He was obsessed as a young man though I'm not sure how long the influence lasted. Certainly it changed him as a person and helped create his literary personae.
This gave me a lot of good insights. I never knew that passage from Fear and Loathing where based on the last page of The Great Gatsby, but after you mentioned it, it made so much sense. Also that writing excise you mentioned about him copying word for word pages from Fitzgerald- I totally thought I invented that. 😂 I started doing that in college, copying Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor short stories. I figured, copying is how painters learn to write, maybe it would work for writers too. I got a kick that he did that too.
Being his editor would have been a hell of a job. I've heard dozens of stories from those poor buggers. He was a nightmare to deal with and he got markedly worse each year.
From what I read, Jann Webber dealt with him because so many other editors got so frustrated dealing with him. What’s interesting from a writing standpoint was he wrote in sections, then jigsaw puzzled them together. “Adding the wisdom” he called it. Strange way to write.
Wenner, for all his millions of flaws, could be a good editor and saw talent where others did not. He recognised Thompson's genius early and stuck with him. They had a weird friendship and both made lots of money from the other, so there were reasons for continuing to work together, but both turned their back on the other for long periods.
HST sent his writing neatly when he could still write. Later, when he was only capable of a few sentences, he would send those and editors would have to compile them. Sometimes it was just mumbled into a cassette tape. It's one of many reasons why his later work wasn't very good.
"At Eglin, he began reading Grantland Rice as an introduction to sports writing. Thompson admired Rice, whose genius, he believed, stemmed from the fact that he “carried a pocket thesaurus” to avoid repetition. This meant that his verbs and adjectives were descriptive, powerful, and original. A little over a decade later, Thompson looked back on this period and claimed that he could write like Rice, one of the great American sportswriters, and indeed his prose from Florida does seem a little derivative of Rice at times."
Thank you. I’ll get your book. Sportswriting, particularly in football programs, in the 1930s and 1940s, was outstanding. Nowhere else would you find the Hobart College Statesmen referred to as the “plenipotentiaries.” Good stuff. Thanks again.
I have a weird obsession with reading old newspapers. Often, the writing was abysmal but you're right about sportswriting. It was a different time. HST's early sportswriting was brilliant. He just went so ridiculously over the top that you never knew whether it was parody, enthusiasm, or just flexing his literary muscle.
I hear some Damon Runyon in HST's writing. Not stylistically--Runyon's slang and jargon is dated--but in the scene-setting, the comic set pieces. Like that hilarious column where he bets that Herschel Walker won't gain 1000 yards in the upcoming football season.
I think Thompson was influenced by his peers, too--Mike Royko, Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill. Daily newspaper columnists who were like his slightly older brothers, and who also wrote scenes that sounded like Runyon sometimes. Hunter Thompson was upfront with his praise of Nelson Algren, too. And Joseph Conrad. Mark Twain. I wouldn't be surprised if HST was also a fan of Charles Portis. That deadpan American voice.
The thing about HST's influences is that he was very reluctant to admit them, at least after he became a professional writer himself. He could be very critical even of the greats and wanted to be seen as an original, so a writer really had to be phenomenally important to him in order for him to admit that influence. He talked endlessly of Fitzgerald and often about Hemingway, so those are easy ones. If he was impressed by the ones you mentioned, he likely would've kept quiet about it. He might have said a few kind words and chucked in some criticism, ultimately keeping a distance and pretending not to have learned much from them. It's just how he was.
HST explicitly praised Joseph Conrad, more than once. Same with Grantland Rice. He refers to Nelson Algren's character Hank Linkhorn, from Algren's 1956 book Walk On The Wild Side, in his description of the Hells Angels in his first book. I don't find Thompson as any more--or less--influenced by Fitzgerald and Hemingway than by the authors I mentioned. After all, Fitzgerald and Hemingway were very divergent, stylistically. If HST could incorporate both of their writing styles--which he did, according to the way the topic he was writing on happened to bend--he surely made room for many more. That's how good writing works, after all.
