Hunter Thompson

[gslade]

Looks like he took his own life RIP

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBI...EZ&SECTION=HOME

[AfricaBrass]

I LOVED his books when I was young.

This is a real shame. I hope he's in a better place now.

[Craig23]

Wow, very sad news.

[Jazzmoose]

Of all people to be shocked when I hear of his death...yet I am.

[Big Al]

Wow.... would never have guessed he'd go out like this....

[Peter Johnson]

Sucks, sucks, sucks...

[Randy Twizzle]

I always pictured him settling gracefully into old age, maybe writing articles for Readers Digest and doing life insurance commercials like Art Linkletter.

[brownie]

He had a morbid fascination with weapons, from what I read of some interviews of him!

[BERIGAN]

Left behind a wife, kid and grandkid

He has written for Espn's page 2 for awhile...

Most likely his last column....

>shotgun golf with Bill Murray<

[BFrank]

Somehow I don't find this too surprising.

RIP - HST (no more bad craziness)

[Johnny E]

Who shoots himself in the chest with a shotgun to commit suicide? I'm so very sad. Just finished "Hey Rube". Why is it the greats always die too young?

[7/4]

---------------

February 21, 2005

Hunter S. Thompson, 65, Author, Commits Suicide

By MICHELLE O'DONNELL, nytimes

Hunter S. Thompson, the maverick journalist and author whose savage chronicling of the underbelly of American life and politics embodied a new kind of nonfiction writing he called "gonzo journalism," died yesterday in Colorado. Tricia Louthis, of the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office, said Mr. Thompson had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek, Colo., yesterday afternoon. He was 65.

Mr. Thompson, a magazine and newspaper writer who also wrote almost a dozen books, was perhaps best known for his book, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," which became a Hollywood movie in 1998. But he was better known for his hard-driving lifestyle and acerbic eye for truth which he used in the style of first-person reporting that came to be known as "gonzo" in the 1960's, where the usually-anonymous reporter becomes a central character in the story, a conduit of subjectivity.

"Nobody really knows what it means, but it sounds like an epithet," he said in an interview that, for him, journalism "can be an effective political tool."

Hunter Stockton Thompson was born in Louisville, Ky, on July 18, 1939, the son of an insurance agent. He was educated in the public school system and joined the United States Air Force after high school. There, he was introduced to journalism, covering sports for an Air Force newspaper at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. He was honorably discharged in 1958 and then worked a series of jobs writing for small-town newspapers.

It was in the heat of deadline that gonzo journalism was born while he was writing a story about the Kentucky Derby for Scanlan's magazine, he recounted years later in an interview in Playboy magazine.

"I'd blown my mind, couldn't work," he told Playboy. "So finally I just started jerking pages out of my notebook and numbering them and sending them to the printer. I was sure it was the last article I was ever going to do for anybody."

Instead, he said, the story drew raves and he was inundated with letters and phone calls from people calling it "a breakthrough in journalism," an experience he likened to "falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids."

He went on to become a counter cultural hero with books and articles that skewered America's hypocrisy.

"He wrote to provoke, shock, protest and annoy," Timothy Crouse wrote in his book "The Boys on the Bus," about the 1972 presidential campaign.

Mr. Thompson influenced a generation of writers who saw in his pioneering first-person, at times over-the-top writing style.

As a young man, he was heavily influenced by Jack Kerouac and wholeheartedly followed Kerouac's approach in which the writer revels in his struggles with writing.

Among his books were "Hell's Angels," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "Fear and Loathing on the Campiagn Trail '72," "The Great Shark Hunt," "Generation of Swine" and "Songs for the Doomed."

[Indestructible!]

Who shoots himself in the chest with a shotgun to commit suicide? I'm so very sad. Just finished "Hey Rube". Why is it the greats always die too young?

Hi Johnny,

Usually a person who wants an open-casket funeral. Didn't Kurt Cobain shoot himself in the chest with a shotgun (thought I'd ask, since he was from your area).

RIP Hunter, some of your work was truly amazing!

Shane

[7/4]

Article Published: Sunday, February 20, 2005

Hunter S. Thompson shoots self in head

"Fear and Loathing" author dead at 67

By Troy Hooper and Claire Martin

The Denver Post

Aspen - Hunter Stockton Thompson, who coined the term "gonzo journalism" to describe the unique and furiously personal approach to reportage exemplified in his 1972 book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," died Sunday night of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his Woody Creek home. He was 67, family members said.

Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, a friend of Thompson's, confirmed the death. Thompson's son, Juan, discovered his body Sunday evening.

"Dr. Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head. ... The family will provide more information about (a) memorial service ... shortly. Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan and Anita Thompson, Hunter Thompson's wife, said in a statement.

"Details and interviews may be forthcoming when the family has had the time to recover from the trauma of the tragedy," Braudis said from Thompson's compound, Owl Farm.

Countless fans strove to imitate Thompson's startlingly candid first-person accounts that described legally errant escapades fueled by drugs, alcohol and nicotine, yet he maintained a savagely private personal life.

"Obviously, my drug use is exaggerated or I would be long since dead," he told a USA Today reporter in 1990.

