranquility. Her only care is when she becomes aware that not all life’s disturbances can be kept at bay.” How Thompson put it: “I’ve grown accustomed to letting her deal with my day-to-day reality and keeping the fucking weasels off my back.”

17 Proud Highway, 429

18 Spencer ed., Wagner Remembered, 259

Parallels with Hunter S. Thompson, part 2: Light and Dark

Note: Since I am writing about Thompson, obscenities will be included.

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And of madness there were two kinds: one produced by human infirmity, the other was a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention.  Socrates

Intro

As I summarized in a chart in this last post, the writer Hunter S. Thompson and the composer Richard Wagner had a number of life parallels.  Beyond that this fact is just interesting to me—a fan of both of them—I think it is relevant in two ways.  First, it indicates what it takes to become a true original in art and simultaneously shows that this pursuit can be torturous.  Second, and more importantly for this blog, I also think that the different receptions they have received from their fans is striking.  As I will try to show in this post, Thompson was a far darker human being than Wagner, but Thompson’s fans and much of the press still have a very nuanced understanding of him.  Many—maybe most—of Wagner’s fans show no such enlightenment. But they should, and that is to their shame.

I will explore both of these topics in detail next post.  I want to devote this post to a character study of Thompson, which will show the similarities to Wagner with the detail my chart lacked.

 On Thompson

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man” – Hunter Thompson’s favorite saying, which hung over his fireplace mantle, serving as a lame excuse for his behavior.

Hunter S. Thompson with his near-trademarked look

Much of what I write about Thompson in this section is equally true of Wagner, which should be readily apparent to anyone who has read my posts, or other reliable biographical information, about him. I will put an asterisk when there is a contrast, which I will address next post.

For people who are reading this blog but don’t know a thing about Hunter Thompson, he is considered one of the best writers and social critics of the last century.  He is often compared to Mark Twain, though an X-rated one. He used hyperbolic dark humor—filled with obscenities—to make his points, thus his work sits on the very edge of respectability, and many people find it to be without merit.  He made himself the story through a blend of outrageous fact and fiction, so his life is truly inseparable from his art—this is what he called “gonzo” journalism. Even though his “journalism” was filled with fiction, he was extremely well respected because through these fabrications, he actually revealed much truth.  To my mind—and many others, including prominent historians—he wrote, in his signature style, the best book ever written on any Presidential campaign, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972.  His collected letters are amazingly prescient and a fascinating kaleidoscopic documentary history of the ’60s and ’70s.  He is also well-known for his biographical portrait of the infamous motorcycle club, The Hell’s Angels, and his fantastic—in both senses of the word—and drug-soaked Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. 

Thompson was, in fact, an outrageous person, but he also created a myth about himself that he was even more outrageous than he was.  Thus, separating fact from fiction requires independent verification.  As well, for any serious inquiry into his life, it is imperative to read his letters to understand the man—though his letters are written in his hyperbolic style, so the truth of any particular statement is always suspect.

The most reliable and knowledgeable witness to the true Hunter Thompson, I believe, is his first wife, Sandy.  

Sandy then

Sandy now (goes by Sondi Wright)

They were together 19 years until Sandy couldn’t take him any more, as she was the target of both physical and verbal abuse throughout the relationship* However, Thompson became ever-more abusive as his years of drug addictions took it’s toll.¹ Though Sandy left him, she forgave him his excesses—she understood that she willingly put her self in that position—and remained a fan and a friend and never stopped loving him, knowing intimately his goodness, too. Thus, she has a fairly balanced and nuanced view of the full man. In an obituary she wrote for Rolling Stone she said:

Hunter was a very, very, very Big person/personality/being.  He was on the one hand extremely loving and tender, brilliant and exciting, generous and kind.  On the other end of the spectrum—he was the Full Spectrum—he was extremely cruel.²

His sense of responsibility for his actions was often nil.  According to a biographer Peter Whitmer:

Repeatedly, he stiffed his landlords, sneaked out on his wife*, and avoided all forms of responsibility. His power over people, his conniving use of theatrics were honed to an art form, becoming his signature style of interacting with others.³ 

Sandy thought Hunter got away with this behavior because he had “a tremendous power of seduction…not just women but men, children—anybody he really wanted to.⁴  And he wanted to put that power to good use, as he was “a very well developed narcissist—a polished narcissist, actually.”⁵ 

