Hunter S. Thompson has come up in the past, so I'm passing
this along.
I always thought he'd survive a nuclear blast, like
cockroaches and Keith Richards. Guess he couldn't survive
himself.
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. Talk
About It· Chat | Post Messages 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."
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