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Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author. He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting in which the reporter involves themselves in the action to such a degree that they become the central figure of the story itself.

Biography

Early years

A Louisville, Kentucky native, Thompson grew up in the Cherokee Triangle neighborhood of the Highlands. He was the first son of parents Jack Robert (1893 – July 3 , 1952), an insurance adjuster and a U.S. Army veteran who served in France during World War I, and Virginia Davidson Ray (1908 – 1999), a reference librarian and secretary who while a student at the University of Michigan had joined the Alpha Delta Gamma sorority. Introduced by a mutual friend in 1934, they had married in 1935.

Jack died of myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disease on July 3 1952 when Hunter was 14 years old, leaving three sons — Hunter, Davison, and James (1949 – 1994) — to be brought up by their mother. Contemporaries described Virginia after Jack's death as a “heavy drinker.”

Interested in sports and athletically inclined from a young age, Thompson joined Louisville’s Castlewood Athletic Club, a sports club for teenagers that prepared them for high school sports, where he excelled in baseball, though he never joined any sports teams in high school.

Education

Thompson attended first the I.N. Bloom Elementary School, then later Atherton High School before transferring to Louisville Male High School in 1952 following the death of his father. That same year he was accepted as a member of the prestigious Athenaeum Literary Association, a school-sponsored literary and social club that had been founded at Male High in 1862. Its members at the time were generally drawn from Louisville’s wealthy upper-class families, and included Porter Bibb, who would later be the first publisher of Rolling Stone and biographer of broadcasting entrepreneur Ted Turner. As an Athenaeum member, Thompson contributed articles and helped edit the club’s yearbook The Spectator, however the group ejected Thompson from its membership in 1955, citing his legal problems.

Charged as an accessory to robbery after having been in a car with the person who actually committed the robbery, Thompson was sentenced to serve 60 days in Kentucky’s Jefferson County Jail. He served 30 days of his sentence, and joined the U.S. Air Force a week after his release.

Military career

Thompson did his basic training at Randolph Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas, and later transferred to Scott Air Force Base in Illinois to study electronics. He attempted to become a pilot by applying to the Air Force's aviation cadet program, but was rejected. In 1956 he transferred to Eglin Air Force Base, near Pensacola, Florida. There he worked in the information services department and became the sports editor of the base's newspaper, The Command Courier. In this capacity, he covered the Eglin Eagles, a base American football team that included such future professional stars as Max McGee, who would years later catch the first touchdown pass ever thrown in a Super Bowl while playing for the Green Bay Packers, and Zeke Bratkowski who would later play for the Packers, Los Angeles Rams and Chicago Bears. Thompson traveled with the team covering its games around the U.S. In 1957, he also wrote a sports column for The Playground News, a local newspaper in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, but wrote it anonymously as outside employment was against Air Force regulations.

Thompson left the Air Force in 1958 as an Airman First Class, having been recommended for an early honorable discharge by his commanding officer. In summary, this airman, although talented will not be guided by policy, Col. William S. Evans, chief of information services wrote to the Eglin personnel office. Sometimes his rebel and superior attitude seems to rub off on other airmen staff members. Thompson claimed in a mock press release he wrote about the end of his duty to have been issued a "totally unclassifiable" status.

Early journalism career

After the Air Force, he worked as sports editor for a newspaper in Jersey Shore, PA before moving to New York City, where he attended Columbia University's School of General Studies, taking part-time classes on short story writing on the GI Bill.

During this time he worked briefly for Time Magazine as a copy boy for $51 a week. While working, he copied F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms using a typewriter, saying that he wanted to learn about the writing styles of the authors. In 1959, Time fired him for insubordination. Later that year, he worked as a reporter for The Middletown Daily Record in Upstate New York. He was fired from this job after damaging an office candy machine and arguing with the owner of a local restaurant who happened to be an advertiser with the paper.

In 1960 Thompson moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to take a job with the sporting magazine El Sportivo which soon folded. While in Puerto Rico he befriended the future novelist William Kennedy, who was then the managing editor of the English-language daily, The San Juan Star. After returning to the States, Hunter lived and worked as a security guard and caretaker at Big Sur Hot Springs for an eight-month period in 1961, just before it became the Esalen Institute. While there, he was able to publish his first magazine feature in the nationally distributed Rogue magazine on the artisan and bohemian culture of Big Sur. The article would get him fired from his job as caretaker.

During this time period, Thompson wrote two novels, Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary, and submitted many fictional short stories to publishers with little success. The Rum Diary was eventually published in 1998, long after Thompson had become famous.

From May 1962 to May 1963, Thompson traveled to South America as a correspondent for a Dow Jones-owned weekly newspaper, the National Observer. When Thompson returned to the United States he promptly married his longtime girlfriend Sandra Dawn Conklin (aka Sandy Conklin Thompson, now Sondi Wright) and the two moved to Aspen, Colorado.

Thompson and Conklin were married on May 19, 1963, and they had one son, Juan Fitzgerald Thompson, born March 23, 1964. The couple conceived five more times together. Three were miscarriages and two died shortly after birth. After nineteen years together and seventeen years of marriage, Hunter and Sandy divorced in 1980; the two remained close friends until Hunter's death.

Thompson, while living in Glen Ellen, California, continued to write for the National Observer on an array of domestic subjects, including a story about his 1964 visit to Ketchum, Idaho in order to investigate the reasons for Ernest Hemingway's suicide. Thompson and the editors at the Observer eventually had a falling out as he moved to San Francisco, California, immersing himself in the drug and hippie culture of the time, while also writing for the Berkeley, California underground paper The Spider.

Hell's Angels

In 1965, Carey McWilliams editor of The Nation, offered Thompson an opportunity to write a story based on his experience with the California-based Hells Angels motorcycle gang. After The Nation published the article (May 17, 1965), Thompson received several book offers and spent the next year living and riding with the Hell's Angels. The relationship broke down when the bikers suspected that Thompson would make money from his writing. The gang demanded a share of the profits and Thompson ended up with a savage beating, or 'stomping' as the Angels referred to it. Random House published the well-received hard cover Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs in 1966. A reviewer for The New York Times praised it as an "angry, knowledgeable, fascinating and excitedly written book," that shows the Hell's Angels "not so much as dropouts from society but as total misfits, or unfits – emotionally, intellectually and educationally unfit to achieve the rewards, such as they are, that the contemporary social order offers." The reviewer also praised Thompson as a "spirited, witty, observant and original writer; his prose crackles like motorcycle exhaust."

In late 1968, Thompson and his family moved into what Thompson described as his "fortified compound" in Woody Creek, Colorado, a small mountain hamlet outlying Aspen where he would reside for the rest of his life.

Thompson's letters from 1968 indicate that he planned to write a book called The Joint Chiefs about "the death of the American dream". This book was never finished, but the theme of the death of the American dream would be carried over into his later work.. Thompson also signed a deal with Ballantine Books in 1968 to write a satirical book called The Johnson File about Lyndon Johnson. However, a few weeks after the contract was signed, Johnson announced that he would not stand for reelection in the 1968 election, and the deal was cancelled..

Middle years

In 1970 Thompson ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, on the "Freak Power" ticket promoting the decriminalization of drugs (for personal use only, not trafficking, as he disapproved of profiteering), tearing up the streets and turning them into grassy pedestrian malls, banning any building so tall as to obscure the view of the mountains, and renaming Aspen, Colorado, "Fat City." The incumbent Republican sheriff whom he ran against had a crew cut. Thompson, having shaved his head, referred to his opponent as "my long-haired opponent."

