The Joke’s Over: Bruised Memories: Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson, and Me, by Ralph Steadman
[rating:5/5]
Ralph Steadman recounts his days illustrating his adventures with Hunter Thompson. It’s very frank:
When I began this book I thought it was going to be a journey of pleasure and warm memories, but as I write I feel more of the icy winds of rejection that were probably there from the beginning. There is a point at which nothing was ever worth the effort, nothing given and nothing taken away. My involvement was nothing more than my own ambition. Quite by chance I became a part of this man’s life, more as an infection than a friend. I fooled myself that there was something in me that he found important. Actually, as time went by, he hated the very idea that something as putrid as a cartoon drawing could ever capture the essence of what it was he was trying to describe. But when I search deep inside myself, grasping at words like air, I believe he may have been right. There was no purpose in my involvement.
To me, Steadman’s work was vital.
Incidentally, the original poster subsequently disappeared – I presumed stolen by a gang of international art thieves. It was, in fact, stolen by Hunter who was often gripped by an insatiable kleptomania. He stole far more of my work than I realized from the offices of Rolling Stone, blaming Jann Wenner whenever something went missing. He did not realize that each time he committed such a felony, he stole a piece of my soul too.
Okay, the book is much more than this, but for some reason I’m left with all of these points. The artist screwed over by the writer, disrespected by the word people. Maybe it’s just me.
I am groaning as I write this piece, that I was systematically screwed over any part of this and other projects I was rightfully entitled to through the years. It was a time of thievery and personal ambition and it has lasted until after Hunter’s death. I simply did not realize that Hunter’s friendship was also a business agreement; he was wise and careful and had surrounded himself with lawyers… and guns and other people’s money. He was much more into deals than personal affection.
With all this said, Steadman remains a true friend to the end. The book isn’t all about Steadman’s treatment at the hands of Hunter.
In the eighties, after The Curse of Lono, Hunter became more circumspect about my involvement in anything to do with Gonzo, as thought the very presence of one of my drawings in a journalistic project of his own represented a serious threat to his domination over the world we had collectively created a decade earlier. My drawings were becoming baggage, best dropped off in some bushy scrub along the trail, halfway across a wilderness, or in a dirty pond along with old bicycle frames and rubber tyres. Writers are like that. Whether they like it or not, whether they attempt to consider themselves actual members of the human race, or chosen spokesmen for life’s underprivileged, winners of prizes or rich and curious seats of learning, I had, as far as he was concerned, exhausted my usefulness. But in his moments of quiet loneliness, I was still there as an integral part of the Gonzo spirit. The poor bastard was as alone as the rest of us when it came to filling a void with what most of us believe the creative spirit to be. These are mere speculations, but even as I write now, in my own chosen loneliness, missing the man like a lost leg, I realize our collaboration was one of those venal necessities I cannot brush aside, and neigther could he.
The Joke’s Over: Bruised Memories: Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson, and Me, by Ralph Steadman
[rating:5/5]