Gore Vidal is Still Alive; Mailer Isn't

Gore Vidal said, "I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television," and he's pretty much lived his life like that. I took his advice to heart a couple of times this week, but I'm still waiting on the TV moguls to call.

Recently, I watched Bill Maher interview an aged, skeletal Vidal sitting in a wheelchair. He was a hideous, scary sight, bony-faced and frail, but he still had his caustic wit. Early on in his career he said, "All writers are rivals" and, "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little." He has outlived his rivals, Capote by decades, and Mailer, only slightly, as Vidal himself looks on the verge of death. In fact, I think that he would have been better served not to have appeared on TV in such a decrepit state.

I watched a comedian the other night say that Norman Mailer, "Drank, fought, had six wives and even stabbed the second one." He paused and said wryly, "I've never read one of his books, but I'm a big fan." Sadly, I believe this is true for most people when it comes to great writers. They've heard of them, even their books, but they haven't read them.

But what is most disappointing is that writers of note are not treated with much respect by the public in old age. No one was particularly paying attention to Mailer in his last years, Tennessee Williams was shunned and derided for decades, and many others have lived in obscurity or even poverty until years after their death when their brilliance was finally discovered. That's sort of discouraging, but if you are true to the art, you really must care only about the work itself.

Vidal also said, "Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made," which is part of the struggle: one must survive so one must sell books, and to do so you must promote -- which takes away from the quiet and stillness needed to really dig deep and create good works.

On the other hand Vidal proclaimed, "In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are."

Leaving Las Vegas--and Hunter S. Thompson

Last week I was in Vegas. I could've been anywhere, since I didn't do much of the Vegas scene, except for the free drinks at Happy Hour and the one-armed bandit at the airport. But whenever I'm in Vegas I think of Hunter Thompson, you know, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

My take: Hunter wrote a few wild, all-out "gonzo" books early on, then he named everything, "Fear and Loathing xxx" after that. Sort of took the originality out of it. But he does get credit for pioneering the term and style, Gonzo journalism.

When things were good in New Orleans, before Katrina around the end of 2004, Hunter was there and went for drinks with his "literary executor" Doug Brinkley, at Lucky's Bar on St. Charles Avenue. Lucky's is a 24-hour dive with a pool table, fried food, and a new bartender every other week. I've spent many a night there, but usually I was at Igor's or Avenue Pub up the street. Lucky's is certainly a misnomer, since it's usually half-full of losers (other than that night I spent with a talented Cajun gal who lived upstairs).

Brinkley was a New Orleans writer, known as a very serious sort, even if he did migrate to Houston by way of Rice University. I've met Doug a few times at New Orleans literary events, before he made a million bucks on his Katrina book. I even sent him an advance copy of my manuscript (for a blurb) not knowing he was penning his own story. He was teaching at U. of New Orleans, evacuated to Houston and then taught at Tulane for a year or so. He's a very busy guy, and he cranks out books and spits out facts like a machine.

This comes from Wikipedia:

During the early 1990s, Brinkley taught American Arts and Politics out of Hofstra University aboard the Majic Bus, a roving, transcontinental classroom, from which emerged the book, The Majic Bus: an American Odyssey, published in 1993. In 1993, he left Hofstra University to teach at the University of New Orleans and taught this class again, using a natural-gas bus. He also worked with Stephen Ambrose, then Director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans. Ambrose chose Brinkley to become Director of the Eisenhower Center for five years before going to Tulane.

Brinkley is the literary executor for his friend, the journalist Hunter S. Thompson. He is also the editor of a three-volume collection of Thompson's letters:

• Volume 1: The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967. Published April 7, 1998.
• Volume 2: Fear And Loathing In America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist. Published December 13, 2000.
• Volume 3: The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop, 1977-2005. Schedule delayed until February, 2009.

As well, Brinkley is the authorized biographer for Beat generation author Jack Kerouac, having edited Kerouac's diaries as Windblown World. He has also written profiles of Kurt Vonnegut^[9], Norman Mailer, and Ken Kesey for Rolling Stone Magazine.

Anyway, Brinkley invited Andrei Codrescu to come along to Lucky's, and as Andrei tells it, Hunter Thompson's utterances that night were barely understandable, then a couple of months later he blew his own brains out declaring that he'd lived "17 years past 50" and that was long enough. He never wanted to be that old. I'm just hoping to make it there (next year).

As a Tijuana ex-pat who runs a cancer clinic (one of many) tells it, they propped up Hunter for one last party before his cremation. I doubt that, since he was in pieces by then, but then again, this guy cures cancer. Oh, late note--the clinic closed last week since the founder has dementia.

But Brinkley tells the story of Thompson's funeral elegantly in an article for Rolling Stone, which is a great tribute:

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 mold-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of "the rat race" is not yet final.
-- HUNTER S. THOMPSON, 1937-2005

February was always the cruelest month for Hunter S. Thompson. An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high-water mark of his year. February, by contrast, was doldrums time. Nothing but monstrous blizzards, bad colds and the lackluster Denver Nuggets. This past February, with his health failing, Hunter was even more glum than usual. "This child's getting old," he muttered with stark regularity, an old-timey refrain that mountainmen used to utter when their trailblazing days were over. Depressed and in physical pain from hip-replacement surgery, he started talking openly about suicide, polishing his .45-caliber pistol, his weapon of choice. He was trying to muster the courage to end it all.

Then, on February 16th, Hunter decided to leave a goodbye note. Scrawled in black marker, it was appropriately titled "Football Season Is Over." Although he left the grim missive for Anita, his young wife, Hunter was really talking to himself. Here, published for the first time, are perhaps his final written words:

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun -- for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax -- This won't hurt.

At the bottom of the page, Hunter drew a happy heart, the kind found on Valentine's cards. Four days later, on February 20th, he committed suicide by firing his pistol into his mouth.

You can read the rest of it here:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7605448/football_season_is_over

Tijuana Bullfights

I went to the bullfights yesterday at Tijuana's bullring-by-the-sea. I like the sport of it, the cheering fans, the showy matadors, but I'm not crazy about what inevitably happens to the poor bull. He almost never stands a chance. But yesterday was different.

Gabriel-the-Tequila-Man (he has a tequila factory in Guadalajara) brought a fresh bottle and we all drank up (Jaime, Yolanda, Luis, Isabella and me). Problem was, I'd just had two beers and an overtopped vodka martini. So I was well on my way when we got there. We bought Cuban cigars to smoke while we watched the action from about four rows back.

The bull comes charging out, crazed and powerful, snorting and balls swinging, greeted by cheering fans and taunts of matadors. He's a beautiful half-ton of muscle, soon to become a heap of dead flesh. They just keep sticking him and sticking him in the back until he's worn out and bleeding to death, then a sword is thrust fully into him, between the shoulder blades. Usually the bull runs and bucks a little more, then his legs give out and just as he is succumbing to death, a knife is jabbed into the base of his skull. Then there's a last kick or two and he goes stiff. The vaqueros tie him up and three harnessed horses are whipped and slapped as they drag the carcass out, leaving a blood trail. Groundskeepers come out and rake dirt over the blood and they start fresh again.

But yesterday was different: The last bull gave such a fight that they let him live. At one point, he stopped and stared directly at me. Jaime was joking that he was going to come at me, like Pajarito (see below). We all laughed. I cheered wildly as they let the wounded and battered bull back into a gate.

Finally, a fair fight.

One of the coolest things I have ever seen is the video of "Pajarito" or "little bird" the flying bull. You should see him fly up into the stands! This was only a year or so ago, in Mexico City. The bull landed in a lady's seat -- the only fight she'd missed in years. He ended up breaking his legs in the stands and they killed him right there.






In 1930 Hemingway published a knowing essay on bullfighting in Fortune magazine, which two years later became the amazing Death in the Afternoon. The critics hated it but it was a huge success. In 1959, just as I was being born, Hemingway returned to Spain with, as Michener puts it, "two handsome and charismatic young matadors" who were about to go mano a mano, They were also brothers-in-law. Evenly matched, they battled all summer and put on a show of skill and bravery. Hemingway later used these events for his series, A Dangerous Summer.