With polls actually showing him with a slight lead in the race, Thompson appeared at Rolling Stone magazine headquarters in San Francisco with a six-pack of beer in hand and declared to editor Jann Wenner that he was about to be elected the next sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, and wished to write about it. Thus, Thompson's first article in Rolling Stone was published as The Battle of Aspen with the byline "By: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (Candidate for Sheriff)." Despite the publicity, Thompson ended up narrowly losing the election.

Birth of Gonzo

Also in 1970, Thompson wrote an article entitled The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved for the short-lived new journalism magazine Scanlan's Monthly. Although it was not widely read at the time, the article is the first of Thompson's to use techniques of Gonzo journalism, a style he would later employ in almost every literary endeavor. The manic, first-person subjectivity of the story was reportedly the result of Thompson's sheer desperation; he was facing a looming deadline and started sending the magazine pages ripped out of his notebook. Ralph Steadman, who would later collaborate with Thompson on several projects, contributed expressionist pen and ink illustrations.

The first use of the word Gonzo to describe Thompson's work is credited to the journalist Bill Cardoso. Cardoso had first met Thompson on a bus full of journalists covering the 1968 New Hampshire Primary. In 1970, Cardoso (who, by this time had become the editor of The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine) wrote Thompson praising the "Kentucky Derby" piece in Scanlan's Monthly as a breakthrough: "This is it, this is pure Gonzo. If this is a start, keep rolling." Thompson took to the word right away, and according to illustrator Ralph Steadman said "Okay, that's what I do. Gonzo."

Thompson's first published use of the word Gonzo appears in a passage in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream : "Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it now: pure Gonzo journalism."

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

The book for which Thompson gained most of his fame had its genesis during the research for Strange Rumblings in Aztlan, an exposé Thompson was writing for Rolling Stone on the 1970 killing of the Mexican-American television journalist Ruben Salazar. Salazar had been shot in the head at close range with a tear gas canister fired by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department during the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War. One of Thompson's sources for the story was Oscar Zeta Acosta, a prominent Mexican-American activist and attorney. Finding it difficult to talk in the racially tense atmosphere of Los Angeles, Thompson and Acosta decided to travel to Las Vegas, Nevada, and take advantage of an assignment by Sports Illustrated to write a 250-word photograph caption on the Mint 400 motorcycle race held there.

What was to be a short caption quickly grew into something else entirely. Thompson first submitted to Sports Illustrated a manuscript of 2,500 words, which was, as he later wrote "aggressively rejected." Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner was said to have liked "the first 20 or so jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication — which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it," Thompson later wrote.

The result of the trip to Las Vegas became the 1972 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which first appeared in the November 1971 issues of Rolling Stone as a two-part series. It is written as a first-person account by a journalist named Raoul Duke on a trip to Las Vegas with Dr. Gonzo, his "300-pound Samoan attorney," to cover a narcotics officers' convention and the "fabulous Mint 400". During the trip, Duke and his lawyer (always referred to as "my attorney") become sidetracked by a search for the American dream, with the aid of copious amounts of marijuana, mescaline, acid, cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored "uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls."

Coming to terms with the failure of the 1960s countercultural movement is a major theme of the novel, and the book was greeted with considerable critical acclaim, including being heralded as "by far the best book yet written on the decade of dope" by the New York Times and a "scorching epochal sensation" by author Tom Wolfe . "The Vegas Book", as Thompson referred to it, was a mainstream success and the first widely-read work of Thompson's that employed his gonzo journalism techniques, and the novel introduced his style to the masses.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972

Within the next year, Thompson wrote extensively for Rolling Stone while covering the election campaigns of President Richard M. Nixon and his unsuccessful opponent, Senator George McGovern. The articles were soon combined and published as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. As the title suggests, Thompson spent nearly all of his time traveling the "campaign trail" and his coverage focuses largely on the Democratic Party's primaries (Nixon, as an incumbent, performed little campaign work) and its breakdown due to splits between the different candidates; McGovern was extolled throughout while fellow candidates Ed Muskie and Hubert Humphrey were ridiculed. As an early supporter of McGovern, it could be argued that his unflattering coverage of the rival campaigns along with the rapidly expanding circulation of Rolling Stone played a role in the senator's nomination.

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 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. was an evil man—evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it." The one passion they shared was a love of football, which is discussed in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.

Thompson was to provide Rolling Stone similar coverage for the 1976 Presidential Campaign that would appear in a book published by the magazine. Reportedly, as Thompson was waiting for a $75,000 advance check to arrive, he learned that Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner had pulled the plug on the endeavor without telling Thompson.

Wenner then asked Thompson to travel to Vietnam to report on what appeared to be the closing of the Vietnam War. Thompson accepted, and left for Saigon immediately. He arrived with the country in chaos, just as the United States was preparing to evacuate and other journalists were scrambling to find transportation out of the region. While there, Thompson learned that Wenner had pulled the plug on this excursion as well, and Thompson found himself in Vietnam without health insurance or additional financial support. Thompson's story about the fall of Saigon would not be published in Rolling Stone until ten years later.

These two incidents severely strained the relationship between the author and the magazine, and Thompson would contribute far less to the publication in future years.

Later years

1980 marked both his divorce from Sandra Conklin and the release of Where the Buffalo Roam, a loose film adaptation of situations from Thompson's early 1970s work, with Bill Murray starring as the author. After the lukewarm reception of the film, Thompson temporarily relocated to Hawaii to work on a novel. The Curse of Lono was a gonzo-style account of a marathon in the state that was extensively illustrated by Ralph Steadman, first appearing in Running magazine in 1981 as "The Charge of the Weird Brigade" and before being excerpted in Playboy in 1983.

On July 21, 1981, in Aspen, Colorado, Thompson ran a stop sign at 2 am and began to "rave" at a state trooper. He also refused to take alcohol tests. Because of his refusal he was detained, although during a trial the drunk-driving charges against the journalist were dropped because there was no basis for the charges.

In 1983, he covered the U.S. invasion of Grenada but would not discuss these experiences until the publication of Kingdom of Fear 20 years later. Later that year he authored a piece for Rolling Stone called "A Dog Took My Place," an expose of the scandalous Roxanne Pulitzer divorce and what he termed the "Palm Beach lifestyle." The article contained dubious insinuations of bestiality (among other things) but was considered to be a return to proper form by many.

Shortly thereafter, Thompson accepted an advance to write about "couples pornography" for Playboy. As part of his research, he spent time at the O'Farrell Theater strip club in San Francisco and his experience there eventually evolved into a full-length nonfiction novel tentatively titled The Night Manager. Neither the novel nor the article ever materialized, and San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen erroneously reported that Thompson was "working as the O'Farrell's night manager" . By the early 1990s Thompson was said to be working on a fictional novel called Polo Is My Life, which was briefly excerpted in Rolling Stone in 1994, and which Hunter himself described in 1996 as "...a sex book — you know, sex, drugs and rock and roll. It's about the manager of a sex theater who's forced to leave and flee to the mountains. He falls in love and gets in even more trouble than he was in the sex theater in San Francisco". The novel was slated to be released by Random House in 1999, and was even assigned ISBN 0679406948, but was never actually published.

