Hunter Stockton Thompson, a renegade journalist whose “gonzo” style threw out any pretense at objectivity and established the hard-living writer as a counter-culture icon, fatally shot himself at his Colorado home on Sunday night, police said. He was 67.Thompson’s son, Juan, released a statement saying he had found his father dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at the writer’s Owl Creek farm near Aspen.Thompson, famed for such adrenaline-packed narratives as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, turned his drug and alcohol-fuelled clashes with authority into a central theme of his work, challenging the quieter norms of established journalism in the process. He also cultivated an aura of recklessness, starting with the blurb on his book Hell’s Angels, in which he called himself “an avid reader, a relentless drinker and a fine hand with a .44 Magnum.” A longtime gun enthusiast, Thompson had a shooting range on his property. By his heyday in the 1970s, Thompson had distilled his style of invective-laced, outlaw journalism into a slogan: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, adapted from a two-part article written for Rolling Stone magazine in late 1971, chronicled Thompson’s drug-fuelled misadventures in Las Vegas while ostensibly covering a motorcycle race in the desert. The book established Hunter as a cult celebrity and became the basis for a 1998 Hollywood adaptation, starring Johnny Depp as Thompson’s alter-ego, Raoul Duke. Thompson’s refracted coverage of the Super Bowl and the1972 presidential race also inspired the 1980 movie Where the Buffalo Roam, with Bill Murray as the self-proclaimed doctor of gonzo journalism. He was also caricatured as Uncle Duke in the comic strip Doonesbury, right down to his signature aviator glasses and cigarette holder.Although Thompson’s later work got mixed reviews, critics credited him with pioneering a style of invective-laced and hyperbolic political commentary that was uniquely American.A 1994 essay in Rolling Stone written as an obituary for former President Richard Nixon was typical. At a time when many commentators offered a more generous re-assessment of Nixon’s legacy, Thompson called him “a liar, a quitter and a bastard. A cheap crook and a merciless war criminal.”“I think Thompson has remained a writer of significance,because, essentially a satirist, he has displayed an utter contempt for power — political power, financial power, even showbiz juice,” novelist Paul Theroux wrote in 2003.Raised in a middle-class family in Louisville, Thompson had been jailed for his part in a robbery. He was 18 then.He enlisted in th eAir Force when he studied journalism at New Yorks Columbia University, and began his career as editor of the Eglin Air Force Base newsletter, simultaneously moonlighting as a sportswriter for a local civilian paper. In 1959, Thompson went on to become a Caribbean correspondent for Time magazine and the New York Herald Tribune. After relocating to South America, he wrote for the National Observer, and then returned to the US and became the West Coast correspondent for The Nation.It was his association with Rolling Stone that turned bothinto literary icons . Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner learned of Thompson from his columns for Scanlan’s Monthly and Ramparts, and hired him as national affairs editor. This propelled Thompson and his cynical, heady reporting style to international fame. People who really did read Playboy for the articles began picking up Rolling Stone for Thompson’s caroming take on politics, particularly his incendiary coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign.
