Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter Stockton Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson, New York City, 1979 (Photo: Allen G. Arpadi) Hunter S. Thompson, New York City, 1979 (Photo: Allen G. Arpadi)
Born	July 18, 1937 Louisville, Kentucky, USA
Died	February 20, 2005 Woody Creek, Colorado, USA
Occupation	journalist, author
Genre	Gonzo journalism
Literary movement	New Journalism

Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author. He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting which blurs distinctions between author and subject, fiction and nonfiction.

Biography

Early years

A Louisville, Kentucky native, Thompson grew up in the Cherokee Triangle neighborhood of the Highlands and attended Louisville Male High School. His parents, Jack (d. 1952) and Virginia (d. 1999), married in 1935. Jack died when Hunter was 14 years old, leaving three sons — Hunter, Davison, and James (d. 1994) — to be brought up by their mother.

Thompson was detained in 1956 for robbery. After crashing an employer's delivery truck, he joined the U.S. Air Force during the mandatory waiting period before army conscription. After working in the information services department at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida in 1956, he became the sports editor of the base's newspaper, The Command Courier. He also wrote for several local newspapers, which was against Air Force regulations.

He was honorably discharged in 1958 as an airman second class, having been recommended for an early discharge by his commanding officer. In summary, this airman, although talented will not be guided by policy, Col. W.S. Evans, chief of information services wrote to the Eglin personnel office. Sometimes his rebel and superior attitude seems to rub off on other airmen staff members. Thompson claimed in a mock press release he wrote about the end of his duty to have been issued a "totally unclassifiable" status.

After the Air Force he moved to New York City and on the GI Bill attended Columbia University's School of General Studies where he took classes on short story writing.

During this time he worked briefly for Time Magazine as a copyboy for $51 a week. While working, he copied F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms using a typewriter, saying that he wanted to learn about the writing styles of the authors. In 1959, Time fired him for insubordination. Later that year, he worked as a reporter for the Middletown Daily Record in Upstate New York. He was fired from this job after damaging an office candy machine and arguing with the owner of a local restaurant who happened to be an advertiser with the paper.

The Rum Diary cover contains a photograph of a young Thompson in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

In 1960 Thompson moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico to take a job with the sporting magazine El Sportivo which soon folded. But the move to Puerto Rico allowed Thompson to travel in the Caribbean and South America writing freelance articles for several American daily newspapers. While in Puerto Rico he befriended journalist William Kennedy. After returning to the States, he lived and worked as a security guard and caretaker at Big Sur Hot Springs for an eight-month period in 1961, just before it became the Esalen Institute. While there, he was able to publish his first magazine feature in the nationally distributed Rogue magazine on the artisan and bohemian culture of Big Sur. The article would get him fired from his job as caretaker.

During this time period, Thompson wrote two novels, Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary, and submitted many fictional short stories to publishers with little success. The Rum Diary was eventually published in 1998, long after Thompson had become famous. Kennedy later remarked that at the time he and Thompson were both failed novelists who had turned to journalism to make a living .

From May 1962 to May 1963, Thompson returned to South America as a correspondent for a Dow Jones-owned weekly newspaper, the National Observer. When Thompson returned to the United States he promptly married his longtime girlfriend Sandra Dawn Conklin (aka Sandy Conklin Thompson, now Sondi Wright) and the two moved to Aspen, Colorado.

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Portrait of Hunter S. Thompson

Thompson and Conklin were married on May 19, 1963 and they had one son, Juan Fitzgerald Thompson, born March 23, 1964. The couple conceived five more times together. Three were miscarriages and two died shortly after birth. In a tribute issue for Hunter in Rolling Stone issue 970, Sandy wrote, " I ... want to acknowledge the five children Hunter and I lost — two full-term babies, three miscarriages.... I had so wanted more Hunters! One of the most beautiful gifts that Hunter ever gave me ... Sarah, our full-term, eight-pound baby, lived about twelve hours. I lay there in Aspen Valley Hospital waiting, and when I saw the doctor's face it was unbearable. I thought I might go mad. Hunter leaned over the bed and said, 'Sandy, if you want to go out there for a while — do that, just know that Juan and I really need you.' I was back." After nineteen years together and seventeen years of marriage, Hunter and Sandy divorced in 1980; the two remained close friends until Hunter's death.

Thompson, now living in Glen Ellen, California, continued to write for the National Observer on an array of domestic subjects, including a story about Thompson's 1964 pilgrimage to Ketchum, Idaho in order to investigate the reasons for Ernest Hemingway's suicide. Thompson and the editors at the Observer eventually had a falling out as Thompson moved to San Francisco, California, immersing himself in the drug and hippie culture of the time, while also writing for the Berkeley, California underground paper The Spider.

