Since Hunter S. Thompson killed himself in February, magazines from Rolling Stone to the American Journalism Review have printed tributes to the gonzo journalist. If Thompson is reading his obits in the Great Beyond, his favorite eulogy is probably the one published in Modern Drunkard, the Denver-based magazine of inebriation, which hailed him as a great writer and a great drunk.
“There was always a powerful comfort in knowing he was out there somewhere in the night, roaring drunk, guzzling high-octane whiskey and railing against a world amok with complacency and hypocrisy,” wrote Frank Kelly Rich, Modern Drunkard’s editor/publisher.
“Hunter was the last of a long, distinguished line of drunkard heroes,” Rich wrote, a line in which he included Ernest Hemingway, Humphrey Bogart, Winston Churchill, W.C. Fields and Mark Twain.
“Nowadays the main rule is Play It Safe,” he writes. “Not only should you look before you leap, you should think very seriously about attending a Leapers Anonymous meeting and discussing the possibility that you have a leaping problem.”