I find more of Fitzgerald's style in Hunter's introspective commentary. His first-person performing self is more like Hemingway. And sometimes, like a good improvising musician or a filmmaker, he'll drop in phrasing that's something like a direct homage: "He was a Doctor of Torts, but it didn't matter. A dog had taken his place." That's Hunter Thompson doing Ernest Hemingway, doing Joseph Conrad. "As God is my witness, brother, I am the richest man north of Camelback Road." A Charles Portis line if ever there was one. The hyperbolic adjectives and epic imagery, that's the hallmark of sportswriting from the era of his earliest days as a reader, reading the sports pages and listening to the narration of newsreels.
I think the most unfortunate thing about Hunter Thompson's legacy as a writer is all of the young aspiring essayists and journalists who seem to view him as their single primary influence, if not the only one. As the summit of American writerly aspiration. P. J. O'Rourke once said that every American journalist under age 30 should probably ignore his work altogether. Because it's so seductive, and so singular, and so easily and badly imitated. I'm inclined to agree--not that I took P.J.'s advice, I was more like one of the novices he was referring to. Hunter Thompson was not the best writer in American literature. At his best, he was one of the best. But at his worst, he was a phoned-in self parody. A problem that started showing up as early as the 1980s. (For a creative soul, Celebrity beckons impending Doom. Not many have the power to resist its wiles.) Read widely, is my advice to readers. Especially aspiring writers.
Given his fascination with drugs, alcohol, and firearms, and his anti-establishment views, as well as his relationship with motorcycle gangs, etc, I’m not surprised. I’m sure he was bored to tears with estrogenicism. As am I, and I’m female. :)
Love to see that Donleavy was an influence. Amazing writer weirdly under the radar. Totally makes sense he influenced Hunter.
He was obsessed as a young man though I'm not sure how long the influence lasted. Certainly it changed him as a person and helped create his literary personae.
Fun read, thanks for writing!
This gave me a lot of good insights. I never knew that passage from Fear and Loathing where based on the last page of The Great Gatsby, but after you mentioned it, it made so much sense. Also that writing excise you mentioned about him copying word for word pages from Fitzgerald- I totally thought I invented that. 😂 I started doing that in college, copying Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor short stories. I figured, copying is how painters learn to write, maybe it would work for writers too. I got a kick that he did that too.
Nice David. Did you notice the “press releases” in “The Great Shark Hunt”? How’d ya like to be his editor?
Being his editor would have been a hell of a job. I've heard dozens of stories from those poor buggers. He was a nightmare to deal with and he got markedly worse each year.
From what I read, Jann Webber dealt with him because so many other editors got so frustrated dealing with him. What’s interesting from a writing standpoint was he wrote in sections, then jigsaw puzzled them together. “Adding the wisdom” he called it. Strange way to write.
Wenner, for all his millions of flaws, could be a good editor and saw talent where others did not. He recognised Thompson's genius early and stuck with him. They had a weird friendship and both made lots of money from the other, so there were reasons for continuing to work together, but both turned their back on the other for long periods.
HST sent his writing neatly when he could still write. Later, when he was only capable of a few sentences, he would send those and editors would have to compile them. Sometimes it was just mumbled into a cassette tape. It's one of many reasons why his later work wasn't very good.
It was sad what drugs did to him.
Yeah. They destroyed him. Everyone who knew and loved him said the same thing about what cocaine did to his brain. It just ruined him.
Intrigued by the reference to Grantland Rice.
From High White Notes:
"At Eglin, he began reading Grantland Rice as an introduction to sports writing. Thompson admired Rice, whose genius, he believed, stemmed from the fact that he “carried a pocket thesaurus” to avoid repetition. This meant that his verbs and adjectives were descriptive, powerful, and original. A little over a decade later, Thompson looked back on this period and claimed that he could write like Rice, one of the great American sportswriters, and indeed his prose from Florida does seem a little derivative of Rice at times."
Thank you. I’ll get your book. Sportswriting, particularly in football programs, in the 1930s and 1940s, was outstanding. Nowhere else would you find the Hobart College Statesmen referred to as the “plenipotentiaries.” Good stuff. Thanks again.
I have a weird obsession with reading old newspapers. Often, the writing was abysmal but you're right about sportswriting. It was a different time. HST's early sportswriting was brilliant. He just went so ridiculously over the top that you never knew whether it was parody, enthusiasm, or just flexing his literary muscle.
I hear some Damon Runyon in HST's writing. Not stylistically--Runyon's slang and jargon is dated--but in the scene-setting, the comic set pieces. Like that hilarious column where he bets that Herschel Walker won't gain 1000 yards in the upcoming football season.
