HST

Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author. He was known for his flamboyant writing style, most notably deployed in his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which blurred the distinctions between writer and subject, fiction and nonfiction. It became known as gonzo journalism and was widely imitated.A Louisville, Kentucky native, Thompson began his career in 1956 as a sports journalist, writing for the base newspaper at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, where he was serving. After the Air Force, Thompson worked briefly as a copy editor for Time Magazine while maintaining a beat-inspired lifestyle in New York City.Thompson traveled extensively in the Caribbean and South America, writing freelance articles for a number of U.S. daily newspapers. While in Puerto Rico, he befriended the journalist William Kennedy. Thompson eventually became a South American correspondent for a Dow Jones owned weekly newspaper called The National Observer. A modification of one of Thompson's original Gonzo flyers during his bid for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado.In the meantime, Thompson wrote two serious novels (Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary) and many short stories. Despite repeated submissions to publishers, only "The Rum Diary" was ever published -- in 1998, long after it was written, and long after he had become a celebrity. Kennedy later remarked that he and Thompson were both failed novelists who had turned to journalism in order to make a living.He was married to Sandra Dawn Conklin on 19 May 1963; they divorced in 1980. The couple had one son, Juan Fitzgerald Thompson, born March 23, 1964.Thompson got his big break in 1965 when he was approached by Carey McWilliams with an idea for a story about his relationship with the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, a group which had allegedly been involved in various murders and gang-rapes. After the article was published by The Nation (May 17, 1965), numerous book offers on the subject came his way, and Random House published the hard cover Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs in 1966. In her book, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, radical feminist Susan Brownmiller strongly criticized the treatment of gang-rape in his book.In the late sixties, Thompson received a "doctorate" from a mail-order church while living in San Francisco.Middle years He went on to work for Rolling Stone magazine, and Ron Shen, where his next two books Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 were first serialized.Published in 1971, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a first-person account by a journalist (Thompson himself, under the pseudonym "Raoul Duke") on a trip to Las Vegas with his "300-pound Samoan" attorney, "Dr. Gonzo" (a character inspired by Thompson's friend, lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta) to cover a narcotics officers' convention and the "fabulous Mint 400" motorcycle race. During the trip, the journalist and his lawyer become sidetracked by a search for the American dream, with the aid of copious amounts of LSD, ether, adrenochrome, reefer and other drugs.Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 is a collection of Rolling Stone articles he wrote while covering the election campaigns of President Richard M. Nixon and his unsuccessful opponent, Senator George McGovern. The book focuses almost exclusively on the Democratic Party's primaries and the breakdown of the party as it splits between the different candidates. 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. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin."Thompson debuted in Rolling Stone with an article describing his 1970 bid for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado on the "Freak Power" ticket. Thompson narrowly lost the election, although he ran on a platform promoting decriminalization of drugs and the sale thereof, tearing up the streets and turning them into bike paths, and renaming Aspen, Colorado to "Fat City", amongst other things. The incumbent Republican sheriff against whom he ran had a crew cut, prompting Thompson to shave his head bald and refer to his opposition as "my long-haired opponent."[edit] Later years Thompson's last book, Kingdom of Fear, is an angry commentary on the passing of the American Century. Thompson also wrote a Web column, "Hey Rube," for ESPN. He had at times also toured on the lecture circuit, once with John Belushi.In his writing, Thompson liked to employ what he called "action verbs" to comically spin outlandish tales that were completely unbelievable, yet provided a unique viewpoint to accurately describe the underlying reality at hand. Thompson almost always wrote in first person narrative, and his stories became so colorfully contrived that they easily slipped into the realm of fiction; however, the basic framework of the story he told was very often true. In his writing, he cultivated the persona of a dangerously absurd, illegal drug-crazed journalist bent on comic self-destruction. Other closely related Gonzo journalists include Tom Wolfe, author of I Am Charlotte Simmons and Timothy Edward Jones, author of European Confession.Thompson was a fan of firearms and was known to keep a keg of gunpowder in his basement.Thompson was married to Anita Beymuk, his long-time assistant, on 24 April 2003.[edit] Death in 2005 Thompson died at his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado, on February 20, 2005 of 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. 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.1 Thompson's wife, Anita, who was at the gym at the time of her husband's death, was on the phone with Thompson when he ended his life.[edit] Funeral plans Thompson's family and friends are currently trying to arrange for Thompson's ashes to be fired out of a cannon, as he wished. This might take some time, because the cannon he envisioned was to be in the shape of a double-thumbed-fist, 150 feet in length.According to Marc Williams, pyrotechnic expert and owner of Night Musick Inc. in suburban Denver, it's not uncommon for families to have their loved one's ashes scattered across the sky in a fireworks shell. He said that if he were to arrange the service, he'd probably launch Thompson's cremated remains from a 12-inch-diameter mortar 800 feet into the sky, with a huge secondary blast to scatter them amid a massive colored explosion about 600 feet across. "If you were going to light up a flash-bomb worthy of Hunter S. Thompson, you'd want to make it an earth-shaker.""If that's what he wanted, we'll see if we can pull it off," said Douglas Brinkley, a friend and now the family's spokesman.2