immortality! take it! it's yours! two giants of the american literary world recently passed away, hunter s thompson and susan sontag. who? yeah, exactly. i've never even heard of susan sontag before last year, and the only thing i knew about mr thompson was his having written "fear and loathing in las vegas." and i only know about that because it was made into a movie. so really, my combined knowledge of these two was about nil. but when someone important dies, you get a chance to read tributes to them. you hear their names in the news and you inevitably start to wonder, "who are they?"

i won't even bother trying to give my take of who they were, since i'm unfamiliar with their life's work or their literary impact. all i know is that susan sontag was some sort of culture critic and hunter s seemed like he was in the same arena as the beats -- but i could be way off on both these things.

there are influential people's names who just float around and you don't really know who or what they are. well, i'd like to know. like why is hunter thompson writing for espn? why did my snobbery book call sontag overrated? all these little bits of puzzle pieces that make no sense until you actually take the time to figure out who they are. or at least get an idea of who they are.

it's like watching a spoof on something when you don't know anything about the original source. it's not funny until you get it. and you won't get it until you know it. or it's like watching a movie based on a real person, like the motorcycle diaries. which is fine when consumed as a standalone movie but if you know who che is, then it adds another level of depth to your experience. so pretty much, that's what i need, another level to my depth of experience with writers that i hear about but have never read.

strangely, i care nothing for historical people in entertainment. politicians, leaders, artists, writers, lots of interest. entertainment, none. why is this? is it because entertainment is transient and really worth nothing in the long run? in fifty years, will my knowledge of the entire original melrose place cast be so much useless brain clutter? that would just be traumatic.