Is Thompson worth reading? I was told he's one of America's best writers, did I get memed?

Is Thompson worth reading? I was told he's one of America's best writers, did I get memed?

Other urls found in this thread:

farnamstreetblog.com/2014/05/hunter-s-thompson-to-hume-logan/
biography.com/people/hunter-s-thompson-9506260#personal-life
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

I was a huge fan throughout my teens to my early twenties. My university dissertation was about Gonzo journalism.

His body of journalism is fairly shitty outside of Hell's Angels, Fear And Loathing, and On The Campaign Trail '72. He's at his most potent in those books, but otherwise his articles devolve into rambling bullshit (see: Generation Of Swine). The Rum Diary was also something of a disappointment.

He wrote some pretty great shit. I think anyone who wants to take psychedelics should really absorb this quote first

>We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.

DUDE DRUGS LMAO

Read this. It basically explains to me the kind of person he later became, and why, and why you might or might not want to read him.

farnamstreetblog.com/2014/05/hunter-s-thompson-to-hume-logan/

"that one edgy kid with the Che Guevara shirt in high school"-tier

Its like you didnt even read the quote

What? Youre gonna have to explain this one

>explain
drivel with a preference for empty, grand statements and seemingly edgy themes

Pretty much this, although I love the Rum Diary. It's a pointless book, but that's sort of the point. It's a book about a bunch of misfits just killing time, wasting their lives.

Most of his stuff is garbage after '72. There's a few gems here and there, but stick to those books.

Implying that its irresponsible to sell people the idea acid puts you in touch with a higer power is "edgy"? And its a pretty accurate critique about the pitfalls of the hippy drug culture, so I dont really see how the quote is "empty" either.

Of course some people do Acid under the pretense of seeking knowledge but, like all drugs, the actual psychological drive is just empty pleasure, like all drugs. Empty pleasure makes for damn boring, uninspired literature and that's all Thompson seems to know about.

>like all drugs
>like all drugs

Oh shit, sorry, I just smoked a bowl of weed. My point still stands, though.

His drug stuff was great when there was a purpose to it. Like...let's hang out with the hell's angels and do drugs, and write about it. Or let's go on a bender in vegas and act like a total animal and write about it.

That shit stopped in the mid 70s or so, though. When he just sat at home, did drugs and booze all day and wrote incoherent bullshit.

Your reading comprehension must be pretty terrible because thats not even the point of the quote. The point is why the acid counter culture failed. You even contradict yourself in your own post. You say Thomphson is unispired because he only seeks pleasure, but then you say all drug users are only seeking pleasure. So is the hippy culture only seeking pleasure as well, because then youre affirming what Thompson is saying.

Also youre implying theres nothing poetic, insightful, or valuable about hedonism, which I think is just not true

Bullshit. psychedelics are different than other drugs. They don't have the same addictive potential and not all experiences on them are pleasant. I know that people do abuse psychedelics but people will abuse anything.

Many of you in this thread are either misinterpreting the good Doctor, have only read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and are judging him solely on that book, or haven't read him at all and are regurgitating memes about his association with drug culture. His true legacy lies in his political writing. Read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and then attempt to make the argument that he's a hack writing about 'empty pleasures'.

Bunch of fucking kids in this thread.

>psychological drive

behaviourist, begone

fucking this, thank you user

Why does Veeky Forums never talk about Thompson?

I honestly have no idea, he was Veeky Forums to the tits. I read all of his stuff when I was a teenager and he completely changed my life (not always for the better, but whatever). I don't know if anyone will read that letter I posted above, but come on, that is like Veeky Forums 1955 or whenever he wrote that. It's a shame, really.

Around here, it's sort of a 40-40-10 split between people who've never done drugs and are anxious about them, people who've never done drugs and are self-righteous about them, and people who've done drugs and are able to see past the writer's lifestyle.

Basically his outward shenanigans stir up too much reaction.

The Great Shark Hunt is worth a read. He was a an interesting, entertaining and surprisingly insightful journalist.

Enjoyed The Rum Diary when I read it in my teens. A good holiday read.

love what i've read from him. Hell's Angels and (especially) Campaign Trail '72 are fantastic works of journalism, and Rum Diary is a surprisingly thoughtful meditation on maturing. plan to read all of the Gonzo Papers.

no, read middlemarch instead. much better.

