Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson | |
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The Rum Diary (1998) | |
Spouse |
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Children | 1 |
Signature | |
Military career | |
Allegiance | United States |
Branch | United States Air Force |
Service years | 1955–58 |
Rank | Airman first class |
Service number | AF 15546879 |
Unit | Strategic Air Command, Office of Information Services |
Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author. He rose to prominence with the publication of
Thompson remains best known for
Thompson ran unsuccessfully for
Starting in the mid-1970s, Thompson's output declined, as he struggled with the consequences of fame and substance abuse, and failed to complete several high-profile assignments for Rolling Stone. For much of the late 1980s and early 1990s, he worked as a columnist for the
Thompson was known for his lifelong use of alcohol and illegal drugs, his love of
Early life
Thompson was born into a middle-class family in
In December 1943, when Thompson was six years old, the family settled in the affluent
Education
Interested in sports and athletically inclined from a young age, Thompson co-founded the Hawks Athletic Club while attending
Thompson attended I.N. Bloom Elementary School,
As an Athenaeum member, Thompson contributed articles to and helped produce the club's yearbook The Spectator until the group ejected Thompson in 1955 for criminal activity.[6] Charged as an accessory to robbery after being in a car with the perpetrator, Thompson was sentenced to 60 days in Kentucky's Jefferson County Jail. He served 31 days, and during his incarceration, was refused permission to take final exams, preventing his graduation.[14] Upon release, he enlisted in the United States Air Force.[6]
Military service
Thompson completed
In 1958, while he was an
Early journalism career
After leaving the Air Force, Thompson worked as sports editor for a newspaper in
In 1960, Thompson moved to
After returning to mainland United States in 1961, Thompson visited San Francisco and eventually lived in Big Sur, where he spent eight months as security guard and caretaker at Slates Hot Springs, just before it became the Esalen Institute. At the time, Big Sur was a Beat outpost and home of Henry Miller and the screenwriter Dennis Murphy, both of whom Thompson admired. During this period, he published his first magazine feature in Rogue about the artisan and bohemian culture of Big Sur and worked on The Rum Diary. He managed to publish one short story, "Burial at Sea," which also appeared in Rogue. It was his first piece of published fiction.[23] The Rum Diary, based on Thompson's experiences in Puerto Rico, was finally published in 1998 and in 2011 was adapted as a motion picture.
In May 1962, Thompson traveled to South America for a year as a correspondent for the
Thompson continued to write for the National Observer on an array of domestic subjects during the early 60s. One story told of his 1964 visit to
Hell's Angels
In 1965,
A
Late 1960s
Following the success of Hell's Angels, Thompson sold stories to several national magazines, including
In 1967, shortly before the
Later that year, Thompson and his family moved back to Colorado and rented a house in
In early 1968, Thompson signed the "
Thompson was impressed by Rolling Stone magazine's coverage of the disastrous Altamont Free Concert in December 1969. After writing to Rolling Stone's editor, Jann Wenner, Thompson accepted an invitation to submit his work to the magazine, which soon became his primary outlet.[42]
Middle years
Aspen sheriff campaign
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In 1970, Thompson ran for
With polls showing him with a slight lead in a three-way race, Thompson appeared at Rolling Stone magazine headquarters in San Francisco with a six-pack of beer in hand, and declared to editor Jann Wenner that he was about to be elected sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, and wished to write about the "Freak Power" movement.[44] "The Battle of Aspen" was Thompson's first feature for the magazine carrying the byline "By: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (Candidate for Sheriff)". (Thompson's "Dr" certification was obtained from a mail-order church while he was in San Francisco in the sixties.) Despite the publicity, Thompson lost the election. While carrying the city of Aspen, he garnered only 44% of the county-wide vote in what had become, after the withdrawal of the Republican candidate, a two-way race. Thompson later said that the Rolling Stone article mobilized more opposition to the Freak Power ticket than supporters.[45] The episode was the subject of the 2020 documentary film Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb. Writing of the episode more than fifty years later, Wenner wrote "Aspen didn't get a new sheriff, but I realized that, in Hunter, I had a fellow traveller."[46]
Birth of Gonzo
Also in 1970, Thompson wrote an article entitled "
Thompson and Steadman collaborated regularly after that. Although it was not widely read, the article was the first to use the techniques of Gonzo journalism, a style Thompson later employed in almost every literary endeavor. The manic first-person subjectivity of the story was reportedly the result of sheer desperation; he was facing a looming deadline and started sending the magazine pages ripped out of his notebook.
