When Bad Writing Happens from Good People
by Paul Sibley

When you found out that Hunter S. Thompson was writing for ESPN did you cry? Did you go to your bookshelf and pull out your copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, stare at it and just lament... I shed a tear. Did you ever think that one of the all time great writing rebels would give us articles about Julia Roberts, hanging out with Benicio Del Toro, or watching cock fights and rambling about plane disasters.

I don't know if it is because I don't like to see a master writer cutting out a bullshit two-thousand-word article about bullshit, or if I just hate to see him do it on ESPN.

I went back, typed in the link for ESPN. I read the rants again. I followed the threads and I honestly thought about it. I just hate the writing. I don't know if Thompson lost his edge, or if I just grew cynical to him, or, more than likely, I just don't give a rat's ass about his thoughts on sports or anything which mentions contemporary pop culture. It just isn't my cup of tea.

We all stumble across the lives of others, who through their experience and hard work, enlighten and entertain us. And if you have never read any previous Hunter S. Thompson, starting out at ESPN and reading some of his articles could sway you either way. I have to say if I was an ESPN kinda guy and did not know Hunter S. Thompson and I stumbled across him one day while looking for hockey scores, I might find him fascinating. Besides, why am I trying to compare a bill-paying weekly article to a body of work that I still cherish?

Crawford Woods reviews Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in the New York Times:

"The book is about that twisting. Like Mailer's, Thompson's American dream is a fanfare of baroque fantasy. It should not, despite its preemptive title, be mistaken for a synopsis of the American experience (even though the narrator comes to think of himself as a "monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger"). But its limits are no narrower than the limits of lunacy, and its method is as adventurous as any to be found in all the free-fire-zone writing of the past dozen years. "

I am bitter about some of my favorite writers. You know, the writers who introduced me to some of the best reading of my life and then one day, their work was not the same. It can't be that I just grew out of them, ir that you read one Hunter S. Thompson and you've read them all. It can't be; something has happened to many of our best writers. Could it really be the money? Should more American writers go to France and fade into obscurity? It worked for Nina Simone, though Johnny Depp has picked some real shit since he has lived there.

Could you ever lose respect for someone who might come close to actually fulfilling the assessment of that review? Thompson is amazing. Some of his books and writing read like the mish-mash Gonzo, master of the deadline billing that Hunter has given himself. Some titles by Thompson might turn you off just by their topic, but reading the work of Hunter S. Thompson will throw you in the thoughts of one man who lays it naked and honestly before you. You gotta respect that. I just prefer he not write dumb shit at a sports web site; it just doesn't feel right.

Please raise your suspension of disbelief. In an alternate world, couldn't we be telling the the story about how Hunter S. Thompson got into a shoot-out with the Colorado State Patrol and died on a highway, not far from his bunker/house, high on drugs with some college-aged awestruck assistant unconscious in his backseat? Wouldn't that be what you might expect from Hunter S. Thompson? Not some bullshit URL where you can chart the path to his decline.

Couldn't you see the local indie record shops selling gigantic wall sized posters of a whiskered and slightly pissed Thompson holding a rifle and staring at the picture? I can't either and I won't ask that you imagine the thought.

Fuck it, whether it covers his property taxes or if it is just something he genuinely wants to do, Hunter S. Thompson can write for ESPN all he wants. I can dig that, he has created an amazing body of work and has lost more creed than many of us will have the opportunity to ever experience for the first time.

I just don't want to think that we do all that we do succeeds on the merit of what we want to do and then, it somehow comes back down to money. If I thought that, I might change my life, move to the woods and mail letters to a lot of people I resented.

Paul Sibley is the editor of KungFu and a contributor at Unlikely Stories. Check out his literary works at this site.