Thompson had a very troubled and troublesome youth. The death of his father after a protracted illness, when he was 14, deeply affected him, as did the alcoholism of his mother.* His father’s death had pushed the family from middle-class to poor; this also had a lasting effect as he saw how differently he was treated than the rich. He had “resistance to any discipline but his own.” Thompson was gifted with energy—abounding energy—but its focus was often on hell-raising. As a youth, he began his life-long enjoyment of destructive forces—setting fires was a favorite activity as a teenager, lots of fires.  He also began his love affair with guns and explosives. He committed a large number of personal and property crimes.*  When finally caught, he avoided extended jail time only by a judge giving him the out of entering the Air Force, which he did at age 18. The incident deeply embittered Thompson because he did his crimes with two rich kids who both went unpunished.  He realized the game was fixed against those without money.⁶

While Thompson seemed on a path of self-destruction by all who knew him, unbeknownst to most of his friends, he was a very serious-minded and vociferous reader, particularly of American writers, and planned to become the next great American novelist. He started typing out the great works of Hemingway and Fitzgerald “just to get the feel of how it is to write those words.”⁷  He went into journalism to make a career as a writer, working on his novels simultaneously.

Thompson also wrote a whole lot of letters.  It was through these letters that his style and voice first emerged.  He kept every letter he wrote, always making carbon copies, as he knew that they would be published in the future, when he got famous. Thompson was also an extremely meticulous and careful worker, contrary to one of the many self-promoted myths about himself. While the words he chose to use were often shockingly outrageous, this was quite deliberate, and necessary for his style of hyperbolic dark humor.  The author Douglas Brinkley wrote, “Like Mark Twain, he believed that the difference between the nearly right word and the right word was a large matter.”⁸

According to Sandy, before drugs took their toll later in his life,

[h]e was absolutely committed to his writing.  He was extremely disciplined.  He wrote every day.  He edited and rewrote everything. He was a very serious young man — wild, yes…but serious.

He believed in his ability, his talent, even genius.  In this forward to the second volume of his letters, the journalist David Halberstam wrote about his self-confidence:

[Thompson had] absolute certainty in the value of his talent, [and] his unyielding faith in himself in a world whose editors had not always deigned to recognize his talents. He knows that he is gifted…. Even when no one else yet realized it, he always knew he was the Great Hunter Thompson.⁹ 

In his letters, four large themes emerge: his need for a home and peace, surviving financially as an artist, his contempt for the mainstream press, and paranoia of the dark forces within the United States. What comes through more implicitly is his idealism and his hope for a better future, which was very connected to his dark, angry side.  He held very firm ideas—ideals—of what was right, and it was his anger at the gulf from those ideals to the reality that was at the center of his anger. He wrote as a young man to a friend:

I think I’ll accomplish more by expressing it [his views] on the keys of a typewriter than by letting it express itself in sudden outbursts of frustrated violence.¹⁰  

After a vagabond period in his young adulthood, his search for a real home—and for some peace of mind—was a constant preoccupation that, by luck and help from friends, he was able to make a reality in 1968.  He stayed there the rest of his life.  Of his home, Thompson wrote in 2000:

My main luxury in those years—a necessary luxury, in fact—was the ability to work in and out of my home-base fortress in Woody Creak.  It was a very important psychic anchor for me, a crucial grounding point where I always knew I had love, friends & good neighbors.  It was like my personal Lighthouse that I could see from anywhere in the world—no matter where I was, or how weird & crazy & dangerous it got, everything would be okay if I could just make it home.¹¹ 

Home, however, only gave him some peace of mind; it wasn’t enough.

Because he spent more than he earned—even after he was a success—he was forever broke. According to his literary agent, Lynn Nesbitt, he consistently spent money “like it was going out of style.”¹²  He frequently borrowed money, and didn’t pay it back. One such lender, Gene McGarr, said:

He had fucked me, and he knew it.  I was confronting him with his basic selfishness, and there was nothing he could say.  He never apologized for anything.  I’ve never heard Hunter say “I’m sorry”—ever. Hunter was shameless—borrowing money, asking people for help, making these weird deals—and he got away with it.¹³

Another friend, George Stranahan, said about his slippery morals on the issue of money:

He always had this kind of Robin Hood thing, that it’s okay to take things—if somebody’s got plenty, it’s okay, you don’t have to pay them.  In fact, they owe you.  He always felt entitled to more than he got—that there was a certain societal abuse of his talent, that society was not giving him enough.¹⁴ 

Thompson wrote in one letter, “I’ve developed a weird talent for producing cash out of nowhere…though I’m tired of having to do it.”¹⁵  That talent notwithstanding, his broke state created tremendous stress.  In another letter, he wrote that “[my debt is] causing me PAIN, constant goddamn pain, and everybody in town who’ll still speak to me is feeling the rotten effects of it.”¹⁶ 