The first use of the word "Gonzo" to describe Thompson's work is credited to the journalist
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The book for which Thompson gained most of his fame began during the research for "
What was to be a short caption quickly grew into something else entirely. Thompson first submitted to Sports Illustrated a manuscript of 2,500 words, which was, as he later wrote, "aggressively rejected." Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner liked "the first 20 or so jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication — which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it", Thompson wrote.[48] Wenner, describing his first impression of it years later, called it "Sharp and insane."[46]
To develop the story, Thompson and Acosta returned to Las Vegas to attend a drug enforcement conference. The two trips became the basis for "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," which
Coming to terms with the failure of the 1960s countercultural movement is a major theme of the novel, and the book was greeted with considerable critical acclaim. The New York Times praised it as "the best book yet written on the decade of dope".[49] "The Vegas Book", as Thompson referred to it, was a mainstream success and introduced his Gonzo journalism techniques to a wide public.
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
In 1971 Wenner agreed to assign Thompson to cover the
Wenner had decided that Rolling Stone would cover the presidential election in part because of the passage in 1971 of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which lowered the legal voting age from 21 to 18, making a large part of its mostly young readership suddenly eligible to vote. "We intended to politicize our generation and wrest this stirring force away from the fake politics of the revolutionary," Wenner wrote in his memoirs of the plan to collaborate with Thompson.[46]
Thompson's first campaign piece for Rolling Stone appeared as Fear and Loathing in Washington: Is This Trip Really Necessary? in the January 6, 1972, issue. The 14th and final installment appeared in the November 9 issue under the headline Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls....[50]
Throughout the year, Thompson traveled with candidates running in the 1972 Democratic Party presidential primaries for the right to challenge the incumbent president, Republican Richard Nixon in the general election. Thompson's coverage focused mainly on Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, the early leader, and former vice-president Hubert Humphrey. Thompson supported McGovern and wrote critical coverage of the rival campaigns.
In the April 13 installment entitled Fear and Loathing: The Banshee Screams in Florida, Thompson relates how someone having apparently lifted his press credential, terrorized Muskie and his staff on a campaign train. The incident was later revealed to be an elaborate prank. In another installment, Thompson relates rumors — rumors he later admitted he had originated — that Muskie had become addicted to the psychoactive drug Ibogaine. The story damaged Muskie's reputation and played a role in his loss of the nomination to McGovern. In another, he tracked down McGovern in a restroom in order to get a reaction quote after a senator from Iowa had switched his endorsement from McGovern to Muskie.
The series, and later, the book were both praised for breaking boundaries with a new approach to political journalism. The literary critic Morris Dickstein, wrote that Thompson had learned to "approximate the effect of mind-blasting drugs in his prose style," and that he "recorded the nuts and bolts of a presidential campaign with all the contempt and incredulity that other reporters must feel but censor out."[51]
Frank Mankiewicz, McGovern's campaign director, often described it as the "most accurate and least factual" account of the 1972 campaign. In one vivid, yet invented anecdote, Thompson describes how Mankiewicz had leapt out from behind a bush to attack him with a hammer. To an uninitiated reader, it might have been unclear at first if the action Thompson described was fanciful or factual, and that seemed to be part of the point. As biographer William McKeen wrote "He wrote for his own amusement, and if others came along for the ride, that was all right."[8]
Fame and its consequences
Thompson's journalistic work began to seriously suffer after his trip to Africa to cover the Rumble in the Jungle—the world heavyweight boxing match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali—in 1974. He missed the match while intoxicated at his hotel and did not submit a story to the magazine. As Wenner put it to the film critic Roger Ebert in the 2008 documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, "After Africa, he just couldn't write. He couldn't piece it together".[52] It was in 1973 that Thompson tried cocaine for the first time and various friends, family members, and editors remarked that its impact upon his productivity and creativity was devastating.[53]
In 1975, Wenner assigned Thompson to travel to
Plans for Thompson to cover the 1976 presidential campaign for Rolling Stone and later publish a book fell through as Wenner dissolved Straight Arrow Press' book publishing division. Thompson claimed Wenner canceled the project without informing him.[44] In his memoirs, Wenner told a different story: "The issue wasn't money ... The real issue was whether he had the discipline to spend so much time on the campaign trail and whether he had that much to say about the same subject again." Thompson went on to spend a day with Jimmy Carter at the Georgia Governor's Mansion and write a 10,000-word cover story endorsing Carter for president. "After that, we were virtually an official part of the Carter campaign, and they treated us as such," Wenner wrote of the episode.[46]
From the late 1970s on, most of Thompson's literary output appeared as a four-volume series of books entitled The Gonzo Papers. Beginning with The Great Shark Hunt in 1979 and ending with Better Than Sex in 1994, the series is largely a collection of rare newspaper and magazine pieces from the pre-Gonzo period, along with almost all of his Rolling Stone pieces.
