Hunter S Thompson: Nothing Vicarious

At some point soon I hope to write properly and at length about Alex Gibney's documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which I saw this evening. For the moment I would only say that it sure stirred up some ghosts for me. The final credits run to the tune of Warren Zevon's 'Lawyers, Guns and Money'. The moment in my sluggish adolescence when I first made the connection between what these two men were up to as artists, and liked to in common and indeed together - sometime around the publication of Thompson's The Curse of Lono and the release of Zevon's Sentimental Hygiene - was a fairly vital one for me. Zevon, too, has been gone for some years now. And men like Thompson and Zevon, they really shouldn't die. And on another level, they clearly should. Not by fading away neither.