He found more satisfying answers embedded in Western culture's gullibility, its confoundingly low expectations, and its related willingness to warmly embrace and celebrate so much that was merely banal, mediocre and uninspired. Stylistically, Bangs owed his 10 cents to the Beats, another dime to Charles Bukowski, and at least as much to Hunter Thompson. His were musings lifted straight from the maelstrom of whatever crazy storm he happened to be weathering at the time. And Bangs always seemed to be weathering a storm. One often senses while reading Bangs' words that the only thing that saved his head from exploding was the sure sense of purpose he brought to his work.
Stasis is death.
Lester might have been portrayed differently in Almost Famous. Alternative options always abound, even if they're mostly ignored. Everyone has felt at least a fleeting moment of naked wonder at simply being a human being tossed for a precarious few years into the heaving tides of this beautiful world. Every so often, a breathless autumn evening comes along when the moon glows wild and the wind whispers softly in your ear, reminding you that life is more than what you buy and what you buy into. In the very scent of dawn, there is something real and true that we all must bear occasionally if we're to find any meaning at all to our strange lives.