From today's Lileks:
Hunter S. Thompson and Sandra Dee died on the same Yahoo most-emailed page. There’s some telling symmetry in that. Dee, who died of organ failure, was a sunny perky teen idol with a dark past – sexual abuse, domineering show-biz mom, public divorce, alcoholism, health ills. But she “turned her life around,” in the lingo of Behind the Scenes; she had a good last act, and she didn’t trade on her pains to craft a public persona. People think "Sandra Dee," they think the happy teen Tammy still.
HST killed himself. He never would have “turned his life around” – that’s a hard thing to try when the room’s been spinning for 40 years. Depression? Wouldn’t be surprising. A bad verdict from the doc? Wouldn’t be surprising. A great writer in his prime, but the DVD of his career would have the last two decades on the disc reserved for outtakes and bloopers. It was all bile and spittle at the end, and it was hard to read the work without smelling the dank sweat of someone consumed by confusion, anger, sudden drunken certainties and the horrible fear that when he sat down to write, he could only muster a pale parody of someone else’s satirical version of his infamous middle period. I feel sorry for him, but I’ve felt sorry for him for years. File under Capote, Truman – meaning, whatever you thought of the latter-day persona, don’t forget that there was a reason he had a reputation. Read "Hell's Angels." That was a man who could hit the keys right.
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