We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of True Romance magazines — we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely — at least, not all the time — but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness. – HST
Fear & Lono: Hunter S. Thompson in Hawaii
Jay Cowan For the Aspen Times Weekly. December 30, 2021
“The Charge of the Weird Brigade”
Forty-one years ago Hunter Thompson spent most of the month of December in Hawaii working on a story about the Honolulu marathon. If that wasn’t odd enough for someone who hadn’t run in 20 years except for very brief bursts in the occasional game of paddleball, he was doing it for Running magazine, a Nike publication.
The executive editor had sent him a letter asking if he would be interested in the assignment and a copy of that letter is one of the first pages of text in Hunter’s 1983 book “The Curse of Lono.” It offered him an all expenses paid vacation for a month “and an excellent fee.” Hunter wrote to his longtime illustrator Ralph Steadman and asked him to join the project by saying, “I think we have a live one this time, old sport.”
To most who knew Hunter it seemed a strange choice, other than as a way to get paid to go to Hawaii. And the whole idea of running becoming a craze baffled him. But he thought it might reveal something about the current state of America. Still – for a magazine published by a shoe manufacturer? Hunter was a devotee of big, floppy, old-fashioned Converses long after sneakers had evolved. To see him transitioning to Nikes and then writing for their magazine was as if he’d stopped smoking Dunhills and switched to Benson & Hedges 100s, and was penning copy for their company periodical.
However the man was no stranger to semi-obscure magazines, [Hey! Watch it!] and Ken Kesey and Ed Abbey were also writing pieces for Running. [Who would’ve picked that trio?] So Hunter’s next letter to Steadman began with, “The time has come to kick ass, Ralph. I’m also in need of a rest – for legal reasons – so I want this gig to be easy, and I know in my heart it will be… I have already secured the Compound: two homes with a 50-meter pool on the edge of the sea on Alii Drive in Kona, where the sun always shines.”
Rarely have any lines seemed more fateful or far off the mark, as the book went on to detail.
Hunter entered himself and Ralph in the race as a publicity stunt and thought they might actually show up and try to stage something clever. Then he learned that a good friend of his in Hawaii – former pro football player John Wilbur – still in top shape, had once tried to pull a Rosie Ruiz and jump into the race half a mile ahead of everyone and only two miles from the finish.
As Hunter wrote in “Lono,” “It was horrible. Nineteen people passed him in two miles. These bastards are fast. He went blind from vomiting and had to crawl the last hundred yards.”
Since it didn’t sound like any kind of stunt would be either original or even viable, he went with just covering the race. Which turned out to be a bizarre spectacle for the uninitiated, yet also somehow singularly uninspiring material. He wanted to know, “Why do those buggers run?”
In retrospect, it seems odd that even if he couldn’t comprehend wanting to be in shape, that he didn’t understand the endorphin releases involved that make long-distance running a lot like other drug addictions. And in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s it was booming, just like other less healthy drugs.
The Honolulu Marathon, for instance, started in 1973 and was an instant hit, doubling its number of entries each succeeding year through ‘78. Today it hosts over 35,000 runners, none of whom have to qualify, and they pay an entrance fee to do it. It’s one of the biggest marathons in the world and has been a resounding success with tourism-based businesses on Oahu, just as the Ironman Triathlon is on the Big Island.
As Hunter continued searching for a dramatic or revelatory storyline he also reassured Ralph, who had crippled himself in a snorkeling accident right after he arrived on Oahu, that Kona would be the antidote to everything: an apparently meaningless foot race, a rainy and unhappy time in Honolulu, and Ralph’s wounds and forebodings.
After the race they went directly to their oceanfront homes and settled in to write and illustrate the story, in a place where “the sun always shines and the seas are always calm,” as he told Ralph. Instead, their stay unspooled like a National Lampoon Christmas from Hell.
