Gonzo remembered

Kurt Loder reviews the new documentary on Hunter S. Thompson:

The late Hunter S. Thompson was a dazzling writer who in his days of greatness — from the mid-1960s to the mid-'70s, approximately — misled a lot of younger writers into believing that if they just ingested enough drugs and alcohol, they, too, could write like Hunter S. Thompson. It didn't work that way. In the end, it didn't even work that way for Hunter anymore.

In "Gonzo," Alex Gibney's moving new documentary about Thompson, we meet the man foursquare: not just the brilliant, rampaging star of the "new journalism" of that period, but also the irascible crank, the drunken gun nut, the public menace. Hunter was much-loved by his many admiring cronies, among them Bill Murray, Keith Richards and Johnny Depp (who narrates the film). "On the other hand," says his ex-wife Sandy, "he was absolutely vicious." Such balanced candor is rare in any documentary, and it makes "Gonzo" the most transfixing film about a troubled artist since the 1994 "Crumb."

I first read Thompson's writing in the mid-1970s, and it was a jaw-dropping experience at that time. I thought his Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 was utterly brilliant . . . it actually made me much more aware of the American political system almost in spite of itself. The word pictures were so arresting, so outré, that they still stick in my mind now, literally thousands of books later.

His later writings fell well short of the full-court brilliance of his best stuff, but they still had glimmerings of his earlier power with words. He kept returning to the same themes — and sometimes the very same phrases — over and over, as his writing got less and less original, and (frankly) less and less readable. I recently read one of his last collections, Hey, Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness Modern History from the Sports Desk, and it was only a pale shadow . . . but even near the bitter end Thompson was still capable of startlingly accurate word pictures. Perhaps they stood out more because they were surrounded with so much dross.