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Hunter S. Thompson dead in apparent suicide
Last Updated Tue, 22 Feb 2005 13:23:45 EST
CBC Arts
ASPEN, COLO. - Hunter S. Thompson's apparent suicide shocked many of his neighbours, but one of his friends said the writer had been in a lot of pain from a broken leg and hip surgery.
"I wasn't surprised," said George Stranahan, a former owner of the Woody Creek Tavern in Aspen, Colo., one of Thompson's favorite hangouts.
"I never expected Hunter to die in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of him," he told the Associated Press on Monday. Another neighbour who knew Thompson, however, said he was surprised at the manner of his death.
Hunter S. Thompson
RELATED STORY: Hunter S. Thompson dies
Thompson, 68, probably most famous for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1971), is credited with pioneering "gonzo" journalism.
The celebrated book is the fictionalized first-person account of a protagonist's drug-addled road trips with his "Samoan attorney" to cover a desert road race in Las Vegas. At their hotel, they stumble upon a police convention and mayhem ensues.
In this highly subjective and over-the-top style – "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold..." – the author and his opinions become essential parts of the narrative.
Died from gunshot wound
Thompson was found dead in his home Sunday night from a gunshot wound that appeared to be self-inflicted, the local Sheriff's Department said.
Authorities refused to say whether a note was found but a family statement said Thompson had taken his own life. His adult son, Juan, found his body Sunday evening.
Investigators recovered the weapon, a .45-calibre handgun. An autopsy was planned. Police said the investigation was continuing but declined to elaborate.
Thompson first vaulted to fame with his non-fiction book Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966) – after riding with the bikers for a year to gather material.
Like method acting, sixties "New Journalism" as practiced by Thompson and the likes of Tom Wolfe, required the protagonist's full immersion in his subject.
Chronicler of drug culture
To portray the purported element of lunacy at the heart of America, Thompson appeared to be saying, it required the author to consume inordinate amount of illicit substances.
In his car's trunk, according to the narrator of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "Two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers. ...A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls."
For Thompson, and his fictionalised characters, it is as if the drugs acted as a filter through which to truly behold and comment on, some of the more outrageous truths about the world.
Wrote for Rolling Stone
Thompson had a penchant for taking a story assignment and turning it on its head, outraging editors in the process, although they would often forgive him later when he responded with something much better than what they had originally envisioned.
Many of his articles were written for Rolling Stone magazine, with whose editor Jann Wenner Thompson had legendary fights about expense accounts for stories that never materialized.
Wenner on Monday mourned Thompson's death. "Today is a very sad day for Rolling Stone. Hunter is a part of our DNA," Wenner said. "I feel I've lost a brother in arms. He lived longer than any of us expected already."
Thompson, whose other most successful work was Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (1973) – about the 1972 presidential election campaign between Richard Nixon and George McGovern – cultivated his image of counterculture hard living to the end.
Though he latterly lived in relative seclusion, from time to time, journalistic accounts would surface of lengthy, liquid interviews at his Rockies home, during which Thompson held forth on his fascination for guns and his contempt for American politicians.
Equated Bush government with KKK
A critic of Thompson's work once said he feared the author might someday lose his edge and "lapse into good taste." Judging by many of his comments, he rarely did.
He once suggested former President Bush should be brutally stomped by voters. He called former Vice President Hubert Humphrey "a hopelessly dishonest old hack," compared the late Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine to a "vicious 200-pound river rat" and frequently dismissed former President Clinton as a white-trash hillbilly.
In his memoir, Kingdom of Fear (2003), he described the members of the current Bush administration: "They are the racists and hate mongers among us – they are the Ku Klux Klan."
"He had more to say about what was wrong with America than George W. Bush can ever tell us about what is right," an admiring fellow writer, Norman Mailer, said on Monday.
Born in 1937, or 1939
Thompson was born – depending on his mood – in 1937 or 1939, in Louisville, Ky.
He served in the U.S. Air Force for a short time as a young man, then began working, first as a sports reporter and then as a freelance journalist.
He rubbed shoulders with many famous counterculture figures in the 1960s, from beat poet Allen Ginsberg to author and LSD enthusiast Ken Kesey.
His life inspired a number of films, including Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) with Bill Murray playing Thompson and British director Terry Gilliam's take on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), starring Johnny Depp as the Thompson character, Raoul Duke.
He was also the model for the character "Duke" in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury.
Thompson's most recent book was Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness (2004).
'Rotten' medical year
Neighbours in Thompson's Woody Creek neighbourhood said a broken leg had recently kept him from going out as often as in the past, including to his favourite tavern.
Mike Cleverly, a longtime friend, spent Friday night watching a basketball game on TV with Thompson. He said Thompson was clearly hobbled by the broken leg.
"Medically speaking, he's had a rotten year," he said. But he added: "He's the last person in the world I would have expected to kill himself. I would have been less surprised if he had shot me."
