...and so, in the spirit of Tbogg and Atrios, it seems right to start a Friday change-of-pace blog thing about writers. Maybe it becomes a tradition, maybe not.
J.D. Salinger died. I made the mistake of not reading Salinger in high school, because when I finally did come to Catcher in the Rye in my mid 20s, it was horrible. Even in my confused and tormented post-adolescent state of mind, I saw Holden Caulfield as someone who deserved to be beaten up. This was the basis of The Great Reputation? Because that was impossible, I kept going, into the later Glass stories, only to discover that they're contrived and precious and, well, awful.
So, in honour of his passing, let's talk instead about Hunter S. Thompson. I'm not claiming that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the great American novel, but it sure as hell captures the cheap, low-grade hustler quality of so much American life, even (perhaps especially) professional and business life. The novel is untidy, self-indulgent and not suitable for young people, but it's alive and angry and funny as hell.
There's something about that heavily Republican time that reminds me of living through the eight years of Bush. We forget that after the summer of love, Republicans won in 1968 and 1972. Advertising talked about joy, but fear and anxiety were top of mind for a huge chunk of North American voters at that time. It was much more like 1984 than anyone realized – anyone except HST. And if you weren't completely obsessed with consumer gadgets for the last ten years, perhaps you came up for oxygen long enough to realize that.
His hatred of uncorrected power, his unerring eye for trends, his libertarian ideals, his anarchist love of self-responsibility – they all contributed to the eight or so years when HST was simply the best at reporting how all of us felt and acted and were.
It's all summed up in the line: "As your attorney, I advise you to pass me the mescaline."
(By the way, here's where the all Internet traditions thing started.)