Hunter S. Thompson (The Sixties in America)

Early Life

A journalist almost from birth, Hunter Stockton Thompson began writing for his neighborhood newspaper at age ten. In 1956, Thompson joined the United States Air Force and penned a weekly sports column for the Elgin base’s newspaper, The Common Courier. Between 1959 and 1965, he served as a correspondent for Time, the New York Herald Tribune and the National Observer. In 1963, in Greenwich Village, he married Sandra Dawn, with whom he had a son, Juan.

The 1960’s

In the 1960’s, the radical youth of the United States demanded a mode of journalism that would divorce itself from a media they viewed as pandering to the political hierarchy. They found it in Thompson’s work. In 1964, Thompson wrote an article for the Nation, “Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders,” and began to challenge the media’s representation of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang. He rode and lived with the motorcycle gang until 1966 when he completed Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga, one of the best examples of New Journalism participant-observer reporting.

Impact

Thompson became known as a champion of the New Journalism, a form noted for its participant-observer approach and that would later become known as “gonzo journalism.”

Subsequent Events

In 1972, Thompson published Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, his best- known work, which was widely read by 1970’s remnants of the counterculture. Thompson married for a second time in 2003. On February 20, 2005, Thompson killed himself at his home in Woody Creek, Colorado.

Bibliography

Carroll, E. Jean. Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson. New York: Dutton, 1993. Full-length biography. Includes the essay “Young Doctor Thompson,” which appeared in Esquire (February, 1993).

Crouse, Timothy. The Boys on the Bus. 1973. Reprint. New York: Random House, 2003. Thompson is featured in Crouse’s depiction of the press corps on the 1972 campaign, offering an alternative account to Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail, ’72.

Draper, Robert. Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History. New York: Doubleday, 1990. Mentions Thompson’s contributions to the magazine.

McKeen, William. Hunter S. Thompson. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Offers biographical information and analyses of Thompson’s major works through the early 1990’s.

Perry, Paul. Fear and Loathing: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Hunter S. Thompson. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992. An unauthorized biography by an editor who has worked with Thompson.

Whitmer, Peter O. When the Going Gets Weird: The Strange Life and Twisted Times of Hunter S. Thompson. New York: Hyperion, 1993. Full-length biography by a clinical psychologist that attempts to demythologize Thompson’s raucous life and reputation.