A lot of people don't lack his complete lack of integrity, and that's if you can "see past the writer's lifestyle".

Yes and no.

I've only read his book on the Hell's Angels and I'd say he is a pretty good writer that ought to be respected for his sort of journalistic innovations. Its interesting stuff and he's got a pretty nice distinct style. You're not going to find anything all that profound in it but he's pretty good i'd say.

I can't respect anyone who uses substances that are obviously forbidden.

Is this the new meme?

yes.

grapefruits are so fucking good dude

Shitposting about people failing to "see past the writer's lifestyle" on a literature board: that's ultra rich.

Thompson didn't lack for integrity. He had too goddamn much of it, and that was his problem. That's why he drove himself to the edge with drugs and wrote about politics. He thought America was incredibly weird and exciting, and it was, and he wanted to see what it looked like as closely as he possibly could. He wrote stuff that was so outrageous it horrified his own editors. It wasn't lack of integrity that split him off from Jann Wenner, it was an excess of it. Do you really think people who quote Samuel Johnson - 'He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man' - really had no sense of any of this? Really?

He ran for sheriff of Aspen on the platform that would tear up the streets and replace them with bicycles and take guns away from all the cops. He lost that by less than 200 votes. The people of Aspen seemed to think he was all right.

"The answer - and, in a sense, the tragedy of life - is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man." That's right out of that letter I posted above. Do these words strike you as being those of a cynic?

It's fine to hate literature. Whatever. Be my guest. But unless can write a line this good, or life a life that full, I'll be taking your ideas about a "lack of integrity" with a grain of salt, thanks.

You know, now that I'm properly triggered, I'll make this even easier: go fuck yourself. Save yourself the reading.

>People of one of the richest municipalities in one of the whitest counties in fucking colorado thought a rich white liberal was a pretty decent guy

He would've been sent to the gulag for being a bourgeois hypocrite.

good post, thanks

>rich white liberal
>bourgeois hypocrite

"Hunter Stockton Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on July 18, 1937. His father, Jack, was a World War I veteran and insurance agent who died while Thompson was in high school, and his mother, Virginia, was an alcoholic left penniless and in charge of their charming but incorrigible son and his two younger brothers."

biography.com/people/hunter-s-thompson-9506260#personal-life

I knew I shouldn't have come back to this thread. I'm going to cool off but you should really stop, because you're fucking embarrassing yourself. The bourgeois hypocrite is YOU, user. Vaya con dios.

>because there was once a point in time when the drug-addled mentally incompetent bourgeois hypocrite was poor, he is forever incapable of being a rich white liberal
Not how it works, pothead. Read a real writer and get off my board; we're done here.

>get off my board
>pothead
>we're done here

FUCK YOU

You sound like absolutely everything I hate concentrated in two sentences. Believe me, I won't be talking to you again.

I am a stranger to this conversation, bit I came here to tell you that you are wrong, stupid, and a complete square.

Calling people out on being white is so pre-Trump.

please leave

hell's angels is goat

He has literary merit. Fear and Loathing serves as a wonderful sort of time piece, too.

That's....honestly pretty shit.

You got meme'd. "gonzo" journalism was his scam for "just making shit up." He was an edge lord. Wacky for the sake of being wacky. I spent a lot of time looking into him. He was just a drugie with mediocre writing skills. He also was NOWHERE near as "wacky" as his persona lets on. His closest friends and even he himself has said this. The LEGEND of Hunter (((marketing))) was 1000000x better than he actually was.

Yeah it was fucking mediocre. It was edge shit in the 70's for the sake of being edge shit. It wasn't journalism, it was made up fantasy because he wasn't a good journalist. So they made up a cool name for it "gonzo." Which was code for "unprofessional drivel with the pretension of creativity." YOU sir are the one who was memed with his garbage writing. Signed someone in their late 30's who didn't but into his bullshit of edgy hollywood elite.

>That's....honestly pretty shit.
It beautifully encapsulates the 60s. Anyone with any appreciation for the context understands this.

