Is There A Doctor in the House?

By Jim LaFemina

Last I heard, the family of the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was still searching for both a suitable launching pad and proper cannon from which to blast the writer's cremated remains skyward, in accordance with his wishes.  Dead a burned to a cinder, getting high was still a priority.

As a speechwriter, I try to remain keenly aware of two things at all times; voice and perspective.  In an effort to keep our speakers lively and our audiences engaged, aren’t we all interested in finding a new voice?  Who among us is not seeking to discover the words of a writer who views the world in a strange and different way?  When we find a scribbler so completely skilled in sharing what he sees, the result can be like a bolt of lightning from the clouds, or a two by four to the base of the skull.  That's what Hunter S. Thompson did for me.  For those who’ve never read his work, seek it out.  In the late 1960s he was a regular contributor to a brash little start-up called Rolling Stone.  Many of these dispatches from the road were later collected in bizarre anthologies like the two Fear and Loathing books and 1979’s The Great Shark Hunt.

He was an American original, a chemically enhanced product of the weirdest generation who recently described himself as an aging dope fiend living in the wilderness.  Regardless of the topic, Hunter Thompson never pulled his punches.  His opinions were never couched in anything; they grabbed you by the throat, shouted their arrival and ransacked your serenity.  Tilting at windmills and barking at the moon, his work was wildly entertaining, and despite (or because of) a near constant influx of exotic drugs and fine, aged liquor, he wrote with rare precision and surprising clarity.

For his first published book, Hell’s Angels; The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Dr. Thompson lived, rode, partied and stomped his way around Northern California with the notorious Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club.  The book came out in 1966, a time when the Angels were truly fearsome, a mysterious and almost mythical force of nature.

He was a journalist who rearranged boundaries.  Hunter S. Thompson would never ask us to think outside the box.  Instead, he would scoop up a handful of blasting caps, a few sticks of dynamite, down a shot of Wild Turkey and reduce the box to a smoldering pile of toothpicks.

He covered Presidential campaigns and ran for Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado in 1970.  His maniacal and sometimes paranoid rants about the baseness of the Nixon White House seemed eerily clairvoyant in the summer of 1974 when the doomed Chief Executive stepped aboard Marine One for the last time.

His life was chronicled in two feature films; Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) starring Bill Murray, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) starring Johnny Depp as Dr. Thompson’s journalistic alter ego, Raoul Duke.  See them both, but then go out and read his stuff.

Because after the big blast, when the good doctor’s ashes finally settle upon the earth, random and scattered by the breeze, the screw-heads will still be out there, and somebody will need to find them.

About the Author: 
Jim LaFemina has been a Washington speechwriter for just over two years, working at both the United States Departments of Transportation and Treasury.  Jim currently works at the United States Mint and lives in Bowie, MD with his wife Paula, son Billy and daughter Zoe.  Jim is a book collector and lifelong fan of the New York Mets.

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