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Two of the most influential American authors of the 20th Century, Arthur Miller and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, are gone, and dying with them is a progressive era of American populism that they defended and fought for so valiantly with their pens.In his first novel THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, F. Scott Fitzgerald makes a distinction between people with personality and personages:
Personality is a physical matter almost entirely; it lowers the people it acts on — I've seen it vanish in a long sickness. But while a personality is active, it overrides 'the next thing.' Now a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought of apart from what he's done. He's a bar on which a thousand things have been hung — glittering things sometimes, as ours are; but he uses those things with a cold mentality back of them.
Arthur Miller and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson were personages. They were bars on which a million things have been hung. They were as complex, mysterious, tragic, wonderful, original, and sublime as their most brilliant works. Their lives are literary monuments carved into our collective American psyche, and their deaths markers that will guide the way we think about our history and culture from this day forward. Though they expressed themselves in radically different ways, it isn't difficult to imagine Hunter S. Thompson with his arm around Marilyn Monroe, or Arthur Miller on the road with the Hell's Angels. Their purpose was the same -- to explore, to illuminate, to educate, to question, to anger. They played out their roles with equal genius in their respective mediums, and spoke with poetic authority of their respective times.
Keeping in step with some basic ideas from my first article, BECAUSE MY MALEBOLGE GOES TO ELEVEN, not only is our interest in literature (and by extension good journalism) on the steady decline, but we are faced with a new set of horrors: the number of actual American literary personages is vanishing; the influence of those personages is waning underneath a nexus of corporate publishing and well funded political "think tanks" (who will be our first American Solzhenitsyn?); and there is the unpleasant prospect that even the most gifted new writer may ultimately end up reading to an empty auditorium. Arthur Miller and Hunter S. Thompson's deaths are twice as tragic as we need them, and writers like them, now more than ever.
Arthur Miller's death is in a sense the death of the American playwright. The stature and cultural importance of American literary theatre has been declining for decades, and only the works of giants like Miller, and a lot of Hollywood money, have propped up the illusion of what it use to be for so long. To rise to the level of Arthur Miller would be a lonely fate these days. The written word has been de-valued as an instrument to reflect on the inner self of our nation, especially on the stage. Miller rode his peak at his craft's peak. In 2005, fifty-six years after its first performance, DEATH OF A SALESMAN is the most produced play in America. That speaks both to the play's preeminence and the lack of power and originality that has followed. Through his words and works, his influence and fame, Miller may very well be the last great literary personage of American theatre.
Then there is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, whose life reminds me of one of the many and remarkably deviant stories of adventurous Greek gods who turned themselves into humans and roamed the Earth wreaking havoc among the mortals. I think it is fair to say that fans of Hunter S. Thompson would rank their first exposure to his writing as a mystical re-defining moment in their lives. A moment when the life of the mind went mad and it was beautiful. For me it was like learning a new language I always knew how to speak. What gets your blood pumping?
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but it was our time."
or
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take effect."
Vivid, controversial, rebellious, criminal, and dangerous. In a mere sentence Thompson taught us that life could be bigger than the cubicle society was training us to occupy (and Dickens, that pencil). And it could be fun. Very fun. Too much fun (if there is such a thing?), but in the end the story was always filed, and it was always the real story that nobody else but the good Doctor would ever have the brass to tell. Whether it was the Kentucky Derby, Nixon, Clinton, or ESPN you knew that you would have to suspend all disbelief, and wonder with awe what it must feel like to be that fearless and free.
As for his unexpected suicide, I point to one of Thompson's own heroes -- Ernest Hemingway -- who, at age 61, was suffering from ill health and serious injuries from a plane crash. Unable to write and live his life on his own terms, Hemingway shot himself in the head. It is difficult for me to romanticize suicide and exercise caution when it is presented as an act of courage. However, in the case of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (and Hemingway) I am ambivalent. Here is a man who lived without fear his entire life so it would be impossible to say he died any other way than fearless. He probably looked around at our brave new world of fear, control, and oppression, and decided he clearly no longer belongs here. They say his ashes are going to be shot out of a cannon. When they do, I will not think of it as a final request, but as the firing of a starting pistol.
Now to address the point of populism. It is this writer's belief that there have been three American revolutions -- the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and Mark Twain -- the original American literary personage. As we draft soldiers to fight our new wars with each new generation, so too do we draft new personages to carry the colors of Twain's revolution. From Twain's groundbreaking THE WAR PRAYER to Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN to Thompson's FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, a remarkable road can be travelled by horse and carriage, Model-T, or Great Red Shark, through the dreams and sufferings of successive generations bound by an indomitable American populism.
Miller was active in a wide array of political causes as well as malestroms. He was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee (Miller was named by Elia Kazan). In 1968 he attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago as the delegate from Roxbury. His characters were the average American and that fact challenged the very nature of tragedy. From a web biography:
Some critics criticized Miller for infusing the play with a deep sense of pity for the commonplace salesman Willy Loman. They insisted that Willy was a "little man" and therefore not worthy of the pathos reserved for such tragic heroes as Oedipus and Medea.
Miller refused to play along. His was the theatre of the common man and the plights and causes of the common man. Most of our theatre today is adaptations of old television shows or movies.
I don't think any imagination is necessary to figure out what end of the political and social spectrum one would find Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. His resume speaks for itself. In short, he was a great champion of the under represented and the underdog. When you strip away the wicked drug fueled maniac persona, what you really have is a compassionate man who used his enormous talents to help others. Even the logo for gonzo journalism -- a raised closed fist -- is a populist symbol of defiance and solidarity, perhaps among what Thompson lovingly referred to as "the doomed." Sir Winston Churchill was once asked what he thought the 20th Century would be called? He responded, "The century of the common man... because nobody has suffered as much." The common man, the little man, the doomed. The tragedy rages on, and a new generation of literary populists must come forward now that we are laying our masters in the ground.
The erosion of our basic rights will be preceded by the willful turning over of our discourse to those whose agenda is not to seek the truth, but to supplant it with spectacle and fear. This is a dangerous path for any people who claim the mantle of liberty. Arthur Miller and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, complete literary opposites, knew that if the writers do not write, the people will not fight. Though the progressive spirit they helped create lies dying (we are all doctors now, Hunter), and the worlds of literature and journalism are full of personalities but few personages, we are not without hope. We are the fortunate beneficiaries of Miller and Thompson's noble legacy, which reminds us that our full passionate participation in the human experience is needed every moment if we ever hope to wrest control of our collective destiny from those who are committed to its subjugation. American populism will not survive without writers like them. Who will challenge our sense of morality like Arthur Miller? Who will go to the darkest part of our souls and live to tell the tale like Dr. Hunter S. Thompson? Who will re-ignite Mark Twain's revolution? And when he or she does, will anyone care? Arthur and Hunter's savage journeys into the heart of the American dream have ended, but ours have just begun.
GW
For more on Arthur Miller see Mike Miller's excellent tribute to him in Crackpot, Issue #1
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