There just haven’t been that many books in the history of the world that can make you laugh out loud, over and over, and anybody who writes one is OK by me, and Hunter S. Thompson did. Plus, he changed what the word “journalism” means, plus he helped advance the general understanding of the U.S. electoral process. But maybe those things are less important than a couple hundred pages of perfect comedy. The bloggers are waxing graceful in eulogy; I like Doc’s take. HST was a very strong man, but the fact is that decadence in general, and cocaine in particular, take things away that usually don’t come back. [Update: Gunnar Peterson wrote me about this unusual reflection on HST, by his son.]
