Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
than he does.
As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is
being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can
do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes.
This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
