Hunter S. Thompson

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me. – H.S.T.

Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was a famous American journalist and author, most famous for his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

He is credited as the creator of Gonzo Journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become central figures of their stories. He is also known for his promotion and use of psychedelics and other mind-altering substances, and his iconoclastic contempt for authority.

~ Biography ~ The Early Years ~

A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Thompson grew up in the Cherokee Triangle neighborhood of the Highlands. He was the first son of Jack Robert, an insurance adjuster and a U.S. Army veteran who served in France during World War I, and Virginia Davidson Ray.

Jack died of myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disease, when Hunter was 14 years old, leaving three sons – Hunter, Davison, and James to be brought up by their mother.

If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up. –  H.S.T.

~ Early Journalism Career ~

After the his participation in Air Force, he worked as sports editor for a newspaper in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania before moving to New York City. There he attended Columbia University’s School of General Studies part-time on the G.I. Bill, taking classes in short-story writing.

During this time he worked briefly for Time, as a copy boy for $51 a week. While working, he used a typewriter to copy F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms in order to learn about the writing styles of the authors.

In 1960 Thompson moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to take a job with the sporting magazine El Sportivo, which soon folded. After, Thompson worked as a stringer for the New York Herald Tribune and a few stateside papers on Caribbean issues. After returning to the States, Hunter lived in California, working as a security guard and caretaker at the Big Sur Hot Springs for an eight-month period in 1961. While there, he was able to publish his first magazine feature in the nationally-distributed Rogue magazine on the artisan and bohemian culture of Big Sur.

During this period, Thompson wrote two novels, Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary, and submitted many short stories to publishers with little success. From May 1962 to May 1963, Thompson traveled to South America as a correspondent for a Dow Jones-owned weekly newspaper, the National Observer.

~ Birth of Gonzo ~

In 1970, Thompson wrote an article entitled The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved. Although it was not widely read at the time, the article is the first of Thompson’s to use techniques of Gonzo journalism, a style he would later employ 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 Bill Cardoso. Cardoso had first met Thompson on a bus full of journalists covering the 1968 New Hampshire primary. In 1970, Cardoso wrote to Thompson praising the “Kentucky Derby“ piece in Scanlan’s Monthly as a breakthrough: “This is it, this is pure Gonzo. If this is a start, keep rolling.” Thompson took to the word right away, and according to illustrator Ralph Steadman said, “Okay, that’s what I do. Gonzo.”

~ Legacy ~

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 New Journalism literary movement, which attempted to break free from the objective style of mainstream reportage. Thompson almost always wrote in the first person, while extensively using his own experiences and emotions to color “the story”. His writing aimed to be humorous, colorful, and bizarre, and he often exaggerated events to be more entertaining.

The term Gonzo has since been applied in kind to numerous other forms of highly subjective artistic expression. Despite his having personally described his work as “Gonzo,” it fell to later observers to describe more precisely what the phrase 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.

The majority of Thompson’s most popular and acclaimed work appeared within the pages of Rolling Stone Magazine. 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.

The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. – H.S.T.

~ The Late Great Dr. Gonzo: What you should know ~

Hunter Thompson was a polarizing figure to say the least.  He created a style of journalism that hasn’t been recreated very well since his time, and probably never will.  He was one of the voices of a generation, and his influence has been felt far and wide, his words touching many people in all sorts of ways.  Hunter was an extraordinary author, unique, and though he’s had many imitators, in many ways he will never have an equal.

Hunter’s supreme gift was the gift of language. There has never been so unique a writer of the English language that has been like him.  Intense, descriptive, provocative, at times light hearted and at times so biting and cruel, but always with a sense of Fun.  Perhaps no other American author besides Mark Twain has been nearly as insightful yet as thoroughly, riotously funny.  His command over the English language was a unique one, perhaps not as bitingly ironic as Swift, or as eloquent as Shakespeare, but Hunter’s stock-in-trade was raw power.  None could match him for that.  How could anybody?

He is also a hero to some for the wrong reasons.  Many people see him as a champion because of his habits.  Now, most famous authors have been substance users, and many will be so far into the future.  However, the amount of people that claim to love Hunter almost solely because he used drugs reveals a flaw in their character.  Hunter was great DESPITE his habits, not BECAUSE of them.  Edgar Allan Poe was laid low just after turning 40 because he couldn’t handle his battle with the bottle.  The drug people got a hold of him as a positive role model, but not because it was his ambition to do so (though it probably was in part), but largely because he was one of the ones who were tough enough to survive.

What should people know about him?  There hasn’t been anyone like him since, or before or during.  He was an American Original.