I'M going to miss Hunter S. Thompson.

Not personally, no. I never met him, although as a reader I devoured some of his best stuff over the past third of a century. Saw him on the tube a few times, most of which he seemed so wildly stoned or drunk or some combination of the two that it made me itch just to watch him. And that was on a little screen in two dimensions, listening on a tinny TV speaker. God knows what it was like to actually be in 3-D in the studio with him, ranting, chain-smoking, sweating and stinking, ripping off his lapel mike so he could cross the room cussing up a storm and kick you in the shins...

I should stop right there. See, I let myself be drawn into trying to ape his style. Not only was the temptation shameful, I can't lay a finger on the Mad Doctor, and few if any can.

Worse, it's dangerous to try. If I have learned anything in two decades as an editorialist and columnist, it is that any comment that can be taken literally, will be — by at least some of the readers some of the time. (I once wrote a short sentence about the "Dewey administration" as a symbol of failed ambition. Soon came the letters admonishing me to do my research, since Truman famously defeated Dewey in '48. So much for satire.)

Like most of my colleagues, I have spent many years trying to discern truth, to be objective, to convey reality whether or not it was leavened with what I hoped were obvious dollops of opinion.

Even there, self-defined gonzo journalist Thompson had us by the scruff of the neck, or at least thought he did. He once wrote that, "With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism."

ASSOCIATED PRESS A 1988 photo of author Hunter S. Thompson, who died last weekend.

Maybe, maybe not. Most of my colleagues certainly strive for it, but, being human, we make small slips in spite of ourselves. And then we go unburden our embarrassment to bartenders or uncomprehending spouses or significant others who find themselves wondering why we couldn't have just been CPAs or ortho-dontists.

Hunter Thompson went a different route. He disdained any attempt at objectivity — simply stripped it away, wadded it up, shredded it — and wrote a type of fictional journalism that aimed at larger truths and hit them with unsettling frequency. The closest comparison I can think of is Mark Twain, who would assert at the outset that he was not given to exaggeration and then would launch into descriptions so over-the-top outlandish that his readers would be propelled into flashes of recognition — so brilliantly illuminated that, between the tears of uncontrollable laughter, they might well shout, "Yes! Oh, God! Precisely!"

The difference was, Twain subtly but expertly telegraphed his send-ups. Thompson didn't even try, and apparently thought it was a bad idea. So when you read in his "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" about Clark McGregor whacking Maurice Stans on the head with a Gideon Bible and calling him names that we don't print in family newspapers, you protest, "Hey, wait a minute — that didn't really happen!" Of course it didn't. But then you stop and think, "No, but I bet McGregor would have liked to... ." Thompson has glimpsed something we didn't. He sent it forth as straight reporting, and placed faith in the reader to catch on to the game. Similarly, when he wrote that Richard Nixon "speaks for the Werewolf in us," a thoughtful observer who had seen Nixon's eyes as he declared himself a non-crook might pause and say, "Hmm."

Hunter Thompson made a point — perhaps a fetish — of elbowing aside Facts in pursuit of larger Truths. He was on a dangerous path, perhaps dangerous particularly to himself. Only he could know what thoughts were on his mind as he pulled the trigger and ended his life.

I am glad that not many writers try to follow where he went. There can be too much of a good thing. Besides, it requires the rest of us plodders to give the mad geniuses a background against which to stand out.

But danger and all, loathing and all, posturing and all, he was a bright star searing his way through us. I'm glad he did.

Charles Reinken is a freelance columnist based in Kansas City, Mo. He is the former editorial page editor of the Omaha World-Herald.