Starting around 1980, Thompson became less active by his standards. Aside from paid appearances, he largely retreated to his compound in Woody Creek, rejecting projects and assignments or failing to complete them. Despite a lack of new material, Wenner kept Thompson on the Rolling Stone masthead as chief of the "National Affairs Desk", a position he held until his death.
In 1980, Thompson divorced his wife, Sandra Conklin. The same year marked the release of Where the Buffalo Roam, a loose film adaptation based on Thompson's early 1970s work, starring Bill Murray as the writer. Murray eventually became one of Thompson's trusted friends. Later that year, Thompson relocated to Hawaii to research and write The Curse of Lono, a Gonzo-style account of the 1980 Honolulu Marathon. Extensively illustrated by Ralph Steadman, an iteration of the work first appeared in Running in 1981 as "The Charge of the Weird Brigade" and was later excerpted in Playboy in 1983.[55] The book was a disappointment, with its editor calling it "disorganized and incoherent."[56] It was poorly reviewed, and sales were disappointing.[57]
In 1983, he covered the
Thompson next accepted a role as weekly media columnist and critic for
Many of these columns were collected in
Later years
Thompson faced a sexual assault charge in March 1990 when former pornographic film director Gail Palmer claimed that after she denied his sexual advances while at his home, Thompson threw a drink at her and twisted her left breast.[62] He was tried for five felonies and three misdemeanors owing to the assault charge and allegations of drug abuse after the police raided his home. The charges were dropped two months later.[63]
Throughout the early 1990s, Thompson claimed to be at work on a novel entitled
Thompson continued to publish irregularly in Rolling Stone, ultimately contributing 17 pieces to the magazine between 1984 and 2004.[65] "Fear and Loathing in Elko," published in 1992, was a well-received fictional rallying cry against the nomination of Clarence Thomas to a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States. "Trapped in Mr. Bill's Neighborhood" was a largely factual account of an interview with Bill Clinton at a Little Rock, Arkansas, steakhouse. Rather than traveling the campaign trail as he had done in previous presidential elections, Thompson monitored the proceedings on cable television; Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie, his account of the 1992 presidential campaign, is composed of reactive faxes to Rolling Stone. In 1994, the magazine published "He Was a Crook", a "scathing" obituary of Richard Nixon.[66]
In November 2004, Rolling Stone published Thompson's final magazine feature "The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane: Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004", a brief account of the 2004 presidential election in which he compared the outcome of the Bush v. Gore court case to the Reichstag fire and formally endorsed Senator John Kerry, a longtime friend, for president.
Fear and Loathing redux
In 1996, Modern Library reissued Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas along with "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan," "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved," and "Jacket Copy for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Two years later, the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas generated new interest in Thompson and his work, and a paperback edition was published as a tie-in. The same year, an early novel, The Rum Diary, was published. Two volumes of collected letters also appeared during this time.
Thompson's next, and penultimate, collection,
Thompson finished his journalism career in the same way it had begun: writing about sports. From 2000 until his death in 2005, he wrote a weekly column for
Thompson married assistant Anita Bejmuk on April 23, 2003.
