Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Random thoughts about 2 of my favorite writers

I have always been a huge fan of two writers; non fantasy writers but great story tellers, Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson. Both of the men wrote of a life lived in society but on the fringes they lived. I was raised by my grandparents they were born in 1901 and 1905 respectfully and didn't think that my choice of authors good for me but they encouraged me to read anything and everything just read was their standpoint. On the Road Jack Kerouac tales from his travels across the country with his friends was inspiring to 13 year old teenage boy in a small upstate new york town. Here he was writing about life a life lived without increasing the heroic or downplaying the tragic just life. Often funny always riveting just the travels of a group of young post college aged men. I wanted this for myself the freedom the adventure the opportunity learn about me and the places I wanted to see by seeing them.

Then I found Hunter S. Thompson, long before Johnny Deep ever made a movie about him. Reading him you can see a influence of Kerouac but as with everything Thompson touched he had to star in. He is credited or discredited depending upon your viewpoint for Gonzo Journalism, did he inflate his importance to the story I'm sure he did but he was rebelling against the system which appealed to that same kid who was stuck in that small town. He choose to in my opinion show some of the fallacy of some of the intuitions he choose to attack.

They both had life long alcohol problems and Hunter S. Thompson also used illegal drugs and choose to write about those experiences as well. Hindsight being what it is maybe this is why I shouldn't have read them according to my grandparents.

Now if you managed to stay with me through all of that I'll finally get this around to wow and blogging now. Are my Journeys thru Azeroth and Outlands worthy of comparison to On the Road? No, nor is my writing even in the same category . I guess the only and a poor comparison is that the are just what they are stuff that has happened. Will Grai or any of the gang ever be banned from a site because we wrote unkind things about them, (Oakland Raiders circa late 60's H.S. Thompson) I hope not. Do I have a few gonzo moments one comes to mind from last year. This was during arena season 1 yeah that long ago. The team i was on had just gone 8-2 for the evening and we were very happy, so we decided to have some fun in Ironforge. What was intended to be us being silly turned into alot more. The guild I was in at the time had a myspace page, our guild leader was at the time in Australia on Marine Corpse reserve maneuvers. So we got drunk and decided to have a dance party with the totems from SMV. He a day or so after this got a chance to log in and look at our myspace page, where we had a few photo's posted and to say the least he wasn't a happy GL.




1 comment:

Beowulfa said...

oh lol the pictures are awesome.

I haven't read either author, but I'm curious and one day might pick up one of their books.