>gets beat up for sticking his nose in biker business
>cries and runs away and stops his "investigation"
>that they were fully aware of and let him in
LOL
>SO REBEL
>much counter culture
>many gonzo
>creative genius

agreed my man

Don't listen to him man, it's obvious he's some 15 year old idiot who thinks he's got it all figured out but doesn't deem it necessary to actually read a word of the authors he shits on

Ignore this guy, his collected journalism is his best work. Its also worth knowing the historical context of the times he was writing in. For example:

Completely misses the point of the passage. Hes not talking about drugs hes using drugs as a metaphor for how the hippie culture had failed. Thats what Fear and Loathing was about , it wasnt just DRUGS LMAO. It was a scathing attack on the drug culture which had replaced the actual counter culture. How protesting against war and for civil rights had turned into taking a bunch of acid to "find yourself."

Duke and Gonzo(who in real life was a civil rights advocate) decide to go on a journey for "the American Dream." Something almost as pointless and navel gazing as "finding yourself" or "turn on tune in drop out." Which of course involves doing a shitload of drugs.

The whole novel they run into caricature after caricature of just about everything Hunter considered sick and wrong in America. Greed, pettiness, abuse of power, the drug war. Things that the counterculture had once fought against, before it became obsessed with Tim Leary's bullshit. Meanwhile the two heroes for all thier self aggrandizement "Im a god damn doctor of journalism" dont do anything about it. In fact they make things worse most of the time. Because theyre not heroes, theyre self centered egotisitical boomer drug fiends.

At that moment in the story, Gonzo is huddled under a blanket doing speed to stay awake so his acid burnout friend(again, a civil rights leader) doesnt carve him up with a knife. He then gives the "wave rolled back monologue" about what the counterculture used to be, when it stood for something, when it fought for things, before it became:
Its beautiful and its sad because its not just a eulogy for the drug culture, it is for his entire generation. Fear and Loathing is about why and how the Boomers went wrong by someone who was there and saw it all. Yes he is worth reading, and yes he is one of Americas best writers.

>Signed someone in their late 30's who didn't but into his bullshit of edgy hollywood elite.
>being so cucked by said same elite you malign your interests out of a need to be counter to their counter-culture
*smirks Jewishly*
top fucking lel user

God damn it you're a stupid faggot. The Mayoral election was in 1969 and the sheriff election was 1970. The only book Thompson had published at this time was Hells Angels. At this time he had a bit of money but was by no means rich. Any money he had accrued at this time was done by credible journalism and skill in prose. Also, if you read literally anything by Thompson at all, you would understand his 'liberalism' was moderate at best, and the only things he cared about was circumventing power corruption and giving everyone a fair shake.

Spending all your time on /pol/ has evidently reduced your iq to double digits, so it would be useless to say anything else

You're wasting your time. He advocates for pot, as per the OP. And any critically thinking intellectual understands this is the black man's drug and discredits Thompson as some kind of leftist hippy caricature...regardless of the fact he is is/was an incredibly conservative gun touting madman who wants as little government as possible (which would include drug, strange how the American right skips over that during their big brother tirades).

>Signed someone in their late 30's who didn't but into his bullshit of edgy hollywood elite.

Alex Jones pls go

>edgy for the sake of being edgy

How to spot a complete pleb 101

>if you don't fall for the ADMITTEDLY over hyped writings of Thompson you are trying to be counter culture
Nice try you dumb faggot. Not falling for hollywood selling you Thompson /= counter culture.

you know, it's possible to read authors without feeling the childish need to rebel against a hollywood boogeyman. I've read 4 of thompsons books and have never seen the Fear and Loathing movie. You're just cucked by reactionaryism

So you have shit taste then? Cool man.

>on lit
>too stupid to read the thread topic
11/10

The thread asked if Thompson was worth reading, not if his persona has been exaggerated by some bullshit concept of 'hollywood elites'. Stupid faggots are derailing threads again.

Go contribute to a thread rather than literally just being a cancerous suck on this one

specifically criticize one of Thompson's books without saying 'edgy for the sake of being edgy' or talking about his public image as a result of 'hollywood elites.' I won't hold my breath

>worth reading
Yeah and every post I have made says NO. If you knew how to read that would be obvious. He's not worth 5 minutes of your time.

>makes a post about merely reading his works
>gets mad when people say hes not worth the time
Little boy, you are defeated. Slink away now. Slink away and die.