Death
At 5:42 pm on February 20, 2005, Thompson died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at Owl Farm, his "fortified compound" in Woody Creek, Colorado. His son Juan, daughter-in-law Jennifer, and grandson were visiting for the weekend. His wife Anita, who was at the Aspen Club, was on the phone with him as he cocked the gun. According to the Aspen Daily News, Thompson asked her to come home to help him write his ESPN column, then set the receiver on the counter. Anita said she mistook the cocking of the gun for the sound of his typewriter keys and hung up as he fired. Will, his grandson, and Jennifer were in the next room when they heard the gunshot, but mistook the sound for a book falling and did not check on Thompson immediately. Juan Thompson found his father's body. According to the police report and Anita's cell phone records,[67] he called the sheriff's office half an hour later, then walked outside and fired three shotgun blasts into the air to "mark the passing of his father." The police report stated that in Thompson's typewriter was a piece of paper with the date "Feb. 22 '05" and a single word, "counselor."[68]
Years of alcohol and cocaine abuse contributed to his problem with depression. Thompson's inner circle told the press that he had been depressed and always found February a "gloomy" month, with football season over and the harsh Colorado winter weather. He was also upset over his advancing age and chronic medical problems, including a hip replacement; he would frequently mutter "This kid is getting old." Rolling Stone published what Douglas Brinkley described as a suicide note written by Thompson to his wife, titled "Football Season Is Over." It read:
No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your age. Relax — This won't hurt.[69]
Thompson's collaborator and friend Ralph Steadman wrote:
... He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one
Richard Milhous Nixon went to — and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too — and Peacocks ...[70]
Funeral
On August 20, 2005, in a private funeral, Thompson's ashes were fired from a cannon. This was accompanied by red, white, blue, and green fireworks—all to the tune of
Legacy
Writing style
Thompson is often credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of writing that blurs distinctions between fiction and nonfiction. His work and style are considered to be a major part of the
Despite him having personally described his work as "Gonzo", it fell to later observers to articulate what the term actually meant. While Thompson's approach clearly involved injecting himself as a participant in the events of the narrative, it also involved adding invented, metaphoric elements, thus creating, for the uninitiated reader, a seemingly confusing amalgam of facts and fiction notable for the deliberately blurred lines between one and the other. Thompson, in a 1974 interview in Playboy addressed the issue himself, saying, "Unlike Tom Wolfe or Gay Talese, I almost never try to reconstruct a story. They're both much better reporters than I am, but then, I don't think of myself as a reporter." Tom Wolfe would later describe Thompson's style as "... part journalism and part personal memoir admixed with powers of wild invention and wilder rhetoric."[73] Or as one description of the differences between Thompson and Wolfe's styles would elaborate, "While Tom Wolfe mastered the technique of being a fly on the wall, Thompson mastered the art of being a fly in the ointment."[74]
The majority of Thompson's most popular and acclaimed work appeared within the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. Publisher Jan Wenner said Thompson was "in the DNA of Rolling Stone."[46] Along with Joe Eszterhas and David Felton, Thompson was instrumental in expanding the focus of the magazine past music criticism; indeed, Thompson was the only staff writer of the epoch never to contribute a music feature to the magazine. Nevertheless, his articles were always peppered with a wide array of pop music references ranging from Howlin' Wolf to Lou Reed. Armed with early fax machines wherever he went, he became notorious for haphazardly sending sometimes illegible material to the magazine's San Francisco offices as an issue was about to go to press.
Wenner said Thompson tended to work "in long bursts of energy, awake until dawn or, too often, two dawns." He said keeping Thompson on track which finishing a piece required "...companionship, or what editors call hand-holding, but in Hunter's case it was more like being a junior officer in his war. He required his creature comforts, which meant the right kind of typewriter and a certain color paper, Wild Turkey, the right drugs, and the proper music."[46]
Robert Love, Thompson's editor of 23 years at Rolling Stone, wrote, "the dividing line between fact and fancy rarely blurred, and we didn't always use italics or some other typographical device to indicate the lurch into the fabulous. But if there were living, identifiable humans in a scene, we took certain steps ... Hunter was a close friend of many prominent Democrats, veterans of the ten or more presidential campaigns he covered, so when in doubt, we'd call the press secretary. 'People will believe almost any twisted kind of story about politicians or Washington,' he once said, and he was right."
