{"id":79,"date":"2012-06-27T08:58:02","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T13:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writedrunkandeditsober.wordpress.com\/?p=393"},"modified":"2012-06-27T08:58:02","modified_gmt":"2012-06-27T13:58:02","slug":"hunter-s-thompson-american-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/artofblogging\/2012\/06\/hunter-s-thompson-american-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunter S. Thompson, American Legend"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Last weekend while I was in Austin, I met Alan Rinzler, the man who published and worked with Hunter S. Thompson, Toni Morrison, Tom Robbins, and Bob Dylan, among others.<\/p>\n

He told me that Hunter S. Thompson was a crazy guy\u2014erratic and a little paranoid, a writer who believed that the editor (in this case Rinzler) was the enemy.<\/p>\n

Rinzler also said that Thompson had spent an entire summer in an apartment in Chelsea when he was young, typing out The Great Gatsby<\/em> just to get a feel for the rhythms of Fitzgerald’s sentences.<\/p>\n

It’s odd to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas<\/em> (or watch this somewhat bizarre interview with Letterman) and think of Thompson in Chelsea, a young guy aspiring to be a writer\u2014just as we aspire to write\u2014and doing so in a way that seems both naive and a little desperate.<\/p>\n

As Thompson later wrote, “Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality.”<\/p>\n

Now Thompson, a man more legend than most, has joined Fitzgerald in the ranks of the great, illusory heroes of American literature.<\/p>\n

Which makes me ask one important question of myself: where in the hell did I put my copy of The Great Gatsby?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend while I was in Austin, I met Alan Rinzler, the man who published and worked with Hunter S. Thompson, Toni Morrison, Tom Robbins, and Bob Dylan, among others. He told me that Hunter S. Thompson was a crazy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a>\"\" Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":951,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,44,12,69,66,54,70,67,25,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alan-rinzler","category-authors","category-books","category-fear-and-loathing-in-las-vegas","category-great-gatsby","category-hunter-s-thompson","category-infinite-possibility","category-letterman","category-literature","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/artofblogging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/artofblogging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/artofblogging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/artofblogging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/951"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/artofblogging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/artofblogging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/artofblogging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/artofblogging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/artofblogging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/artofblogging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}