Hunter Stockton Thompson 1937–2005
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.
Hunter S. Thompson | Hell's Angels
"He stomped terra."
Times Online | Hunter S. Thompson found dead
Hunter S. Thompson, the maverick journalist and author whose savage chronicling of the underbelly of American life and politics embodied a new kind of nonfiction writing he called "gonzo journalism," died yesterday in Colorado. Tricia Louthis, of the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office, said Mr. Thompson had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek, Colo., yesterday afternoon. He was 65.
New York Times | Hunter S. Thompson, 65, Author, Commits Suicide
Hunter S. Thompson in 2003 summed up his life thus: "I was a notorious best-selling author of weird and brutal books and also a widely feared newspaper columnist ... I was also drunk, crazy and heavily armed at all times." He died on Sunday as a result of gunshot wounds, apparently self-inflicted.
The Independent | Hunter S. Thompson: Obituary
"...not everybody is made for this life..."
Thompson is credited with pioneering New Journalism - or, as he dubbed it, "gonzo journalism" - in which the writer made himself an essential component of the story. Much of his earliest work appeared in Rolling Stone magazine.
"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist," Thompson told the AP in 2003. "You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it."
An acute observer of the decadence and depravity in American life, Thompson also wrote such collections "Generation of Swine" and "Songs of the Doomed." His first ever novel, "The Rum Diary," written in 1959, was first published in 1998.
Guardian Online | Author Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself
On Sunday morning, I had just finished signing the 1,200 title pages for a limited-edition Taschen version of The Curse of LONO, which Hunter had signed so uncharacteristically - obedient and mechanical - over the month of December. I thought that was very strange. He has to be cajoled like a child to do anything like that, so I drew his portrait across the last sheet, glaring out, his two eyes in the two Os of LONO, put the cigarette holder with long Dunhill prodding upwards in his grimacing mouth, signed it with an extra flourish and closed the last of the four boxes. The old bastard! He waited to make sure I had finished the task. Then he signed himself off.
Ralph Steadman | Hunter S. Thompson RIP: 'I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time'
"Welcome to the future of America. Welcome to Shotgun Golf."
Hunter S. Thompson | Shotgun Golf with Bill Murray
More...
Guardian Online | 'Truth is weirder than any fiction I've seen ... '
Scotsman | Lazy Guide to Net Culture: Hunter farewell
This is London | Hunter S Thompson takes his final trip
The Age | Hunter S. Thompson writes his own ending
The Australian | 'Gonzo' legend shoots himself
Rolling Stone | Hunter S. Thompson Dies
William Rivers Pitt | The Proverbial 'Live Boy'
Herald Sun | Hunter S. Thompson: Death of a sacred clown
The Mercury News | Hunter S. Thompson takes his last trip, echoing Hemingway
Times Online | Hunter S. Thompson Obituary
New York Times Books | The Thompson Style: A Sense of Self, and Outrage
Hunter tried to teach us that objectivity is a rule set that can be gamed, corrupted, and shaped into a weapon for use against the very principles it was developed to protect. He tried to teach us that fact and truth aren’t the same thing. Quoting Faulkner, he noted that "the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism – and the best journalists have always known this." He set an uncompromising determination to get at the truth ahead of what he saw as artificial rules and conventions, and if the "facts" got in the way of the truth, well, that told you something about the facts, didn’t it?
Sam Smith | Fear, Loathing, and Great Reporting