>criticize the man without criticizing him
LOL okay.
He's a hack writer. He drivels on and on without making a point. He injects fantasy into reality because he's too shitty to make reality good. He writes a shitty book about drugs and teenagers pine for it even though it's weak and lacks depth. He writes about the hells angels from the perspective of BEING INVITED IN (so not true research without bias) and pusses out at the first sign of trouble because he fedora tips over an old lady. He writes about a campaign but has to make half the shit up, because again he can't convey the excitement of reality. He writes about horse racing and literally makes up an entire under ground but sells it under the guise of reality. Hes a piece of shit writer who has to inject fantasy into reality but sells it as reality (he didn't coin gonzo, it was a cop out for morons to "appreciate" his "style"). Go crawl in a hole now 20 year old edge faggot.

>Go contribute to a thread rather than literally just being a cancerous suck on this one

Is Thompson worth reading? I was told he's one of America's best writers, did I get memed?


Maybe you should leave

>Completely misses the point of the passage. Hes not talking about drugs hes using drugs as a metaphor
He kind of is talking about drugs. He literally says theres no light at the end of the acid tunnel. Hes literally saying people put too much faith in psychedelics, thats why I posted that quote

I was trying to get the thread back on track by pointing out the stupidity of the posts I replied to. But that's how shitposters ruin threads; everyone that replies to them tacitly contributes to their original intention of derailing because it's just another post not addressing the thread topic. Congratulations you worthless faggot, you made me party to your bullshit. I am leaving

>he says drugs in da sentince therefore the point he is making is about drugs i am right

Are people actually this dumb?

No you weren't. He was being called over rated and a hack. Which is clearly responding to OP that he shouldn't waste the time. You were just trying to argue the "validity" of Hunter. GDIAF.

>thinks Hunter is deeper than what is written on the page
LOL are you one of those faggots that though he was smart "disecting" stories in HS. Even though the author never mentions the meaning was deeper than what was written. Like Alice In Wonderland where the writer explicitly said at a college people read too much into what he was saying. Writers aren't 200iq savants. 99.9% of the time, what is on the page, is what is on the page.

I gave several posts earlier in the thread on exactly why his books were worthwhile; I contributed. Calling him 'overrated and a hack' are bullshit nothing shitposts. You are worth nothing and should have killed yourself years ago

I dont see how what youre saying doesnt imply what Im saying. The drug culture failed because people thought by taking a bunch of acid theyd eventually transcend. They lost sight of what was actually important. You just seem obssesed with asserting that youre right and Im wrong for interpreting it on a different level than you

So are you going to sit there and tell me that when Thompson was talking about the great wave rolling back with us still able to see the high water mark, he was talking about water? Because that is where the stupidity of your logic leads

So he is talking about drug culture but not drugs? Think about that for a second

No, when a CLEAR euphemism is made, we can see it. When you have to stretch like a gymnast going for gold, you are probably wrong. Most writers aren't smart enough to trick the average reader. Clear analogies are clear, and things you WANT to read into are usually just what is written.

>We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Easy as fuck to interpret, he wasn't even hiding it. Moron.

you are deliberately choosing to take a surface impression of what he wrote (without actually reading the book, I'm sure of that) to perpetuate the opinion you desperately want to hold that Thompson does not write things that are worthwhile. Disagree all you want, and call me pig-headed for wanting to prove I'm right, but we both know his intentions were to use drugs as a totem on which the moral integrity of counterculture hinged and eventually toppled into disingenuous, self-absorbed purpose

Of course he wasn't hiding it. Nor was he hiding the fact that he was talking about Timothy Leary's acid culture as a means to illustrate the superficial delving into self-satisfaction that people escaped into after the true tenets of counterculture had failed. Just because you're too stupid to understand the second example, doesn't mean it isn't on the page equally as plain.

Moron.

>Thompson, who was of average intelligence was a super savant that could hide layers upon layers of context in his writing, thatonly a few anons on a weeb board would be able to interpret
>what is occam's razor

it's actually quite easy to see. It's not my fault you are too stupid too see extremely thinly veiled metaphors. It's your fault that you're too stupid, stupid.

>you are deliberately choosing to take a surface impression of what he wrote (without actually reading the book, I'm sure of that) to perpetuate the opinion you desperately want to hold that Thompson does not write things that are worthwhile
What in the fuck are you talking about? I have read Fear and Loathing, and where did I ever imply its not worthwhile? I literally said
>He wrote some pretty great shit. I think anyone who wants to take psychedelics should really absorb this quote first

And then you go on the basically rephrase what I just said (the counter culture failed because of its obsession with drugs) and yet imply your understanding is somehow right and mine is wrong.