On the one hand they had to deal with the endless rain and winds of brutal winter storms that hurled boulders from the shore into their houses and swimming pool. It was especially disruptive for the increasingly fragile Steadman family with their 6-year-old daughter.
On the other hand, Hunter was developing a fascination with the burgeoning culture of a paradise island being dominated by realtors and fishing guides running roughshod over indigenous people and customs that had been suffering at the hands of westerners for centuries. Reminiscent of his ongoing experiences in Aspen and Florida, the situation was a weird enough stew of angst and violence to pique his interest.
The long and lavishly illustrated story in Running, titled “The Charge of the Weird Brigade,” came out in April of 1981 and turned out to be good, though understandably not universally well-received by the magazine’s audience. It was admired enough by others to inspire Hunter to immediately begin looking for a way to turn it into a book.
What it lacked was something with him more at the center of it, which was his M.O. Then someone he’d met in Hawaii showed up in Aspen later that spring. His name was Steve Kaiser and he was the captain of a fishing boat in Kailua Kona. Hunter had met him at Huggo’s bar, struck up a friendship, did some fishing with him and invited him to Colorado. Kaiser was a skier and Hunter asked me to show him around the slopes, during which he mentioned a big fishing tournament in Hawaii in May. He wondered if that might be something Hunter would be interested in.
Boy howdy.
Hunter instantly was, and so was I. As a friend and once-and-future caretaker at Hunter’s Owl Farm in Woody Creek, I had heard all about the Running story. And since I planned to be in Kauai anyway I could easily swing over to Hawaii, where I’d never been.
Hunter saw the tournament as a perfect vehicle for exploring the gestalt and complicated dynamics of the state, and moving away from the notion of a travelogue or “Gonzo Goes Hawaiian” thing. His writing was being called genius by some of the most prominent authors of the day and getting compared to what cubists did for painting. A travel-story/sneaker-advertorial mash-up didn’t necessarily seem like the best plan for his much-anticipated next book.
There was concern that in the wake of his successful political writing in the mid to late ‘70s, readers may have forgotten about “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” which was essentially a ginned-up travel piece. And the seeds for that book and everything to follow had been sown with his landmark Scanlan’s magazine story, “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.”
This template was in place from the very beginning: participatory journalism with a Merry Pranksters attitude, the observations not of a neutral observer but a wildly original and manic personality unleashed on some place and time that seemed particularly deserving. For a prime example look no further than his first book, “Hell’s Angels.”
After that, whether intentionally or not, his specialty became attending and providing his unique interpretation of big events of one kind or another: the Mint 400 motorcycle race in Vegas, the Kentucky Derby, championship heavyweight boxing, Democratic Party presidential conventions, America’s Cup sailing, the Roxanne Pulitzer trial in Florida and the annual marathon in Honolulu.
Jay Cowan’s excellent piece goes on and on, as did the book, The Curse Of Lono, which is not excellent. Generally acknowledged to be a compendium or collage of kaka. The book sold well because of Hunter’s name and brand. But he knew the only good writing was a reprint from a running magazine. Plus Ralph Steadman’s gonzo illustrations, the gift that keeps on giving.
Thought I knew not a little about Mr. Thompson, until I read High White Notes by David S. Willis.
As with poet Janes Dickey, fully half of what you think you understood about The Duke are simply stories created by the author himself.
Can you imagine?
The editing of the Running magazine article merits a few atavistically-entertaining paragraphs I am so glad I got to see before I died. Oh, the horror.
I HUGELY recommend High White Notes!!! Heapful of last-laugh illuminating.
Had planned to compose a kickass gonzo review, talk about how lucky I was not to be lucky and how fame and fortune killed Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. He actually killed himself, which suggests to me he looked in his own heart and his own mind and he wasn’t happy with what he saw.
Had planned, just told you, to compose a kickass review about how the Doctor and I are statistically similar except I was far too cute for prison.
Then I decided, fuck it.
That’s gonzo.
Here’s Ralph now.
