Hunter S Thompson Dies

[Pure]

Hunter Thompson, Counterculture Writer, Dies at 67, AP Says

 

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Hunter S. Thompson, the counterculture author of ``Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga'' and ``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,'' has committed suicide, the Associated Press reported. He was 67.

 

Thompson shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen, Colorado, home, AP reported. In a statement to the Aspen Daily News, his son Juan Thompson asked that the author's friends and admirers respect the privacy of his family, AP said.

 

Thompson achieved fame in the 1960s when he wrote for Rolling Stone and invented a subjective and impressionistic style of reporting dubbed ``gonzo'' journalism. His 1972 work ``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' was made into a movie with Johnny Depp playing the role of the author.

 

Recently, Thompson was a columnist for Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN.com. In a February 2003 interview with Salon, Thompson said that America suffered a nervous breakdown after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that has resulted in disastrous restrictions of civil libertie

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=100...nttF00&refer=us

 

Hunter was my favorite authour and a man that bth demanded anddeservedespect

Mot of you wouldknow him bst for writing Fear and oathing in Las vegas

[Pure]

.S. National - AP

 

 

Author Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself

 

4 minutes ago U.S. National - AP

 

 

By CATHERINE TSAI, Associated Press Writer

 

DENVER - Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67.

 

 

AP Photo

 

 

Canadian Press

Slideshow: Author Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself

 

 

 

Related Links

• Hunter S. Thompson (Yahoo! Directory)

 

 

 

"Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News.

 

 

Pitkin County Sheriff officials confirmed to The Associated Press that Thompson had died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Thompson's wife, Anita, was not home at the time.

 

 

Besides the 1972 drug-hazed 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 with pioneering New Journalism — or, as he dubbed it, "gonzo journalism" — in which the writer made himself an essential component of the story. Much of his earliest work appeared in Rolling Stone magazine.

 

 

"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist," Thompson told the AP 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."

 

 

An acute observer of the decadence and depravity in American life, Thompson also wrote such collections "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."

 

 

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, Deborah Fuller, trying to chase a bear off his property.

 

 

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."

[dwyndorf]

We were somewhere around Barstow in the middle of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.....

 

Oh my god, this is very sad and unexpected news. Hunter was a legend and will be dearly missed.

 

dywndorf

[Pickle]

What a terrible shame, from the little i have heard about him (i never knew who he was untill i saw Pure's sig) he had a very deep perspective, who knows what it was he saw that brought him to this.

 

One thing's for certain, he left a mark and the shortness of any life can't take that away.

[Pure]

Hunter was an absolute politcal Junkie and it wouldn't suprise me if what has happened in the last two elections has not helped to push him over the edge , (pure speculation ofcourse but it was the type of person he was ) although suiside didn't seem like a very hunter thing to do which is why I was so shocked wehen I read this

[jonx]

This is just awful.

 

I really need to find out why because this to me is devastating. A hero of mine, so strong and uncompromising it is very hard to understand how he could do this.

 

A sad end to an amazing life.

[Rheinpirat]

How sad :-(

 

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is seriously among the best drug movies ever. I really didn't know that he passed away.

 

For whatever reasons he decided to do so, "though it be madness, there is method in it" (Hamlet/ Shakespeare).

 

 

Rest in Peace

[Pure]

if you read hunters books and understoond hunter a bit you will soon relise that they will NEVER reveale if there was a note left or what it said

 

a few people have mentioned the fact that he felt he had made him impact ( which he had ) and it was time to follow in the steps of his mentor " a certain famous autour" who I also belive ended his life the same way

 

Hunter is one of those peopel that is goign to be remembered 100 years from now buy those who respect good literature and brutal honesty

 

Rest in Peace Hunter