"Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the
extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to
erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and
mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the
tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final." - HST.
(The following ‘lost’ interview with Juan Fitzgerald
Thompson was done on January 14th, 2016. For various painful reasons I do not intend to discuss, it has not been published until now. Huge thanks to Fraser Philip for getting it off my American phone for me so that I could transcribe it.)
Aye, Hunter Stockton Thompson. Whenever you mention the deceased gonzo journalist’s name, people who have heard of the man will generally think of two things: the 1998 movie of his seminal classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas starring Johnny Depp; or a crazed, unpredictable drink-and-drug addict (oh, and a writer, too, as an afterthought) whose image was unfortunately discussed more than his writing ability in the latter part of his life.
I say unfortunately, because Hunter S Thompson was genuinely a brilliant, inspirational writer who chronicled the 60s and early 70s in a way that came closest to capturing the giddy vertiginous high of that unstable period in recent American history. He called FALILV “a vile epitaph for the Drug Culture of the Sixties.” It certainly wasn’t an epitaph for his own drug abuse, but for a few years he streaked across the American literary and journalistic landscape like a stormcracker illuminating meteor, his own eccentric, bizarre behaviour throwing the excesses of the stories he was writing about into stark bas relief. He truly was a one-of-a-kind genius writer.
I first read Thompson at 19, with the aforementioned FALILV, and it instantly blew me away. I found it inspirational and hilarious – I got it out of the library in Falkirk and remember nearly walking into a lamppost as I walked home reading it and laughing. His deeply moral, human, anti-authoritarian, anarchaotic, stunning-insights work certainly inspired some copycat fun, deranged situations in my own writing. I followed his career until the tragic end of it, when he shot himself in 2005, aged 67.
And that, I thought, was that.
I was wrong. In 2016, Hunter’s (only) son, Juan Fitzgerald Thompson, brought out the excellent memoir Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S Thompson. As the title makes clear, this is Juan’s exploration of his tempestuous relationship with his father, warts and all, and it’s not pretty. The memoirist recounts a childhood filled with fear of his unstable alcoholic father’s rages and unpredictable behaviour, his understandable estrangement from the man for many years, and his timely reconciliation with his father nearing the end of his life. And it’s an absolute must-read for any admirer of Hunter’s work. It fills in a lot of gaps, and lays bare the relationship at the heart of the book. In fact, it occasionally, to me, reveals a little too much (reading about Hunter’s incontinence at the end of his life was depressing to me), but it’s definitely well worth your time.
Juan takes an interesting angle here. On the very first page of the preface, he admits that Stories is a “highly subjective and unreliable memoir…It is filled with exaggerations, misstatements, faulty recollections, obfuscations, omissions, and elisions.” You’d have to admit it’s a very novel way to present such personal work, but also an extraordinarily honest one. The son of one of the most notorious and iconic writers of the 20th century puts his heart and soul into this, poorly remembered or not, and I suppose the elephant-in-the-room question is: can he write, were those genes passed on?
And the answer? Absolutely he can write, and very well. After all, he graduated in English from university. What is clear on reading is that Juan has finally managed to step out of his father’s literary shadow with this book, which is an interesting amalgam of memoir and exorcism, an integral part of any future art that the writer may produce (as of this date, December 25th, 2019, he still has not brought out another book), and something he had to do for himself. It’s a love and fear and loathing letter to his dead dad, and the fact he could sell it as a book is probably gravy to him.
The writing here is very crisp and clean, flows like relationship-revelatory water. Juan’s vocab sometimes reflects his father’s (he refers to a vicious-tongued, post-back-surgery Hunter as a “rotten, stinking bastard”), and each chapter starts with a Hunter-like list of topics included in the next few pages. But Juan’s voice is also his own. He throws in some hard-earned, non-cliche, che-sera-sera serated wisdom into the mix, with the occasional poetic zinger, like this one from P39: “Unlike the basement, the darkness of the winter night was comforting, like a thick down jacket. The night sky outside Aspen is a canopy of what seems like an infinite number of little hard points of light that shine steadily rather than twinkle, and in which the vague ribbon of the Milky Way can be easily discerned stretching from one horizon to another.”
Writing like that occurs with decent regularity throughout the book, and sits well alongside the more abstract passages where Juan is trying to make sense of his confused feelings towards his confused, brilliant, addict-writer father. But he strikes the reader as somebody who knows himself well enough to let others know him, unafraid, and this is a real gift. Now that Juan has gotten this book out of the way it will be interesting to see what, if anything else, he writes. He certainly would not have been able to write anything else without exercising his talent in exorcising his father’s long-typing-fingered shadow from his creative mind, solidifying decades-old dramas and traumas to be able to grasp and transcend and reveal them on the page.
What I found interesting was that his description of the slipperiness of memory on the first page occasionally mirrored the way he talked about memory and comprehension and healing after attending Adult Children of Alcoholics. Stories I Tell Myself is, ultimately, far, far more than any random grab-bag of fond and foul memories, cynically put out to make a few bucks from the subject matter. It’s a questing, questioning, searching, absolution-giving declaration of independence from the past, a state of the historic father-son reunion address, and a planting of flags marking a new way through dense psychological and literary foliage. Because, for all their shared literary talent, the two men were chalk and cheese, and Juan turned out really normal, describing himself as a 'computer guy.' Things could have turned out quite different.
The passages near the end of the book when Juan talks about looking after his father are poignant and heartbreaking, as is the horrendous moment when he details finding his father’s dead body. Juan Thompson clearly learned a lot about himself and his father whilst writing this book. But he also finally had the courage to put pen to paper and write in a serious way, at the late age of 52. This takes a lot of courage, when your father is such a well-known writer, and I personally would love to read anything else he may write in the future. Until then, though, this book exists as a template and a paying-it-forward future promise of other, different, maybe less difficult things to come. And let’s hope that’s sooner rather than later. Until then, though, Juan is heavily involved every July in Gonzofest, an annual celebration of his rogue father and his work. It's held in Louisville Kentucky, where Hunter was originally from. Would love to visit someday...
I have broken this long interview into two parts, so your brain won’t melt down too much. The second part is linked to at the end of the first part. So without further ado…
Aye, Hunter Stockton Thompson. Whenever you mention the deceased gonzo journalist’s name, people who have heard of the man will generally think of two things: the 1998 movie of his seminal classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas starring Johnny Depp; or a crazed, unpredictable drink-and-drug addict (oh, and a writer, too, as an afterthought) whose image was unfortunately discussed more than his writing ability in the latter part of his life.
