Centerfield

Remembering Hunter S. Thompson

I wanted to post a little something today on the sad news of Hunter S. Thompson's suicide. I had the opportunity to meet the guy way back when -- some 20 years ago, when I was in college. And it was, for me, kind of an unusual experience.

I went to school on one of the most conservative campuses in the nation -- that true bastion of southern conservatism known as Vanderbilt University. For some reason, in my sophomore year, the speaker's bureau decided to bring Hunter S. Thompson to campus. I think he was out doing publicity for his new book The Curse of Lono, and the Vanderbilt lecture was part of that.

I had read a little bit of HST, and I picked up another of his books, The Great Shark Hunt, before the lecture. It gives you a real feel for his writing and his "voice" as an author, because it includes all those early pieces from various magazines, including the Rolling Stone articles that first brought him national attention.

There was quite a crowd for the lecture -- a large, packed auditorium. And the kids were mostly startled by the whole thing. HST was a terrible public speaker, and he mostly just rambled and made ugly remarks about then-president Reagan. I can't really say much about what he said that night, except that he kept punctuating everything with "so goddamn what?", as in:

"People say to me, Hunter, you're crazy ... Hunter, you're nuts ... but so goddamn what?"

People thought it was funny, but also kind of crazy. There were angry letters to the administration afterwards and something of a minor campus scandal having to do with the fact that the school paid him for that appearance.

At the end of the talk that night, I wandered up to the front of the auditorium. There was a crowd around HST, and among them a group of students I had met before, but wasn't really friends with.

The students I knew were trying to convince HST to go to a certain bar afterwards. They kept saying the name of the bar, asking him to repeat it back to them, telling him where it was, and trying to get him to say he would go.

It was clear to me that he wasn't interested in the bar, but that didn't seem to get through to the other guys. HST kept mumbling something about going to Louisville, instead. They would say the name of this bar, and he would say "no, Louisville".

He wanted to go on a road trip from Nashville to Louisville, which happens to be his old neck of the woods, where he grew up. One of the guys in the group had a car, but said definitively "we're not going on a road trip."

So that was that -- they kept trying to talk him into the bar, which I kinda thought wasn't happening. When he left the auditorium to go back to his hotel, I tagged along with the group of students on their way to the little bar where they expected HST to show.

He didn't. We sat there for quite a while.

Then the lightbulb went off. In the process of giving HST directions to the bar, we had gleaned the name of the hotel where he was staying. Why not go there?

So we went trudging off to the Vanderbilt Commodore, the swanky hotel right next to campus where they had booked him. We walk in, take a turn toward the hotel bar, and there HST sits.

There was already one guy sitting with him, and a couple of young ladies. The guy was apparently a student, and was enthusiastically challenging HST to a drinking contest. He kept ordering shot after shot, and was egging HST on to try to match him. HST seemed to find this unbearably moronic.

What made an impression on me that evening was how awkward HST was in social situations. This was a guy who was very organized about his writing ... very particular in the way he chose his words. For written publications. But he had a very hard time expressing himself just in everyday conversation.

I wasn't quite confident enough as a young man to engage him about his writing -- those politics and sports pieces I had been reading in The Great Shark Hunt. And I didn't have a car, so couldn't help him with what he really wanted, which was to go have a look at the old neighborhood.

I didn't find a way to rescue HST from the guy insisting on doing shots with him. As partial atonement, I'd like to point you guys in the direction of one of his early essays from his sportswriting days -- something called "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved".

If you haven't read this, do yourself a favor. I think this is how HST would have wanted you to know him.

Posted by William Swann at February 21, 2005 02:40 PM