In 1965, Carey McWilliams editor of The Nation, offered Thompson an opportunity to write a story based on his experience with the California-based Hells Angels motorcycle gang. After The Nation published the article (May 17, 1965), Thompson received several book offers and spent the next year living and riding with the Hells Angels. The relationship broke down when the bikers suspected that Thompson would make money from his writing. The gang demanded a share of the profits and Thompson ended up with a savage beating, or 'stomping' as the Angels referred to it. Random House published the well-received hard cover Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs in 1966. A reviewer for The New York Times praised it as an "angry, knowledgeable, fascinating and excitedly written book," that shows the Hell's Angels "not so much as dropouts from society but as total misfits, or unfits – emotionally, intellectually and educationally unfit to achieve the rewards, such as they are, that the contemporary social order." The reviewer also praised Thompson as a "spirited, witty, observant and original writer; his prose crackles like motorcycle exhaust."

In late 1966, Thompson and his family moved into what Thompson described as his "fortified compound" in Woody Creek, Colorado, a small mountain hamlet outlying Aspen where he would reside for the rest of his life.

Middle years

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A modification of one of Thompson's original Gonzo flyers during his bid for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado.

In 1970 Thompson ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado on the "Freak Power" ticket of promoting drugs decriminalization (but for use only, not trafficking, as he disapproved of profiteering), tearing up the streets and turning them into grassy pedestrian malls, banning any building so tall as to obscure the view of the mountains, and renaming Aspen, Colorado "Fat City." The incumbent Republican sheriff whom he ran against had a crew cut, prompting Thompson to shave his head bald and refer to his opposition as "my long-haired opponent."

With polls actually showing him with a slight lead in the race, Thompson appeared at Rolling Stone magazine headquarters in San Francisco with a six-pack of beer in hand and declared to editor Jann Wenner that he was about to be elected the next sheriff of Aspen, Colorado and wished to write about it. Thus, Thompson's first article in Rolling Stone was published as The Battle of Aspen with the byline "By: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (Candidate for Sheriff)." Despite the publicity, Thompson ended up narrowly losing the election.

The majority of Thompson's most popular and acclaimed work was to appear within the pages of Rolling Stone. Thompson went on to work as a political correspondent for the magazine, retaining the title of chief of the "National Affairs Desk" on the magazine's masthead for over thirty years until his death. Two of his books, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, were first serialized there. Along with Joe Eszterhas and David Felton, Thompson would be instrumental in expanding the focus of the magazine past music criticism; indeed, Thompson was the only staff writer of the epoch never to contribute a music feature to the magazine. Nevertheless, his articles were always peppered with a wide array of pop music references ranging from Howlin' Wolf to Lou Reed. Armed with early fax machines wherever he went, he became notorious for haphazardly sending sometimes illegible material to the magazine's San Francisco offices immediately as they were to go to press.

Birth of Gonzo

Also in 1970, Thompson wrote an article entitled The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved for the short-lived new journalism magazine Scanlan's Monthly. Although it was not widely read at the time, the article is the first of Thompson's to use techniques of Gonzo journalism, a style he would later employ in almost every literary endeavor. The manic, first-person subjectivity of the story was reportedly the result of Thompson's sheer desperation; he was facing a looming deadline and started sending the magazine pages ripped out of his notebook. Ralph Steadman, who would later collaborate with Thompson on several projects, contributed expressionist pen and ink illustrations.

The first use of the word Gonzo to describe Thompson's work is credited to the journalist Bill Cardoso. Cardoso had first met Thompson on a bus full of journalists covering the 1968 New Hampshire Primary. In 1970, by which time Cardoso had become the editor of The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, he wrote Thompson praising the "Kentucky Derby" piece in Scanlan's Monthly as a breakthrough: "This is it, this is pure Gonzo. If this is a start, keep rolling." Thompson took to the word right away, and according to illustrator Ralph Steadman said "Okay, that's what I do. Gonzo."

Original cover of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Thompson's next piece for Rolling Stone was an expose on the controversial death of Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar by the Los Angeles Police Department. Finding it difficult to talk in the racially tense atmosphere of Los Angeles, Thompson and Chicano activist/attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta decided to travel to Las Vegas, Nevada and take advantage of an assignment by Sports Illustrated to write a 250-word photograph caption for the Mint 400 motorcycle race held there.

The result of the trip to Las Vegas became the 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, first appearing in Rolling Stone as a two-part series.