I think Thompson was influenced by his peers, too--Mike Royko, Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill. Daily newspaper columnists who were like his slightly older brothers, and who also wrote scenes that sounded like Runyon sometimes. Hunter Thompson was upfront with his praise of Nelson Algren, too. And Joseph Conrad. Mark Twain. I wouldn't be surprised if HST was also a fan of Charles Portis. That deadpan American voice.
The thing about HST's influences is that he was very reluctant to admit them, at least after he became a professional writer himself. He could be very critical even of the greats and wanted to be seen as an original, so a writer really had to be phenomenally important to him in order for him to admit that influence. He talked endlessly of Fitzgerald and often about Hemingway, so those are easy ones. If he was impressed by the ones you mentioned, he likely would've kept quiet about it. He might have said a few kind words and chucked in some criticism, ultimately keeping a distance and pretending not to have learned much from them. It's just how he was.
HST explicitly praised Joseph Conrad, more than once. Same with Grantland Rice. He refers to Nelson Algren's character Hank Linkhorn, from Algren's 1956 book Walk On The Wild Side, in his description of the Hells Angels in his first book. I don't find Thompson as any more--or less--influenced by Fitzgerald and Hemingway than by the authors I mentioned. After all, Fitzgerald and Hemingway were very divergent, stylistically. If HST could incorporate both of their writing styles--which he did, according to the way the topic he was writing on happened to bend--he surely made room for many more. That's how good writing works, after all.
I find more of Fitzgerald's style in Hunter's introspective commentary. His first-person performing self is more like Hemingway. And sometimes, like a good improvising musician or a filmmaker, he'll drop in phrasing that's something like a direct homage: "He was a Doctor of Torts, but it didn't matter. A dog had taken his place." That's Hunter Thompson doing Ernest Hemingway, doing Joseph Conrad. "As God is my witness, brother, I am the richest man north of Camelback Road." A Charles Portis line if ever there was one. The hyperbolic adjectives and epic imagery, that's the hallmark of sportswriting from the era of his earliest days as a reader, reading the sports pages and listening to the narration of newsreels.
I think the most unfortunate thing about Hunter Thompson's legacy as a writer is all of the young aspiring essayists and journalists who seem to view him as their single primary influence, if not the only one. As the summit of American writerly aspiration. P. J. O'Rourke once said that every American journalist under age 30 should probably ignore his work altogether. Because it's so seductive, and so singular, and so easily and badly imitated. I'm inclined to agree--not that I took P.J.'s advice, I was more like one of the novices he was referring to. Hunter Thompson was not the best writer in American literature. At his best, he was one of the best. But at his worst, he was a phoned-in self parody. A problem that started showing up as early as the 1980s. (For a creative soul, Celebrity beckons impending Doom. Not many have the power to resist its wiles.) Read widely, is my advice to readers. Especially aspiring writers.
I have the book now. On what page can I find this (Rice is not in the index)? Thank you.
Oh. That's a strange oversight.
It's on page 24-25. Also, Rice is mentioned in the list of HST articles at the back of the book because he wrote about him for ESPN in 2002.
Got it, thank you. This is a great book!
Thanks. Glad you're enjoying it.
Never made the connection between Thompson and Fitzgerald but it makes a hell of a lot more sense now
The Book of Revelations.
What? No female influences? But, but, what about Austen and Shelly, and … what was that girl’s name …wait, it will come to me … Barbara Cartland?
He was not hugely influenced by female writers and could be quite misogynistic. He went through an Ayn Rand phase early in life but that's about all.
Given his fascination with drugs, alcohol, and firearms, and his anti-establishment views, as well as his relationship with motorcycle gangs, etc, I’m not surprised. I’m sure he was bored to tears with estrogenicism. As am I, and I’m female. :)
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/hells-angels-hunter-s-thompson
The writers behind my favorite writer. Love this!
He is a golden god.
Good post. I’ve seen Donleavy‘s name, but never knew anything about him. So many good books, so little time!
Henry Miller was a big one too. I found him through Thompson’s recommendation.
Just really apply yourself and results will come^^
You could count me, too, David!!!
https://johnnogowski.substack.com/p/hunter-would-have-laughed?utm_source=publication-search