Discerning the line between the fact and the fiction of Thompson's work presented a practical problem for editors and fact-checkers of his work. Love called fact-checking Thompson's work "one of the sketchiest occupations ever created in the publishing world", and "for the first-timer ... a trip through a journalistic fun house, where you didn't know what was real and what wasn't. You knew you had better learn enough about the subject at hand to know when the riff began and reality ended. Hunter was a stickler for numbers, for details like gross weight and model numbers, for lyrics and caliber, and there was no faking it."[75]
Persona
Thompson often used a blend of fiction and fact when portraying himself in his writing, too, sometimes using the name Raoul Duke as an author surrogate whom he generally described as a callous, erratic, self-destructive journalist, constantly drinking and taking hallucinogenics. In the early 1980s, Wenner spoke with Thompson about his alcoholism and addiction to cocaine, and offered to pay for drug treatment. "Hunter was polite and firm;" Wenner wrote in 2022. "He had thought about it and didn't feel he could or would change. He felt that [his drug abuse] was a key to his talent. He said that if he didn't do drugs, he would have the mind of an accountant. The abuse was already taking a toll on his gifts.... It was just too late, and he knew it."[46]
In the late 1960s, Thompson acquired the title of "Doctor" from the Church of the New Truth.[76][77]
A number of critics have commented that as he grew older, the line that distinguished Thompson from his literary self became increasingly blurred.[78][79][80] Thompson admitted during a 1978 BBC interview that he sometimes felt pressured to live up to the fictional self that he had created, adding, "I'm never sure which one people expect me to be. Very often, they conflict — most often, as a matter of fact. ... I'm leading a normal life and right alongside me there is this myth, and it is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say, speak at universities, I'm not sure if they are inviting Duke or Thompson. I'm not sure who to be."[81]
Thompson's writing style and eccentric persona gave him a cult following in both literary and drug circles, and his cult status expanded into broader areas after being portrayed three times in major motion pictures. Hence, both his writing style and persona have been widely imitated, and his likeness has even become a popular costume choice for Halloween.[82]
Political beliefs
Thompson was a
Part of his work with the Fourth Amendment Foundation centered around support of Lisl Auman, a
Thompson was also an ardent supporter of
In a 1965 letter to his friend
After the September 11 attacks, Thompson voiced skepticism regarding the official story on who was responsible for the attacks. He speculated to several interviewers that it had been conducted by the U.S. government or with the government's assistance, though readily admitting he had no way to prove his theory.[95]
In 2004, Thompson wrote: "[Richard] Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for—but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush–Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him."[96]
Scholarships
Thompson's widow established two scholarship funds at Columbia University School of General Studies for U.S. military veterans and the University of Kentucky for journalism students.[97][18][98][99] Colorado NORML created the Hunter S. Thompson Scholarship to pay all expenses for a lawyer or law student to attend the NORML Legal Committee Conference in Aspen, generally the first few days of June each year. The funding from a silent auction has paid for two winners for some years. Many winners have gone on to become important cannabis lawyers on state and national levels.[100]
Works
Awards, accolades, and tributes
- Thompson was named a Kentucky Colonel by the governor of Kentucky in a December 1996 tribute ceremony where he also received keys to the city of Louisville.[101]
- Dale Gribble, a main character on Fox's animated sitcom King of the Hill, is based on Thompson in terms of appearance and lifestyle.[102]
- Author Tom Wolfe has called Thompson the greatest American comic writer of the 20th century.[73]
- Asked in an interview with Jody Denberg on KGSR Studio, in 2000, whether he would ever consider writing a book "like [his] buddy Hunter S. Thompson", the musician Warren Zevon responded: "Let's remember that Hunter S. Thompson is the finest writer of our generation; he didn't just toss off a book the other day..."[103]
- Thompson appeared on the cover of the 1,000th issue of Rolling Stone, May 18 – June 1, 2006, as a devil playing the guitar next to the two "L"'s in the word "Rolling". Johnny Depp also appeared on the cover.[104]
- Many have suggested that General Hunter Gathers in the Adult Swim animated series The Venture Bros. is a tribute to Thompson, as they have a similar name, mannerisms, and physical appearance.[105][106]
- In the Cameron Crowe film Almost Famous, based on Crowe's experiences writing for Rolling Stone while on the road with the fictional band Stillwater", the writer is on the phone with an actor portraying Jann Wenner. Wenner tells the young journalist that he "is not there to join the party, we already have one Hunter Thompson" after the young writer amassed large hotel and traveling expenses and is overheard to be sharing his room with several young women.[107][108]
- Eric C. Shoaf donated a caché of approximately 800 items (in librarian terms, about 35–40 linear feet of material on a shelf) pertaining to the life and career of Thompson to the University of California at Santa Cruz.[109] Shoaf also published a descriptive bibliography, Gonzology: A Hunter Thompson Bibliography, of the works of Hunter S. Thompson with over 1,000 entries, many never before documented appearances in print, hundreds of biographical entries about Thompson's life, full descriptions of all his primary works, preface by William McKeen, Phd, and photo section with rare and exclusive items depicted.[110]
See also
References
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The notes were always signed: OK/HST.