I say unfortunately, because Hunter S Thompson was genuinely a brilliant, inspirational writer who chronicled the 60s and early 70s in a way that came closest to capturing the giddy vertiginous high of that unstable period in recent American history. He called FALILV “a vile epitaph for the Drug Culture of the Sixties.” It certainly wasn’t an epitaph for his own drug abuse, but for a few years he streaked across the American literary and journalistic landscape like a stormcracker illuminating meteor, his own eccentric, bizarre behaviour throwing the excesses of the stories he was writing about into stark bas relief. He truly was a one-of-a-kind genius writer.
I first read Thompson at 19, with the aforementioned FALILV, and it instantly blew me away. I found it inspirational and hilarious – I got it out of the library in Falkirk and remember nearly walking into a lamppost as I walked home reading it and laughing. His deeply moral, human, anti-authoritarian, anarchaotic, stunning-insights work certainly inspired some copycat fun, deranged situations in my own writing. I followed his career until the tragic end of it, when he shot himself in 2005, aged 67.
And that, I thought, was that.
I was wrong. In 2016, Hunter’s (only) son, Juan Fitzgerald Thompson, brought out the excellent memoir Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S Thompson. As the title makes clear, this is Juan’s exploration of his tempestuous relationship with his father, warts and all, and it’s not pretty. The memoirist recounts a childhood filled with fear of his unstable alcoholic father’s rages and unpredictable behaviour, his understandable estrangement from the man for many years, and his timely reconciliation with his father nearing the end of his life. And it’s an absolute must-read for any admirer of Hunter’s work. It fills in a lot of gaps, and lays bare the relationship at the heart of the book. In fact, it occasionally, to me, reveals a little too much (reading about Hunter’s incontinence at the end of his life was depressing to me), but it’s definitely well worth your time.
Juan takes an interesting angle here. On the very first page of the preface, he admits that Stories is a “highly subjective and unreliable memoir…It is filled with exaggerations, misstatements, faulty recollections, obfuscations, omissions, and elisions.” You’d have to admit it’s a very novel way to present such personal work, but also an extraordinarily honest one. The son of one of the most notorious and iconic writers of the 20th century puts his heart and soul into this, poorly remembered or not, and I suppose the elephant-in-the-room question is: can he write, were those genes passed on?
And the answer? Absolutely he can write, and very well. After all, he graduated in English from university. What is clear on reading is that Juan has finally managed to step out of his father’s literary shadow with this book, which is an interesting amalgam of memoir and exorcism, an integral part of any future art that the writer may produce (as of this date, December 25th, 2019, he still has not brought out another book), and something he had to do for himself. It’s a love and fear and loathing letter to his dead dad, and the fact he could sell it as a book is probably gravy to him.
The writing here is very crisp and clean, flows like relationship-revelatory water. Juan’s vocab sometimes reflects his father’s (he refers to a vicious-tongued, post-back-surgery Hunter as a “rotten, stinking bastard”), and each chapter starts with a Hunter-like list of topics included in the next few pages. But Juan’s voice is also his own. He throws in some hard-earned, non-cliche, che-sera-sera serated wisdom into the mix, with the occasional poetic zinger, like this one from P39: “Unlike the basement, the darkness of the winter night was comforting, like a thick down jacket. The night sky outside Aspen is a canopy of what seems like an infinite number of little hard points of light that shine steadily rather than twinkle, and in which the vague ribbon of the Milky Way can be easily discerned stretching from one horizon to another.”
Writing like that occurs with decent regularity throughout the book, and sits well alongside the more abstract passages where Juan is trying to make sense of his confused feelings towards his confused, brilliant, addict-writer father. But he strikes the reader as somebody who knows himself well enough to let others know him, unafraid, and this is a real gift. Now that Juan has gotten this book out of the way it will be interesting to see what, if anything else, he writes. He certainly would not have been able to write anything else without exercising his talent in exorcising his father’s long-typing-fingered shadow from his creative mind, solidifying decades-old dramas and traumas to be able to grasp and transcend and reveal them on the page.
What I found interesting was that his description of the slipperiness of memory on the first page occasionally mirrored the way he talked about memory and comprehension and healing after attending Adult Children of Alcoholics. Stories I Tell Myself is, ultimately, far, far more than any random grab-bag of fond and foul memories, cynically put out to make a few bucks from the subject matter. It’s a questing, questioning, searching, absolution-giving declaration of independence from the past, a state of the historic father-son reunion address, and a planting of flags marking a new way through dense psychological and literary foliage. Because, for all their shared literary talent, the two men were chalk and cheese, and Juan turned out really normal, describing himself as a 'computer guy.' Things could have turned out quite different.
The passages near the end of the book when Juan talks about looking after his father are poignant and heartbreaking, as is the horrendous moment when he details finding his father’s dead body. Juan Thompson clearly learned a lot about himself and his father whilst writing this book. But he also finally had the courage to put pen to paper and write in a serious way, at the late age of 52. This takes a lot of courage, when your father is such a well-known writer, and I personally would love to read anything else he may write in the future. Until then, though, this book exists as a template and a paying-it-forward future promise of other, different, maybe less difficult things to come. And let’s hope that’s sooner rather than later. Until then, though, Juan is heavily involved every July in Gonzofest, an annual celebration of his rogue father and his work. It's held in Louisville Kentucky, where Hunter was originally from. Would love to visit someday...
I have broken this long interview into two parts, so your brain won’t melt down too much. The second part is linked to at the end of the first part. So without further ado…
JUAN THOMPSON INTERVIEW
Juan: Hello?
Graham: Hi, could I speak to Juan Thompson, please?
Juan: Is this Graham?
Graham (breezily): Well, judging by the accent, it most definitely is, sir, yeah!
Juan: (Laughs) Hey, nice, uh, nice to talk to you in person.
Graham: Ah, likewise. Is the line okay?
Juan: Is the…is the what?
Graham: (Putting on rubbish American accent a bit for clearer comprehension) Is the line okay?
Juan: Yes, yes, although people have said that my line is not so good, can you hear me alright?
Graham: Um-hum, fine, yeah.
Juan: Okay.
Graham: How long do I have?
Juan: I was planning on an hour? (In the end it turned out double that – Graham)
Graham: Okay. I don’t know how long it will take me to ask the questions that I have. First of all, let me just tell you, by the way, that I really enjoyed your book. I think that you’re a very good writer, you’ve got an excellent style, some of it’s poetic, philosophical, and I really, really enjoyed the book. So thank you for allowing us an intimate portrait of your relationship with you and your father. I very much appreciated being let into that world.
Juan: Thank you Graham, thank you, and that means a lot coming from…I know you take your own writing very seriously, so…thank you very much, that’s very generous of you.
Graham: I’m a high school graduate, I’ve got high school English (Juan chuckles), but obsession drives. OK, so…
Juan: (Good-naturedly) What have you got for me?
Graham: What have I got for you? Good question. First of all, is this the first book that you’ve written?
