I made a roadside pilgrimage to the Woody Creek Tavern on a motorcycle trip across the US just a few years ago. Not a Thompson scholar if such a thing could exist, but certainly a fan. My impression was he realized that if you had a puppet, you could get away with saying anything you wanted, and Raoul was his puppet. Journalism was constrained by the bourgois consensus of sources and fact checking, and fiction was limited like an official court jester by the pretense that it wasn't true, especially when it was. Gonzo was the hybrid freak that used puppets and misdirection to tell you the truth like you had never heard it before. "Faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death."

I miss two people in the world today, Christopher Hitchens, and Hunter S. Thompson.