Dr. Hunter Stockton Thompson (1937-2005)
Journalist, author, activist
Ten years since the bastard offed himself, the bastard. On his worst days, which were more often than not, his articles had the acrid smell of a hotel hangover, but a strange energy surged in the room, always coiled, ready to unleash some comment, some whip-smart metaphor, that had been trapped down in his amygdala, liberated only by the exact mix of alcohol and drugs that held the key to the cell in which that thought languished.
Hunter Thompson had seven good years in journalism, from 1967 to 1974. A stringer for a variety of papers and magazines after he managed, improbably, an honorable discharge from the Air Force (which he got into to straighten up after a fraught high school career ending when he shot all the boats in a marina below the waterline; he had a thing for boats, about which more anon). He spent a year riding with the Hells Angels; he got tight with them- both ways. When they found out he was writing a book, like the sailors in John Collier’s “Bottle Party”- who bought a bottle that didn’t hold a genie, just a schlub called Franklin Fletcher, “their disappointment knew no bounds, and they used him with the utmost barbarity.” They demanded a cut of the royalties, too.
The Hells Angels book- they don’ need no f***ing apostrophes, man- put Thompson on the map as the inventor of gonzo journalism, a reporter who put himself, often disastrously, at the center of the action he was covering. He followed it with 1971’s Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, and then Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, a counterculture counterpoint to Theodore H. White’s “The Making of the President” series.
By then Thompson was The National Affairs Desk at Rolling Stone, serializing his books and raising hell with deadlines and publisher Jann Wenner’s blood pressure. He’d also become such a celebrity it was harder to get inside his subjects’ circles the way true gonzo required, and had an expense account so epic it was possible to stay high as a satellite pretty much 24/7. His work suffered; in 1974 he not only missed his deadline for Ali’s Africa fight but the fight itself.
He ran for sheriff of Pitkin County Colorado, in 1970, on the Freak Power ticket. A frantic Aspen establishment cut a deal: the Republican candidate for sheriff withdrew; so did a Democrat running for county commissioner. Honor was satisfied, the anti-freak vote coalesced. Thompson lost with 44% of the vote.
Thompson spent the next quarter century as a character, freelancing for publications that found places for his increasingly dated view of the world. Garry Trudeau satirized for years as Uncle Duke in Doonesbury; Thompson said if he ever met Trudeau, he’d set him on fire.
Early on, during his breakthrough years at a short lived magazine called Scanlan’s, he was sent, with artist-collaborator Ralph Steadman, to cover the America’s Cup Race in Newport; he published a hilarious account that was less about the race and more about what he considered the hubris of the Australian team, and how he and Steadman stole a rubber dinghy to row out and paint “F*** the Pope just above the waterline. The shaking ball in the paint can gave them away; a chaotic escape followed; and it was days before Thompson fod Steadman, barefoot, cursing under his breath, pacing in the lobby of a New York hotel. He ended his career as a sports columnist for ESPN.
Frustrated by chronic health problems and who knows what the hell else, Thompson committed suicide in 2005. He was 67. His funeral was staged by his friend, the actor Johnny Depp; the mourners of this ultimate anti establishment character included a raft of celebrities; two past presidential nominees, and two correspondents from Sixty Minutes. His ashes were packed into a sannon atop a 150-foot tower, and blown into a very, very low earth orbit
“When the going gets weird,” Hunter S. Thompson wrote, “the weird turn pro.”
Related sites:
Matthew Hahn, “Writing on the Wall: An Interview With Hunter S. Thompson,” The Atlantic, August 26, 1997
“The Art of Journalism, No. 1”, Paris Review, No. 156, Fall, 2000
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