Peggy Noonan in her weekly Opinion Journal column writes ala Blogger Style:
"This week, an homage de blog. Or would that be homage du blog? James Taranto will know. It's good to have an editor, especially one I would characterize as a nonintrusive stickler. He always knows my topic, doesn't know my view, corrects my spelling and grammar. [De? Du? It's all Greek to me!--ed.]
Today I post thoughts blog-style. There is, however, a theme. Find it.
Hunter Thompson, RIP. Tom Wolfe, a genius, goes over the top in his praise of Thompson. Wolfe and Thompson were of the same journalistic generation, and we are all chauvinists for our era. But Hunter Thompson was not Mark Twain, who was a genius, nor was he the great comic voice of America in the 20th century.
He was a reporter/diarist who helped create a new journalistic form, to which 30 years ago he gave the even then embarrassingly corny name "gonzo journalism." It was highly personal, eccentric, with the writer at the center of the story, and it had its moments, the best of which was "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," which had a different sound, a different attitude, and a whiff of anarchy that seemed liberating.
In time Thompson's swashbuckling came to seem joyless, aggressive and half dead. What he thought fed his gift (drugs, alcohol) killed it. He must have been very scared to get tanked like that to write. The empty page, the blank screen, is scary. But so is a mortgage. So is the stillness of a courtroom before you make the closing argument. And so is a broken leg that needs fixing fast. We all have jobs. You take a bad turn when you start to think your next work must be marked by genius because you are a genius. Thompson's death is an occasion not for inspiration or celebration but compassion. Not pity, but a sense of universal idiocy, and sympathy...."
Read the rest here.
Not a bad attempt..... from one of my favorite writers!
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