Juan: Yes it is. Yes it is. And a good thing too, because had I known how hard it would be to write a book, I never would have started. (Chuckling)
Graham: No?
Juan: (Still chuckling) No. I thought it’d be like a long, long essay y’know? But oh my God – no! Totally different.
Graham: How long did it take you to write?
Juan: Uh…I started in 2006, a year after…ah, let’s see, yeah, a year after my dad died. I had a huge advantage in being able to call Hunter’s old agent, Lynn Nesbit and say “Hey Lynn, I’ve got this idea for a book, what do you think?” And she said “That sounds promising, why don’t you write up an outline and send it to me.” So I did, and she said “It’s a little bit short, need more detail here.” So I sent her a longer one, and sent it back to her, and she said “Yeah, I think I can work with this.” She had her list of editors that she thought would be interested, talked to them, and (publisher) Knopf came back and said “Yeah, we’re interested.” And as a result I got (sounding slightly incredulous) an advance, which for a first time author is, like, unheard of. And believe me, I know how extremely fortunate I was to have that ability to just call an agent and have her, y’know, take my call.
Graham: Um-hum.
Juan: So that allowed me to quit my job for around nine months and just work on this. I took about, I dunno, six to nine months. I’d sit down in the morning and write a thousand words or something. Some days it was just garbage, but, yeah, a thousand words or something. So by the end of that period I had a first draft. Then it was time to go back to work. And between…being a father, my son Will was seven when I started, and working a full-time job, I just keep that kind of focus I had on the book for that first year. I was so grateful I had that time to get that first draft done, otherwise it would’ve taken a lot longer. And then…y’know… (to himself) why did it take so long? Part of it was that it was just hard trying to figure out what to write, how to put it together into a coherent story, to kind of figure out what was missing. And the biggest difference between writing something short and a book for me was that I could not see the whole book in my head at once. I could only see, y’know, a chapter, or a piece of a chapter. I just couldn’t visualise how it all flowed together. Part of it was, I think, not wanting to sit down and focus on the stuff. (Sighing) I mean, ummm…
Graham: It’s difficult subject matter. I mean, you’re looking back at your life…that must have been actually very painful, because you’re looking at a very prolonged period of time and your memories of your father, and that would be bringing back old emotions constantly, and old feelings and…I’m sure it must have been quite mentally and emotionally overwhelming at times for you.
Juan: You know, it didn’t feel that way, it mostly just showed up as “I don’t
wanna do this, I don’t wanna work on this.” But I know that part of it
absolutely was that part of me just didn’t want to dig into those memories
because…it’s one thing to think back in my head, y’know “Boy, those fights
between my mom, Hunter and Sandy when I was twelve, boy, those were rotten.”
It’s another thing to sit and think “Alright, how can I most effectively convey
what was happening and what it felt like?” And that’s a whole different level
of really trying to remember “What was it like, and what did they do, and, umm…
(sighing)” And I think it was – I know
it was a valuable process overall, going back to look at that stuff. And in
some cases, y’know, like finding that letter from my dad he wrote me when I
went off to college (reproduced in the book – Graham), I’d completely forgotten
about that.
Graham: That was a beautiful letter.
Juan: (Happily, in slight amazement) It was a beautiful letter, yeah! And then to find it again and think “How could I have forgotten about this?” And then to think through it further and put it together with his response to my letter. It was a beautiful letter but, as I say in the book, we just weren’t there. It was an ideal, but it was a fantasy. There’s definitely something about writing…not for myself, but when the goal is to…how do I convey this, the whole thing, to other people, as clearly as I can, that really forces me to get a lot closer to it than I otherwise would have.
Graham: It must be very difficult for you. Here’s a question for you. You studied literature, right?
Juan: Yes.
Graham: You graduated in 1988, and this is your first book.
Juan: Yes.
Graham: It seemed to me that the book was a way that you and your father could sit together on the shelf, you know, your books together for all eternity. Do you have some plans to write any more books, maybe some fiction or…?
Juan: (Sighing) Well, the first answer is if I have something really worthwhile to say, then I would really enjoy writing another book. Because after it got towards the end of the process, and was really focussing on the editing, rather than the creative process – which was really interesting cos it engaged two completely different parts of my brain, the creating and the editing, that it started to be actually, fun to work on. Y’know, how can I polish this out, how can I add a little bit here and polish it. That was really gratifying. Then to start getting people’s reactions, who actually found it moving was incredibly gratifying; oh my God, all this time has not been for naught. All this time and all of this hard work and focus, it hasn’t been for naught, and that’s it. You know from writing your own book, you really wanna know that it was worthwhile.
Graham: Your book is an excellent piece of work, the writing was very tight, there’s some beautiful prose poetry in there, there’s some beautiful philosophical zingers. The way you conveyed your thoughts on the page was just absolutely excellent. It was very tight, it was difficult to believe you’re a first-time writer. I’m curious to know, did you ever write anything, fiction or non-fiction, or whatever, that you showed to your dad, except letters?
Juan: You know what? Gosh, I haven’t thought about it for a long time, but…I think I might have been in school, it might have been right afterwards, but I wrote some short stories and I thought “Well, these seem okay.” Sent them off to Hunter and he said “Send these off to somebody.” And I got a response back saying “Intriguing, but you’ve gotta work on these some more.” The novel form never felt like my thing. Whereas this format, where I was not trying to create characters and create a world, but just explain as clearly as I could my own thoughts and feelings and experiences, that felt a lot more natural. (Sighing) To your original question, after this I felt pretty comfortable, as a result of writing this book I really have discovered that writing is really important to me. And for a long time I didn’t think it was so important.
Graham: You know, here’s something that occurred to me, right, when I read that book. Now obviously, I’m being honest, when you hear about the spouse or the daughter or the son of somebody famous putting out something you’re a bit dubious, you’re like “Hmmm, it’s like nepotism or something, you wouldn’t have gotten published otherwise.” But that’s what did strike me very much, right through that whole book, was how important writing was to you. Now, you’ve finally – to me – been able to step away from your father’s literary shadow, and the way you’ve assembled the book was very interesting, you’ve got letters and…I was sitting reading it and I thought “Y’know, there’s been no dialogue in this book,” and your first piece of dialogue in the book is a recreation of Hunter shouting at you, y’know? (In rereading the book, I see I am wrong - there is a small piece of dialogue between Juan and will a few pages before it, it's just that Hunter's vocal entrance into the book was SO LOUD - Graham)
Juan: (Chuckles)
Graham: It was interesting to me, it was like a smash of sound on the page. It was quite a fascinating little…umm…you sounded like at that point he was obviously a very difficult man to live with.