Last Updated Tue, 22 Feb 2005 13:23:45 EST
CBC Arts
ASPEN, COLO. - Hunter S. Thompson's apparent suicide shocked many of his neighbours, but one of his friends said the writer had been in a lot of pain from a broken leg and hip surgery.
"I wasn't surprised," said George Stranahan, a former owner of the Woody Creek Tavern in Aspen, Colo., one of Thompson's favorite hangouts.
"I never expected Hunter to die in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of him," he told the Associated Press on Monday. Another neighbour who knew Thompson, however, said he was surprised at the manner of his death.
Hunter S. Thompson
RELATED STORY: Hunter S. Thompson dies
Thompson, 68, probably most famous for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1971), is credited with pioneering "gonzo" journalism.
The celebrated book is the fictionalized first-person account of a protagonist's drug-addled road trips with his "Samoan attorney" to cover a desert road race in Las Vegas. At their hotel, they stumble upon a police convention and mayhem ensues.
In this highly subjective and over-the-top style – "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold..." – the author and his opinions become essential parts of the narrative.
Died from gunshot wound
Thompson was found dead in his home Sunday night from a gunshot wound that appeared to be self-inflicted, the local Sheriff's Department said.
Authorities refused to say whether a note was found but a family statement said Thompson had taken his own life. His adult son, Juan, found his body Sunday evening.
Investigators recovered the weapon, a .45-calibre handgun. An autopsy was planned. Police said the investigation was continuing but declined to elaborate.
Thompson first vaulted to fame with his non-fiction book Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966) – after riding with the bikers for a year to gather material.
Like method acting, sixties "New Journalism" as practiced by Thompson and the likes of Tom Wolfe, required the protagonist's full immersion in his subject.
Chronicler of drug culture
To portray the purported element of lunacy at the heart of America, Thompson appeared to be saying, it required the author to consume inordinate amount of illicit substances.
In his car's trunk, according to the narrator of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "Two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers. ...A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls."
For Thompson, and his fictionalised characters, it is as if the drugs acted as a filter through which to truly behold and comment on, some of the more outrageous truths about the world.
Wrote for Rolling Stone
Thompson had a penchant for taking a story assignment and turning it on its head, outraging editors in the process, although they would often forgive him later when he responded with something much better than what they had originally envisioned.
Many of his articles were written for Rolling Stone magazine, with whose editor Jann Wenner Thompson had legendary fights about expense accounts for stories that never materialized.
Wenner on Monday mourned Thompson's death. "Today is a very sad day for Rolling Stone. Hunter is a part of our DNA," Wenner said. "I feel I've lost a brother in arms. He lived longer than any of us expected already."
Thompson, whose other most successful work was Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (1973) – about the 1972 presidential election campaign between Richard Nixon and George McGovern – cultivated his image of counterculture hard living to the end.
Though he latterly lived in relative seclusion, from time to time, journalistic accounts would surface of lengthy, liquid interviews at his Rockies home, during which Thompson held forth on his fascination for guns and his contempt for American politicians.
Equated Bush government with KKK
A critic of Thompson's work once said he feared the author might someday lose his edge and "lapse into good taste." Judging by many of his comments, he rarely did.
He once suggested former President Bush should be brutally stomped by voters. He called former Vice President Hubert Humphrey "a hopelessly dishonest old hack," compared the late Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine to a "vicious 200-pound river rat" and frequently dismissed former President Clinton as a white-trash hillbilly.
In his memoir, Kingdom of Fear (2003), he described the members of the current Bush administration: "They are the racists and hate mongers among us – they are the Ku Klux Klan."
"He had more to say about what was wrong with America than George W. Bush can ever tell us about what is right," an admiring fellow writer, Norman Mailer, said on Monday.
Born in 1937, or 1939
Thompson was born – depending on his mood – in 1937 or 1939, in Louisville, Ky.
He served in the U.S. Air Force for a short time as a young man, then began working, first as a sports reporter and then as a freelance journalist.
He rubbed shoulders with many famous counterculture figures in the 1960s, from beat poet Allen Ginsberg to author and LSD enthusiast Ken Kesey.
His life inspired a number of films, including Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) with Bill Murray playing Thompson and British director Terry Gilliam's take on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), starring Johnny Depp as the Thompson character, Raoul Duke.
He was also the model for the character "Duke" in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury.
Thompson's most recent book was Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness (2004).
'Rotten' medical year
Neighbours in Thompson's Woody Creek neighbourhood said a broken leg had recently kept him from going out as often as in the past, including to his favourite tavern.
Mike Cleverly, a longtime friend, spent Friday night watching a basketball game on TV with Thompson. He said Thompson was clearly hobbled by the broken leg.
"Medically speaking, he's had a rotten year," he said. But he added: "He's the last person in the world I would have expected to kill himself. I would have been less surprised if he had shot me."