At the behest of old friend and editor Warren Hinckle, Thompson became a media critic for the San Francisco Examiner from the mid-1980s until the end of that decade.

Thompson continued to contribute irregularly to Rolling Stone. "Fear and Loathing in Elko," published in 1992, was a well received fictional rallying cry against Clarence Thomas, while "Mr. Bill's Neighborhood" was a largely non-fictional account of an interview with Bill Clinton in an Arkansas diner. Rather than embarking on the campaign trail as he had done in previous presidential elections, Thompson monitored the proceedings from cable television; Better than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie, his account of the 1992 campaign, is composed of reactionary faxes sent to Rolling Stone. A decade later, he contributed "Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004" — an account of a road jaunt with John Kerry during his presidential campaign that would be Thompson's final magazine feature.

The Gonzo Papers

Despite publishing a novel and numerous newspaper and magazine articles, the majority of Thompson's literary output after the late 1970s took the form of a 4-volume series of books called The Gonzo Papers. Beginning with The Great Shark Hunt in 1979 and ending with Better than Sex in 1994, the series is largely a collection of rare newspaper and magazine pieces from the pre-gonzo period, along with almost all of his Rolling Stone short pieces, excerpts from the Fear and Loathing... books, and so on.

By the late 1970s Thompson received complaints from critics, fans and friends that he was regurgitating his past glories without much new on his part; these concerns are alluded to in the introduction of The Great Shark Hunt, where Thompson eerily suggested that his "old self" committed suicide.

Perhaps in response to this, as well as the strained relationship with Rolling Stone, and the failure of his marriage, Thompson became more reclusive after 1980, often retreating to his compound in Woody Creek and rejecting and/or refusing to complete assignments. Despite the dearth of new material, Wenner kept Thompson on the Rolling Stone masthead as chief of the "National Affairs Desk," a position he would hold until his death.

Fear and Loathing Redux

However, Thompson's work was popularized again with the 1998 release of the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which opened to considerable fanfare. The novel was reprinted to coincide with the film, and Thompson's work was introduced to a new generation of readers.

Soon thereafter, Thompson's "long lost" novel The Rum Diary was published, as were the first two volumes of his collected letters, which were greeted with critical acclaim.

Thompson's next and penultimate collection, Kingdom of Fear, was a combination of new material, selected newspaper clippings, and some older works. Released in 2003, it was perceived by critics to be an angry, vitriolic commentary on the passing of the American Century and the state of affairs after the September 2001 attacks.

Hunter married Anita Bejmuk, his long-time assistant, on April 24, 2003.

Ultimately, Thompson ended his journalism career in the same way it had begun: writing about sports. Thompson penned a weekly column called "Hey, Rube" for ESPN "Page 2". The column ran from 2000 to shortly before his death in 2005. Simon & Schuster bundled many of the columns from the first few years and released it in mid-2004 as Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness - Modern History from the Sports Desk.

Death

Thompson died at his self-described "fortified compound" known as "Owl Farm" in Woody Creek, Colorado, at 5:42 p.m. on February 20, 2005, from 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, though the gunshot was mistaken for a book falling, and so they continued with their activities for a few minutes before checking on him: "Winkel Thompson continued playing 20 questions with Will, Juan Thompson continued taking a photo." Thompson was sitting at his typewriter with the word "counselor" written in the center of the page.

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. Thompson's wife, Anita, who was at a gym at the time of her husband's death, was on the phone with Thompson when he ended his life.

What family and police describe as a suicide note was delivered to his wife 4 days before his death and later published by Rolling Stone Magazine. Entitled "Football Season Is Over", it read:

"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won't hurt"

Artist and friend Ralph Steadman wrote:

"...He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell — rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to — and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too — and Peacocks..."

Funeral

On August 20, 2005, in a private ceremony, Thompson's ashes were fired from a cannon atop a 153-foot tower of his own design (in the shape of a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button) to the tune of Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man, known to be the song most respected by the late writer. Red, white, blue and green fireworks were launched along with his ashes. As the city of Aspen would not allow the cannon to remain for more than a month, the cannon has been dismantled and put into storage until a suitable permanent location can be found. According to widow Anita Thompson, the actor Johnny Depp, a close friend of Thompson (and portrayer of Raoul Duke in the movie adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), financed the funeral. Depp told the Associated Press, "All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out." Other famous attendees at the funeral included U.S. Senator John Kerry and former U.S. Senator George McGovern; 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley; actors Bill Murray (who portrayed Hunter S. Thompson in the movie Where the Buffalo Roam), Sean Penn and Josh Hartnett; singers Lyle Lovett and John Oates; and numerous other friends. An estimated 280 people attended the funeral.

The plans for this impressive monument were initially drawn by Thompson and Ralph Steadman and were shown as part of an Omnibus program on the BBC entitled Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision (1978). It is included as a special feature on the second disc of the 2003 Criterion Collection DVD release of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (labeled on the DVD as "Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood"). The video footage of Steadman and Thompson drawing the plans and outdoor footage showing where he wanted the cannon constructed were played prior to the unveiling of his cannon at the funeral.

Douglas Brinkley, a friend and now the family's spokesman, said of the ceremony: "If that's what he wanted, we'll see if we can pull it off."

Legacy

Writing style

Thompson is often credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of writing that blurs distinctions between fiction and nonfiction. His work and style are considered to be a major part of the New Journalism literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which attempted to break free from the purely objectivist style of mainstream reportage of the time. Thompson almost always wrote in the first person, while extensively using his own experiences and emotions to color "the story" he was trying to follow. His writing aimed to be humorous, colorful, and bizarre, and he often exaggerated events to be more entertaining.

The term Gonzo has since been applied in kind to numerous other forms of highly subjective artistic expression.

Despite his having personally described his work as "Gonzo," it fell to later observers to describe more precisely what the phrase actually meant. While Thompson's approach clearly involved injecting himself as a participant in the events of the narrative, it also involved adding invented, metaphoric elements, thus creating, for the uninitiated reader, a seemingly confusing amalgam of facts and fiction notable for the deliberately blurred lines between one and the other. Thompson, in a 1974 Interview in Playboy Magazine addressed the issue himself, saying "Unlike Tom Wolfe or Gay Talese, I almost never try to reconstruct a story. They’re both much better reporters than I am, but then, I don’t think of myself as a reporter." Tom Wolfe would later describe Thompson's style as "...part journalism and part personal memoir admixed with powers of wild invention and wilder rhetoric."

The majority of Thompson's most popular and acclaimed work appeared within the pages of Rolling Stone Magazine. Thompson went on to work as a political correspondent for the magazine, retaining the title of chief of the "National Affairs Desk" on the magazine's masthead for over thirty years until his death; two of his books, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, were first serialized there. Along with Joe Eszterhas and David Felton, Thompson was instrumental in expanding the focus of the magazine past music criticism; indeed, Thompson was the only staff writer of the epoch never to contribute a music feature to the magazine. Nevertheless, his articles were always peppered with a wide array of pop music references ranging from Howlin' Wolf to Lou Reed. Armed with early fax machines wherever he went, he became notorious for haphazardly sending sometimes illegible material to the magazine's San Francisco offices immediately as they were to go to press.

