Hunter S. Thompson (67), the American writer best known for his novel, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” and as an exaggerated man of quirks, was found dead at his home in Woody Creek, Colorado this past Sunday, after placing the receiving end of a .45 caliber handgun in his mouth while on the phone with his wife. He was a man of many talents, and multitasking was apparently one of them.
Hunter Stockton Thompson, the son of Jack and Virginia Thompson, was born July 18, 1939, in Louisville, Kentucky. After attending public school, Hunter joined the Air Force, which served to unveil his inherent craziness and writing ability. After a few years of parading around in inappropriate attire and terrorizing his fellow pilots, Thompson was dishonorably discharged in the fall of 1957.
Shortly thereafter, Thompson decided to dedicate his life to writing. He was greatly influenced by beat writer, Jack Kerouac and based his writing style on William Faulkner’s idea that “the fiction is often the best fact.” With that muse in mind, Thompson, in a drunken frenzy, quickly developed, “Gonzo Journalism.” This is the term used to describe Thompson’s politically driven rants about the American government and its follies: a series of personal, partially fictional and drug-induced tales that emerged from his eccentric personality and insane adventures. Thompson has been quoted as saying, “I hate to advocate weird chemicals, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone … but they’ve always worked for me.”
He’s right. They have.
Thompson found a home for his new style in Rolling Stone magazine. His first piece was entitled “The Battle of Aspen: Freak Power in the Rockies.” After facing police violence while covering the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, he had returned to his home in Aspen, Colorado, and ran for sheriff. This article detailed his run on a “Freaks” platform, and subsequent loss by 500 votes.
Thompson is well known for about a dozen novels, including “Hell’s Angels, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72,” “The Great Shark Hunt,” “Generation of Swine” and “Songs for the Doomed,” and “The Rum Diaries,” all of which expose, reflect, hyperbolize and demand the attention of the reader with a style so rich and vehemently Thompson’s.
A cult classic, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (which became a Hollywood movie in 1998), was Thompson’s most accurate portrayal of what he wanted to achieve in “Gonzo Journalism.” It was a piece of work seen through LSD tinted-glasses, instead of the rose colored ones so often worn by others in search of the so-called ‘American Dream.’ Under the pseudonym of Raoul Duke, Thompson travels with his Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo (see the connection?) through Las Vegas with “two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…. A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls” (insert deep breath here).
Even decked out in his trademark Hawaiian shirts, mirrored sunglasses, and dilated pupils (cough, cough), Thompson never strayed away from his political mindedness and held fast to his strong beliefs of civil liberties. He kept his mordant eyes peeled in search for enlightenment and “truth” (whatever he felt that was supposed to be). In his most recent book, “Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century” Thompson describes America as “…a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world–a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts… and that is how history will judge us.”
Did you know that good ol’ George Bush attended some of Thompson’s super bowl parties back in his cocaine days? Ha!
Friends and neighbors knew Thompson as something of a hermit, notorious for heavy drinking, loud music and for employing a large Chinese gong as a target for his Magnum .44 at all hours of the night.
Thompson willed that his ashes be blown out of a cannon across his Colorado ranch. I sense something of a pattern here. According to Thompson, and I whole-heartedly agree, “Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”
RIP.