Hunter S. Thompson

At 67 years old, Hunter S. Thompson has this physical status:

Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author who was a pioneer of the gonzo journalism movement, as well as the founder of the gonzo journalism movement.

He came to fame with the publication of Hell's Angels (1967), a book in which he spent a year with the Hell's Angels motorcycle club in order to write a first-hand account of the lives and experiences of its members. "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" for Scanlan's Monthly in 1970, both raised his profile and established him as a writer with counterculture credibility.

It also put him on a path to establish his own sub-genre of New Journalism, which he referred to as "Gonzo," which was essentially a continuing experiment in which the writer becomes both a central figure and also a participant in the events of the story. Thompson is best known for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971), a book that was first serialized in Rolling Stone in which he grapples with the ramifications of the 1960s counterculture movement.

It was shot on film twice, briefly in Where the Buffalo Roam starring Bill Murray as Thompson in 1980, and in 1998, by director Terry Gilliam in a film starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro.

Duke, a Doonesbury cartoon character who was modeled after Thompson, pens an essay titled "My shoplifting conviction" titled "Fear and Loathing at Macy's Menswear," a reference to Thompson's book. Thompson, who was politically aware, attempted unsuccessfully for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, on the Freak Power ticket in 1970.

Richard Nixon was well-known for his his dislike of him, who argued for "the dark, venal, and inexorably violent face of the American character."

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 covered Nixon's 1972 reelection bid for Rolling Stone and later collected the stories in book form as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.' Thompson's output in the 1970s plummeted as he grappled with fame's repercussions, and he complained that he could no longer report on events as he was too easily recognized.

He was also known for his lifelong use of alcohol and illegal drugs, his obsession with firearms, and his skepticism of authoritarianism.

"I hate to promote heroin, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone," the narrator said, "but they've always worked for me." Thompson died at the age of 67 after a series of health issues.

In accordance with his wishes, his ashes were fired out of a cannon at a funeral sponsored by his buddy Johnny Depp and attended by colleagues, including then-Senator John Kerry and Jack Nicholson.

"The authentic voice of Thompson has been revealed to be that of an American moralist," Hari Kunzru wrote. "One of American moralist... one who often dresses himself ugly to mask the ugliness he sees around him."

Early life

Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the first of three sons of Virginia Davison Ray (1908, Springfield, Kentucky) and Jack Robert Thompson (September 4, 1952, Louisville, Kentucky), a public insurance adjuster and World War I soldier. His parents were welcomed by a friend from Jack's fraternity at the University of Kentucky in September 1934 and married on November 2, 1935. Thompson's first name, Hunter, came from an ancestor on his mother's side, the Scottish surgeon John Hunter, according to Guardian journalist Nicholas Lezard. Hunter Stockton's first and middle name, according to his maternal grandparents, Prestly Stockton Ray and Lucille Hunter, was attributed to him in a more specific way.

Thompson's family moved in The Highlands, a wealthy Cherokee Triangle neighborhood, in December 1943. Thompson's father died of myasthenia gravis at the age of 58 on July 3, 1952, when he was 14 years old. Hunter and his brothers were raised by their mother. Following her husband's death, Virginia served as a librarian to help her children and was described as a "heavy drinker" after her husband's death.

Thompson, who was interested in sports and athletically inclined from a young age, co-founded the Hawks Athletic Club while attending the United Nations General Assembly. Bloom Elementary School was given the opportunity to join Castlewood Athletic Club for youth, which prepared them for high-school athletics. In the end, he never joined a high school sports team.

Thompson attended the United Nations General Assembly. Bloom Elementary School, Highland Middle School, and Atherton High School were all schools before moving to Louisville Male High School in fall 1952. He was accepted as a member of the Athenaeum Literary Association, a school-sponsored literary and social club that dates back to 1862, and also in 1952. At the time, it was members from Louisville's upper-class families, as well as Porter Bibb, who became the first publisher of Rolling Stone at Thompson's behest. Thompson read and adored J. P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man at this time.

Thompson, a member of Athenaeum, contributed to and helped produce the club's yearbook The Spectator. Thompson was banned from serving in jail in 1955 for unlawful conduct. Thompson was sentenced to 60 days in Jefferson County Jail after being in a car with the perpetrator. He served 31 days in the United States Air Force a week after being released. Although he was in jail, the school superintendent refused to sit his high-school final examinations because he was unable to graduate.