Thompson felt alone, apart from most of humanity.  At the age of 20, he wrote, “I can see that I shall be permanently apart from all but a small and lonely percentage of the human race…. I am quite sincere about some of the things which people take very lightly, and almost insultingly unconcerned about some of the things which people take most seriously.”¹⁷ 

He needed to use drugs, primarily, to help still the pain in his troubled soul.  Sandy describes this reality:

Hunter was a tortured man.  I knew his mother, Virginia, many of his childhood friends and both his brothers.  Everyone agreed that from birth he was brilliant, charming and tormented.  The torment, of course, eventually led to the addictions and further torment.¹⁸

The drugs, though, also fueled his creativity. His editor, Alan Rinzler, describes the intertwining of his addictions with his writings:

Hunter would juggle alcohol and speed.  The speed would get him up and get the adrenaline flowing.  It would make him even more manic than he usually was, and give him racing thoughts.  Then the alcohol would give him a sense of euphoria.  That was the balance he was trying to achieve.  Later, unfortunately, he switched from amphetamines to cocaine—around ’74 or ’75.  Cocaine is a nastier drug, a more debilitating drug.  You have to do more and more of it.”¹⁹

The toll the drugs took decreased his abilities and his output.  By the 1980s, his best work was far behind him, and his life became more about celebrity and addiction than about artistry.*  He got trapped in his own myths.

Sandy wrote sadly about her ultimate awakening to reality:

I was living for Hunter and his work—for this great person, this great writer, who was so disciplined—and then when he couldn’t write anymore, what was I doing?  It was sad to see.  I was taking care of a drug addict—who loved me and who was also terrifying me.²⁰

Thompson’s central life passion was individual freedom.* His credo was “All I want out of life… is my rightful place and for others to keep theirs.”²¹ Of course, as a narcissist that meant his individuality—don’t tread on me—but he was perfectly content to tread on others.  If he didn’t like something, like the behavior of gay men, he had no problem taking matters in his own hands to stop the behavior he found repulsive.  Thus, in Thompson’s letter to a friend in 1961, he relates:

I am about to be evicted for splitting a queer’s head with that billy club I got from Fred.  Maxine and me and that club tackled 15 queers in an outdoor bathhouse the other night and I was stomped, but not before doing extensive damage.²² 

Thompson remained a homophobe, and was unsympathetic to his gay brother James, who died of AIDS in 1993.*²³  

I could quote racist and anti-Semitic things he said—and some actions he did—too, but I think Thompson writes rather eloquently, in his style, of course, about his misanthropic nature in this letter to his publicist, Selma:

I’ve never paid much attention to the Black/Jew/WASP problem; it strikes me as a waste of time and energy.  My prejudice is pretty general, far too broad and sweeping for any racial limitations.  It’s clear to me—and has been since the age of 10 or so—that most people are bastards, thieves, and yes—even pigfuckers.*²⁴

As for the second sex, he considered that “about 95% of women are hopelessly stupid”²⁵ and lived, according to Sandy, in a “male world.”²⁶ Yet, he always needed to have a woman to take care of everything for him so he could concentrate on his writing. He liked “nesters” who were drawn in by his charisma.²⁷  Jann Wenner, the Rolling Stone publisher, said of Sandy:

Sandy was not only his wife but also his full-time assistant.  She was the one typing the manuscripts, filing, and doing all the administrative work, and she was also the recipient of Hunter’s abusive and unrelenting late-night irritability. ²⁸

According to his friend, Bob Braudis, Thompson’s second wife, Anita, was “working five jobs: wife, cook, cleaning woman, editorial assistant, groundskeeper.  She was running the whole farm.”²⁹

Not coincidently, it was mostly to woman that he could let out his softer side. The actress Margo Kidder said:

Women got to know a side of Hunter than men didn’t, because of that Ernest Hemingway nature of feeling very competitive with other men.  They feel a great need to keep their macho up in the presence of other guys.  There was a side of Hunter that I think almost all women who got to know him as—God knows I saw it—which was a very sad, sweet, lost little boy who was very eager to please.*³⁰

All his friends—male and female—were enablers, allowing him to behave in ways that frequently crossed to cruel and destructive because he charmed them out of their senses.  And that includes some really famous guys like George McGovern, Pat Buchanan and Jimmy Carter.  Interestingly, it didn’t include Bill Clinton, who called him out for his behavior. Isn’t that rich?