Robert Love, Thompson's editor at Rolling Stone of 23 years wrote that "the dividing line between fact and fancy rarely blurred, and we didn’t always use italics or some other typographical device to indicate the lurch into the fabulous. But if there were living, identifiable humans in a scene, we took certain steps....Hunter was close friends with many prominent Democrats, veterans of the ten or more presidential campaigns he covered, so when in doubt, we’d call the press secretary. “People will believe almost any twisted kind of story about politicians or Washington,” he once said, and he was right."

Discerning the line between the fact and the fiction of Thompson's work presented a practical problem for editors and fact-checkers of his work. Love called fact-checking Thompson's work "one of the sketchiest occupations ever created in the publishing world," and '"for the first-timer ... a trip through a journalistic fun house, where you didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. You knew you had better learn enough about the subject at hand to know when the riff began and reality ended. Hunter was a stickler for numbers, for details like gross weight and model numbers, for lyrics and caliber, and there was no faking it."

Persona

Hunter often used a blend of fiction and fact when portraying himself in his writing as well, sometimes using the name Raoul Duke as an author surrogate whom he generally described as a callous, erratic, self-destructive journalist who constantly drank alcohol and took hallucinogenic drugs. Fantasizing about causing bodily harm to others was also a characteristic in his work and according to the book "Hunter" by E. Jean Carrol, he would often deliver anecdotes about threatening to rape prostitutes.

A number of critics have commented that as he grew older the line that distinguished Thompson from his literary self became increasingly blurred. Thompson himself admitted during a 1978 BBC interview that he sometimes felt pressured to live up to the fictional self that he had created, adding "I'm never sure which one people expect me to be. Very often, they conflict - most often, as a matter of fact. ...I'm leading a normal life and right along side me there is this myth, and it is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say, speak at universities, I'm not sure if they are inviting Duke or Thompson. I'm not sure who to be."

Thompson's writing style and eccentric persona gave him a cult following in both literary and drug circles, and his cult status expanded into broader areas after being twice portrayed in major motion pictures. Hence, both his writing style and persona have been widely imitated, and his likeness has even become a popular costume choice for Halloween .

Political beliefs

Thompson's early letters to friends suggest an interest in Ayn Rand's Objectivism, but he later moved radically away from Rand's version of politics and instead embraced a combination of libertarian, anarchist, and socialist views. In the documentary "Breakfast With Hunter," Thompson can be seen in several scenes wearing different Che Guevara t-shirts, while his son Juan Thompson acknowledges that his father had "a perverse resistance to security and predictability, and a deliberate disregard for propriety."

Thompson's official biographer and longtime friend Douglas Brinkley said:

"He's both a kind of old-fashioned believer in democratic virtues, but also an anarchist. There's always that unpredictable element with him. In any given situation, as soon as he feels there's a system closing in, he'll destroy it" .

Hunter Thompson was a passionate proponent of the right to bear arms and private property rights . A member of the National Rifle Association, Thompson was also co-creator of "The Fourth Amendment Foundation", an organization to assist victims defend themselves against unwarranted search and seizure .

Thompson was a firearms and explosives enthusiast (in his writing and in real life) and owned a vast collection of handguns, rifles, shotguns, and various automatic and semi-automatic weapons, along with numerous forms of gaseous crowd control and many other homemade devices.

Thompson was also an ardent supporter of drug legalization and became known for his less-than-shy accounts of his own drug usage. He was an early supporter the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and served on the group's advisory board for over 30 years until his death . He told an interviewer in 1997 that drugs should be legalized "Across the board. It might be a little rough on some people for a while, but I think it's the only way to deal with drugs. Look at Prohibition: all it did was make a lot of criminals rich".

After the September 11th, 2001 attacks, Thompson voiced skepticism regarding the "official story" on who was responsible for the attacks, suggesting to several interviewers that it may have been conducted by the U.S. Government or with the government's assistance. In 2002, Thompson told a radio show host "...you sort of wonder when something like that happens, Well who stands to benefit? Who had the opportunity and the motive? You just kind of look at these basic things I saw that the US government was going to benefit, and the White House people, the Republican administration to take the mind of the public off of the crashing economy. And I have spent enough time on the inside of, well in the White House and you know, campaigns and I've known enough people who do these things, think this way, to know that the public version of the news or whatever event, is never really what happened."

In 2004 Thompson, regarding politics, wrote: "Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for — but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him."

Popular slogans

A slogan of Thompson's, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro," appears as a chapter heading in Kingdom of Fear. He was also quoted as saying, "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." Another one of his favorite sayings, "Buy the ticket, take the ride," is easily applied to virtually all of his exploits. "Too weird to live, too rare to die," a phrase applied to Oscar Zeta Acosta (Thompson's attorney from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), has been widely used to characterize the "Good Doctor" posthumously. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he coined the term "bad craziness."

The Hawaiian word "mahalo" also frequently appears in Thompson's works and correspondence. Loosely translated, it means "may you be in divine breath" or "thank you." On more than one occasion, "mahalo" followed Thompson's usage of "buy the ticket, take the ride."

Letters

Thompson wrote many letters and they were his primary means of personal conversation. Thompson made carbon copies of all his letters, usually typed, a habit that began in his teenage years. His letters were sent to friends, public officials and reporters.

Some of his letters have begun to be published in a series of books called The Fear and Loathing Letters. The first volume, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955 - 1967, is over 650 pages, while the second volume Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist passed 700. Douglas Brinkley, who edits the letter series, said that for every letter included, fifteen were cut. Brinkley estimated Thompson's own archive to contain over 20,000 letters. According to Amazon.com, the last of the three planned volumes of Thompson's letters was allegedly to be published on January 1, 2007 as The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop 1977-2005. Anita Thompson has said on her blog that the collection will be released sometime in February. Amazon.com recently updated the publication date on its site to February 1, 2008.

Many biographies have been written about Thompson, although he did not write an autobiography himself. But his letters contained "asides" to "his biographers" that he assumed could be "reading in" on his collected letters. Some of these letters were already bundled into Thompson's Kingdom of Fear, though it is not considered an autobiography.

Photography

Thompson was an avid amateur photographer throughout his life and his photos have been exibited since his death at art galleries in the United States and United Kingdom. In late 2006, AMMO Books published a limited-edition 224 page collection of Thompson photos called GONZO, with an introduction by Johnny Depp. Thompson's snapshots were a combination of the subjects he was covering, stylized self-portraits, and artistic still life photos. The London Observer called the photos "astonishingly good" and that "Thompson's pictures remind us, brilliantly in every sense, of very real people, real colours".

Accolades

Author Tom Wolfe has called Thompson the greatest American comic writer of the 20th century.("As Gonzo in Life as in His Work: Hunter S. Thompson died as he lived." Tuesday, February 22, 2005 - Wall Street Journal, Opinion Journal.)

Movies

The film Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) depicts Thompson's attempts at writing stories for both the Super Bowl and the 1972 U.S. presidential election. It stars Bill Murray as Thompson and Peter Boyle as Thompson's attorney Oscar Acosta, referred to in the movie as Carl Laslow, Esq.

The 1998 film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was directed by Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam, and starred Johnny Depp (who moved into Hunter's basement to 'study' Thompson's persona before assuming his role in the film) as "Hunter Thompson/Raoul Duke" and Benicio Del Toro as "Dr. Gonzo." Thompson appeared in the scene at the club "The Matrix," sitting at a table. The film has achieved something of a cult following.

A film is in production based upon Thompson's novel The Rum Diary. It is scheduled for a 2008 release, starring Johnny Depp. Bruce Robinson is directing.

