talbotlucas.org: a word to the wise is sufficient

Jeez...just read the news that Hunter Thompson killed himself. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas features one of my favorite opening passages, one that I liked long before I ever made the drive between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It starts:

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like ‘I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. . . .'

The thing is, I can't read that passage without hearing Johnny Depp speaking those very words at the start of the movie version.

When I finally found myself on Highway 15 driving toward Vegas for the first time (sans drugs, I hasten to add) I couldn't help but think how much the landscape had changed since 1971, when Fear and Loathing was first published. So much has changed that the drive from the coast to Vegas doesn't really feel like the desert trek it once was. And in some spots the highway is being widened, so the sense of winding one's way through the joshua trees is fading fast.

The sad thing is that all the news I heard recently has suggested that this was not a happy man. For example, a defamer.com report of a book signing gives you a sense of what I mean. (For those who haven't seen the movie version of Fear and Loathing with Johnny Depp, Benecio Del Toro, mentioned in the defamer piece, plays Thompson's lawyer/traveling companion/partner in over-consumption. Thompson's real-life attorney, Oscar Zeta Acosta, supposedly died under suspicious--and drug-laden--circumstances).

What do all these thoughts add up to? Not much, I suppose, but I was sorry to hear of his passing. Whether or not you liked his work, we've lost a unique voice.