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Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson shoots self in head

"Fear and Loathing" author dead at 67

By Troy Hooper and Claire Martin
The Denver Post

Post file
Hunter S. Thompson in his Woody Creek home, February 1997

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.

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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. Much more...

Here was a writer...

Fear & Loathing in America
September 12 2001

by Hunter S. Thompson

And it was not even Bombs that caused this massive damage. No nuclear missiles were launched from any foreign soil, no enemy bombers flew over New York and Washington to rain death on innocent Americans. No. It was four commercial jetliners.

They were the first flights of the day from American and United Airlines, piloted by skilled and loyal U.S. citizens, and there was nothing suspicious about them when they took off from Newark, N.J., and Dulles in D.C. and Logan in Boston on routine cross-country flights to the West Coast with fully-loaded fuel tanks -- which would soon explode on impact and utterly destroy the world-famous Twin Towers of downtown Manhattan's World Trade Center. Boom! Boom! Just like that.

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden may be a primitive "figurehead" -- or even dead, for all we know -- but whoever put those All-American jet planes loaded with All-American fuel into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and accuracy. The second one was a dead-on bullseye. Straight into the middle of the skyscraper. LINK

When will there come such another?