You could be right, Ken. CBC's As It Happens, the phone show, called a
novelist friend of Thompson's, who was shocked but had lots to say
about the man (McGuane it was), & talked especially about how he's not
been seen for the great stylist & comic (satiric) writer he was.
McGuane was himself quite funny about the somber moralizing critics who
missed what he was doing. A good point: the announcer then read one of
Thompson's wildly funny description of Nixon, & we were both laughing
all over again at how well he pinned that nasty piece of work down. I
read F & L on the Campaign Trail (& later the coverage of the Watergate
mess) as it came out in RS, & it was something special indeed....
I imagine he will want to be remembered for what he wrote.
CBC TV National News had a fairly long item on him, including some
prime footage, & a comment on his love for Hemingway & the irony of his
end so like the old man's....
So some of the people up here clearly felt his death was a major
story...
Doug
On 21-Feb-05, at 1:15 PM, Ken Wolman wrote:
> Douglas Barbour wrote:
>
>> Ken
>>
>> Salon has a link to a bunch of quote about Thompson, this one seeming
>> relevant to your query:
>>
>> Robert Sam Anson, journalist "His special curse"
>
> Saddening stuff, especially this from Thompson's own mouth:
>
> "But I don't know how wise I am. I don't know what kind of a role model
> I am. And not everybody is made for this life."
>
> I don't know much about Salon except Camille Paglia used to (?) write
> for it--so I have to wonder whether there is an editorial slant to the
> selections and presentation, and what if anything it's intended to
> prove. Thompson comes across as a demolished old public building with
> feral cats chasing rats in and out of the cracks in the marble. It's
> difficult to slam together a rethinking or revaluation of a man's
> entire
> lifework overnight, but Salon has made its attempt. Surprisingly, I
> rather liked Cintra Wilson's introduction, if only because she
> mentioned
> sitting around last night with a magazine photographer she calls "Dirty
> Bobby." Unless I'm totally wrong here, I went to college with Dirty
> Bobby, he's really Robert Altman (not the film director), and I
> remember
> him walking around with that damned Nikon or Canon or whatever it was
> back in 1965, as stoned out of his head as the rest of us, taking
> pictures of everyone he knew. And we all wound up on his website.
> Forever young? Yeah, but we all came down anyway, those of us who
> survived as a significant few did not.
>
> My suspicion is that Salon moved too damn fast on this. I keep
> picturing the researchers combing through the interviews and slapping
> the whole retrospective together. The magazine acted like the old New
> York Daily Mirror.
>
> Ken
>
> --
> Kenneth Wolman
> Proposal Development Department
> Room SW334
> Sarnoff Corporation
> 609-734-2538
>
>
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 Canada
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Reserved books. Reserved land. Reserved flight.
And still property is theft.
Phyllis Webb
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