The book is a first-person account by a journalist named Raoul Duke on a trip to Las Vegas with Dr. Gonzo, his "300-pound Samoan attorney," to cover a narcotics officers' convention and the "fabulous Mint 400". During the trip, Duke and his lawyer (always referred to as "my attorney") become sidetracked by a search for the American dream, with the aid of copious amounts of alcohol, LSD, ether, adrenochrome, mescaline, cocaine, marijuana and other drugs.

Coming to terms with the failure of the 1960s countercultural movement is a major theme of the novel, and the book was greeted with considerable critical acclaim, including being heralded as "by far the best book yet written on the decade of dope" by the New York Times and a "scorching epochal sensation" by author Tom Wolfe. "The Vegas Book", as Thompson referred to it, was a mainstream success and the first widely-read work of Thompson's that employed his gonzo journalism techniques, and the novel introduced his style to the masses.

Thompson first submitted to Sports Illustrated a manuscript of 2,500 words, which was, as he later wrote "aggressively rejected." Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner was said to have liked "the first 20 or jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication — which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it," Thompson later wrote.

Thompson's first published use of the word gonzo appears in book's passage: "Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it now: pure Gonzo journalism."

Within the next year, Thompson wrote extensively for Rolling Stone while covering the election campaigns of President Richard M. Nixon and his unsuccessful opponent, Senator George McGovern. The articles were soon combined and published as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. As the title suggests, Thompson spent nearly all of his time traveling the "campaign trail" and his coverage focuses largely on the Democratic Party's primaries (Nixon, as an incumbent, performed little campaign work) and its breakdown due to splits between the different candidates; McGovern was extolled throughout while fellow candidates Ed Muskie and Hubert Humphrey were ridiculed. As an early supporter of McGovern, it could be argued that his unflattering coverage of the rival campaigns along with the rapidly expanding circulation of Rolling Stone played a role in the senator's nomination.

Thompson would go on to become a fierce critic of Nixon, both during and after his presidency. After Nixon's death in 1994, Thompson famously described him in Rolling Stone as a man who "could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time" and said "his casket [should] have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. [He] was an evil man—evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it." The one passion they shared was a love of football, which is discussed in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.

Thompson was to provide Rolling Stone similar coverage for the 1976 Presidential Campaign that would appear in a book published by the magazine. Reportedly, as Thompson was waiting for a $75,000 advance check to arrive, he learned that Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner had pulled the plug on the endeavor without telling Thompson.

Wenner then asked Thompson to travel to Vietnam to report on what appeared to be the closing of the Vietnam War. Thompson accepted, and left for Saigon immediately. He arrived with the country in chaos, just as the United States was preparing to evacuate and other journalists were scrambling to find transportation out of the region. While there, Thompson learned that Wenner had pulled the plug on this excursion as well, and Thompson found himself in Vietnam without health insurance or additional financial support. Thompson's story about the fall of Saigon would not be published in Rolling Stone until ten years later.

These two incidents severely strained the relationship between the author and the magazine, and Thompson would contribute far less to the publication in future years.

Later years

1980 marked both his divorce from Sandra Conklin and the release of Where The Buffalo Roam, a loose film adaptation of situations from Thompson's early 1970s work, with Bill Murray starring as the author. After the lukewarm reception of the film, Thompson temporarily relocated to Hawaii to work on a novel. The Curse of Lono was a gonzo-style account of a marathon in the state that was extensively illustrated by Ralph Steadman, first appearing in Running magazine in 1981 as "The Charge of the Weird Brigade" and before being excerpted in Playboy in 1983 .

The Curse of Lono, with cover art by Ralph Steadman

On July 21, 1981 in Aspen Colorado Thompson ran a stop sign at 2 am and began to "rave" at a state trooper. He also refused to take alcohol tests. Because of his refusal he was detained, although during a trial the drunk-driving charges against the journalist were dropped because there was no basis for the charges.

In 1983, he covered the U.S. invasion of Grenada but would not discuss these experiences until the publication of Kingdom of Fear 20 years later. Later that year he authored a piece for Rolling Stone called "A Dog Took My Place," an expose of the scandalous Roxanne Pulitzer divorce and what he termed the "Palm Beach lifestyle." The article contained dubious insinuations of bestiality (among other things) but was considered to be a return to proper form by many.