Thompson completed basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, before moving to Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Illinois, where he studied electronics. He wanted to become an aviator, but the Air Force's aviation-cadet program turned down his application. He moved to Eglin Air Force Base near Fort Walton Beach, Florida, in 1956. He took evening classes at Florida State University when he was stationed at Eglin. He landed his first professional writing position as the sports editor of The Command Courier in Eglin by shaming his job experience. Thompson, a sports reporter, followed the Eglin Eagles football team around the country, reporting the team's games. He began writing a sports column for The Playground News, a local newspaper in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, in early 1957. Since Air Force rules barred outside work, his name did not appear on the column.

His commanding officer recommended him for an early honorable discharge in 1958, as an airman first class. "In summary, this airman, though skilled, will not be guided by law," Colonel William S. Evans, the head of information services, wrote to the Eglin staff office. "His rebel and sarcastic attitude sometimes rubs off on other airmen employees."

Thompson spent time in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, before relocating to New York City. He audited several courses at the Columbia University School of General Studies. During this time, he worked briefly for Time as a copy boy for $51 a week. At work, he typed out portions of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms in order to discover the authors' rhythms and writing styles. In 1959, Time punished him for insubordination. He began working as a reporter for The Middletown Daily Record in Middletown, New York, later that year. He was kicked from his career after destroying an office candy machine and arguing with the restaurant's owner, who happened to be an advertiser with the paper.

Thompson left San Juan, Puerto Rico, to work with El Sportivo, a sports newspaper, which ceased operations soon after his arrival. Thompson tried to work for The San Juan Star, but its managing editor, William J. Kennedy, turned him down. Nevertheless, the two girls became best friends. Thompson, the demise of El Sportivo, served as a stringer for the New York Herald Tribune and a few other stateside newspapers on Caribbean affairs, with Kennedy as his editor.

Thompson travelled to mainland California and later lived in Big Sur, where he worked as a security guard and caretaker at Slates Hot Springs for eight months before the Esalen Institute was established in 1961. Big Sur was both a Beat outpost and home of Henry Miller and Dennis Murphy (screenwriter), both of whom Thompson admired at the time. He also wrote his first magazine article about Big Sur's artisan and bohemian heritage. Thompson wrote two books, Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary, and submitted several short stories to publishers during this period, with no success. The Rum Diary, based on Thompson's Puerto Rico experience, was not released until 1998.

Thompson was sent by the Dow Jones-owned weekly newspaper, the National Observer, to South America for a year in May 1962. He spent several months in Brazil as a reporter for the Brazil Herald, Brazil's only English-language daily, published in Rio de Janeiro. Sandra Dawn Conklin Thompson (or Sandy Conklin Thompson, later Sondi Wright) later joined him in Rio. They married on May 19, 1963, just after returning to the United States, and spent a short time in Aspen, Colorado. When Sandy and her family migrated to Glen Ellen, California, they were eight months pregnant. Juan Fitzgerald Thompson Thompson Thompson's uncle was born on March 23, 1964.

Thompson continued to write for the National Observer on a variety of domestic topics. One man told of his 1964 trip to Ketchum, Idaho, to look at Ernest Hemingway's suicide as a result. When he was there, he took two elk antlers hanging above Hemingway's cabin's front door. Thompson departed San Francisco later this year, where he appeared at the 1964 GOP Convention at the Cow Palace. Thompson strained his ties with the Observer after his editor refused to publish his review of Tom Wolfe's 1965 essay-collection The Kandy-Flake Streamline Baby. He soon embedded himself in the local drug and hippie movement, and began writing for the Berkeley underground newspaper Spider.

Carey McWilliams, the Nation's editor, had Thompson interview Thompson in 1965 to write a piece about the Hells Angels motorcycle club in California. Thompson was living in a house in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, where the Hells Angels lived across the street from the Grateful Dead. His paper appeared in May 17, 1965, after which he received several book offers and spent the next year living and riding with the club. The bikers knew that Thompson was exploiting them for personal gain and demanded a cut of his earnings, but the bikers soon discovered that it was ended. Thompson was beaten (or "stomping") as the Angels referred to it, as a result of an altercation at a party. In 1966, Random House published The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, a hardcover book by Hell's Angels, and Thompson's struggle against the Angels was well-marketed. An encounter between Thompson and Hells Angel Skip Workman was even broadcast live on CBC Television ahead of a live studio audience.

According to a New York Times review, the Hells Angels "not so much as dropouts from society but as complete misfits, intellectually, and educationally ineffective to reap the benefits that the modern social order affords." Thompson was also praised as a "spirited, witty, and original writer," the reviewer said of him; his prose crackles like motorcycle exhaust.

Thompson appeared on the book's publication on February 20, 1967, episode of To Tell The Truth, receiving all four votes from the panel members.

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