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
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