Shortly thereafter, Thompson accepted an advance to write about "couples pornography" for Playboy. As part of his research, he spent time at the O'Farrell Theater strip club in San Francisco and his experience there eventually evolved into a full-length nonfiction novel tentatively titled The Night Manager. The novel did not materialize (much to Thompson's embarrassment), and San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen erroneously reported that Thompson was "working as the O'Farrell's night manager." By the early 1990s Thompson was said to be working on a fictional novel called Polo Is My Life, which was briefly excerpted in Rolling Stone in 1994, and which Hunter himself described in 1996 as "...a sex book — you know, sex, drugs and rock and roll. It's about the manager of a sex theater who's forced to leave and flee to the mountains. He falls in love and gets in even more trouble than he was in the sex theatre in San Francisco." . The novel was slated to be released by Random House in 1999, and was even assigned ISBN number 0679406948, but was never actually published.

At the behest of old friend and editor Warren Hinckle, Thompson became a media critic for the San Francisco Examiner from the mid-1980s until the end of that decade.

Thompson continued to contribute irregularly to Rolling Stone. "Fear and Loathing in Elko," published in 1992, was a well received fictional rallying cry against Clarence Thomas, while "Mr. Bill's Neighborhood" was a largely non-fictional account of an interview with Bill Clinton in an Arkansas diner. Rather than embarking on the campaign trail as he had done in previous presidential elections, Thompson monitored the proceedings from cable television; Better than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie, his account of the 1992 campaign, is composed of reactionary faxes sent to Rolling Stone. A decade later, he contributed "Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004" — an account of a road jaunt with John Kerry during his presidential campaign that would be Thompson's final magazine feature.

The Gonzo Papers

Despite publishing a novel and numerous newspaper and magazine articles, the majority of Thompson's literary output after the late 1970s took the form of a 4-volume series of books called The Gonzo Papers. Beginning with The Great Shark Hunt in 1979 and ending with Better than Sex in 1994, the series is largely a collection of rare newspaper and magazine pieces from the pre-gonzo period, along with almost all of his Rolling Stone short pieces, excerpts from the Fear and Loathing... books, and etc.

By the late 1970s Thompson received complaints from critics, fans and friends that he was regurgitating his past glories without much new on his part; these concerns are alluded to in the introduction of The Great Shark Hunt, where Thompson eerily suggested that his "old self" committed suicide.

Perhaps in response to this, as well as the strained relationship with Rolling Stone, and the failure of his marriage, Thompson became more reclusive after 1980, often retreating to his compound in Woody Creek and rejecting and/or refusing to complete assignments. Despite the dearth of new material, Wenner kept Thompson on the Rolling Stone masthead as chief of the "National Affairs Desk," a position he would hold until his death.

Fear and Loathing, Again

However, Thompson's work was popularized again with the 1998 release of the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which opened to considerable fanfare. The novel was reprinted to coincide with the film, and Thompson's work was introduced to a new generation of readers.

Soon thereafter, Thompson's "long lost" novel The Rum Diary was published, as were the first two volumes of his collected letters, which were greeted with critical acclaim.

Thompson's next and penultimate collection, Kingdom of Fear, was a combination of new material, selected newspaper clippings, and some older works. Released in 2003, it was perceived by critics to be an angry, vitrolic commentary on the passing of the American Century. In addition, Thompson penned a sports column for ESPN "Page 2" during the early 2000s called "Hey, Rube", which was later compiled into the book Hey Rube : Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness Modern History from the Sports Desk (2005).

Hunter married Anita Bejmuk, his long-time assistant, on April 24, 2003. —

Death

Thompson died at his self-described "fortified compound" in Woody Creek, Colorado, at 5:42 p.m. on February 20, 2005, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He was 67 years old.

Thompson's son (Juan), daughter-in-law (Jennifer Winkel Thompson) and grandson (Will Thompson) were visiting for the weekend at the time of his suicide. Will and Jennifer were in the adjacent room when they heard the gunshot, though the gunshot was mistaken for a book falling, and so they continued with their activities for a few minutes before checking on him: "Winkel Thompson continued playing 20 questions with Will, Juan Thompson continued taking a photo." Thompson was sitting at his typewriter with the word "counselor" written in the center of the page.

They reported to the press that they do not believe his suicide was out of desperation, but was a well-thought out act resulting from Thompson's many painful medical conditions. Thompson's wife, Anita, who was at a gym at the time of her husband's death, was on the phone with Thompson when he ended his life.

Although family and police determined it a clear case of suicide, conspiracy theorists inevitably appeared, postulating that Thompson may have been murdered because of information he had concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks .

What family and police describe as a suicide note was delivered to his wife 4 days before his death and later published by Rolling Stone Magazine. Entitled "Football Season Is Over", it read:

"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won't hurt"

Artist and friend Ralph Steadman wrote:

"...He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell — rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to — and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too — and Peacocks..."

