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"
