Hunter is Dead

The death of Hunter S. Thompson Sunday night took me by surprise. I had one of those pangs that starts in the stomach and shoots outward through the limbs, followed by a numb tingling. It wasn't that I knew or really cared that much about him as a writer, because I didn't. I've read some of his works and never thought much of them. He was a writer larger in life than in print, so it seemed to me. Of course, as with any writer, he surely had his following. He was a literary and pop culture icon of a darker sort, a kind romanticized in the same way as Hemingway and his life. He was characterized in movies - played most recently by Johnny Depp, and prior to that by Bill Murray - as well as in comics - Doonsbury. I'm sure there were far more people who knew about him from these venues than ever actually read his works.

All the same, my feelings of shock and sadness were for the character of Hunter S., and for the sense of "end of an era" in my lifetime. I felt old for knowing who he was as well as for feeling a bout of tenderness at his passing. That he took his own life is no more the tragedy; if anything, it is quite in step with his character and, while sad in the sort of way that makes us wonder why or if something could have been done, it was not shocking.

Hunter S. is the second of those writers whom I have known to take his life in such fashion, which also stirred my emotions to recall. Richard Brautigan also committed suicide by shooting himself. I came to know his writing in 1983 and fell in love with his works. I read everything I could get my hands on. Several years later, I found out he had killed himself in 1984. I was stunned and angry that a writer whom I had only just discovered and sought out to read so thoroughly would write no more. I was angry that he was alive when I first read him, and even spent time in my hometown, but I would never get the chance to know him. I was angry at Brautigan for removing himself from this world, for taking his writing away. And though I don't feel this way about Hunter S., I'm sure there are those who do, and who will.

To Richard and to Hunter - rest in peace.