My cell phone rang, and I could tell Anita Thompson was crying. "Are you near a computer? Can you get online?" Hunter S. Thompson's widow asked. "The L.A. Times just did a piece ... It's just so wrong."
She was talking about Marc Weingarten's "review" of the Jann Wenner-Corey Seymour biography of her late husband:
According to "Gonzo," an artfully edited mix tape of more than 100 interviews, the booze and drugs chased away the muse. . . .
Thompson was physically infirm near the end. . . .
But he couldn't even write two sentences in a row anymore.
This infuriates Mrs. Thompson, who served as editorial assistant to the famed "gonzo journalist" from 2000 until his suicide in February 2005. They married in 2003.
I met Mrs. Thompson in September, when she spoke at Olsson's bookstore about her own book, "The Gonzo Way: A Celebration of Hunter S. Thompson."
The Wenner-Seymour book arrived this week, and Thursday I interviewed Seymour by phone, then called Mrs. Thompson -- who had backed out of participating in their book, and had criticized it in the New York Daily News -- to get her own reaction. Her chief complaint (quoting from a feature article to be published next week) is the book's implicit suggestion that Thompson wrote nothing worthwhile after leaving Rolling Stone:
"He wrote more in the final five years of his life than he did in the previous 15 years of his life," said Mrs. Thompson, who . . . is currently working with Tulane University professor Douglas Brinkley on a collection of her husband's interviews to be published next year.
"Some of Hunter's most astute writing was in those ESPN columns," she said. "He took those very seriously, just as seriously as he took his writing in Rolling Stone. . . . He was reaching hundreds of thousands of readers through his ESPN column but Jann says it was 'humiliating.' . . . That attitude goes throughout the book."
Indeed, the chapter in the new book describing Thompson's early-'70s years with Rolling Stone is titled, "The Golden Age of Gonzo." Let the reader judge for himself what Thompson wrote for ESPN, for example in
this column from November 2000:
There is a Presidential Election, right on schedule, but somehow there is no President. A new Congress is elected, like always, but somehow there is no real Congress at all -- not as we knew it, anyway, and whatever passes for Congress will be as helpless and weak as Whoever has to pass for the "New President."
If this were the world of sports, it would be like playing a Super Bowl that goes into 19 scoreless Overtimes and never actually Ends. . . . or four L.A. Lakers stars being murdered in different places on the same day. Guaranteed Fear and Loathing. Abandon all hope. Prepare for the Weirdness. Get familiar with Cannibalism.
An amazingly accurate prophecy, if you think about it.
Those who would criticize this latter work for lacking the shocking freshness of what Thompson wrote in 1971 or '72 remind me of the critic who attended a recent Simon and Garfunkel reunion concert at the Kennedy Center and basically slammed the performers for no longer being 25 years old. If Art Garfunkel at 66 can't hit the high notes on "Bridge Over Troubled Water," that means he now joins the other 99.99 percent of humanity who could never hit those notes. But at least he once could, for which he ought to get some credit.
Never mind Art Garfunkel now, though. The Widow Thompson's on the phone in tears, and she's furious at Weingarten, who by his own account was once received with hospitality at Thompson's Owl Farm:
By far the most memorable experience was the two nights I spent in Woody Creek with Hunter Thompson. I just had a wonderful time with him. I think he enjoyed reliving his salad days for a captive audience. His wife Anita was great, as well -- she kept Hunter on point if he drifted too far afield.
So this, then, is how Thompson's generosity and kindness is repaid, with a review that leaves his widow in tears.
Trying to comfort her, I say, "They never would have written this stuff while Hunter was alive. He'd have shot them." This elicits a bit of a laugh, and I add that her late husband still has millions of fans, who admire him because of what he wrote, and who won't cease to admire him no matter what anybody else writes about him.
She says she's about to go for a hike around Owl Farm to clear her head. She gives me permission to quote her, tears and all. I tell her this will be online by the time she's back from the hike.
It's Fear and Loathing v.2.0. Like the man said, "Prepare for the Weirdness."
-- Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times
UPDATE 4:15 p.m.
Mrs. Thompson writes on her Owl Creek blog:
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize the many people did TAKE, TAKE, TAKE from Hunter and give very little, if anything in return. Hunter helped many people, especially Jann, make a lot of money, while he sat at his typewriter. Today is not exception. . . .
Jann is rich and powerful, and I was warned by friends that Jann would try to destroy me if I said "no" to him.
To quote the man: "When the going gets weird ... "
-- RSM
UPDATE, Sunday 9 a.m.:
Linked by Jeralynn Merrit of Talk Left, who defends Thompson, recalling his activism on behalf of Lisl Auman.
Merritt also cites a 2001 ESPN column by Thompson:
Nixon stabbed his Enemies in the back, but Clinton did it to his Friends. His lust to inflict Punishment surpassed even Nixon's, and he put more people in prison than Caligula.
-- RSM
