“the true voice of Thompson is revealed to be that of American moralist … one who often makes himself ugly to expose the ugliness he sees around him” – Hari Kunzru.
Hunter Stockton Thompson was born to a middle-class family in Louisville, Kentucky, on July 18, 1937.
During his formative years, Thompson straddled the line between wild child and scholar. When he wasn’t causing havoc in his affluent neighbourhood of The Highlands, he was excelling at sports and fostering a passion for writing.
In 1952, while Thompson was still 14, his father died from a neuromuscular disease, leaving his alcoholic mother to care for him and his two brothers. It was around this time that he began experimenting with alcohol and other drugs. Meanwhile, the pranks he and his friends pulled were starting to evolve from childhood antics into more serious, borderline criminal acts.
That same year, Thompson was accepted into the Athenaeum Literary Association, a prestigious literary club usually reserved for students of upper-class households, such as Porter Bibb, who would become the first publisher of Rolling Stone.
As a member of the club, Thompson was responsible for contributing articles and helping to create the Athenaeum’s yearbook, The Spectator. As he developed his voices, Thompson’s pieces became more sarcastic and controversial. He spent three years in the group, until being dismissed for his involvement in a robbery. He served a month in jail for the act, and was refused permission to take the high school final examinations. As a result, he never graduated.
Upon release, Thompson enlisted in the United States Air Force. He was posted in Texas and Illinois, where he studied electronics, before being transferred to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Outside of work, he took evening classes at the Florida State University, and eventually landed his first professional writing role as the sports editor for The Command Courier after lying about his experience in the field.
Just over a year later, he was honourably discharged. “In summary, this airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy,” wrote Colonel William S. Evans. “Sometimes his rebel and superior attitude seems to rub off on other airmen staff members.”
It couldn’t have come at a better time for Thompson, who six months later would write to his friend Hume Logan, when asked for life advice: “As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.”
And so it was that Thompson strived to find a place for himself in the journalism industry. After working at several small papers, he moved to New York City, only to be fired first by Time for insubordination, then The Middletown Daily Record after damaging an office vending machine and getting into an argument with one of the paper’s advertisers.
The following year, he took a job in Puerto Rico, but the magazine folded soon after his arrival. Thompson then tried for a position at The San Juan Star, where he was turned down. Nevertheless, he became friends with the paper’s editor, William J. Kennedy, who helped him find freelance work until he returned to mainland United States.
With little money to his name, Thompson hitchhiked to Big Sur, California, where he worked as a security guard and caretaker while working on personal projects including short stories and two novels, Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary. The former would never be published, while The Rum Diary – a semi-biographical reaction to Thompson’s time in Puerto Rico – would be rejected for the next four decades until being championed by Johnny Depp, leading to its release in 1998.
His first hint of success came when his first magazine feature appeared in Rogue magazine, detailing the bohemian culture of Big Sur. It cost him his job, but lay the groundwork for his coming domination of the counterculture scene.
Over the next few years, he worked in North and South America as a correspondent for the National Observer, before a disagreement over his review of Tom Wolfe’s essay collection The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby saw him leave the paper and head for San Francisco.
Thompson dived headfirst into the hippie culture of the city, and finally began to feel at home. That same year, he was hired by The Nation to write an article on the Hells Angels motorcycle club.
Released in May 17 that same year, the story saw Thompson become an overnight celebrity. He was offered several book deals, and spent the next year riding with the gang collecting material. It all came to an end when Thompson allegedly intervened to stop one of the bikies beating his wife, only to be “stomped” on himself by a group of Angels.
The resulting book, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs was released to great acclaim in 1966.
Over the next year, Thompson gathered an audience through his insight into 1960s counterculture with damning pieces on the transformation of the hippy scene in San Francisco from a politically-charged movement to one more interested in obtaining drugs.
When Thompson finally received his $15,000 in royalties from sales of Hell’s Angels, he purchased a modest property in Colorado. He named it Owl Farm, and described it as a “fortified compound”. It would be where he spent the remainder of his life.
By 1968, Thompson’s work became more political. It all started when he signed the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest, refusing to pay his tax in protest of the Vietnam War. He then travelled the Presidential campaign trail as research for The Joint Chiefs, a book he described as being about “the death of the American Dream”.
Two years later, Thompson ran for sheriff of Pitkin County on a platform of drug decriminalisation, rejection of any plans to build tall buildings that would obscure the view of nearby mountains, and a suggestion to rename Aspen “Fat City” in an attempt to deter investors.
Remarkably, he lead the race early, but lost after the Republican candidate withdrew to focus his efforts on helping the Democrats defeat Thompson.
Thompson’s experience during the election resulted in The Battle of Aspen, his first article for Rolling Stone. However, his most important article of the year – perhaps most important ever – was The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved for the short-lived Scanlan’s Monthly.
The piece is described as the first example of Gonzo journalism, a revolutionary, subjective style unlike anything seen in the field before. Apparently, the first-person perspective, written in a raw, rather manic tone, was the by-product of Thompson’s desperation to meet deadline.
The term ‘gonzo’ was first applied by journalist Bill Cardoso, who had covered the 1968 Presidential election with Thompson, and who recalled his obsession with an album of the same name by New Orleans pianist James Booker.
Thompson himself would first use the word in his 1972 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It would become his most famous work, propelling him into the mainstream.
Based on the themes of his incomplete manuscript for The Joint Chiefs, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 was released the following year. It focused predominantly on the Democratic primary, but the most obvious outcome from the experience was Thompson’s unquenchable criticism of Nixon, who would go on to be elected.
When Nixon was pardoned for his involvement in the Watergate Scandal in 1974, Thompson wrote “‘(i)f there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark”.
That same year, Thompson’s career began to fall apart. He was sent to Africa to cover The Rumble in the Jungle between heavyweight boxers George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, but he got so drunk that he missed the fight.
As he prepared to cover the 1976 election, Rolling Stone cancelled the assignment, and instead sent him to Saigon. He arrived amidst the fall of South Vietnam, only to learn that this story had been pulled as well He was stuck in the country with no financial support as other journalists scrambled on flights home. He covered the collapse of Saigon, but the story would not be published for another decade.
“By any accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once, and there were 13 times I almost and maybe should have died.”
Over the next 15 years, Thompson’s writing became more erratic, as did his personal life. He was caught drunk-driving, accused of sexual assault, and a search of his home by police uncovered a range of drugs and several sticks of dynamite.
He continued to have articles and novels published, including Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie, and Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004 – a look at his friend John Kerry’s campaign for presidency that would become his last magazine feature.
Thompson concluded his career as in a similar fashion as it had begun, by producing sports columns for ESPN.
On February 20, 2005, while his son, daughter-in-law and grandson were visiting Owl Farm, Thompson committed suicide via a gunshot wound to the head.
His so-called suicide note was entitled Football Season is Over.
“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 (old) age. Relax — This won’t hurt.”
His friend Ralph Steadman would later state:
“… 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 Nixon went to — and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too — and Peacocks …”
A private funeral was held six months later, in which Thompson’s ashes were fired from a cannon, accompanied by red, white, blue, and green fireworks.
Hunter S. Thompson remains an icon of counterculture journalism, a style which flourished in the wake of his success. Though the line between his authorial persona and ‘real world’ identity blurred as he grew older, his dedication to the truth, however crazy, remained firm.
It was a weird kind of integrity, but integrity nonetheless.