'Gonzo' writer Hunter S. Thompson kills himself
CTV.ca News Staff
Hunter S. Thompson, the prominent countercultural writer who personified "gonzo journalism," has been found dead.
Thompson, 67, fatally shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen-area home, his only son Juan Thompson said. His wife Anita was not home at the time. Juan found the body.
"Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News.
Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, who was a personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death to the local newspaper.
Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1937. After a delinquent youth, he joined the Air Force (as a condition of parole) where he became exposed to writing by working for an airbase paper.
A man with an appetite for alcohol, drugs and life, he left this as his signature quote: "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
Thompson is credited with pioneering a new form of journalism which he dubbed, "gonzo journalism," in which the writer was a central character.
Many of Thompson's non-fiction stories and books were based on his own adventures. In Hells Angels, published in 1966, he recounted how he was "stomped" by members of the infamous motorcycle gang that he had been living and riding with.
"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist," Thompson told the Associated Press in 2003.
"You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it."
Much of his earlier work appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine, a distinctly countercultural publication in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Titles such as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas were considered classics of the gonzo genre.
The latter was made into a 1998 movie starring Johnny Depp. Thompson was also immortalized in the film Where The Buffalo Roam, starring Bill Murray.
Thompson was also the basis for the "Uncle Duke" character in the Doonesbury comic strip drawn by Garry Trudeau.
The veteran radical journalist, Paul Krassner, who was also one of Thompson's former editors told AP that: "he may have died relatively young but he made up for it in quality if not quantity of years."
"It was hard to say sometimes whether he was being provocative for its own sake or if he was just being drunk and stoned and irresponsible,'' said Krassner.
"But every editor that I know, myself included, was willing to accept a certain prima donna journalism in the demands he would make to cover a particular story,'' he said. "They were willing to risk all of his irresponsible behaviour in order to share his talent with their readers."
His most recent efforts were Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness.
In 1970, he ran for sheriff of Pitkin County in Colorado on the Freak Power ticket and almost won.
