Posted on 02/21/2005 7:01:39 AM PST by Jenya
Pioneer Author, Journalist Thompson Dies at 67
By CATHERINE TSAI, AP
ASPEN, Colo. (Feb. 20) - Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67.
The Life of Hunter S. Thompson
"Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News.
Pitkin County Sheriff officials confirmed to The Associated Press that Thompson had died Sunday night of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Thompson's wife, Anita, was not home at the time.
Besides the 1972 drug-hazed classic about Thompson's visit to Las Vegas, he also wrote "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72." The central character in those wild, sprawling satires was "Dr. Thompson," a snarling, drug- and alcohol-crazed observer and participant.
Thompson is credited with helping to pioneer New Journalism - or, as he dubbed it, "gonzo journalism" - in which the writer made himself an essential component of the story. Much of his earliest work appeared in Rolling Stone magazine.
"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist," Thompson told the AP in 2003. "You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it."
An acute observer of the decadence and depravity in American life, Thompson also wrote such collections as "Generation of Swine" and "Songs of the Doomed." His first ever novel, "The Rum Diary," written in 1959, was first published in 1998.
Thompson was a counterculture icon at the height of the Watergate era, and once said Richard Nixon represented "that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character."
Thompson also was the model for Garry Trudeau's balding "Uncle Duke" in the comic strip "Doonesbury" and was portrayed on screen by Johnny Depp in a film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
Other books include "The Great Shark Hunt," "Hell's Angels" and "The Proud Highway." His most recent effort was "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness."
"He may have died relatively young but he made up for it in quality if not quantity of years," Paul Krassner, the veteran radical journalist and one of Thompson's former editors, told The Associated Press by phone from his Southern California home.
"It was hard to say sometimes whether he was being provocative for its own sake or if he was just being drunk and stoned and irresponsible," quipped Krassner, founder of the leftist publication The Realist and co-founder of the Youth International (YIPPIE) party.
"But every editor that I know, myself included, was willing to accept a certain prima donna journalism in the demands he would make to cover a particular story," he said. "They were willing to risk all of his irresponsible behavior in order to share his talent with their readers."
The writer's compound in Woody Creek, not far from Aspen, was almost as legendary as Thompson. He prized peacocks and weapons; in 2000, he accidentally shot and slightly wounded his assistant, Deborah Fuller, trying to chase a bear off his property.
Born July 18, 1937, in Kentucky, Hunter Stocton Thompson served two years in the Air Force, where he was a newspaper sports editor. He later became a proud member of the National Rifle Association and almost was elected sheriff in Aspen in 1970 under the Freak Power Party banner.
Thompson's heyday came in the 1970s, when his larger-than-life persona was gobbled up by magazines. His pieces were of legendary length and so was his appetite for adventure and trouble; his purported fights with Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner were rumored in many cases to hinge on expense accounts for stories that didn't materialize.
It was the content that raised eyebrows and tempers. His book on the 1972 presidential campaign involving, among others, Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey and Nixon was famous for its scathing opinion.
Working for Muskie, Thompson wrote, "was something like being locked in a rolling box car with a vicious 200-pound water rat." Nixon and his "Barbie doll" family were "America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the werewolf in us."
Humphrey? Of him, Thompson wrote: "There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until you've followed him around for a while."
The approach won him praise among the masses as well as critical acclaim. Writing in The New York Times in 1973, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt worried Thompson might someday "lapse into good taste."
"That would be a shame, for while he doesn't see America as Grandma Moses depicted it, or the way they painted it for us in civics class, he does in his own mad way betray a profound democratic concern for the polity," he wrote. "And in its own mad way, it's damned refreshing."
The lunatics over at DU are already speculating that Thompson might have been "suicided" by evil genius, Karl Rove.
I would have thought they'd be too busy accusing Rove of masterminding the Bush Tapes in 1998 to make Bush look to be the same person in public that he is when he's being "secretly taped".
From one of Thompson's columns:
Bush's disturbing sleeping
"This is no time for the "leader of the free world" to be falling asleep at massively-popular sporting events. He is already trailing heavily in polls among football fans and young males who would do anything to see a naked female nipple during halftime at the Super Bowl.
That is a hell of a lot of eligible voters to insult when your chances of living in the White House this time next year are less than 50-50.
Was he drunk? Does he fear the sight of an uncovered nipple? Was he lying? Does he believe in his heart that there are more evangelical Christians in this country than football fans and sex-crazed yoyos with unstable minds? Is he really as dumb as he looks and acts?"
Hope he willed the gun to Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore.
/sarcasm.
I wasted several hours reading and discussing "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" in college english and writing circa 1976, when authors like Thompson and Exner were the cutting edge of this cynical, self-exploring style.
On reflection, this was an incredibly demoralizing and negative book which shaped the attitudes of many people my age during that era—and not for the better.
