| "What the hell. What makes me tick?"
After speaking to Ralph Steadman and reading his new book, The Joke’s Over: Ralph Steadman on Hunter S. Thompson (Harcourt, 352 pp.), I have an idea. Somewhat.
"I threatened to write it years ago and Hunter said, ‘Not you and your instincts,’" says Steadman.
But it’s hard to imagine Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Thompson’s image – bucket hat, cigarette holder – without Steadman. After Thompson’s death put an end to gonzo journalism, more than autobiography or travelogue, The Joke’s Over is necessary — it’s historical record.
"It’s much easier to write a book than to peddle it. It was a genuine attraction between Hunter and I – he thought the same, and thought I was awful, pompous and upsetting people. That intrigued him – pretending to be pompous outraged him."
The Joke’s Over isn’t a humbling ode to a dead hero. Thompson doesn’t need a puff piece and Steadman hasn’t provided one here – rather, many will be surprised to see him take on the dead journalist. HST’s work ethic, so to speak, provided the data for his books, but it didn’t make it easy working with him.
Their first collaboration was on a piece for Scanlan’s magazine, which became The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved. Later came Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Curse of Lono and countless others, from books to movie posters and Hunter’s attempt at being elected sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, on the Freak Power ticket.
Steadman details all this and more, from the Watergate hearings to Zaire and the Rumble in the Jungle (complete with smuggled elephant tusks) and the construction of the cannon that was used to blast out Thompson’s ashes. He also discusses his own biography and drawings for other books and publications (one of which is for author Will Self’s column for The Independent).
So, what would Hunter think? "I think he would prefer it the way it was. He was a cynical old bastard."
ON HUNTER
Fast Forward: From the very beginning, at the Kentucky Derby, was there ever a point where you thought, ‘I don’t want to be around this guy?’
Ralph Steadman: It frightens me this whole thing. It was a good job. I was an innocent, presupposing or so. It made a kind of electricity between the two elements, words and pictures.
Hunter was jealous. I gave him exactly what he dreamed of and he hated it – it was more than he ever dreamed of. I think he found something he wasn’t expecting, thinking that illustrators are people that are brought in to push the swing doors on a building, something as basic as that. Nothing against guys who push doors around, but it was something else – people who express something more than the writer wants to express, but more eloquently. I think that makes art art, rather than an illustration.
FFWD: How do you remember him?
Steadman: When I find a worm in an unusual place. There are bruised memories, but a kind of love – we enjoyed the work we did.
Then the years of berating me – ‘Ralph do this, don’t do that; Ralph, you swine.’ He found film stars – Johnny Depp, John Cusack – for friends. In a way, he was bigger than them as a star. I was no longer of any importance. I’m just glad that I met him.
FFWD: Had you planned any further works together?
Steadman: We were going to finish Polo is My Life. An unfinished life. I think he did a lot of stuff for it. I have all the drawings – they were done before the book was finished, like what had been done for The Curse of Lono.
FFWD: Are you still inspired to do similar work?
Steadman: The things we did together – I don’t like doing them anymore, it’s gone. You’re not involved in it emotionally. I still do portraits of him, because of that iconic way I drew him.
FFWD: And the legacy of gonzo?
Steadman: It’s still there, the work we did. But the definition of gonzo? Hunter in an oxygen tent insisting on smoking. Kicking against the pricks. Shocking people in a way that’s good for them. He wasn’t a complacent man. My wife said I treated Hunter like I treat animals and children. He was respectful of people, an old southern gentleman. His America is gone – the one he loved, the frontier America. I feel he was someone deeply disappointed with what had happened – the constitution in shreds, run by corporate management.
ART
FFWD: Why draw?
Steadman: A political drawing is the only kind of art that isn’t only decorative. It’s a sad fact that violence is the mother of satire. An unhappy person is a satirist without a cause. Happily, he’s rarely out of business.
In the finest example, all extraneous matter is left out in the urge of clarity. When it describes the harrowing blight of communities, an attack against a political scumbag is the most necessary, the driving force, to call the common bond.
I wrote underneath a drawing of him (Hunter) and I, ‘It’s not literature, Ralph, until it’s sold.’ I don’t know where it comes from. I know that a lot of people pay a lot of money for those Rolling Stone pictures. I sold those drawings for $60 each.
When the artist is a mouthpiece, he’s lost in the cause. Here’s a thing about lying: ‘He can convey pride, lust, greed – even a recognizable individual can make a so-called work of fine art, an illustration nothing more than a joke or a space maker, even propaganda. Such work remains a lowly profession considered by editors as a device to sell papers, like, "Pictures attract those who don’t read."’
If there’s fault in any message, it is in its level of intellectual development. Go beyond the representational, search the surface of the canvas of the unexpected. Ever since a grunting human made its first mark, we have been putting a shape around ideas. It became a unique tool, a step up from the weapon as a means of communication and communication is survival.
BAD CRAZINESS
FFWD: Are we doomed?
Steadman: Nietzsche said, ‘It is only as an esthetic phenomenon that existence and the world appear justified.’ We’re only ticks on this planet. The ice caps and everything else – we can’t go on like this. We keep talking about it. If we could all suffer from amnesia and start again, forget our way of doing things. Maybe learn to be better by being more compassionate. Look at the way a motorway moves – it’s constant, but how can it be supported for very long? It’s showing us warnings but we can’t quit.
I think we’ve gone as far as we can before the world self-regulates to save itself. It won’t be thinking of us – it’ll simply do what it has to. Like (Hurricane) Katrina, these things happen – nature cleans itself out. Soon there’ll be the deluge, the biblical-sized disaster we will survive or won’t. How can we believe all is OK but know it’s not? We don’t know how to stop it. It’s a frightening, awesome, horrible fact. |
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