Documentaries

The film Breakfast With Hunter (2003) was directed and edited by Wayne Ewing. It documents Thompson's work on the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his arrest for drunk driving, and his subsequent fight with the court system.

"Come on Down: Searching for the American Dream" (2004) was directed and written by Adamm Liley and produced by Steven James May of Manifestation Television. Hunter gives Adamm valuable insight into the elusive American Dream over many drinks at the Woody Creek Tavern. Also features Bob Barker and Chris Gardner. Music by The Sadies.

"When I Die," (2005), also by Wayne Ewing, is a video chronicle of making Thompson's final farewell wishes a reality and the great send-off itself.

Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride: Hunter S. Thompson On Film (2006) was directed by Tom Thurman, written by Tom Marksbury, and produced by the Starz Entertainment Group. The original documentary features interviews with Hunter’s inner circle of family and friends, but the thrust of the documentary is focused on the manner in which his life often overlapped with numerous Hollywood celebrities who became his close friends, such as Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Bill Murray, Sean Penn, John Cusack, Hunter’s wife Anita, son Juan, former Senators George McGovern and Gary Hart, Tom Wolfe, William F. Buckley, Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton, Ralph Steadman and others.

Tributes

• The 2006 documentary film Fuck, which features Hunter S Thompson commenting on the usage of that word, is dedicated to his memory.
• Gonzo Imperial Porter is a beer produced by an Aspen, Colorado, brewery, Flying Dog Brewery, in memory of the late Hunter S. Thompson.
• Doonesbury

• • Hunter Thompson appears as Uncle Duke in Doonesbury, the Garry Trudeau comic strip. (Raoul Duke was a pseudonym used by Thompson.) When the character was first introduced, Thompson protested, (he was once quoted in an interview saying that he would set Trudeau on fire if the two ever met) although it was reported that he liked the character in later years.
  • Between 7 March 2005 (roughly two weeks after Thompson's suicide) and 12 March 2005, Doonesbury ran a tribute to Hunter, with Uncle Duke lamenting the death of the man he called his "inspiration." The first of these strips featured a panel with artwork similar to that of Ralph Steadman, and later strips featured various non sequiturs (with Duke variously transforming into a monster, melting, shrinking to the size of an empty drinking glass, or people around him turning into animals) which seemed to mirror some of the effects of hallucinatory drugs described in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
• Besides Uncle Duke, Hunter was the direct inspiration of two other comic strip characters. Underground comix creator turned animation/cartooning historian Scott Shaw! used an anthropomorphic dog named "Pointer X. Toxin" in a number of his works. Matt Howarth has created a number of comic books in his "Bugtown" universe with a Thompson-inspired character named "Monseiuer Boche", as well as a musician named "Savage Henry", the name of a drug dealer (or "scag baron") mentioned in Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.
• In The Simpsons' episode Viva Ned Flanders there was a scene when Ned Flanders and Homer Simpson drive down the road to Las Vegas. They pass two guys in a red convertible who bear a strong resemblance to Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
• In The Simpsons episode where Grandpa' Simpsons decides to get death assistance, Hunter S Thompson has taken advantage of death assistance at the same clinic as Grandpa' Simpson.
• The Avenged Sevenfold song Bat Country is a tribute to Thompson.
• Spider Jerusalem, the gonzo journalist protagonist of Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, is largely based on Thompson.
• Adult Swim's animated series The Venture Bros. featured a character named Hunter Gathers (who looks and acts much like Thompson) employed by the fictional Office of Secret Intelligence as a trainer.
• In January 2007, the play Gonzo, a Brutal Chrysalis opens in San Francisco. The play, based on Thompson's letters and writing, presents Thompson's life from 1968 to 1971.
• In an episode of the animated series South Park, Stan Marsh's father performs a poetry reading with large photo of Thompson behind him.

Trivia

• Thompson's title "Doctor" (referred to in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in "Duke's" comment, "You're talking to a Doctor of Journalism!") was purchased from the Universal Life Church in the late '60s.
• Thompson was long rumored to have appeared on the early 90's Nickelodeon TV series, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, in the episode "New Years Pete." However, the creators have since debunked this in several interviews, explaining that the "Man on the Street" was simply an extra who, coincidentally, happened to be named Hunter Thompson.
• Thompson appeared on the cover of the 1000th Rolling Stone issue (May 18 - June 1, 2006). He appeared as a devil playing the guitar next to the two "L"'s in the word Rolling Stone. Johnny Depp, portraying Thompson, also appeared on the cover.
• Flying Dog Brewery sponsored a contest to attend the final farewell to Thompson by placing a Golden Ticket inside one bottle of their tribute brew, Gonzo Imperial Porter.
• In 1964, while writing a story on Ernest Hemingway's suicide for the National Observer, Thompson symbolically stole a pair of elk antlers hanging above the front door of the late author's Ketchum, Idaho cabin.
• Hunter Thompson was named a Kentucky Colonel by the Governor of Kentucky in a December 1996 tribute ceremony where he also received keys to the city of Louisville.
• Actor Bill Murray spent considerable time with Thompson as part of his preparation prior to production of film Where the Buffalo Roam and inevitably picked up many of the latter's mannerisms, much to the annoyance of Murray's Saturday Night Live coworkers.
• While writing a Wall Street Journal feature about the mine in Butte, Montana, Thompson made the acquaintance of a small folk band called The Big Sky Singers who were then playing the Gun Room at the Finlen Hotel in Butte. Thompson subsequently wrote the liner notes for their debut album, which appeared in 1966.
• Paul Oakenfold's album Bunkka features Thompson's voice in the song titled Nixon's Spirit.

Articles

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items.

• The Boston Globe
  • Memoirs of a Wretched Weekend in Washington — February 1969

