In Hunter S. Thompson’s Songs of the Doomed, renowned artist, collaborator, and personal friend of the author Ralph Steadman notes, “In his weirdness [Thompson] illuminates the faults in your reason and etches the silhouette of your antics against a pure white background… he sees inside the blackness of those silhouettes searching for the soul of a nation.” Furthermore, Steadman states, “It is a privilege to have him in my life.”

While the general public remembers Thompson as the drug-addled protagonist played by Johnny Depp in the film adaptation of the author’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, critics, peers, and fans of Thompson’s work recognize his value to the literary world and feel the privilege of which Steadman speaks. Indeed, it is an honor and a pleasure to have known the work of a true American original, the famed gonzo journalist who, in a bizarre tragedy, took his own life at the age of 67 on Sunday, February 20, in this foul year of our Lord, 2005.

Hunter Stockton Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky on July 18, 1937. He started his career writing for the Eglin Air Force Base newspaper in 1956. After a brief stint in the United States Air Force, Thompson worked as a copy editor for Time and later became a South American correspondent for the National Observer. It was around this time in the late ‘50s that Thompson wrote his first two novels, Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary. But it wasn’t until the 1966 release of Hell’s Angels, a chronicle of his experiences with the infamous motorcycle gang, that Thompson started on his path to notoriety.

This time in the late ‘60s also saw the rise of many of Thompson’s contemporaries, including Tom Wolfe, Bill Cardoso, Michael Lewis, and Ken Kesey. In fact, Wolfe traveled across the U.S. on the famed bus, Furthur, with Kesey and his Merry Pranksters around the same time that Thompson rode with the Hell’s Angels. Later, in writing The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Wolfe stated, “Hunter Thompson made available to me several tapes he had made while working on his book Hell’s Angels, parts of the book itself dealing with the Pranksters and the Angels were also helpful.” This collaboration was an aspect of the New Journalism movement of the mid to late 1960s, a journalistic direction that was heavily influenced by both Wolfe and Thompson.

After receiving his doctorate in journalism from a mail-order church in the ‘60s, Thompson continued to work and was often influenced by the experimentation inherent in the emerging drug culture. Alcohol was no stranger to him and his drug habits became the stuff of legend. His obsession with finding the American Dream, paired with his continued dependence on substances such as marijuana, LSD, cocaine, mescaline, and adrenaline, fueled his strange and horrific visions and added a disturbing and equally entertaining quality to his inventive writing.

With Scanlan Monthly’s publication of “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” in 1970, the American public was first introduced to the concept of gonzo journalism that Thompson pioneered. Fellow journalist Bill Cardoso first used the term “gonzo” to describe his response to Thompson’s article.

There are many definitions and interpretations of this style of journalism, but for the most part, it is marked by its opinionated style and a blend of fact and fiction. In an article entitled “What is Gonzo,” Dr. Martin Hirst from the University of Queensland cites John Filatriano’s definition: “Gonzo can only be defined as what Hunter Thompson does… it generally consists of the fusion of reality and stark fantasy in a way that amuses the author and outrages his audience… it is a point of view run wild.”

The first clear-cut example of this new style pioneered by Thompson came in 1971 with his most famous (and misunderstood) work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The book was the result of a weekend trip to Vegas taken by Thompson and his real-life attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta. Their purpose was to seek refuge from the chaotic murder investigation of one of Acosta’s clients, journalist Ruben Salazar. By using his new style, Thompson delivers a satirical and poignant commentary on the social and political scene of the time. It is not just a book about drugs. Although the characters (and Thompson) did abuse drugs to an extent deemed unimaginable by any previous records, reading the book (or the movie) as a stoner comedy misses Thompson’s point completely.

Perhaps it is for this reason that Thompson stated that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was a “failed attempt at gonzo journalism.” Either way, his next book, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail of ’72, would prove to be his gonzo masterpiece. As he traveled with then presidential candidates incumbent Richard Nixon and Senator George McGovern, Thompson wrote, “So much for objective journalism… there is no such thing… the phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.” As a result, his unique coverage of the ’72 presidential campaign remains one of the greatest political works of the American Century.

As his career advanced, he gained further respect among critics and peers with the releases of The Proud Highway, Screwjack, and Fear and Loathing in America. An even greater testament to the genius of Thompson comes from his four volumes of gonzo papers (The Great Shark Hunt, Generation of Swine, Songs of the Doomed, and Better Than Sex) where one can see the true influence of his comic work in literature, journalism, and political thought.

Hunter S. Thompson’s suicide on February 20 delivered a devastating blow to all who knew him. His unflinching views on politics and current events changed the face of American writing and journalism. Thompson’s legend goes far beyond the films Where the Buffalo Roam and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He was not the clown made famous by Bill Murray and Johnny Depp. He was an American original, the creator and master of gonzo journalism who exercised his freedom to the fullest in his writing and in his lifestyle, dangerous, as it may have been. Tom Wolfe put it best in his obituary for Thompson in The Wall Street Journal: “In the nineteenth century, Mark Twain was king of all gonzo writers… in the twentieth century, it was Hunter Thompson, whom I would nominate as the century’s greatest comic writer.”