Juan: (Laughing ruefully.) Yes, that is a generalisation that I can make. He was a difficult man to live with. (Laughing gently) Yeah. (Laughing)
Graham: As I told you, your father’s work meant so much to me when I was younger, and it still does.
Juan: Yes.
Graham: I regard your father as one of the great literary geniuses of the 20th century. And I believe he was a genius-
Juan: Oh, absolutely.
Graham: -He was a troubled genius, a dark genius, but he was a genius. I mean the man, to me, represents absolute American freedom: freedom of thought, freedom of expression-
Juan: Um-hum.
Graham – And he was a moralist.
Juan: Yes.
Graham: I was reading…ah, what was I reading…I reread Hey Rube, y’know, the collection of columns, his ESPN columns…
Juan: Yeah.
Graham: …And I thought Jesus! It’s like a day or two after 9/11 and he’s talking about “these scum, these swine, they’re going to take us into a thousand-year war that we’re never going to get out of…”
Juan: (Chuckles knowingly)
Graham…It was totally prophetic! “Holy fuck! What?! He just predicted the next fourteen years the day after that happened!” He was incredible!
Juan: (In total agreement) Yeah, Yeah. I really love that choice of words, a “moralist,” I think that’s an aspect of Hunter that a lot of people miss. But I think that was just a fundamental part of him. Obviously not a moralist in the sense of a conformist, but in the sense of his emphasis on justice.
Graham: Absolutely, yes.
Juan: The word I use is “idealist,” but I think “moralist” is an excellent word. Yeah, I think that’s right on.
Graham: That’s what always struck me about his work as well. I can only imagine what he would think of America right now, I can only imagine he’d be beyond disgusted. I can only imagine the vitriol that would flow from his pen (Juan sighs expansively) about people like Donald Trump, he would not hold back.
Juan: I don’t know if he could have borne it. George W’s re-election in 2004 was really, really hard on him, he could not believe the man was re-elected. And then to be confronted by the Republican nominees this time around, I don’t think that he could have…I don’t think that he could have stood it. Just so, umm, what’s the word, is it, ummm…demoralizing. It’s hopeless, probably hopeless. And that most of the media would cover these candidates with a straight face, and not call them out. I mean, what kind of horrible farce is this? But that’s not how the media works.
Graham: This is just all over the map, here, umm…
Juan: Yeah, sure, go ahead.
Graham: I feel the same way. I know he wouldn’t have been able to tolerate it, because he had his demons, but at heart he was a good man and didn’t want people to be hurt, he didn’t like that kind of thing. He was an advocate for freedom, but he was also an advocate for intelligence and justice, y’know?
Juan: Absolutely. Absolutely, yes, yeah…
Graham: That’s why I’ve always respected him. The whole drug thing, the alcohol thing, he became a caricature to some people, but I feel that he never ever lost his power of thought and analysis and righteous indignation that he would use the correct terminology for. I’ve always respected that man.
Juan: I completely agree, I think the drugs and alcohol…not only were they a caricature and a distraction, I really think they crippled his ability to write, to concentrate for the sustained periods of time necessary to create something more than a column. And even the columns were extremely difficult for him to finish. But you’re absolutely right, in that, even though he lost the ability to sustain that concentration, the underlying…righteous indignation is perfect. That never faded one bit. I often think about Mark Twain and Hunter, y’know, so many similarities, and I think of Tom Wolfe as a satirist. And I’d never thought of it that way, but I think that’s very accurate because Hunter used his writing abilities and his powerful and unique style…I think it was most effective when he was using it to make a point about an issue that was very important to him.
Graham: Oh yeah, you could tell that.
Juan: Yeah, it wasn’t…writing about great adventures was entertaining, but that was not what motivated him. Some of (Fear and Loathing on) the Campaign Trail was…y’know, it’s that wonderful chapter (humour creeping into voice) after Nixon’s been re-elected, and it’s just so starkly personal and honest about this feeling of sadness and depression that this could happen. That section was just brilliant, y’know, so maybe it’s true that we are just a nation of used car salesmen.
Graham: Who are your own favourite writers? Do you read fiction, or non-fiction, or what?
Juan: Favorite writers….ummm…well, I’m a sort of classicist when it comes to that. Names that come to mind, y’know, Graham Greene, some of Joseph Conrad, I mean…Heart of Darkness was just amazing. And a novel I hadn’t even heard of until I came across it on audio was Victory and I just thought “My god, this is amazing.”
Graham: Who’s that by?
Juan: That’s by Joseph Conrad, right? Never heard of it, though, right?
Graham: (Unwell-read roots showing) No.
Juan: Brilliant book. Let me think, ummm…(breezily) when you ask this question my mind totally goes blank!
Graham: (Chuckling) Well that’s what I’m hoping for, that’s what makes for a good interview, when a person’s mind is blank! (Juan laughs progressively louder) So let me ask you some more mind-blanking questions and we can finish early! (We both laugh)
Juan: I can’t believe this…oh…William Faulkner’s collection of short stories and novella, The Old People. Especially that novella The Bear. I mean, that’s just…that’s just…what an accomplishment. Some more modern writers, I really like Jim Harrison. Ummm…god, this is really embarrassing…oh, Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five. Philip Roth, American Pastoral, hell, The Human Stain. I’m not a big Saul Bellow fan, but Henderson the Rain King. (Enthused) God I love that book! But I tried some of his other stuff, and it just didn’t grab me the same way. But you tend to get the idea, it’s more traditional style, y’know, more realism as opposed to something more adventurous, a prose style meaning pretty classical and not focussing on the style itself, but on the story that is being told.
Graham: (Chuckling) You know, if you ever look at my book, I dunno what you’ll make of it… (Juan laughs). It’s the first ever Scottish book to be written with all-American spellings-
Juan: Oh, no kidding!
Graham: I did that on purpose to piss off the Scottish literary crowd, (Juan is still laughing) and to make a little barbed point about cultural colonization, so fuck it. I have no idea what you’ll make of it.
Juan: I’m looking forward to it. I know it will be interesting and original, that I know.
Graham: Anyway, moving on. Personally, I think your father would have been really proud of your book. Do you have any concept about what he might have thought about it?
Juan: (Sighing) Boy…well, first, the disclaimer…it’s really risky for anybody to assume they know what Hunter might have thought or felt. But, that said… (sighing) I think he would have been, uh…I think he would have been proud that I had finished it. I think he would have been proud that I didn’t hold back on the less agreeable aspects of his life and his nature. I think he would have been very disappointed if I had made it a book of hero worship – he would have been disgusted, actually, if I had done that. As a writer, I think he would have been proud of parts of the book, also as a writer I’m sure he would have had some quibbles, y’know, “This was good” or “This was sloppy,” or whatever. Because he really was, I mean, as you know, he took writing very seriously, and he had very high standards for himself and others. Even if he couldn’t always live up to his standards in the later books, where he couldn’t string it all together, writing well was really important to him. And with books, as with people, he really had a very low tolerance for mediocrity.
