Atavistic

~Exordium~

 Today is the kickoff for the 2013 April A-Z Challenge. This is the third year I have participated. As with both prior years, I look upon this month of daily deadlines with nervous anticipation. Though I have struggled to get ahead of the wave as it were, I know I will still have days of frantic writing during the month. Coupled with the impending week long absence due to a vacation out of the country, I know days of anxiety are looming.

With that said but barely coherent, I am again themeless this year. I will however be making many ventures into my delightful discovery of the depths of the writing genius of my new favorite journalist/author, Hunter S Thompson. Not every post will be dedicated to an HST topic but several will. Though not a writer of any measure myself, I am easily drawn to who I would have been had I started writing 30 years ago. Some of the style I use during the Challenge will be reflective of that (I hope).

I hope you enjoy sharing my journey through this A-Z and I look forward to visiting some old friends and making some new ones as I visit the sea of blogs in this years entry.

Off we go...

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URGENT: A quick shout out and appreciative tip of the cap to Arlee Bird over at Tossing it Out. He is patient zero for this most mentally harrowing thing we call the A-Z Challenge. After starting this by himself... three short years later the list of participants has grown monstrously huge. Requiring minions this year, that's right minions to help all the hosts patrol the list of bloggers taking part in the insanity. They are the mosh pit monitors of this blogapolooza!! Thanks Lee for bringing the great people of the blogosphere together for a month of fun!!

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I start off this years A-Z Challenge with a brainteaser.

 

 

Quote:

 

"It is almost impossible to be a doctor and an honest man, but it is obscenely impossible to be a

 

psychiatrist without at the same time bearing the stamp of the most incontestable madness: that of

 

being unable to resist that old atavistic reflex of the mass of humanity, which makes any man of

 

science who is absorbed by this mass a kind of natural and inborn enemy of all genius."

 

-Antonin Artaud

 

 

As you will see throughout this Month of April, I will make references often to the writings of Hunter S. Thompson. Hopefully they will be in educational and varied ways. Maybe you will be encouraged to explore his works. I love his style, use of arcane as well as made-up language, the edgy way he wrote. I have fallen down the Hobbit hole and embarked on the mission of reading all his works. I must say I have made great progress in that regard (7 books down, 5 to go), however I will leave expansion on that subject for a later post in this Challenge.

 

Atavistic.

 

This is a word often used in Hunter's writing to describe a myriad of things. I had never heard of this word and had no idea what it meant. I read it so often and in so many of his letters and articles that I finally looked up the dictionary definition. (Yes, I read this word several times in several books and did not know the meaning. I assumed it would just come to me. Let's move on.) It goes something like this:

 

atavistic - adjective

 

      ~throwback

 

       ~of or relating to reversion to a former or more primitive type

Now what I want to know is what does this above quote from Artaud mean to YOU? I need some interpretive inspiration.

Please comment with your thoughts.

Until tomorrow...