R.I.P. Gonzo Journalism

Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself

By Richard Martin, 2-21-05

	Book jacket: Fear and Loathing in America.

The Rockies lost one of its true iconoclasts and most talented writers last night when Hunter S. Thompson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Thompson had become something of a self-parody over the last decade, as his personal demons took tighter hold and his once-prodigious output declined. It may be that his infatuation with drugs, booze and the outlaw life (“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone,� he once wrote, “but they've always worked for me.�) prevented him, in the end, from attaining the true literary greatness that had always been his goal.

As it happens I had a brief encounter with the good doctor in November, 1992, the night Bill Clinton was elected president. After wrangling my way into the War Room, on the second floor of Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Little Rock (a feat I accomplished by following a bunch of trenchcoat-clad politicos up the stairs and flashing an old press pass from the Philippines I always carry), I found Thompson partying with James Carville, who was wearing a gold star on his forehead and brandishing a bottle of Wild Turkey. Sodden with drink and smelling bad, Thompson was accompanied by an attractive female minder whose main tasks seemed to be to keep him upright and his whiskey-cup full. He also had a video camera with which he recorded the festivities, which I surmised was his secret method of reporting while snockered. It was kind of sad, to tell the truth.

But, demon-plagued or not, he could still write like an angel, and his last foray into gonzo journalism – his impassioned defense of Lisl Auman, a Colorado woman who Thompson believed was wrongly convicted of felony murder in 1998 – was typical, blending fierce disdain for public institutions, outrageous slander and innuendo, and black humor. (Thompson’s long article detailing the case appeared in the June, 2004 Vanity Fair, which is not available online; Auman remains in jail while the Colorado Supreme Court considers her fate.)

News accounts vary on just how old Thompson was (the New York Times says 65; the Denver Post and Washington Post both have 67). Given Thompson's penchant for self-mythologizing, that's somehow appropriate. He probably lied about his age with alacrity.

According to the Denver Post, in reporting his death, Thompson's friend Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis referred to the late writer with the honorific that Thompson had always mysteriously assumed: "Dr. Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head…�
Hunter would’ve liked that.

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