>literally understand it
>you are making it sound deeper than it is because you need to protect yourself and your AVERAGE intelligence
buhhh buhhhh I read so I'm smmmaarrttt... He was sooo deepp!!!! Mahh edge!!!
>you need to defend Thompson as some savant even though his shit writing is clear as day

>he is over rated as fuck and you can't deal
BTFO
T
F
O

>this is the reason he is over rated
>keeps arguing he isn't over rated
LOL how big is your unjustified ego that you literally admit he makes hack metaphors but he's somehow a superior writer. Dude.....you need to reflect on your anger. It's okay to agree that he's pretty shit.

Finally your autism was revealed, thank you. I'm not mad any more, I don't expect autistic people to have coherent opinions.

>I just realized that I proved myself wrong
>better call him an autist
LOL keep trying bitch nigga. It's okay, work through the rage.

>Nor was he hiding the fact that he was talking about Timothy Leary's acid culture as a means to illustrate the superficial delving into self-satisfaction that people escaped into after the true tenets of counterculture had failed
If thats really what he was talking about then yes he was hiding it. He was talking about the failure of hippies due to their reliance on drugs to be a guiding light, but not in the overly abstract way youre trying to portray it

>>literally understand it
>>you are making it sound deeper than it is because you need to protect yourself and your AVERAGE intelligence
>buhhh buhhhh I read so I'm smmmaarrttt... He was sooo deepp!!!! Mahh edge!!!
>>you need to defend Thompson as some savant even though his shit writing is clear as day
>>he is over rated as fuck and you can't deal
>BTFO
>T
>F
>O

you did this caps-spew, but you're calling me mad lol. again, autism

>what is a straw man
>hint: your last couple of posts
LOL keep crying bitch nigger. MMMMMMM it's so nice to intellectually defeat morons and watch them grasp for insults. Keep making insults, OR, sit back and reflect that you literally agree Thompsons writing isn't deep and he's over rated. I know admitting you're wrong is scary, if it makes you feel better you can just stop responding.

>inb4 more lame insults from a 20 something faggot

>being in your 30's and being this mad that people don't agree with your dismissive opinions based on nothing that you have to spam caps and memes to make yourself feel better.

Youre honestly not better. The fact you kept replying to him and the fact youre samefagging shows youre pretty much just as shallow and reactionary as he is

shouldn't you be like, tending to your family or something. I mean, you're over 30 and spending multiple hours probably arguing with some 18 year old troll. He's a fag, but damn you're pathetic dude

The guy your responding to is the troll. The other guy actually thinks hes being smart and making points

>awww babby is still spewing straw men
>thinks "spam caps" is somehow an impressive enough insult to use twice
It's okay teenage bitch nigger. You'll self realize one day. Until then, consider suicide.


>you
"Of course he wasn't hiding it. "
>me
"No, when a CLEAR euphemism is made, we can see it."
>you
"So are you going to sit there and tell me that ..... he was talking about water"
Look how that works in reverse..... Then slit your wrist. He wasn't deep or creative. AGAIN, that is the point to the OP. He's over rated.

This basically.
Better writing skills than Thompson.

lol I don't know, they both seem like massive faggits to me my dude. It's just funny that one of them is in their late 30's, I didn't think people unironically existed like that on Veeky Forums

>Veeky Forums started in 2003
>people here are only teenagers
You should probably rethink things.

ITT: autistic samefag proxy wars.

Delete this thread mods, I was on board for the first 20 posts or so but the last 50 have just been two guys mad at each other pretending to be multiple guys mad at each other

lol you're supposed to mentally graduate beyond this shit slinging at some point. If I'm still here after I'm like 25 I will unironically murder myself because my life will have been objectively a failure

This is not false.

t. 18 year old who's been here for two years

>It's okay teenage bitch nigger. You'll self realize one day. Until then, consider suicide.
Still better writing than HST

>one of the most popular websites in the world
>arbitrary moratorium at 25
LOl okay dude. A TON of users are 30+ on this site. They don't visit every day, but they still come by. The oldfags in their late 20's-late 30's built this site, literally.