• Chicago Tribune
  • Renfro Valley — February 1962

• Cycle World
  • Song of the Sausage Creature — March 1995

• The Distant Drummer
  • The Ultimate Free Lancer — November 1967

• ESPN Page 2
  • Baseball has become unruly – November 2000
  • Just binge, baby! – November 2000
  • Prepare for the Weirdness – November 2000
  • The fix is in – November 2000
  • The NFL, election & Generation Z – December 2000
  • State of disgrace December - 2000
  • Ready for Sainthood December - 2000
  • Gambling Fever - December 2000
  • Watch the economy shrink while breasts expand – January 2001
  • Fear & Loathing on Super Sunday – January 2001
  • Abandon all hope ye in Tampa ... and Washington – January 2001
  • Giants, gamblers go down in a ball of fire – January 2001
  • Several grave injustices – February 2001
  • Mad cows and sick sports – February 2001
  • Death in the afternoon - February 2001
  • XFL, RIP – February 2001
  • A crime against nature – March 2001
  • Warning to gamblers: Beware the ides of March – March 2001
  • Cat scratch fever – March 2001
  • Memo from a gambling victim - March 2001
  • Where were you when the Fun Stopped? – April 2001
  • Notes on the wrong way to gamble – April 2001
  • NBA and the downward spiral of dumbness – April 2001
  • Bad craziness at Owl Farm – April 2001
  • Kentucky Derby and other gambling disasters - May 2001
  • Going to war for justice - May 2001
  • How 'bout that Patrick Roy - May 2001
  • Patrick Roy and Warren Zevon -- two champions at the top of their game - May 2001
  • Jack Kerouac and the Football Hall of Fame - June 2001
  • Wild Days at The Sports Desk - June 2001
  • Eerie lull rattles the sports world - June 2001
  • Olympic disaster in Utah - June 2001
  • Hey Rube' goes to Hollywood - July 2001
  • The wisdom of Nashville and violence of Jack Nicholson: A football story - September 2001
  • Fear & Loathing in America - September 2001
  • When war drums roll - September 2001
  • Will sports survive bin Laden? - September 2001
  • Stadium living in new age - October 2001
  • Football in the Kingdom of Fear - October 2001
  • Banish Cowboys, 'Skins -- forever October 2001
  • Foul balls and rash predictions - October 2001
  • Getting weird for Devil's Day - October 2001
  • The Yankees are dead; long live the Yankees - November 2001
  • The man who loved sport too much - November 2001
  • The shame of Indianapolis - November 2001
  • Revenge of the 49ers - November 2001
  • Failure, football & violence on the Strip - December 2001
  • Madness in Honolulu - December 2001
  • Skunks Like Me - December 2001
  • Break Up the Ravens - January 2002
  • Pay Up or Get Whipped - January 2002
  • Braced For the Last Football Game - January 2002
  • Domestic Terrorism at the Super Bowl - February 2002
  • Ed Bradley & the Stigma of Bull Worship - February 2002
  • For what it's worth - March 2002
  • Be like George -- bet on Kentucky - March 2002
  • Slow Dance in Rap Town - March 2002
  • Spring and summer break for HST - March 2002
  • HST is Back from Beirut - September 2002
  • Walking tall in the sport of swine - October 2002
  • The NFL Uber Alles - October 2002
  • Blood On the Walls of Hollywood - October 2002
  • My 49er Habit - November 2002
  • Don't Let This Happen To You - November 2002
  • White death in the Rockies - November 2002
  • Grantland Rice haunts the Honolulu Marathon - December 2002
  • The Honolulu Marathon is Decadent and Depraved - December 2002
  • The Death of the 49ers - January 2003
  • Public Shame and Private Victory - January 2003
  • Braced For the Last Football Game - January 2003
  • Oakland uber alles - January 2003
  • Bet the Raiders - January 2003
  • The last Super Bowl - January 2003
  • Super Bowl fool - January 2003
  • Extreme behavior - February 2003
  • A world of pain - February 2003
  • Saturday night at the fights - March 2003
  • Kentucky uber alles - March 2003
  • Love blooms in the Rockies - March 2003
  • One in a Million- August 2003
  • Not So Sweet Dreams- August 2003
  • Speed Will Rule the NFL- August 2003
  • George Plimpton Uber Alles - September 2003
  • Death of an American Poet (Warren Zevon) - September 2003
  • Bush League - September 2003
  • A Bad Bet (Rush Limbaugh) - October 2003
  • Fast and Furious - October 2003
  • Submitting to sports - October 2003
  • Wild Monday night in Denver - November 2003
  • Am I turning into a pervert? - November 2003
  • In your dreams, buddy - November 2003
  • Running wild - December 2003
  • Being a betting man - January 13, 2004
  • Note to self - January 2004
  • Mr. Brady goes to Washington - January 2004
  • The final score - February 2004
  • Goose bumps - February 2004
  • Presidential no-no - February 2004
  • Tournament time - March 2004
  • Kentucky's disgrace - March 2004
  • Duke's a hazard - March 2004
  • No contest - April 2004
  • Strange days - April 2004
  • Let's go to the Olympics! - May 2004
  • Let's get physical - May 2004
  • Security blanket - July 2004
  • Buy my book! - July 2004
  • Don't you dare - July 2004
  • Opening bet - August 2004
  • Stirring the pot - August 2004
  • Just pay up - September 2004
  • D-Day - November 2004
  • End of days - November 2004
  • State of emergency - November 2004
  • Monday night fools - December 2004
  • A monster weekend - December 2004
  • Fore!- February 2005

• Esquire
  • Life Styles: the Cyclist — January 1967

• The Nation
  • The Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders — May 1965
  • Nonstudent Left — September 1965

• National Observer
  • "Leary Optimism" at Home for Kennedy Visitor — June 1962
  • Nobody Is Neutral Under Aruba's Hot Sun — July 1962
  • A Footloose American in a Smuggler's Den — August 1962
  • Democracy Dies in Peru, But Few Seem to Mourn Its Passing — August 1962
  • How Democracy is Nudged Ahead in Ecuador — September 1962
  • Ballots in Brazil Will Measure the Allure of Leftist Nationalism — October 1962
  • Operation Triangular: Bolivia's Fate Rides With It — October 1962
  • Uruguay Goes to Polls, With Economy Sagging — November 1962
  • Chatty Letters During a Journey From Aruba to Rio — December 1962
  • Troubled Brazil Holds Key Vote — January 1963
  • It's a Dictatorship, but Few Seem to Care Enough to Stay and Fight — January 1963
  • Brazilian Soldiers Stage a Raid in Revenge — February 1963
  • Leftist Trend and Empty Treasury Plague the Latin American Giant — March 1963
  • A Never-Never Land High Above the Sea — April 1962
  • Election Watched as Barometer of Continent's Anti-Democratic Trend — May 1963
  • A Time for Sittin', Listenin', and Reverie — June 1963
  • He Haunts the Ruins of His Once-Great Empire — June 1963
  • Kelso Looks Just Like Any $1,307,000 Horse...A Day Without a Champion — July 1963
  • When the Thumb Was a Ticket to Adventures on the Highway...The Extinct Hitchhiker — July 1963
  • Where Are the Writing Talents of Yesteryear? — August 1963
  • Why Anti-Gringo Winds Often Blow South of the Border — August 1963
  • An Aussie Paul Bunyan Shows Our Loggers How — September 1963
  • Executives Crank Open Philosophy's Windows — September 1963
  • One of the Darkest Documents Ever Put Down is "The Red Lances" — October 1963
  • Can Brazil Hold Out Until the Next Election — October 1963
  • Donleavy Proves His Lunatic Humor Is Original — November 1963
  • The Crow, a Novelist, and a Hunt; Man in Search of His Primitive Self — December 1963
  • What Miners Lost in Taking an Irishman — December 1963
  • When Buck Fever Hits Larkspur's Slopes — December 1963
  • And Now a Proletariat on Aspen's Ski Slopes — February 1964
  • The Catch is Limited in Indians' "Fish in" — March 1964
  • Dr. Pflaum Looks at the Latins, But His View is Tired and Foggy — March 1964
  • When the Beatniks Were Social Lions — April 1964
  • Brazilian's Fable of a Phony Carries the Touch of Mark Twain — April 1964
  • Golding Tries "Lord of the Flies" Formula Again, But It Falls Short — April 1964
  • What Lured Hemingway to Ketchum? — May 1964
  • Wither the Old Copper Capital of the West? To Boom or Bust? — June 1964
  • The Atmosphere Has Never Been Quite the Same — June 1964
  • Why Montana's "Shanty Irishman" Corrals Votes Year After Year — June 1964
  • Living in the Time of Alger, Greeley, Debs — July 1964
  • Bagpipes Wail, Cabers Fly as the Clans Gather — September 1964
  • You'd Be Fried Like a Piece of Lean Bacon — September 1964
  • People Want Bad Taste...In Everything — November 1964
  • A Surgeon's Fingers Fashion a Literary Career — December 1964