Funeral

On August 20, 2005, in a private ceremony, Thompson's ashes were fired from a cannon atop a 153-foot tower of his own design (in the shape of a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button) to the tune of Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, known to be the song most respected by the late writer. Red, white, blue and green fireworks were launched along with his ashes. As the city of Aspen would not allow the cannon to remain for more than a month, the cannon has been dismantled and put into storage until a suitable permanent location can be found. According to widow Anita Thompson, the actor Johnny Depp, a close friend of Thompson (and portrayer of Raoul Duke in the movie adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), financed the funeral. Depp told the Associated Press, "All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out." [5] Other famous attendees at the funeral included U.S. Senator John Kerry and former U.S. Senator George McGovern; 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley; actors Bill Murray (who portrayed Hunter S. Thompson in the movie Where the Buffalo Roam), Sean Penn and Josh Hartnett; singers Lyle Lovett and John Oates; and numerous other friends. An estimated 280 people attended the funeral.

The plans for this impressive monument were initially drawn by Thompson and Ralph Steadman and were shown as part of an Omnibus program on the BBC entitled Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision (1978). It is included as a special feature on the second disc of the 2003 Criterion Collection DVD release of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (labeled on the DVD as "Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood"). The video footage of Steadman and Thompson drawing the plans and outdoor footage showing where he wanted the cannon constructed were played prior to the unveiling of his cannon at the funeral.

Douglas Brinkley, a friend and now the family's spokesman, said of the ceremony: "If that's what he wanted, we'll see if we can pull it off."

Legacy

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DVD cover of the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Writing style and persona

Thompson is often credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of writing that blurs distinctions between fiction and nonfiction. His work and style are considered to be a major part of the New Journalism literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which attempted to break free from the purely objectivist style of mainstream reportage of the time. Thompson almost always wrote in the first person, while extensively using his own experiences and emotions to color "the story" he was trying to follow. His writing aimed to be humorous, colorful, and bizarre, and he often exaggerated events to be more entertaining.

The term Gonzo has since been applied in kind to numerous other forms of highly subjective artistic expression.

Hunter often portrayed himself as a callous, erratic, self-destructive journalist who constantly drank alcohol and took hallucinogenic drugs. He often characterized himself as fantasizing about causing bodily harm to others and according to the book "Hunter" by E. Jean Carrol, would often deliver anecdotes about threatening to rape prostitues. During a BBC interview, he said that he sometimes felt obligated to live up to the fictional self that he had created.

In addition, Thompson was fond of firearms (in both his writing and in real life), and was a firearms enthusiast with a vast collection of handguns, rifles, shotguns, numerous forms of gaseous crowd control, automatic and semi-automatic weaponry, and virtually every form of manufactured and homemade explosive known to man.

Thompson's writing style and eccentric persona gave him a cult following in both literary and drug circles, and his cult status expanded into broader areas after being twice portrayed in major motion pictures. Hence, both his writing style and persona have been widely imitated, and his likeness has even become a popular costume choice for Halloween [6].

Political beliefs

Thompson's early letters to friends suggest an interest in Ayn Rand's Objectivism, but he later drifted away from Rand's version of politics. His political position was frequently libertarian, anarchist, and socialist. In the documentary "Breakfast With Hunter," Thompson can be seen in several scenes wearing different Che Guevara t-shirts, while his son Juan Thompson acknowledges that his father had "a perverse resistance to security and predictability, and a deliberate disregard for propriety."

Thompson's official biographer and longtime friend Douglas Brinkley said:

"He's both a kind of old-fashioned believer in democratic virtues, but also an anarchist. There's always that unpredictable element with him. In any given situation, as soon as he feels there's a system closing in, he'll destroy it" .

After the September 11th, 2001 attacks, Thompson voiced skepticism regarding the "official story" on who was responsible for the attacks, suggesting to several interviewers that it may have been conducted by the U.S. Government or with the government's assistance . In 2002, Thompson told a radio show host "...you sort of wonder when something like that happens, Well who stands to benefit? Who had the opportunity and the motive? You just kind of look at these basic things [...] I saw that the US government was going to benefit, and the White House people, the republican administration to take the mind of the public off of the crashing economy. [...] And I have spent enough time on the inside of, well in the White House and you know, campaigns and I've known enough people who do these things, think this way, to know that the public version of the news or whatever event, is never really what happened."

In 2004 Thompson, regarding politics, wrote: "Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for — but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him."