- ^ "Obituary: Hunter S Thompson". BBC News. February 21, 2005. Archived from the original on August 25, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2012.
- ^ "Hunter S Thompson: in his own words". The Guardian. February 21, 2005. Archived from the original on August 23, 2021. Retrieved August 23, 2021.
- ^ Kunzru, Hari (October 15, 1998). "Hari Kunzru reviews 'The Rum Diary' by Hunter S. Thompson and 'The Proud Highway' by Hunter S. Thompson, edited by Douglas Brinkley · LRB 15 October 1998". London Review of Books. Lrb.co.uk. pp. 33–34. Archived from the original on July 5, 2017. Retrieved October 11, 2012.
- ^ Reitwiesner, William Addams. "Ancestry of Hunter Thompson". Archived from the original on August 3, 2020. Retrieved August 3, 2012.
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- ^ Lezard, Nicholas (October 11, 1997). "An outlaw comes home". The Guardian.
- ^ ISBN 9780393249118.
Prestly Stockton Ray.
- ^ Eblen, Tom. "For sale: Hunter S. Thompson's childhood home – bullet holes, Gates of Hell not included". The Bluegrass and Beyond. Archived from the original on March 25, 2012. Retrieved August 3, 2012.
- ^ Hunter S Thompson Biography and Notes. "Books by Hunter S. Thompson – biography and notes". Biblio.com. Archived from the original on August 24, 2013. Retrieved July 30, 2010.
- ^ ISBN 978-0393061925.
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- ^ a b Homberger, Eric (February 22, 2005). "Obituary: Hunter S. Thompson: Colourful chronicler of American life whose 'gonzo' journalism contrived to put him always at the centre of the action". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 30, 2016. Retrieved December 11, 2016.
- ^ "Thompson, Hunter S." American National Biography Online. Archived from the original on May 7, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2012.
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- ^ a b "Columbia University scholarship for veterans to be named for Hunter S. Thompson, says wife". aspentimes.com. July 18, 2016. Archived from the original on June 22, 2020. Retrieved June 19, 2020.
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JUAN F. THOMPSON was born in 1964 outside of San Francisco, California, and grew up in Woody Creek, Colorado.
- ^ Parker, James (November 10, 2019). "Hunter S. Thompson's Letters to His Enemies". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on April 6, 2023. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
- ^ Brinkley, Douglas (March 10, 2005). "The Final Days at Owl Farm". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on October 18, 2007. Retrieved August 3, 2012.
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- ^ a b Joseph, Jennifer (December 22, 2018). "The Haight-Ashbury's History and Heyday: How the 'Ground Zero of Hippiedom' Happened". The Battery. Archived from the original on November 12, 2020. Retrieved August 15, 2020.
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- ^ Fremont-Smith, Eliot (February 23, 1967), "Books of The Times; Motorcycle Misfits—Fiction and Fact." The New York Times, p. 33.
- ^ "Hunter S. Thompson | American journalist". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on October 6, 2017. Retrieved October 6, 2017.
- ^ Thompson, Hunter (May 14, 1967). "The Hashbury is the Capital of the Hippies". The New York Times Magazine. p. 29.
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Hardwick described the character's look as being inspired by William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson
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- OCLC 1050361234.
Further reading
- Denevi, Timothy, Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson's Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism. New York: PublicAffairs, 2018. ISBN 1541767942
- McKeen, William, Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008. ISBN 0393335453
- Richardson, Peter, Savage Journey: Hunter S. Thompson and the Weird Road to Gonzo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2022. ISBN 9780520304925
- Wills, David S., High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism. Edinburgh: Beatdom Books, 2022. ISBN 978-0-9934099-8-1
- Wenner, Jann S.; Seymour, Corey, eds. (September 4, 2008). Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson. New York: Little, Brown, and Co. ISBN 9780748108497.
External links
- Hunter S. Thompson at IMDb
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Official author's page at Simon & Schuster
- Douglas Brinkley, Terry McDonell (Fall 2000). "Hunter S. Thompson, The Art of Journalism No. 1". The Paris Review. Fall 2000 (156).
- "Hunter S. Thompson's ESPN Page 2 Archive", at Totallygonzo.org
- Hunter S. Thompson full bibliography, at Gonzo-Studies.org.
- A collection of Hunter S. Thompson resources, at HSTbooks.org.