• New York Times Magazine
  • The 'Hashbury' Is the Capital of the Hippies — May 1967

• Pageant
  • Why Boys Will Be Girls — August 1967
  • Presenting: The Richard Nixon Doll (Overhauled 1968 Model) — July 1968
  • Those Daring Young Men in Their Flying Machines — September 1969

• Playboy
  • The Great Shark Hunt — 1974
  • The Curse of Lono (book excerpt) — 1983
  • Fear and Justice in the Kingdom of Sex — 2004
  • Post Cards from the Proud Highway — May 2005

• The Reporter
  • A Southern City With Northern Problems — December 1963

• Rolling Stone
  • The Battle of Aspen — October 1, 1970
  • Strange Rumblings in Aztlan — April 29, 1971
  • Memo From the Sports Desk: The So-Called 'Jesus Freak Scare (as Raoul Duke) — November 11, 1971
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (as Raoul Duke) — November 11, 1971
  • Conclusion of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (as Raoul Duke) — November 25, 1971
  • Fear and Loathing in Washington: Is this Trip Necessary? — February 3, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing in Washington: The Million Pound Shithammer — February 3, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire — February 17, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing: The Banshee Screams in Florida. — April 13, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing in Wisconsin — April 27, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing: Late News from Bleak House — May 11, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing: Crank-Time on the Low Road — June 8, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing in California: Traditional Politics with a Vengeance — July 6, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing: In the Eye of the Hurricane — July 20, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing in Miami: Old Bulls Meet the Butcher — August 17, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing in Miami: Nixon bites the bomb — September 28, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing: The Fat City Blues — October 26, 1972
  • Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls — November 9, 1972
  • Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl: No Rest for the Wicked — February 15, 1973
  • Time Warp: Campaign '72 — July 5, 1973
  • Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber — August 2, 1973
  • Fear and Loathing at the Watergate: Mr. Nixon has cashed his check — September 27, 1973
  • Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl — February 28, 1974
  • Boys in the Bag, Fear and Loathing in Washington — July 4, 1974
  • Fear and Loathing in Limbo : The Scum Also Rises — October 10, 1974
  • Saigon Dispatch — May 22, 1975
  • Jimmy Carter and the Great Leap of Faith — June 3, 1976
  • The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat — October 10, 1977
  • Last Tango in Vegas — May 4, 1978
  • Last Tango in Vegas, Pt 2 : The Scum Also Rises — May 18, 1978
  • A Dog Took My Place — 1983
  • The Sequins were Michael's Idea (Fllv Excerpt) — ?
  • The Fall of Saigon — May 9, 1985
  • Victory and Vegeance (Songs of the Doomed Excerpt) — 1990
  • The Taming of the Shrew — October 5, 1991
  • Fear and Loathing in Elko — January 22, 1992
  • Mr. Bill's Neighborhood — September 17, 1992
  • He was a Crook — June 1994
  • Polo Is My Life — December 15, 1994
  • Bill Clinton — ?
  • Hey Rube! I Love You! — May 13, 1999
  • Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004 — November 11, 2004

• Rogue Magazine
  • Big Sur: The Tropic of Henry Miller — October 1961
  • Burial at Sea — December 1961

• Running Magazine
  • The Charge of the Weird Brigade — 1981

• Scanlan's Monthly
  • The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy — March 1970
  • The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved — June 1970
  • Police Chief - The Indispensable Magazine of Law Enforcement — September 1970

• Spider Magazine
  • Collect Telegram from a Mad Dog — October 1965

• Time
  • Doomed Love at the Taco Stand — November 10th, 1997

Bibliography

• The Rum Diary (1959; Simon & Schuster, 1997, ISBN 0-684-85647-6)
• Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (New York, Random House, 1966; Ballantine Books, 1996, ISBN 0-345-41008-4)
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. (New York, Random House, 1972; Vintage, 1989, ISBN 0-679-72419-2; Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-679-78589-2)
• Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. (San Francisco, Straight Arrow Books, 1973; Warner Books, 1985, ISBN 0-446-31364-5)
• Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time. (New York, Summit Books, 1979; Simon & Schuster, 2003, ISBN 0-7432-5045-1)
• The Curse of Lono, illustrated by Ralph Steadman. (Bantam Books, 1983)
• Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s. (New York, Summit Books, 1988; Vintage, 1989, ISBN 0-679-72237-8; Simon & Schuster, 2003, ISBN 0-7432-5044-3)
• Gonzo Papers, Vol. 3: Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream. (New York, Summit Books, 1990; Pocket, 1991, ISBN 0-671-74326-0; Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 2002, ISBN 0-7432-4099-5)
• Screw-jack:and other stories. (Santa Barbara, Neville Press, 1991; Simon & Schuster, 2000, ISBN 0-684-87321-4)
• Gonzo Papers, Vol. 4: Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie. (New York, Random House, 1994; Ballantine Books, 1995, ISBN 0-345-39635-9)
• The Fear and Loathing Letters, Vol. 1: The Proud Highway: The Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955–1967. (New York, Random House, 1997; Ballantine Books, 1998, ISBN 0-345-37796-6)
• Mistah Leary - He Dead (X-Ray Book Company; Hand-sewn/Hand-printed Chapbook, 300 Copies, 1997, No ISBN)
• Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist 1968–1976. (Collection of Papers first appeared in Time magazine, 1997; Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN 0-684-87316-8)
• Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century. (Simon & Schuster; 1st Simon edition, November 1, 2003, ISBN 0-684-87324-9)
• Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness Modern History from the Sports Desk. (Simon & Schuster, August 11, 2004, ISBN 0-684-87319-2)
• GONZO: Photographs By Hunter S. Thompson (AMMO Books, December 4, 2006 ISBN 978-0978607609)
• The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop 1977-2005. (Simon & Schuster, February 1, 2008, ISBN 0-684-87317-6 )

