New at Reason: Jesse Walker on Dennis Hopper

June 1, 2010

When Dennis Hopper died, you might have been surprised to read that the counterculture icon spent the last three decades of his life as a Republican. Don't let that puzzle you, writes Managing Editor Jesse Walker. Both as a young leftist and as an old conservative, Hopper exuded an individualism too explosive to be reduced to mere ideology. It was the individualism of a talented actor eager to play eccentric characters and the individualism of a self-destructive rascal who alienated his colleagues, the individualism of the counterculture's cosmic cowboys and the individualism of a Kansas Republican. It was the individualism of someone willing not just to stare into the abyss but to fall into it, climb out, then merrily dive back in.

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