Graham: I still know the first half page of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas verbatim and I’ll sometimes walk around saying to myself “the last-minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino,” (Juan chuckles) cos that’s just beautiful poetry. There’s such beautiful poetry in some of his work, like the letters…
Juan: There really is. Yes. Yes. And he was so…what I’ve realized about him over time, and what the letters (the two excellent Hunter epistolary tomes, The Proud Highway and Fear and Loathing in America – Graham) really made clear to me, is how serious he was about writing from an early age-
Graham: Oh yeah, yeah.
Juan: -And how hard he worked at it. He wasn’t just accidentally a great writer, this wasn’t just “I sat down and wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “Wow, this guy’s great!” And so I know, with the whole book, that opening page, that he spent a long time trying to get the right words and the right rhythm, to get it so it flowed, so it sounded just right. And not just how it read, he really thought about the rhythm, how it sounded.
Graham: Oh, you can tell. What do you think you’ve learned about writing from your father? Obviously you’d been exposed to it for decades before his death, so it must have had some sort of stylistic impact on you, or maybe cognitive…?
Juan: (Sighing) That’s a really good question, no-one’s asked that one. (Long, full-nine-month pregnant pause) Well certainly, if you’re gonna write, be honest. And I would say…uh…I’ve learned from him that it’s a craft, you have to really work at to make a final…uh…words are not coming here, but…to create something worthwhile it doesn’t just pop off into your fingertips.
Graham: What struck me is that you’ve got this kind of teenage, emo, melodramatic letter that you send your father. (Juan laughs) And I really liked that, because it’s so teenage: “I’m so alone!” Everybody feels that way (Juan is still laughing) and some of it must have been cringe-worthy-
Juan: Oh, absolutely.
Graham: -Even there, you’re 18 years old and you’re still a damned good writer, you’re a really good writer and I hope that you continue to write, to put stuff out, man, cos I was reading this and I was going “Jesus….” I was reading this and I was so dubious going into it, we’ll see, and then it’s just “Huh. This man can write, he’s obviously inherited that from his father.” And it was just so…by turns poignant, funny…I must admit, when it got to the bit about your father killing himself I went cold and I was like (Juan lets out a small moan) “Oh shit, I don’t know if I want to read this.” I mean, that must have been the most difficult thing to write, to think about again.
Juan: (Instantly, flatly) Yes. That was, that was the hardest…that was definitely the hardest piece to write, yes, because I really had to, as we covered earlier, I really had to, y’know, try to recreate it in my mind and on the page as clearly as I could. And I wrote the funeral chapter, that was one of the first chapters I wrote. And I think I wrote that one, y’know, the last day not long afterwards because it was such a, uh…it was so loaded emotionally. And I wanted to get it down before I forgot the details. But yeah, that was difficult to write, and I just finished doing the audiobook version, I read it for Audible.com. That was really interesting, because it’s one thing to just read the book. And I’ve read this thing so many times, I don’t wanna go over it anymore. But sitting there and reading it out loud, slowly and clearly, with some emotional emphasis, was a real interesting process. And boy, in reading that section, and going over it how many times, and I’m still sitting there reading it, y’know…it has not lost its punch.
Graham: (Quietly) I’m sure. And it never will, probably…unfortunately.
Juan: Yeah, well, uh…that was…y’know… (chuckling mirthlessly) I will never forget that day. But it’s in the book, and I’m really glad I was there cos at least I know what happened. And I think it would have been so much worse if I’d gotten a phone call, and, y’know, “Hunter’s killed himself.” God, I just would have been always wondering what…what happened? And there wouldn’t have been anybody there to answer, “What led up to this, why now, what happened that I don’t know.” That would have been really, ummm…that would have been painful. And no way to resolve it, just have to accept there’s stuff I’m not gonna know.
Graham: Were you angry at your father for putting you through that? (Juan sighs) You know, you were there with your son Will and your wife, were you angry at him for doing that?
Juan: You know, I wasn’t, and a lot of people were, and still are. I wasn’t. I mean, the only thing I was mad about was “Godammit, y’know, now Will’s not gonna know you well.” But…I was never angry at him for killing himself, or even for doing it while we were there, because I think I know why. And was it selfish, in a way? Yeah.
Graham: But he was with family.
Juan: Yes. And I really think his intention was, if he was gonna, y’know, check out, he wanted to do it while people who loved and accepted him were there in the house. And I also think part of it was he knew that I would be there to deal with his body and to deal with the sheriff. And I think he wanted me to be that person rather than, I dunno, y’know, some stranger. And he was so unhappy, he was so unhappy, he couldn’t write, his body was completely giving out on him in a way that was not-
Graham: -That was horrible.
Juan: Yeah, yeah, it was horrible. And it wasn’t like something that could be fixed. You know, he agreed to do the hip surgery and the back surgery because it could be fixed, it was like fixing a machine, and he felt better afterwards. But by the time he killed himself I’m sure it was very clear to him that this was irreversible and was only gonna get worse. So why would he wanna stick around for that?
Graham: I remember initially somebody said to me that he never left a suicide note, and I said “Well his life was his suicide note, it was just like live your life to the fullest-“
Juan: -Yes.
Graham: “-Because that man was just on a different plane.” He was like a wise old Seer who had these moments, these incredible moments of lucidity and beauty-
Juan: Yes.
Graham: -And I mean it was all there: anger, pain, love, hate. As you said, he was an incurable romantic, and that really did come through in his work, it really did. I never ever, for one second…you look at these websites, “I took drugs today like Hunter S Thompson” (Juan laughs) and it’s just (totally dismissively, in utter disgust) “Shut the fuck up. Can you write? I’m not interested in your drug consumption, people have been taking drugs for fucking hundreds of years…can you write? Are you an interesting person? Doesn’t matter about yer drugs, stick them up yer fucking bahookie!” (Chuckling) ‘Backside.’
Juan: (Chuckling) Yeah. And I completely agree. Drinking a lot, and taking drugs, will not allow you to write like Hunter S Thompson, or, I would say, to create anything of any value. I think Hunter was a great writer in spite of his drinking and drug use, not because of it.
Part two:
https://whorattledyourcage.blogspot.com/2019/12/like-father-unlike-son-lost-juan-f_25.html
Graham: Hi, could I speak to Juan Thompson, please?
Juan: Is this Graham?
Graham (breezily): Well, judging by the accent, it most definitely is, sir, yeah!
Juan: (Laughs) Hey, nice, uh, nice to talk to you in person.
Graham: Ah, likewise. Is the line okay?
