February 21, 2005

MOJO wire

...Perhaps he found what he came here for, but the odds are huge that he didn't. He was an old, sick, and very troubled man, and the illusion of peace and contentment was not enough for him... So finally, and for what he thought must have been the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun.

I don't find it surprising that Hunter Thompson met a violent end. That was almost to be expected given his lifestyle. Any prolonged exposure to a combination of drugs, alcohol and firearms almost certainly - or at least statistically - must end in some sort of tragedy. No, the means do not surprise me, it's the idea that he would take his own life is what has caught me off guard.

Throughout the day, however, hints and clues begin to materialize. The most prominent and resonating seem to be health related: a broken leg, a hip operation and failing health due to years of unbridled smoking and drinking. Perhaps this starts to make the picture a bit more clear.

Anyone familiar with his writing knows that even Hunter Thompson himself was more than a little surprised by his own longevity. He, along with many others, seemed incredulous that, despite his many indulgences, he continued to bounce back again and again giving no sign of lasting damage. In his 20's he wrote that he did not expect to live to see 30. In the late 90's he predicted that he would not see the year 2000.

He seemed to set deadlines for himself this way all through his life - but then blow past them just as he would famously miss his story deadlines for Rolling Stone. Is the secret to immortality an inablilty to finish work on time? Or could it be that he only wanted to stick around as long as things were interesting?

If, in fact, his health was failing, could the self proclaimed "champion of fun" really be expected to endure a slow drawn out death? Could someone who always wrote his own rules resign himself to a few final years trapped under the thumb of declining health? I would imagine not.

Parallels have been drawn between Thompson and Hemingway in an attempt to uncover the reasons behind the suicide and perhaps to introduce the theme of writers whose best years are considered behind them. There are similarities, of course, in the way they both lived and both chose to die, but how can we presume to know why they made the choices they made?

And so we come back again to a story Hunter Thompson wrote over 40 years ago about Hemingway's death...

Hemingway, he wrote, fled to Ketchum, Idaho because he could not adapt to the way the world had changed around him. Instead, he retreated to a community where he tried to surround himself with the illusion that everything had remained the same. But then, when age and illness caught up with him, he chose, for reasons known only to him, to take his own life.

Hunter probably came to this same conclusion for reasons similar to those he ascribed to Ernest Hemingway. But instead of seeking "peace and contentment" like Hemingway, Hunter was fighting to avoid it. Living life as he did on the edge - at redline - burning fast and bright, he could not envision a existence in which he was not in control. And so, after a lifetime of living life on his own terms, he chose to end it on his own terms as well.

And this, he must have thought, was the best of reasons.