The Myth of Hunter S.

My Bronson's reading spectrum begins with lurid, flimsy benderbooks and ends with turgid literary tomes. The best books, and there are few, sit right in the middle, like the early work of Hunter S. The Vegas book (as the man calls it) chronicles an unsurpassed bender with his propulsive voice, and we are all better for it. The Great Shark Hunt chronicles the evolution of his voice through compiled early pieces, including the birth of Gonzo when dear Hunter S was so drug-addled following a Kentucky Derby julep jag he was incapable of writing a coherent piece, so he instead submitted his manic notes and made history.

Truthfully, Charles Bronson began reading Hunter S. in the sixth grade and has yet to find a more suitable hero.

This new book about Hunter S. is a stitched-together oral history
of Hunter's entire life, culled from thousands of hours of interviews with family, editors, Johnny Depp, Jack, Ed Bradley, George McGovern, Charles Bronson, everyone. Before reading this book, I was entrenched in the myth of Hunter S.: that he was an uncompromising writer who simply did not give a fuck. Sure he blasted himself, but that only cannonized him further with all those other immortal writers who did the same. He did every drug, caroused with all the females and celebrities, and then wrote straight poetric vitriol unlike any other, ever.

However, this book killed the Bronson Santa Claus. It reveals an irrational, bullying addict who couldn't write anything the last thirty years of his life. And when Hunter S.'s body couldn't take the drugs anymore, his reaction was to swallow a bullet. Check this out:

Jann Wenner (Rollingstone editor): " But then I questioned whether I really wanted to go down there, stay up until three am, and take drugs. We'd sit there and laugh and then come up with some scheme to do something, an article to write, some political move, knowing it would fall apart, and I'd see him aging. I didn't want to do that. Maybe I was lazy or just neglectful, but I just wanted to remember Hunter in his glory."

More Jann Wenner, about Hunter's first wife Sandy: "I really never fully understood how she could absorb all the abuse. We used to work very closely on deadlines - she was typing up clean pages, faxing them to me, keeping Hunter awake, putting him to sleep, everything. You'd always hear him in the backgound of phone calls, screaming violently - "Goddam it, Sandy, you fucking dingbat, I am going to tear your fucking throat out."

This is curious in and of itself because Jann Wenner edited the book. But more:

A Neighbor in Aspen: "Some of his friends did an intervention in the mid-nineties, and he said to me and some other friends, "If you ever try that agian, I'll never speak to you."

Ed Bradley: "Once at Owl Farm he was trying to get some stuff out of the refrigerator, and a bunch of things fell out. Hunter just sat down on the floor like a little boy and started laughing on the floor and screaming. I said, "What the fuck is wrong with you, man? Pick it up." He looked at me and said, "I pay them a lot of money." Sure enough, his assistants came running in to take care of it all. "Oh god, Hunter, what did you do? Hunter, let us pick it up, just stay there."

Yes, the same people lionize him, too, but the damage to this glorious idol is irreperable. I read this book as a lark, to merely enhance my knowledge of Hunter S. Now, I am seriously shaken. Hunter's eloquent invenctive was not just pointed at the hypocrites, but his loved ones, too. The drug fueled rides that were his most celebrated adventures eroded his talent. His lifestyle turned on him.

But, not so fast. James Carville, near the end, says, "Hunter did something that none of us had the guts to do - he led the kind of life that secretly all of us would like to have had the guts to lead. To hell with the whole thing, just stay drunk and high and smoke and hang out and write outrageous things. He'd never lived his life on anybody else's terms." Then I realized that the myth does exist, and the 112 people who spun Hunter tales for the book were the privileged ones, even if knowing him did exact a cost. I will burn this book, but when I turn to Hunter's own work, there will be no vendetta. After all, as you've just read, it is only on the written page where there can be no flaws.