Legendary writer Thompson dead: Counterculture icon fatally shot himself at his home
Celebrated author had style all his own
Shotgun Golf with Bill Murray (Thompson’s last column)
Hunter was not only a national treasure, but the conscience of this little village. He kept us all honest. He was righteous. He was part of literary nobility.
- Gerry Goldstein
Hunter S. Thompson was the definition of the word “enigma”. Though he represented the sort of drug-addled lunacy that has been out of fashion since the 70s, it always seem an act designed to hide the real person, to somehow protect us from him- or vice-versa. At 67, he still had yet to apologize for the pharmacological excess that seemed to fuel so much of his writing. He was an icon who, in the end, proved unapologetically out of step with a world that had changed around him. Talk about marching to a different drummer….
At this point, it is difficult to know what possessed Thompson to swallow the business end of a gun and take his own life. He was still working, still a prolific writer who wrote a regular column for ESPN.com. Ultimately, Thompson was an exceedingly private man who created a character for himself that took on a life of it’s own.
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.
“On Feb. 20, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head at his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colo.,” said Thompson’s son, Juan in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News and reported by the Denver Post. “The family will shortly provide more information about memorial service and media contacts. Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family.”
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.
Cynics among us will compare Thompson’s demise to that of Ernest Hemingway, who swallowed a shotgun in his 60s. Given Thompson’s private nature, we may never know what dark forces drove him to take his life. Perhaps he just felt that it was time to go. In the end, that knowledge, or lack of it, will not change the end result. Whatever your particular feelings about Thompson’s lifestyle and his legacy, it would be difficult to argue the reality that a unique literary voice has gone silent.
Thompson was the creator and chief protagonist of “Gonzo Journalism”, in which the journalist was no longer a neutral observer, but often an active participant in the story. In Thompson’s case, he was often at the center of his own stories, a first-person narrative gone haywire. Thompson, and later Tom Wolfe and George Plimpton, pioneered first-person journalism and created a school of journalism that was much more fun and interesting that the staid J-school detachment that had preceded Gonzo Journalism.
In the era that Hunter S. Thompson first came to the fore as a literary force, our world was a much different place. It will be easy for some to condemn him for the excess and abandon with which Thompson often championed- and lived. To do so would be to miss the point, though. Thompson questioned the world around him in a manner that is virtually impossible to find these days. In this era of “don’t rock the boat” journalism, a Hunter S. Thompson-like writer would find it difficult to find work. He was the last dinosaur, and though we might not realize it now, the American literary scene will miss his voice.