One of his benefactors, Max Palevsky, said of him: 

Hunter Thompson is one of the most thoroughly contradictory people I have ever met.  Nothing he does makes sense with anything else the he does.  There is a great dark side of Hunter Thompson… He must have some hurt, some pain deep down inside that causes all this.”³¹ 

Paul Semonin—a good friend in his younger years who was driven away by Thompson’s antics and cruelty—summed him up as a “compassionate shark.” 

However, he is most often described by his friends in glowing—or at least understanding—terms:  utterly charming, extremely funny, genius talent and smart;  a man of morals and ideals;  at his core, innocence and sweetness, quite a softy; well-mannered and soft-spoke;  a charismatic, natural leader;  delightful, unpredictable and unforgettable; a Southern gentleman, all chivalry and charm; a kid in an adult’s body.³²

Hunter, light and dark, was, as Sandy wrote, the full spectrum.  But even she remains confused by the enigma of Thompson.  She says, “It was always hard for me to know—really hard.  What was at the core?  The bad guy or the good guy?”³³  

My answer—for what is worth—would be both; they were two sides of the same coin.  More on that enigma next post.

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End Notes

1 Peter Whitmer, When the Going Gets Weird, the twisted life and times of Hunter S. Thompson, 230-31

2 Rolling Stone magazine, September 19, 2007, Hunter Thompson tribute issue, 52

3 Whitmer, 56

4 Wenner and Seymour ed., Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson, 6

5 Gonzo, 55

6 Gonzo; this paragraph is based in large part on information contained in the the chapter, “Coming of Age in Louisville,” see specifically 42, 51-52, 20, 67 

7 Gonzo, 12

8 Brinkley, ed., Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America, The Gonzo letters, volume 2, xxii

9 Letters, volume 2, xii

10 Gonzo, 70

11 Letters, volume 2, xxv

12 Gonzo, 89

13 Gonzo, 54

14 Gonzo, 138

15 Letters, vol 2, 138

16 Letters, vol 2, 650

17 Brinkley, ed., Hunter S. Thompson: Proud Highway, The Gonzo Letters, Vol 1, 68

18 Rolling Stone tribute, 52

19 Whitmer, 177

20 Gonzo, 220,

21 Whitmer, 56,

22 Letters, vol. 1, 279; You can find more of the story in a generally sympathetic biography, Fear and Loathing: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Hunter S. Thompson , by Paul Perr, starting on page 60.  Adding some complexity to this story, Maxine was an old friend and a lesbian.

23 See here.

24 Letters, vol. 2, 185, 

25 Letters, vol 1, 59

26 Rolling Stone, 52, 

27 Gonzo, 95

28 Gonzo, 154

29 Gonzo, 398

30 Gonzo, 194

31 Whitmer, 199

32 These are quotes from the Rolling Stone tribute issue from people such as Johnny Depp, Jack Nicholson, Jimmy Carter, etc.

33 Gonzo, 195

Richard Wagner and Hunter S. Thompson: Parallel Lives a Century Apart

Now for something completely different... You will find below something I put together several years ago showing the parallels between the lives of Richard Wagner and the “gonzo” writer Hunter S. Thompson. Though I don’t believe in reincarnation as Wagner did, so striking are the similarities between the men that I like to imagine that Wagner came back as Thompson, and boy was he pissed.¹

I first noticed their parallels as artists and men when I read Thompson and Wagner’s letters around the same time about ten years ago. They were both fixated on the same issues, and in the same general way. This spurred me on to read more about Thompson—as well as Wagner of course—and these similarities became even more striking. I wrote the chart below to briefly encapsulate some of this. I didn’t know how to get it to format on the blog, so I just am publishing screen shots of a document—sorry it's a bit blurry. Peruse the chart this week; I am going to save until the next post the narrative about it, and why I think it is not just interesting but also important.

The colors in the chart are their individual variations; everything else is the same.

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End Notes

1 I will probably not ever write about Wagner’s religious or philosophical beliefs in any depth, but he was very attracted intellectually to Buddhism, which aligns closely with the beliefs of his greatest influence, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. That said, he also was greatly attracted to the symbols, though not dogma, of Christianity. He had planned a explicit Buddhist-themed opera, The Victors, but he ran out of steam, plus he decided Parsifal covered the ground adequately. An interesting book that covers Wagner’s Buddhist (and Christian) beliefs is The Redeemer Reborn, Parsifal as the Fifth Opera of Wagner’s Ring, by Paul Schofield (a former Zen monk). He makes the case that all the major characters in the Ring are reincarnated in Parsifal to work through their remaining negative karma. It’s really well written and a rather fascinating take on the opera.