Popular slogans

A slogan of Thompson's, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro," appears as a chapter heading in Kingdom of Fear. He was also quoted as saying, "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." Another one of his favorite sayings, "Buy the ticket, take the ride," is easily applied to virtually all of his exploits. "Too weird to live, too rare to die," a phrase applied to Oscar Zeta Acosta (Dr. Gonzo from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), has been widely used to characterize the "Good Doctor" posthumously. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he coined the term "bad craziness."

The Hawaiian word "mahalo" also frequently appears in Thompson's works and correspondence. Loosely translated, it means "may you be in divine breath" or "thank you." On more than one occasion, "mahalo" followed Thompson's usage of "buy the ticket, take the ride."

Letters

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The Proud Highway...Fear and Loathing Letters Vol. 1

Thompson wrote many letters and they were his primary means of personal conversation. Thompson made carbon copies of all his letters, usually typed, a habit that began in his teenage years. His letters were sent to friends, public officials and reporters.

Some of his letters have begun to be published in a series of books called The Fear and Loathing Letters. The first volume, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955 - 1967, is over 650 pages, while the second volume Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist passed 700. Douglas Brinkley, who edits the letter series, said that for every letter included, fifteen were cut. Brinkley estimated Thompson's own archive to contain over 20,000 letters. According to Amazon.com, the last of the three planned volumes of Thompson's letters will be published on January 1, 2007 as The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop 1977-2005. Anita Thompson has said on her blog that the collection will be released sometime in February.

Many biographies have been written about Thompson, although he did not write an autobiography himself. But his letters contained "asides" to "his biographers" that he assumed could be "reading in" on his collected letters. Some of these letters were already bundled into Thompson's Kingdom of Fear, though it is not considered an autobiography.

Accolades

Author Tom Wolfe has called Thompson the greatest American comic writer of the 20th century.("As Gonzo in Life as in His Work: Hunter S. Thompson died as he lived." Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - Wall Street Journal, Opinion Journal.)

Movies

The film Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) depicts Thompson's attempts at writing stories for both the Super Bowl and the 1972 U.S. presidential election. It stars Bill Murray as Thompson and Peter Boyle as Thompson's attorney Oscar Acosta, referred to in the movie as Carl Laslow, Esq.

The 1998 film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was directed by Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam, and starred Johnny Depp (who moved into Hunter's basement to 'study' Thompson's persona before assuming his role in the film) as "Hunter Thompson/Raoul Duke" and Benicio Del Toro as "Dr. Gonzo." Thompson appeared in the scene at the club "The Matrix," sitting at a table. The film has achieved something of a cult following.

The film Breakfast With Hunter (2003) was directed and edited by Wayne Ewing. It documents Thompson's work on the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his arrest for drunk driving, and his subsequent fight with the court system.

"When I Die," (2005), also by Wayne Ewing, is a video chronicle of making Thompson's final farewell wishes a reality and the great send-off itself.

A film is in production based upon Thompson's novel The Rum Diary. It is scheduled for a 2008 release, starring Johnny Depp. Bruce Robinson is directing.

Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride: Hunter S. Thompson On Film (2006) was directed by Tom Thurman, written by Tom Marksbury, and produced by the Starz Entertainment Group. The original documentary features interviews with Hunter’s inner circle of family and friends, but the thrust of the documentary is focused on the manner in which his life often overlapped with numerous Hollywood celebrities who became his close friends, such as Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Bill Murray, Sean Penn, John Cusack, Hunter’s wife Anita, son Juan, former Senators George McGovern and Gary Hart, Tom Wolfe, William F. Buckley, Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton, Ralph Steadman and others.

Tributes

• The 2006 documentary film Fuck, which features Hunter S Thompson commenting on the usage of that word, is dedicated to his memory.
• Gonzo Imperial Porter is a beer produced by an Aspen, Colorado brewery, Flying Dog Brewery, in memory of the late Hunter S. Thompson.
• Doonesbury

Doonesbury's Uncle Duke.