Juan: Is the…is the what?
Graham: (Putting on rubbish American accent a bit for clearer comprehension) Is the line okay?
Juan: Yes, yes, although people have said that my line is not so good, can you hear me alright?
Graham: Um-hum, fine, yeah.
Juan: Okay.
Graham: How long do I have?
Juan: I was planning on an hour? (In the end it turned out double that – Graham)
Graham: Okay. I don’t know how long it will take me to ask the questions that I have. First of all, let me just tell you, by the way, that I really enjoyed your book. I think that you’re a very good writer, you’ve got an excellent style, some of it’s poetic, philosophical, and I really, really enjoyed the book. So thank you for allowing us an intimate portrait of your relationship with you and your father. I very much appreciated being let into that world.
Juan: Thank you Graham, thank you, and that means a lot coming from…I know you take your own writing very seriously, so…thank you very much, that’s very generous of you.
Graham: I’m a high school graduate, I’ve got high school English (Juan chuckles), but obsession drives. OK, so…
Juan: (Good-naturedly) What have you got for me?
Graham: What have I got for you? Good question. First of all, is this the first book that you’ve written?
Juan: Yes it is. Yes it is. And a good thing too, because had I known how hard it would be to write a book, I never would have started. (Chuckling)
Graham: No?
Juan: (Still chuckling) No. I thought it’d be like a long, long essay y’know? But oh my God – no! Totally different.
Graham: How long did it take you to write?
Juan: Uh…I started in 2006, a year after…ah, let’s see, yeah, a year after my dad died. I had a huge advantage in being able to call Hunter’s old agent, Lynn Nesbit and say “Hey Lynn, I’ve got this idea for a book, what do you think?” And she said “That sounds promising, why don’t you write up an outline and send it to me.” So I did, and she said “It’s a little bit short, need more detail here.” So I sent her a longer one, and sent it back to her, and she said “Yeah, I think I can work with this.” She had her list of editors that she thought would be interested, talked to them, and (publisher) Knopf came back and said “Yeah, we’re interested.” And as a result I got (sounding slightly incredulous) an advance, which for a first time author is, like, unheard of. And believe me, I know how extremely fortunate I was to have that ability to just call an agent and have her, y’know, take my call.
Graham: Um-hum.
Juan: So that allowed me to quit my job for around nine months and just work on this. I took about, I dunno, six to nine months. I’d sit down in the morning and write a thousand words or something. Some days it was just garbage, but, yeah, a thousand words or something. So by the end of that period I had a first draft. Then it was time to go back to work. And between…being a father, my son Will was seven when I started, and working a full-time job, I just keep that kind of focus I had on the book for that first year. I was so grateful I had that time to get that first draft done, otherwise it would’ve taken a lot longer. And then…y’know… (to himself) why did it take so long? Part of it was that it was just hard trying to figure out what to write, how to put it together into a coherent story, to kind of figure out what was missing. And the biggest difference between writing something short and a book for me was that I could not see the whole book in my head at once. I could only see, y’know, a chapter, or a piece of a chapter. I just couldn’t visualise how it all flowed together. Part of it was, I think, not wanting to sit down and focus on the stuff. (Sighing) I mean, ummm…
Graham: It’s difficult subject matter. I mean, you’re looking back at your life…that must have been actually very painful, because you’re looking at a very prolonged period of time and your memories of your father, and that would be bringing back old emotions constantly, and old feelings and…I’m sure it must have been quite mentally and emotionally overwhelming at times for you.
Graham: That was a beautiful letter.
Juan: (Happily, in slight amazement) It was a beautiful letter, yeah! And then to find it again and think “How could I have forgotten about this?” And then to think through it further and put it together with his response to my letter. It was a beautiful letter but, as I say in the book, we just weren’t there. It was an ideal, but it was a fantasy. There’s definitely something about writing…not for myself, but when the goal is to…how do I convey this, the whole thing, to other people, as clearly as I can, that really forces me to get a lot closer to it than I otherwise would have.
Graham: It must be very difficult for you. Here’s a question for you. You studied literature, right?
Juan: Yes.
Graham: You graduated in 1988, and this is your first book.
Juan: Yes.
Graham: It seemed to me that the book was a way that you and your father could sit together on the shelf, you know, your books together for all eternity. Do you have some plans to write any more books, maybe some fiction or…?
Juan: (Sighing) Well, the first answer is if I have something really worthwhile to say, then I would really enjoy writing another book. Because after it got towards the end of the process, and was really focussing on the editing, rather than the creative process – which was really interesting cos it engaged two completely different parts of my brain, the creating and the editing, that it started to be actually, fun to work on. Y’know, how can I polish this out, how can I add a little bit here and polish it. That was really gratifying. Then to start getting people’s reactions, who actually found it moving was incredibly gratifying; oh my God, all this time has not been for naught. All this time and all of this hard work and focus, it hasn’t been for naught, and that’s it. You know from writing your own book, you really wanna know that it was worthwhile.
Graham: Your book is an excellent piece of work, the writing was very tight, there’s some beautiful prose poetry in there, there’s some beautiful philosophical zingers. The way you conveyed your thoughts on the page was just absolutely excellent. It was very tight, it was difficult to believe you’re a first-time writer. I’m curious to know, did you ever write anything, fiction or non-fiction, or whatever, that you showed to your dad, except letters?
Juan: You know what? Gosh, I haven’t thought about it for a long time, but…I think I might have been in school, it might have been right afterwards, but I wrote some short stories and I thought “Well, these seem okay.” Sent them off to Hunter and he said “Send these off to somebody.” And I got a response back saying “Intriguing, but you’ve gotta work on these some more.” The novel form never felt like my thing. Whereas this format, where I was not trying to create characters and create a world, but just explain as clearly as I could my own thoughts and feelings and experiences, that felt a lot more natural. (Sighing) To your original question, after this I felt pretty comfortable, as a result of writing this book I really have discovered that writing is really important to me. And for a long time I didn’t think it was so important.
Graham: You know, here’s something that occurred to me, right, when I read that book. Now obviously, I’m being honest, when you hear about the spouse or the daughter or the son of somebody famous putting out something you’re a bit dubious, you’re like “Hmmm, it’s like nepotism or something, you wouldn’t have gotten published otherwise.” But that’s what did strike me very much, right through that whole book, was how important writing was to you. Now, you’ve finally – to me – been able to step away from your father’s literary shadow, and the way you’ve assembled the book was very interesting, you’ve got letters and…I was sitting reading it and I thought “Y’know, there’s been no dialogue in this book,” and your first piece of dialogue in the book is a recreation of Hunter shouting at you, y’know? (In rereading the book, I see I am wrong - there is a small piece of dialogue between Juan and will a few pages before it, it's just that Hunter's vocal entrance into the book was SO LOUD - Graham)
Juan: (Chuckles)
Graham: It was interesting to me, it was like a smash of sound on the page. It was quite a fascinating little…umm…you sounded like at that point he was obviously a very difficult man to live with.
