The Writer's Almanac from Thursday, July 18, 2013

The Writer's Almanac from Thursday, July 18, 2013

"That Reminds Me" by Ogden Nash, from The Best of Ogden Nash. © Ivan R. Dee, 2007.

ORIGINAL TEXT AND AUDIO - 2013

Today is believed to be the anniversary of the fire that burned Rome in 64 A.D., while the emperor Nero supposedly played his fiddle. In fact, Nero wasn't even in Rome when the fire broke out. He was 35 miles away at his holiday villa on the coast, and his own palace was one of the buildings that burned.

Nero apparently decided that the fire needed to be blamed on someone else. And so he singled out a new religious group only a few decades old: Christians. He had them crucified in the streets and burned at the stake. The historian Tacitus later argued that Nero's persecution of the Christians went too far, and that it had the unintended effect of making people sympathize with the Christians. It's possible that Nero's decision to blame Christians for the fire gave them the publicity they needed to help spread their ideas.
A little more than 200 years after Nero picked the Christians as his scapegoat, the emperor of the Roman Empire himself converted to Christianity, and it became the dominant religion of Europe for more than 1,500 years.

It's the birthday of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, born in Louisville, Kentucky (1939). He was trying to make it as a freelance writer, living with his mother, when he was hired by The Nation magazine to write a brief investigative article about the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang. After his article was published, he got a call from a publisher offering him $1,500 to write a book on the same subject.

Thompson used the advance to buy a motorcycle and began driving around the country, meeting bikers and writing about them. He almost died doing his research one day when five Hell's Angels suddenly turned on him and beat him senseless. But he survived, and in 1967, he published his book Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.

In 1971, he published his most famous book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In it, he wrote: "Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether."

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

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