“shit! shit-shit-shit!”
i look around this place and see his influence everywhere, from the tilley hat on the cd tower, the whiskey on the liquor shelf, and the filters for smokes. i’m not sure if it’s because he was so iconic or because i share some fundamental character properties with him.
his style, of living, of writing, of attacking weakness, that’s what truly appeals to me. the man, das ding on sich, that’s the key. the cigarette filter, it’s so symbolic. it kept him from having to put the cigarette in his mouth. it maintained a distance between a poison and his body. it also allowed him to really chomp down on the smoke. to bite into it in a way that would ruin a normal cigarette. and it kept the smokes out of his hands. he didn’t need to hold the smoke, his hands were mostly free, to type.
i should really go into the closet and drag out a typewriter for this. i should be touching paper and banging keys, slamming the return lever over with each line. and yet, if hst were starting up today, he would be using a computer. he would be banging the mechanical switches of an ibm model m keyboard (based on the sound and feel of his beloved selectric). i will use cherry mechanical switches and emacs. the modern selectric.
i bought the tilley hat because it’s the best hat made. i wear the chucks because they are the originals. these things came with me when i discovered hst.
rubes, that’s what we all were to him. the doomed, the easily fooled, the marks. he pitied and mocked us because we have given up the american dream. we have ceded from the dream of this country and readily handed away the freedoms our fathers and their fathers fought so hard for. go back to _fear and loathing in las vegas_, to the beginning. he spells out the defeat of the american dream and the goal of the trip is to recapture it. look at _fear and loathing on the campaign trail ’72_. he followed the election because he felt he needed to fight for the dream. he took action, with the only weapons he could — his words, to defeat an enemy he saw as a monster. and to hst, nixon was definitely a monster. a huge, slobbering, evil, and twisted man, compelled by his own weaknesses to dominate others — to take from the country what he lacked in himself.
a brief note about the life of richard m. nixon: graduated first in his class in high school and second in his class in college. he practiced with the football team, but didn’t see much game time. he went to duke on a full scholarship for a degree in law. he passed the bar in california and became a lawyer in a small town. he was in the navy during wwii. he was an excellent poker player, to the point where he used this skill to help fund his run for president in 1960. he redefined the roll of the vice president. he made the office highly visible and was the first person to use the office as a stepping-stone to the presidency. after his bitter defeat to kennedy in 60, he failed in a bid to become governor of california.
hst saw the man as a true freak, a divider of the country. a stodgy whiner willing to write off all opponents and nay-sayers, willing to doom the youth of the county, some in jail for drug use and some across the globe in an unwinnable war. and because the country elected this man, twice as vice president and twice as president, hst believed the future of the country to be doomed, why we are all rubes.
his lifestyle was extravagant, his habits exaggerated to mythic/comic proportions. he believed in taking everything to the limits possible. just look at the stories of his driving. high speed races through the streets of la and through the mountains of colorado, while drinking, smoking dope, and possibly typing. his wife, anita, was once asked by a naive local policeman if hst had any guns. she replied, “22, and everyone of them is loaded.” i remember his appearance on _late nite, with conan o’brien_ (november 6, 2003). he refused to come to the studio to do the interview, so conan went to owl ranch. hst then refused to do the interview unless they were shooting guns during the interview. he refused to answer conan’s questions until conan drank a pint of whiskey (still shooting large caliber, automatic weapons at barrels and stuffed animals). i remember him on charley rose. rose’s set is quite dark, with just the round table lit. yet, there was hunter with his tilley hat and aviator sunglasses on. he answered every question, but mumbled so badly, rose couldn’t understand the answers. it was obvious. it was hysterical. rose would ask a question. hunter would mumble something. rose would wait a minute, in clear distress, and then nod and ask another question.
hst saw himself as continuing in the tradition of f. scott fitzgerald and ernest hemingway. yet, he really created something new. he factored into his writing as heavily as the subject matter. i have been giving this matter a lot of thought lately. i believe that it was intensional. i believe that hunter put himself in his writings because he knew he was the cathartic element. he was a real life don quixote. he lived by a code we took as dead, the southern gentleman. he tilted against his enemies, sometimes windmills and sometimes actual dragons. his gift to us, was to make us all his sancho panza, allowing us all to realize that while crazy, he was necessary.
“in a place in [colorado], whose name i do not care to recall, there dwelt not so long ago a gentleman of the type wont to keep an unused lance, an old shield, a greyhound for racing, and a skinny old horse.”
hst, you are missed.
:P