Juan: (Laughing ruefully.) Yes, that is a generalisation that I can make. He was a difficult man to live with. (Laughing gently) Yeah. (Laughing)
Graham: As I told you, your father’s work meant so much to me when I was younger, and it still does.
Juan: Yes.
Graham: I regard your father as one of the great literary geniuses of the 20th century. And I believe he was a genius-
Juan: Oh, absolutely.
Graham: -He was a troubled genius, a dark genius, but he was a genius. I mean the man, to me, represents absolute American freedom: freedom of thought, freedom of expression-
Juan: Um-hum.
Graham – And he was a moralist.
Juan: Yes.
Graham: I was reading…ah, what was I reading…I reread Hey Rube, y’know, the collection of columns, his ESPN columns…
Juan: Yeah.
Graham: …And I thought Jesus! It’s like a day or two after 9/11 and he’s talking about “these scum, these swine, they’re going to take us into a thousand-year war that we’re never going to get out of…”
Juan: (Chuckles knowingly)
Graham…It was totally prophetic! “Holy fuck! What?! He just predicted the next fourteen years the day after that happened!” He was incredible!
Juan: (In total agreement) Yeah, Yeah. I really love that choice of words, a “moralist,” I think that’s an aspect of Hunter that a lot of people miss. But I think that was just a fundamental part of him. Obviously not a moralist in the sense of a conformist, but in the sense of his emphasis on justice.
Graham: Absolutely, yes.
Juan: The word I use is “idealist,” but I think “moralist” is an excellent word. Yeah, I think that’s right on.
Graham: That’s what always struck me about his work as well. I can only imagine what he would think of America right now, I can only imagine he’d be beyond disgusted. I can only imagine the vitriol that would flow from his pen (Juan sighs expansively) about people like Donald Trump, he would not hold back.
Juan: I don’t know if he could have borne it. George W’s re-election in 2004 was really, really hard on him, he could not believe the man was re-elected. And then to be confronted by the Republican nominees this time around, I don’t think that he could have…I don’t think that he could have stood it. Just so, umm, what’s the word, is it, ummm…demoralizing. It’s hopeless, probably hopeless. And that most of the media would cover these candidates with a straight face, and not call them out. I mean, what kind of horrible farce is this? But that’s not how the media works.
Graham: This is just all over the map, here, umm…
Juan: Yeah, sure, go ahead.
Graham: I feel the same way. I know he wouldn’t have been able to tolerate it, because he had his demons, but at heart he was a good man and didn’t want people to be hurt, he didn’t like that kind of thing. He was an advocate for freedom, but he was also an advocate for intelligence and justice, y’know?
Juan: Absolutely. Absolutely, yes, yeah…
Graham: That’s why I’ve always respected him. The whole drug thing, the alcohol thing, he became a caricature to some people, but I feel that he never ever lost his power of thought and analysis and righteous indignation that he would use the correct terminology for. I’ve always respected that man.
Juan: I completely agree, I think the drugs and alcohol…not only were they a caricature and a distraction, I really think they crippled his ability to write, to concentrate for the sustained periods of time necessary to create something more than a column. And even the columns were extremely difficult for him to finish. But you’re absolutely right, in that, even though he lost the ability to sustain that concentration, the underlying…righteous indignation is perfect. That never faded one bit. I often think about Mark Twain and Hunter, y’know, so many similarities, and I think of Tom Wolfe as a satirist. And I’d never thought of it that way, but I think that’s very accurate because Hunter used his writing abilities and his powerful and unique style…I think it was most effective when he was using it to make a point about an issue that was very important to him.
Graham: Oh yeah, you could tell that.
Juan: Yeah, it wasn’t…writing about great adventures was entertaining, but that was not what motivated him. Some of (Fear and Loathing on) the Campaign Trail was…y’know, it’s that wonderful chapter (humour creeping into voice) after Nixon’s been re-elected, and it’s just so starkly personal and honest about this feeling of sadness and depression that this could happen. That section was just brilliant, y’know, so maybe it’s true that we are just a nation of used car salesmen.
Graham: Who are your own favourite writers? Do you read fiction, or non-fiction, or what?
Juan: Favorite writers….ummm…well, I’m a sort of classicist when it comes to that. Names that come to mind, y’know, Graham Greene, some of Joseph Conrad, I mean…Heart of Darkness was just amazing. And a novel I hadn’t even heard of until I came across it on audio was Victory and I just thought “My god, this is amazing.”
Graham: Who’s that by?
Juan: That’s by Joseph Conrad, right? Never heard of it, though, right?
Graham: (Unwell-read roots showing) No.
Juan: Brilliant book. Let me think, ummm…(breezily) when you ask this question my mind totally goes blank!
Graham: (Chuckling) Well that’s what I’m hoping for, that’s what makes for a good interview, when a person’s mind is blank! (Juan laughs progressively louder) So let me ask you some more mind-blanking questions and we can finish early! (We both laugh)
Juan: I can’t believe this…oh…William Faulkner’s collection of short stories and novella, The Old People. Especially that novella The Bear. I mean, that’s just…that’s just…what an accomplishment. Some more modern writers, I really like Jim Harrison. Ummm…god, this is really embarrassing…oh, Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five. Philip Roth, American Pastoral, hell, The Human Stain. I’m not a big Saul Bellow fan, but Henderson the Rain King. (Enthused) God I love that book! But I tried some of his other stuff, and it just didn’t grab me the same way. But you tend to get the idea, it’s more traditional style, y’know, more realism as opposed to something more adventurous, a prose style meaning pretty classical and not focussing on the style itself, but on the story that is being told.
Graham: (Chuckling) You know, if you ever look at my book, I dunno what you’ll make of it… (Juan laughs). It’s the first ever Scottish book to be written with all-American spellings-
Juan: Oh, no kidding!
Graham: I did that on purpose to piss off the Scottish literary crowd, (Juan is still laughing) and to make a little barbed point about cultural colonization, so fuck it. I have no idea what you’ll make of it.
Juan: I’m looking forward to it. I know it will be interesting and original, that I know.
Graham: Anyway, moving on. Personally, I think your father would have been really proud of your book. Do you have any concept about what he might have thought about it?