• • Hunter Thompson appears as Uncle Duke in Doonesbury, the Garry Trudeau comic strip. (Raoul Duke was a pseudonym used by Thompson.) When the character was first introduced, Thompson protested, (he was once quoted in an interview saying that he would set Trudeau on fire if the two ever met) [7] although it was reported that he liked the character in later years.
  • Between 7 March 2005 (roughly two weeks after Thompson's suicide) and 12 March 2005, Doonesbury ran a tribute to Hunter, with Uncle Duke lamenting the death of the man he called his "inspiration." The first of these strips featured a panel with artwork similar to that of Ralph Steadman, and later strips featured various non sequiturs (with Duke variously transforming into a monster, melting, shrinking to the size of an empty drinking glass, or people around him turning into animals) which seemed to mirror some of the effects of hallucinatory drugs described in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
• Besides Uncle Duke, Hunter was the direct inspiration of two other comic strip characters. Underground comix creator turned animation/cartooning historian Scott Shaw! used an anthropomorphic dog named "Pointer X. Toxin" in a number of his works. Matt Howarth has created a number of comic books in his "Bugtown" universe with a Thompson-inspired character named "Monseiuer Boche", as well as a musician named "Savage Henry", the name of a drug dealer (or "scag baron") mentioned in Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.
• The Avenged Sevenfold song Bat Country is a tribute to Thompson.
• Spider Jerusalem, the gonzo journalist protagonist of Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, is largely based on Thompson.
• Adult Swim's animated series The Venture Bros. featured a character named Hunter Gathers (who looks and acts much like Thompson) employed by the fictional Office of Secret Intelligence as a trainer.

Trivia

• Thompson's title "Doctor" (referred to in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in "Duke's" comment, "You're talking to a Doctor of Journalism!") was purchased from the Universal Life Church in the late '60s.
• Thompson was long rumored to have appeared on the early 90's Nickelodeon TV series, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, in the episode "New Years Pete." However, the creators have since debunked this in several interviews, explaining that the "Man on the Street" was simply an extra who, coincidentally, happened to be named Hunter Thompson.
• Thompson appeared on the cover of the 1000th Rolling Stone issue (May 18 - June 1, 2006). He appeared as a devil playing the guitar next to the two "L"'s in the word Rolling Stone. Johnny Depp, portraying Thompson, also appeared on the cover.
• Flying Dog Brewery sponsored a contest to attend the final farewell to Thompson by placing a Golden Ticket inside one bottle of their tribute brew, Gonzo Imperial Porter.
• In 1964, while writing a story on Ernest Hemingway's suicide for the National Observer, Thompson symbolically stole a pair of elk antlers hanging above the front door of late author's Ketchum, Idaho cabin.
• Hunter Thompson was named a Kentucky Colonel by the Governor of Kentucky in a December 1996 tribute ceremony where he also received keys to the city of Louisville.
• Actor Bill Murray spent considerable time with Thompson as part of his preparation prior to production of film Where The Buffalo Roam and inevitably picked up many of the latter's mannerisms, much to the annoyance of Murray's Saturday Night Live coworkers.
• While writing a Wall Street Journal feature about the mine in Butte Montana, Thompson made the acquaintance of a small folk band called The Big Sky Singers who were then playing the Gun Room at the Finlen Hotel in Butte. Thompson subsequently wrote the liner notes for their debut album, which appeared in 1966.
• Saints and Sots by Jimmy Ibbotson is a tribute to Hunter Thompson.

Articles

• Cycle World
  • Song of the Sausage Creature — March 1995 [8]

• The Nation
  • The Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders — May 1965 [9]

• Playboy
  • The Great Shark Hunt — 1974
  • The Curse of Lono (book excerpt) — 1983
  • Fear and Justice in the Kingdom of Sex — 2004
  • Post Cards from the Proud Highway — May 2005

• Rolling Stone
  • The Battle of Aspen — October 1, 1970
  • Strange Rumblings in Aztlan — April 29, 1971
  • Memo From the Sports Desk: The So-Called 'Jesus Freak Scare (as Raoul Duke) — November 11, 1971
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (as Raoul Duke) — November 11, 1971
  • Conclusion of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (as Raoul Duke) — November 25, 1971
  • Fear and Loathing in Washington: Is this Trip Necessary? — February 3, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing in Washington: The Million Pound Shithammer — February 3, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire — February 17, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing: The Banshee Screams in Florida. — April 13, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing in Wisconsin — April 27, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing: Late News from Bleak House — May 11, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing: Crank-Time on the Low Road — June 8, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing in California: Traditional Politics with a Vengeance — July 6, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing: In the Eye of the Hurricane — July 20, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing in Miami: Old Bulls Meet the Butcher — August 17, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing in Miami: Nixon bites the bomb — September 28, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing: The Fat City Blues — October 26, 1972
  • Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls — November 9, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl: No Rest for the Wicked — February 15, 1973
  • Time Warp: Campaign '72 — July 5, 1973
  • Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber — August 2, 1973
  • Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon has cashed his check — September 27, 1973
  • Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl — February 28, 1974
  • Boys in the Bag, Fear and Loathing in Washington — July 4, 1974
  • Fear and Loathing in Limbo : The Scum Also Rises — October 10, 1974
  • Saigon Dispatch — May 22, 1975
  • Jimmy Carter and the Great Leap of Faith — June 3, 1976
  • The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat — October 10, 1977
  • Last Tango in Vegas — May 4, 1978
  • Last Tango in Vegas, Pt 2 : The Scum Also Rises — May 18, 1978
  • A Dog Took My Place — 1983
  • The Sequins were Michael's Idea (Fllv Excerpt) — ?
  • The Fall of Saigon — May 9, 1985
  • Victory and Vegeance (Songs of the Doomed Excerpt) — 1990
  • The Taming of the Shrew — October 5, 1991
  • Fear and Loathing in Elko — January 22, 1992 [10]
  • Mr. Bill's Neighborhood — September 17, 1992 [11]
  • He was a Crook — June 1994 [12] [13]
  • Polo Is My Life — December 15, 1994
  • Bill Clinton — ?
  • Hey Rube! I Love You! — May 13, 1999
  • Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004 — November 11, 2004 [14]

