Pierre Joris wrote:
> The good doctor's last piece can be read here:
>
> http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=1992213&type=story
I don't like being the Statue at the Feast (but if I am, deal with it),
but I looked at the sports story and focused on the picture of Thompson
in the right-hand corner. When did he look like that? The online NY
Times had one of their "slide shows" yesterday to accompany the
obituary. In the first picture we see an almost beautiful young man, a
thinner version of Truman Capote. But by the last photo there is shock:
Hunter Thompson at a Kerry rally last year looking like some guy who
sleeps in a car under a bridge and hustles coin in Perth Amboy, New
Jersey. His face has sagged to the point of cave-in, he is stooping,
his clothes don't fit. The thought: "You're GOT to be kidding, that
can't be him!" but that is what he did to himself. "I did it my way."
You sure did, Hunter: a straw tapped into the Wild Turkey distillery,
every drug known to mankind, and at the end of the day a pistol for
release. Your story, Dr. Thompson, is depressingly familiar, I have
been to the funerals of men like you, and at the end of the day and the
morning after, all you have proven to me is that talent alone is a sad
non-substitute for a life well-lived.
I've had a line going through my head since seeing that: "The wonder is
he hath endur'd so long, he but usurped his life."
Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
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