Pubdate: Mon, 21 Feb 2005
Source: Porterville Recorder (CA)
Copyright: 2005 The Porterville Recorder
Contact:  http://www.portervillerecorder.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2887
Author: Robert Weller
Note: Associated Press writer John Rogers in Los Angeles contributed to 
this report.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Hunter+S.+Thompson (Hunter S. Thompson)

WRITER HUNTER S. THOMPSON KILLS HIMSELF

ASPEN, Colo. - Hunter S. Thompson, the hard-living writer who inserted 
himself into his accounts of America's underbelly and popularized a 
first-person form of journalism in books such as "Fear and Loathing in Las 
Vegas," has committed suicide.

Thompson was found dead Sunday in his Aspen-area home of an apparent 
self-inflicted gunshot wound, sheriff's officials said. He was 67. 
Thompson's wife, Anita, had gone out before the shooting and was not home 
at the time.

Besides the 1972 classic about Thompson's visit to Las Vegas, he also wrote 
"Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72." The central character in 
those wild, sprawling satires was "Dr. Thompson," a snarling, drug- and 
alcohol-crazed observer and participant.

Thompson is credited alongside Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese with helping 
pioneer New Journalism _ or, as he dubbed it, "gonzo journalism" _ in which 
the writer made himself an essential component of the story.

Thompson, whose early writings mostly appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, 
often portrayed himself as wildly intoxicated as he reported on such 
historic figures as Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

"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."

Thompson also wrote such collections as "Generation of Swine" and "Songs of 
the Doomed." His first ever novel, "The Rum Diary," written in 1959, was 
first published in 1998.

Thompson was a counterculture icon at the height of the Watergate era, and 
once said Richard Nixon represented "that dark, venal, and incurably 
violent side of the American character."

Thompson also was the model for Garry Trudeau's balding "Uncle Duke" in the 
comic strip "Doonesbury" and was portrayed on screen by Johnny Depp in a 
film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

That book, perhaps Thompson's most famous, begins: "We were somewhere 
around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

Other books include "The Great Shark Hunt," "Hell's Angels" and "The Proud 
Highway." His most recent effort was "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush 
Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness."

"He may have died relatively young but he made up for it in quality if not 
quantity of years," Paul Krassner, the veteran radical journalist and one 
of Thompson's former editors, told The Associated Press by phone from his 
Southern California home.

"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," quipped 
Krassner, founder of the leftist publication The Realist and co-founder of 
the Youth International (YIPPIE) party.

"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 behavior in order to share his talent with their readers."

The writer's compound in Woody Creek, not far from Aspen, was almost as 
legendary as Thompson. He prized peacocks and weapons; in 2000, he 
accidentally shot and slightly wounded his assistant trying to chase a bear 
off his property.

He also is survived by his son, Juan Thompson.

Born July 18, 1937, in Kentucky, Hunter Stocton Thompson served two years 
in the Air Force, where he was a newspaper sports editor. He later became a 
proud member of the National Rifle Association and almost was elected 
sheriff in Aspen in 1970 under the Freak Power Party banner.

Thompson's heyday came in the 1970s, when his larger-than-life persona was 
gobbled up by magazines. His pieces were of legendary length and so was his 
appetite for adventure and trouble; his purported fights with Rolling Stone 
editor Jann Wenner were rumored in many cases to hinge on expense accounts 
for stories that didn't materialize.

It was the content that raised eyebrows and tempers. His book on the 1972 
presidential campaign involving, among others, Edmund Muskie, Hubert 
Humphrey and Nixon was famous for its scathing opinion.

Working for Muskie, Thompson wrote, "was something like being locked in a 
rolling box car with a vicious 200-pound water rat." Nixon and his "Barbie 
doll" family were "America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks 
for the werewolf in us."

Humphrey? Of him, Thompson wrote: "There is no way to grasp what a shallow, 
contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until 
you've followed him around for a while."

The approach won him praise among the masses as well as critical acclaim. 
Writing in The New York Times in 1973, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt worried 
Thompson might someday "lapse into good taste."

"That would be a shame, for while he doesn't see America as Grandma Moses 
depicted it, or the way they painted it for us in civics class, he does in 
his own mad way betray a profound democratic concern for the polity," he 
wrote. "And in its own mad way, it's damned refreshing."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake