There are two people that I regard as having helped me to understand my cultural identity – to understand what it means to be an American, to be a Southern boy, to live in a country made of free people. One is Jack Kerouac and the other (and likely the most important) is Hunter S. Thompson.

His writing conveys a wild, insatiable interest and keen bead on his subjects – be they the Kentucky Derby, race relations in Louisville, the wild flipside of the American Dream, or politics. He taught me that all writing is journalism, and journalism is much more than writing. His madcap dispatches blend furious imagination with a seam of truth that runs so deep as to ground the whole escapade like a seasick man clutching a ships railing. Some of his work is a tough read, no doubt, but it’s all worth it for those moments of pristine clarity that ring out like gunshots through his work.

Gonzo, a movie about Hunter S. Thompson is soon to be released in theaters. Trailer below:

A couple of choice quotes “after the jump”…

One of my favorite articles by HST is A Southern city with Northern Problems, which details the struggle for black equality in Louisville. While we never had riots on the scale that the Deep South had, we have long had a racism that is more subtle, more indirect. This article, written some 45 years ago underscores how much and how precious little things have changed in the intervening years:

“What is apparent in Louisville is that the Negro has won a few crucial battles, but instead of making the breakthrough he expected, he has come up against segregation’s second front, where the problems are not mobs and unjust laws but customs and traditions. The Louisville Negro… now faces a far more subtle thing than the simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ that his brothers are still dealing with in most parts of the South. To this extent, Louisville has integrated itself right out of the South, and now faces problems more like those of a Northern or Midwestern city.”

- “A Southern City with Northern Problems”, The Reporter, December 19 1963

Hunter S, the self-proclaimed “political junkie” was very adept at turning what to many would see as mundane and inconsequential into something that absolutely, positively needed to be paid attention to. His political writing was always unrestrained and topically detailed, but is ever prescient, even to this day:

We’ve come to a point where every four years this national fever rises up — this hunger for the Saviour, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback — and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful, like Nixon is now, that when you vote for President today you’re talking about giving a man dictatorial power for four years. I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England — or the Queen — and have the real business of the presidency conducted by… a City Manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who’s directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years. The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It’s come to the point where you almost can’t run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.

- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72