He famously threatened to shoot trespassers, providing endless fodder for cartoonist Garry Trudeau's ongoing portrayal of Thompson as the hard- living Duke, named after Raoul Duke, a character in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." The book was made into a 1998 movie starring Johnny Depp.

Pitkin County Commissioner Dorothea Farris, who moved to Carbondale in the late 1980s after living in Woody Creek, called Thompson a "fine" neighbor despite the fact it was common to hear gunfire from his property. Firearms were abundant at Owl Farm, where he had his own shooting range.

The son of an insurance salesman who died when Thompson was in high school, Thompson grew up in Louisville, Ky., as a star athlete. Before graduation, he was arrested for robbery and served 30 days at a correctional facility. When he got out, Thompson joined the Air Force, where he caught up on credits and earned his diploma.

Hunter Stockton Thompson

Born: July 18, 1937, in Louisville, Ky.

Married: Sandra Dawn, May 19, 1963 (divorced in 1980); Anita Beymuk, April 24, 2003

Children: One son, Juan

Education: Journalism, Columbia University

Career: Time, Caribbean correspondent, 1959; New York Herald Tribune, Caribbean correspondent, 1959-60; National Observer, South American correspondent, 1961-63; The Nation, West Coast correspondent, 1964-66; Ramparts, columnist, 1967-68; Scanlan's Monthly, columnist, 1969-70; Rolling Stone, national affairs editor, 1970-84; High Times, global affairs correspondent, 1977-82; San Francisco Examiner, media critic, 1985-90; candidate for sheriff of Pitkin County, 1968; executive director, Woody Creek Rod and Gun Club

Books: Among his writings, "Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga"; "The Curse of Lono"; "Generation of Swine"; "Better Than Sex"; "The Proud Highway"; "The Rum Diary"; "Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist."

Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2004

DENVER POST RESEARCH LIBRARIAN ANN FEILER

He was still enlisted when he studied journalism at New York's Columbia University, and began his career as editor of the Eglin Air Force Base newsletter, simultaneously moonlighting as a sportswriter for a local civilian paper.

In 1959, Thompson went on to become a Caribbean correspondent for Time magazine and the New York Herald Tribune. After relocating to South America, he wrote for the National Observer, and then returned to the U.S. and became the West Coast correspondent for The Nation.

Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner learned of Thompson from his columns for Scanlan's Monthly and Ramparts, and hired him as national affairs editor. This propelled Thompson and his cynical, heady reporting style to international fame. People who really did read Playboy for the articles began picking up Rolling Stone for Thompson's caroming take on politics, particularly his incendiary coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign.

"A lot of people really loved Hunter, and despised him at the same time," longtime friend and Rolling Stone photographer Lynn Goldsmith said."I know, having been a celebrity portrait photographer, that there are individuals who aren't like other people. That's because they're geniuses. So you can't expect them to act like a normal person."

Thompson seemed to revel in eccentricity. In 1968, he ran for Pitkin County sheriff but lost. He kept peacocks, the descendants of Hannibal, his storied watchdog-peacock in the 1970s.

Friends and acquaintances reeled on learning of his death.

"Oh, my God," sobbed Coleen Auerbach, mother of Lisl Auman, who was convicted of felony murder in 1998. Thompson championed Auman's cause, bringing his friends Warren Zevon and actor Benicio Del Torro to a rally protesting what Thompson believed was a wrongful conviction.

Jim Horowitz, who founded the Aspen Jazz Festival, remembered that Thompson invariably attended his event.

"He always seemed to materialize, kind of out of thin air, and always backstage, and always wearing his hat," Horowitz said.

Aspen friend Gerry Goldstein called Thompson "not only a national treasure but the conscience of this little village."

Thompson married twice, first to Sandra Dawn Thompson Tarlo, with whom he had one son, Juan Fitzgerald Thompson. He later married his longtime assistant, Anita Thompson, a native of Fort Collins. Besides his wife and son, survivors include a grandson, William Thompson.

[7/4]

A bit surprised, I didn't expect this.

[Guest ariceffron]

he didnt 'pass away' he killed himself-- but WHY. was Hunter sick of the sorry state of the world today, or was there more to it. maybe he was physically sick, ie. cancer. why did he kill himself

[Chalupa]

Who shoots himself in the chest with a shotgun to commit suicide?    I'm so very sad.  Just finished "Hey Rube".  Why is it the greats always die too young?

Hi Johnny,

Usually a person who wants an open-casket funeral. Didn't Kurt Cobain shoot himself in the chest with a shotgun (thought I'd ask, since he was from your area).

RIP Hunter, some of your work was truly amazing!

Shane

FWIW, Cobain shot himself in the head.

I was shocked to hear that HST killed himself but considering his fascination w/ guns and his love of alcohol and drugs it is not that surprising

[bertrand]

Thompson had an amazing career: U.S. envoy to American Samoa, then China, general manager of the Washington Redskins, etc. etc.

Bertrand.

[porcy62]

"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of uppers, downers, laughers, screamers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon."

So long HST.

[Johnny E]

I would guess it was either an accident or he had a terminal illness. I don't see him as the suicidal type.

[7/4]

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

[7/4]

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."

[7/4]

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

[7/4]

"Fear is just another word for ignorance."

[Joe]

He's up in heaven now, bugging the shit out of Grantland Rice.