• Rogue Magazine
  • Big Sur: The Tropic of Henry Miller — October 1961
  • Burial at Sea — December 1961 [15]

• Running Magazine
  • The Charge of the Weird Brigade — 1981

• Scanlan's Monthly
  • The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy — 1970
  • The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved — 1970

• Time
  • Doomed Love at the Taco Stand — November 10th, 1997 [16]

Bibliography

• The Rum Diary (1959; Simon & Schuster, 1997, ISBN 0-684-85647-6)
• Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (New York, Random House, 1966; Ballantine Books, 1996, ISBN 0-345-41008-4)
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. (New York, Random House, 1971; Vintage, 1989, ISBN 0-679-72419-2; Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-679-78589-2)
• Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. (San Francisco, Straight Arrow Books, 1973; Warner Books, 1985, ISBN 0-446-31364-5)
• Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time. (New York, Summit Books, 1979; Simon & Schuster, 2003, ISBN 0-7432-5045-1)
• The Curse of Lono, illustrated by Ralph Steadman. (Bantam Books, 1983)
• Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s. (New York, Summit Books, 1988; Vintage, 1989, ISBN 0-679-72237-8; Simon & Schuster, 2003, ISBN 0-7432-5044-3)
• Gonzo Papers, Vol. 3: Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream. (New York, Summit Books, 1990; Pocket, 1991, ISBN 0-671-74326-0; Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 2002, ISBN 0-7432-4099-5)
• Screw-jack:and other stories. (Santa Barbara, Neville Press, 1991; Simon & Schuster, 2000, ISBN 0-684-87321-4)
• Gonzo Papers, Vol. 4: Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie. (New York, Random House, 1994; Ballantine Books, 1995, ISBN 0-345-39635-9)
• The Fear and Loathing Letters, Vol. 1: The Proud Highway: The Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955–1967. (New York, Random House, 1997; Ballantine Books, 1998, ISBN 0-345-37796-6)
• Mistah Leary - He Dead (X-Ray Book Company; Hand-sewn/Hand-printed Chapbook, 300 Copies, 1997, No ISBN)
• Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist 1968–1976. (Collection of Papers first appeared in Time magazine, 1997; Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN 0-684-87316-8)
• Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century. (Simon & Schuster; 1st Simon edition, November 1, 2003, ISBN 0-684-87324-9)
• Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness Modern History from the Sports Desk. (Simon & Schuster, August 11, 2004, ISBN 0-684-87319-2)

External links

• Thompson's ESPN column
• Thompson Tribute/Obit
• Thompson's final column on ESPN
• On Thompson (critical) by William F. Buckley, Jr. of National Review
• Tribute to Thompson by Tom Wolfe in the Wall Street Journal
• Tribute to Thompson by Christopher Hitchens in Slate.
• Thompson Eulogy by D.A. Blyler in Raw Story.
• Thompson's Final "Counselor" by D.A. Blyler in Raw Story.
• "Odi et Amo in Aspen" an obituary, by Kit Boyes on H2G2.
• Where the Buffalo Roam at IMDb
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at IMDb
• The Rum Diary at IMDb
• Coverage of Hunter S. Thompson's Death in The Guardian'
• James Garnett Thompson obituary
• -Tribute: Spike Magazine
• Fear,loathing,guns: at home with King Gonzo-article by Marianne MacDonald
• Article about the funeral with photo of memorial tower
• Going, Going, Gonzo Essay by Arik Hesseldahl in Oregon Quarterly recalling a 1991 lecture by Thompson at the University of Oregon.
• Democracy Now obituary
• A Hero of Our Time: Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005 Obituary from Moscow alternative newspaper The eXile written by John Dolan
• scotsman.com obituary

Online sources

• American Collection
• BookRags