Sorry for him that he took his life, but looking at how he led his, this news today doesn't surprise me.
So he's an Air Force vet, a proud NRA member, and a lefty lunatic? Or am I wrong on that last one? I really have no clue about who or what Hunter S. Thompson is and why I should be giving a damn.
"Hope he willed the gun to Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore."
Amen to that...but they're too yellow to pull a trigger.
Seeing a naked nipple? Could Thompson also see clothed nipples?
I don't get it. I was a college liberal who read Fear and Loathing and I didn't get it then. I still don't get it.
Nihilistic and morose, he created his own hell on earth for himself with his excesses. Why shouldn't he commit suicide? He did more or less what he wanted in life. He was regarded as a hero by many. Although there are those of us who don't regard suicide as a particularly heroic action.
More reason to not mourn to heavily his passing:
A sad week in America by Hunter S. Thompson
http://espn.go.com/page2/s/thompson/030410.html
This is a very bad week for the American nation, and next week will be even worse. The Kansas-Syracuse game was barely over when I learned to my horror that the United States Marines were killing journalists in Baghdad.
Three journalists have died in Baghdad so far, and not one of them was killed by Enemy Fire. They were shot down like dogs by U.S. military personel, killed and wounded and mangled by Americans, who drive American M1 Abrahms battle tanks and eat all-American pie, just like the rest of us. American troops are killing journalists in a profoundly foreign country, under cover of a war being fought for savage, greed-crazed reasons that most of them couldn't explain or even understand.
What the hell is going on here? How could this once-proud nation have changed so much, so drastically, in only a little more than two years. In what seems like the blink of an eye, this George Bush has brought us from a prosperous nation at peace to a broke nation at war. And why are we killing innocent people at point-blank range on the other side of the world -- with big guns and big bombs that kill everything in reach?
Indeed, there is something going on here, Mr. Jones, and you don't know what it is, do you?
Bob Dylan said that, and he is still right, now more than ever. Hell, there is nothing really new about American enforcers -- especially cops -- killing and brutalizing innocent American citizens. It happens with depressing regularity. But at least the bastards used to have the decency to deny it.
That is a big difference, sports fans, and that is why I feel so savagely depressed tonight. When the Pentagon feels free -- and even gleeful -- about killing anybody and Everybody who gets in the way of their vicious crusade for oil, the public soul of this country has changed forever, and professional sports is only a serenade for the death of the American dream.
I slogged through the entire article looking for any mention of an untreatable, extremely painful disease. Didn't see one.
Wondering if he's happy with his choice.
"This is no time for the "leader of the free world" to be falling asleep at massively-popular sporting events. He is already trailing heavily in polls among football fans and young males who would do anything to see a naked female nipple during halftime at the Super Bowl.He missed the boat on that one, I'd bet that 2/3 of regular NFL watchers voted for Bush. That's one of the reasons I thought it was pretty stupid to get all crazy about a long distance momentary shot of a semi-flash.
My gut feeling is that HST was suffering from a terminal illness. It doesn't seem his style to do this, unless that was the case. Then it seems very much like something he would do, to not let the illness run its course.
-Eric
I slogged through the entire article looking for any mention of an untreatable, extremely painful disease. Didn't see one.He wouldn't tell anyone outside his close circle if that was the case.
-Eric
> almost was elected sheriff in Aspen in 1970 under the Freak Power Party banner...
Running against:
Arthur J. Smith ("Sensible party"): 30,612.
Jethro Q. Bonwacky Bozzits to Bonbood Walrus Titty ("Silly party"): 33,108.
Kevin Phillips Bong ("Slightly Silly"): Naught.
Tarquin Fintimlimbimlimbimwhinbimlin Bus Stop
Ftang Ftang Olay Biscuit Barrel ("Silly Party"): 12,441.
Arthur Peter Brown Telescope Adrian Blackpool Rock Stoat-Gobbler John Raw Vegetable (whwhwhwhwhuh) Norman Michael (ding ding ding) (tweeet!) Edward (Honk, honk) 'Shubiddy shubiddy shubiddy' (low honk) Thomas 'Oh, we'll keep a welcome in' (BANG!) Williams (rising whistle) 'Rain-drops keep falling on my' (whing!) 'Don't sleep in the subway' (Cuckoo cuckoo) nyeuueneuhuenhuh Smith ("Very Silly Party"): 2.
So, what have we got here? The begining of and endless number of boring left wing salutes to a boring dead leftie. In Aspen, huh? Another elitist leftie. To determine how great a loss this guy is to the fellow travelers of the progressive left wing, old-timey media, let's note the dying, so called "national" news tonight and see how much more time they spend on this guy than, oh, say, Washington or Lincoln.
may God rest his troubled soul.
You're right - he took the coward's way out. I couldn't give a rat's rear end about what he wrote or did. L-O-S-E-R.
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