References

1. Whitmer, Peter (1993). When The Going Gets Weird: The Twisted Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (First Edition ed.). Hyperion. pp. 23–27. ISBN 1562828568. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1= and |2= (help)
2. Whitmer, Peter (1993). When The Going Gets Weird: The Twisted Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (First Edition ed.). Hyperion. pp. 39–41. ISBN 1562828568. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1= and |2= (help)
3. Whitmer, Peter (1993). When The Going Gets Weird: The Twisted Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (First Edition ed.). Hyperion. pp. 37–42. ISBN 1562828568. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1= and |2= (help)
4. Whitmer, Peter (1993). When The Going Gets Weird: The Twisted Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (First Edition ed.). Hyperion. pp. 45–63. ISBN 1562828568. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1= and |2= (help)
5. Whitmer, Peter (1993). When The Going Gets Weird: The Twisted Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (First Edition ed.). Hyperion. pp. 62–73. ISBN 1562828568. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1= and |2= (help)
6. Whitmer, Peter (1993). When The Going Gets Weird: The Twisted Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (First Edition ed.). Hyperion. pp. 74–82. ISBN 1562828568. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1= and |2= (help)
7. Rolfsen, Jeff (Feb. 21, 2005) Writer Hunter S. Thompson commits suicide. Air Force Times. (Accessed 22 February 2007.)
8. Thompson, Hunter (2002). Songs of the Doomed (Reprint Edition ed.). Simon and Schuster. pp. 29–32. ISBN 0743240995. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1= and |2= (help)
9. Thompson, Hunter (1998). Douglas Brinkley (ed.). The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (1st ed. ed.). Ballantine Books. p. 139. ISBN 0-345-37796-6. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
10. Thompson, Hunter (1998). Douglas Brinkley (ed.). The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (1st ed. ed.). Ballantine Books. p. 152. ISBN 0-345-37796-6. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
11. Thompson, Hunter (1998). Douglas Brinkley (ed.). The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (1st ed. ed.). Ballantine Books. p. 160. ISBN 0-345-37796-6. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
12. New York State Writers Institute William Kennedy Biography
13. Brinkley, Douglas March (24th, 2005) Last Days at Owl Farm Rolling Stone
14. Louison, Cole This is skag folks, pure skag: Hunter Thompson Buzzsaw Haircut Retrieved Oct. 12th, 2006.
15. Fremont-Smith, Eliot (Feb. 23, 1967) Books of The Times; Motorcycle Misfits—Fiction and Fact. The New York Times, P.33.
16. Thompson, Hunter (2001). Fear and Loathing in America (2nd ed. ed.). Simon & Schuster. p. 784. ISBN 978-0684873169. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
17. Thompson, Hunter (2001). Fear and Loathing in America (2nd ed. ed.). Simon & Schuster. p. 784. ISBN 978-0684873169. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
18. Anson, Robert Sam (Dec. 10th, 1976) Rolling Stone Pt. 2: Hunter Thompson Meets Fear and Loathing Face to Face New Times
19. Martin, Douglas, (March 16, 2006) Bill Cardoso, 68, Editor Who Coined 'Gonzo', Is Dead. The New York Times.
20. Thompson, Hunter (1979). The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1st ed. ed.). Summit Books. pp. 105–109. ISBN 0-671-40046-0. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
21. Woods, Crawford (July 23, 1972) The New York Times Book Review
22. Thompson, Hunter S. (June 15th, 1994) He Was A Crook Rolling Stone
23. Anson, Robert Sam (Dec. 10th, 1976) Rolling Stone Pt. 2: Hunter Thompson Meets Fear and Loathing Face to Face New Times
24. Anson, Robert Sam (Dec. 10th, 1976) Rolling Stone Pt. 2: Hunter Thompson Meets Fear and Loathing Face to Face New Times
25. http://www.gonzo.org/books/cl/
26. Sara Nelson 1996 Interview with Hunter S. Thompson The Book Report
27. http://www.gonzo.org/hst/interviews.asp?ID=10
28. Pitkin County Sheriff's Dept. (March 2, 2005) Incident Report 4391
29. "Football Season Is Over", Rolling Stone Magazine.
30. Steadman, Ralph (Feb. 2005). "Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005". Retrieved Mar. 19, 2005.
31. Elliott, Dan — Associated Press "Thompson's send-off could fill skies"
32. Love, Robert. (May-June 2005) A Technical Guide For Editing Gonzo. Columbia Journalism Review. Accessed 20 Feb. 2007.
33. Cohen, Rich "Gonzo Nights The New York Times April 17, 2005
34. Hart, Stephen Hunter S. Thompson The Opinion Mill Dec 26th, 2005.
35. Clifford, Peggy A love song for Hunter S. Thompson Santa Monica Mirror Retrieved March 28th, 2007.
36. BBC 1978 Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision
37. Glassie, John Interview with Hunter S. Thompson Salon.com. Accessed Monday, Mar 5, 2007
38. Susman, Tina Writer's Death Shocks Friends Newsday Feb 22, 2005
39. Higgins, Matt THE GONZO KING An interview with Hunter S. Thompson High Times Sept. 2nd, 2003.
40. NORML 2007 Aspen Legal Seminar Afternoon Cookout at Owl Farm
41. Far Gone Books Transcript of Hunter S. Thompson Interview
42. Bulger, Adam (March, 9, 2004) Interview with Hunter S. Thompson Freezer Box Magazine
43. O'Regan, Mike Interview with Hunter S. Thompson August, 2002
44. O'Regan, Mike Interview with Hunter S. Thompson August, 2002
45. Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004, Rolling Stone
46. Ferguson, Euan Hunter Gets Captured By The Frame London Observer February 4th, 2007
47. http://www.gonzo.org/hst/hst.asp?ID=0
48. http://www.ugo.com/channels/dvd/features/peteandpete/interview.asp
49. Whitehead, Ron. Hunter S. Thompson, Kentucky Colonel Reykjaviks Magazine March 11, 2005 http://www.grapevine.is/default.aspx?show=paper&part=fullstory&id=281
50. http://www.deregulo.com/facetation/2006/05/lost-hunter-s.html

External links

• "The Curse of Gonzo: Hunter S. Thompson in America," by Alexander Provan, published in Pitch Magazine
• "Shotgun Golf With Bill Murray," Thompson's final column for ESPN.com's's Page 2.
• "Death Of A Comic," An essay critical of Thompson by William F. Buckley, Jr. in The National Review, 1 March, 2005.
• "A Tribute to The Great Gonzo Gonzo," Seattle Times. by Michael A. Stusser, 24 February, 2005.
• "Gonzo In His Life As In His Work," A Tribute to Thompson by Tom Wolfe in The Wall Street Journal, 22 February 2005.
• "Gonzo Nights," an essay by Rich Cohen, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone published in The New York Times, 17 April, 2005.
• "Fear and Earning," a remembrance by screenwriter and novelist Lucian K. Truscott IV, published in The New York Times, 25 February 2005.
• "Bedtime For Gonzo," A Review of Thompson's 2003 Autobiography Kingdom Of Fear, by Jack Schafer in The New York Times Book Review, 23 February 2003.
• Owl Farm Blog- Anita Thompson's blog dealing with her late husband's legacy
• Gonzo Store- Operated by the family of Hunter Thompson; profits go to protect and preserve Thompson's home at Owl Farm.
• "Hunter Thompson: The Minuteman Of The Rockies," Tribute to Thompson by Christopher Hitchens in Slate, 22 February 2005.
• "Hunter's Fear," A Eulogy To Thompson by D.A. Blyler from The Raw Story.
• "Hunter S. Thompson's Counselor," Thompson's Final "Counselor" by D.A. Blyler in The Raw Story.
• "Odi et Amo in Aspen," A Gonzo-style obituary by Kit Boyes on the BBC Web site H2G2, 10 June 2005.
• "All Aboard The Hell-Bound Train: An Interview With Hunter S. Thompson" Claimed as Thompson's Final Interview. By Jess Hopsicker, from The College Crier.
• Where the Buffalo Roam at IMDb
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at IMDb
• The Rum Diary at IMDb
• A collection of articles on Thompson from The Guardian
• Excerpt from "Hunter: The Strange and Savage Live Of Hunter S. Thompson, by E. Jean Carroll, first published in Esquire Magazine, February, 1993
• -Tribute: Spike Magazine
• Article about the funeral with photo of memorial tower
• "Going, Going, Gonzo" A remembrance by journalist Arik Hesseldahl from the Summer 2005 issue of Oregon Quarterly recalling a February, 1991 lecture by Thompson at the University of Oregon.
• A Hero of Our Time: Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005 Obituary from Moscow alternative newspaper The eXile written by John Dolan
• Promo site for Starz Documentary Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride - Hunter S Thompson on Film

Online sources

• American Collection
• BookRags
• An Image Gallery of Thompson's photography

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