In the course of a long and memorable afternoon some years ago, the late Irving Howe sighed, waved a finger and admonished an avid younger writer that "the critic should always hesitate."
Later, the listener -- still dizzy with the compliment of the great man's company -- carefully copied the aphorism into his notebook. And if, as happened, the younger man subsequently came across other versions of it in several of Howe's published talks and essays, he valued it nonetheless. Those who make their living from the keenness of their own intellect are entitled to their little economies.
And, certainly, their eccentricities -- which brings us to the subject of Hunter S. Thompson, who shot himself to death early Sunday evening at his Owl Farm compound outside Aspen, Colo. Howe's advice seems particularly apt, because an appraisal of Thompson and his work somehow needs to take into account the extraordinary outpouring of reaction from writers and journalists of all stripes and ages that has occurred over the past week. Every reporter who ever met Thompson -- however briefly -- attended one of his purposely incoherent lectures or once owned a paperback copy of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" seemed gripped by an irresistible impulse to tell the rest of us what "Hunter" meant to them.
By Friday, Douglas Brinkley, the historian who edited two volumes of Thompson's correspondence and is one of his executors, was talking about commissioning a bust of the 67-year-old writer, establishing an archive for his papers and endowing a Hunter S. Thompson professorship of journalism.
Since reportorial convention neither acknowledges the grief of others nor declines to intrude upon it, this is the moment to suggest that everybody take a deep, deep breath -- or, in the spirit of the occasion, another hit -- and get a grip. Hunter Thompson was a social satirist of bitingly comedic power, who managed to capture the spirit and style of a particularly turbulent moment of social transformation in a way that no one else did. "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" and his experience of "Fear and Loathing," first in Las Vegas and then along the campaign trail, are darkly hilarious works of social comment on the American ethos in the 1960s and '70s. But the fact is that it has been 40 years since Thompson published a recognizable work of journalism -- "The Hell's Angels, a Strange and Terrible Saga."
If the rest of his work requires a category, it's performance art, not journalism.