Juan: (Sighing) Boy…well, first, the disclaimer…it’s really risky for anybody to assume they know what Hunter might have thought or felt. But, that said… (sighing) I think he would have been, uh…I think he would have been proud that I had finished it. I think he would have been proud that I didn’t hold back on the less agreeable aspects of his life and his nature. I think he would have been very disappointed if I had made it a book of hero worship – he would have been disgusted, actually, if I had done that. As a writer, I think he would have been proud of parts of the book, also as a writer I’m sure he would have had some quibbles, y’know, “This was good” or “This was sloppy,” or whatever. Because he really was, I mean, as you know, he took writing very seriously, and he had very high standards for himself and others. Even if he couldn’t always live up to his standards in the later books, where he couldn’t string it all together, writing well was really important to him. And with books, as with people, he really had a very low tolerance for mediocrity.
Graham: I still know the first half page of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas verbatim and I’ll sometimes walk around saying to myself “the last-minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino,” (Juan chuckles) cos that’s just beautiful poetry. There’s such beautiful poetry in some of his work, like the letters…
Juan: There really is. Yes. Yes. And he was so…what I’ve realized about him over time, and what the letters (the two excellent Hunter epistolary tomes, The Proud Highway and Fear and Loathing in America – Graham) really made clear to me, is how serious he was about writing from an early age-
Graham: Oh yeah, yeah.
Juan: -And how hard he worked at it. He wasn’t just accidentally a great writer, this wasn’t just “I sat down and wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “Wow, this guy’s great!” And so I know, with the whole book, that opening page, that he spent a long time trying to get the right words and the right rhythm, to get it so it flowed, so it sounded just right. And not just how it read, he really thought about the rhythm, how it sounded.
Graham: Oh, you can tell. What do you think you’ve learned about writing from your father? Obviously you’d been exposed to it for decades before his death, so it must have had some sort of stylistic impact on you, or maybe cognitive…?
Juan: (Sighing) That’s a really good question, no-one’s asked that one. (Long, full-nine-month pregnant pause) Well certainly, if you’re gonna write, be honest. And I would say…uh…I’ve learned from him that it’s a craft, you have to really work at to make a final…uh…words are not coming here, but…to create something worthwhile it doesn’t just pop off into your fingertips.
Graham: What struck me is that you’ve got this kind of teenage, emo, melodramatic letter that you send your father. (Juan laughs) And I really liked that, because it’s so teenage: “I’m so alone!” Everybody feels that way (Juan is still laughing) and some of it must have been cringe-worthy-
Juan: Oh, absolutely.
Graham: -Even there, you’re 18 years old and you’re still a damned good writer, you’re a really good writer and I hope that you continue to write, to put stuff out, man, cos I was reading this and I was going “Jesus….” I was reading this and I was so dubious going into it, we’ll see, and then it’s just “Huh. This man can write, he’s obviously inherited that from his father.” And it was just so…by turns poignant, funny…I must admit, when it got to the bit about your father killing himself I went cold and I was like (Juan lets out a small moan) “Oh shit, I don’t know if I want to read this.” I mean, that must have been the most difficult thing to write, to think about again.
Juan: (Instantly, flatly) Yes. That was, that was the hardest…that was definitely the hardest piece to write, yes, because I really had to, as we covered earlier, I really had to, y’know, try to recreate it in my mind and on the page as clearly as I could. And I wrote the funeral chapter, that was one of the first chapters I wrote. And I think I wrote that one, y’know, the last day not long afterwards because it was such a, uh…it was so loaded emotionally. And I wanted to get it down before I forgot the details. But yeah, that was difficult to write, and I just finished doing the audiobook version, I read it for Audible.com. That was really interesting, because it’s one thing to just read the book. And I’ve read this thing so many times, I don’t wanna go over it anymore. But sitting there and reading it out loud, slowly and clearly, with some emotional emphasis, was a real interesting process. And boy, in reading that section, and going over it how many times, and I’m still sitting there reading it, y’know…it has not lost its punch.
Graham: (Quietly) I’m sure. And it never will, probably…unfortunately.
Juan: Yeah, well, uh…that was…y’know… (chuckling mirthlessly) I will never forget that day. But it’s in the book, and I’m really glad I was there cos at least I know what happened. And I think it would have been so much worse if I’d gotten a phone call, and, y’know, “Hunter’s killed himself.” God, I just would have been always wondering what…what happened? And there wouldn’t have been anybody there to answer, “What led up to this, why now, what happened that I don’t know.” That would have been really, ummm…that would have been painful. And no way to resolve it, just have to accept there’s stuff I’m not gonna know.
Graham: Were you angry at your father for putting you through that? (Juan sighs) You know, you were there with your son Will and your wife, were you angry at him for doing that?
Juan: You know, I wasn’t, and a lot of people were, and still are. I wasn’t. I mean, the only thing I was mad about was “Godammit, y’know, now Will’s not gonna know you well.” But…I was never angry at him for killing himself, or even for doing it while we were there, because I think I know why. And was it selfish, in a way? Yeah.
Graham: But he was with family.
Juan: Yes. And I really think his intention was, if he was gonna, y’know, check out, he wanted to do it while people who loved and accepted him were there in the house. And I also think part of it was he knew that I would be there to deal with his body and to deal with the sheriff. And I think he wanted me to be that person rather than, I dunno, y’know, some stranger. And he was so unhappy, he was so unhappy, he couldn’t write, his body was completely giving out on him in a way that was not-
Graham: -That was horrible.
Juan: Yeah, yeah, it was horrible. And it wasn’t like something that could be fixed. You know, he agreed to do the hip surgery and the back surgery because it could be fixed, it was like fixing a machine, and he felt better afterwards. But by the time he killed himself I’m sure it was very clear to him that this was irreversible and was only gonna get worse. So why would he wanna stick around for that?
Graham: I remember initially somebody said to me that he never left a suicide note, and I said “Well his life was his suicide note, it was just like live your life to the fullest-“
Juan: -Yes.
Graham: “-Because that man was just on a different plane.” He was like a wise old Seer who had these moments, these incredible moments of lucidity and beauty-
Juan: Yes.
Graham: -And I mean it was all there: anger, pain, love, hate. As you said, he was an incurable romantic, and that really did come through in his work, it really did. I never ever, for one second…you look at these websites, “I took drugs today like Hunter S Thompson” (Juan laughs) and it’s just (totally dismissively, in utter disgust) “Shut the fuck up. Can you write? I’m not interested in your drug consumption, people have been taking drugs for fucking hundreds of years…can you write? Are you an interesting person? Doesn’t matter about yer drugs, stick them up yer fucking bahookie!” (Chuckling) ‘Backside.’
Juan: (Chuckling) Yeah. And I completely agree. Drinking a lot, and taking drugs, will not allow you to write like Hunter S Thompson, or, I would say, to create anything of any value. I think Hunter was a great writer in spite of his drinking and drug use, not because of it.
Part two:
https://whorattledyourcage.blogspot.com/2019/12/like-father-unlike-son-lost-juan-f_25.html
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