hunter s thompson hemingway essay

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A tale of Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson and a set of antlers

August 18, 2016 / 5:25 PM EDT / AP

BOISE, Idaho -- A young Hunter S. Thompson went to Idaho to write about Ernest Hemingway and decided to take a piece of his hero home with him - a set of trophy elk antlers.

More than half a century later, the gonzo journalist’s wife returned the antlers to Hemingway’s house in the mountain town of Ketchum.

“One of the stories that has often been told over the years is the story of Hunter S. Thompson taking the antlers,” said Jenny Emery Davidson of Ketchum Community Library. “These are two great literary figures who came together over the item of the antlers.”

Davidson was there on Aug. 5 when Thompson’s widow, Anita Thompson, gave back the antlers she says her husband regretted taking. Hemingway’s house is owned by The Nature Conservancy, which has an agreement with the library to help catalog and preserve items in the residence where the author took his own life.

In 1964, Hunter Thompson, then 27, came to Ketchum when he was still a conventional journalist. He had not yet developed his signature style, dubbed gonzo journalism, that involved inserting himself, often outrageously, into his reporting and that propelled him into a larger-than-life figure.

Thompson was writing a story for the National Observer about why the globe-trotting Hemingway shot and killed himself at his home three years earlier at age 61. Thompson attributed the suicide in part to rapid changes in the world that led to upheavals in places Hemingway loved most - Africa and Cuba.

Even Ketchum, which in the 1930s and 1940s attracted luminaries such as Gary Cooper, had fallen off the map of cafe society by the late 1950s, Thompson wrote.

In the story, later collected in his book “The Great Shark Hunt,” he noted the problem of tourists taking chunks of earth from around Hemingway’s grave as souvenirs. 

Early the piece, he wrote about the large elk antlers over Hemingway’s front door but never mentioned taking them.

For decades, the antlers hung in a garage at Thompson’s home near Aspen, Colorado.

Davidson said they made their way back to Idaho after historian Douglas Brinkley, who spoke at the library in May and was familiar with the antler story after interviewing the writer, contacted Anita Thompson. She called the library on Aug. 1.

“She gave a little background about the antlers and said she’d love to return them,” Davidson said.

They have since been shipped to a Hemingway grandson in New York who wanted them, she said. It’s not clear if the antlers came from an elk killed by the author, who was a noted big game hunter, or if they were a gift.

Anita Thompson and Sean Hemingway didn’t respond to emails or phone messages seeking comment from The Associated Press.

Not long after the visit to Hemingway’s house, Thompson developed the journalism style that took him into the dangerous world of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and would make him famous.

Like Hemingway, Thompson ended his own life by shooting himself, dying in 2005 at age 67 at his Colorado home.

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Hunter S. Thompson and Hemingway Connection: The Tale of the Stolen Antlers

Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson , two iconic literary figures known for their adventurous spirits and larger-than-life personas, shared a peculiar connection that extended beyond their contributions to the world of literature. This connection manifested in a strange and infamous incident involving the theft of Hemingway’s prized antlers by none other than the irrepressible Hunter S. Thompson.

Ernest Hemingway, often hailed as one of the greatest American novelists of the 20th century, was known for his succinct and impactful writing style . His experiences as a journalist and war correspondent infused his works with themes of courage, stoicism, and the human condition. On the other hand, Hunter S. Thompson, a pioneer of Gonzo journalism, carved out his own niche with his brazen, unapologetic approach to storytelling and his wild escapades that blurred the lines between fiction and reality.

Despite their differing literary styles, both Hemingway and Thompson shared a passion for adventure, a disdain for authority, and a penchant for living life on the edge, making them larger-than-life figures in the literary world.

Hunter Thompson Steals Hemingway’s Antlers

One of the most bizarre and legendary tales involving these two literary icons is the infamous incident where Hunter S. Thompson absconded with Ernest Hemingway’s prized elk antlers. The antlers, mounted on a plaque, held significant sentimental value for Hemingway and were displayed at his home in Ketchum, Idaho.

Thompson, known for his eccentric and unpredictable behavior, allegedly orchestrated the audacious theft as a misguided act of admiration for Hemingway. The brazen heist, which involved a late-night break-in at Hemingway’s residence, added another surreal chapter to Thompson’s already eccentric legacy, leaving the literary world bewildered and amused in equal measure.

A Tale of Literary Legends and Mysterious Theft

The peculiar saga of Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, and the stolen antlers continues to captivate the imagination of literature enthusiasts and aficionados of the unconventional. This enigmatic episode serves as a testament to the enduring mystique of these larger-than-life figures and the unexpected intersections that punctuate literary history.

While the stolen antlers incident remains steeped in eccentricity and intrigue, it also underscores the idiosyncratic bond that linked these two literary mavericks, transcending the boundaries of time and convention. The legacy of Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson endures not only through their literary contributions but also through the captivating anecdotes and enigmatic escapades that continue to define their mythic personas.

The enigmatic connection between Hunter S. Thompson and Ernest Hemingway, encapsulated by the peculiar theft of Hemingway’s antlers, stands as a testament to the enduring allure of literary legends and the captivating mystique that enshrouds their lives. This singular incident serves as a curious footnote in the annals of literary history, immortalizing the larger-than-life personas of Thompson and Hemingway in a tale of audacious theft and enigmatic camaraderie.

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What Hunter S. Thompson Stole from Hemingway's House 52 Years Ago

Half-a-century later, HST's widow just returned it.

In 1964, Hunter S. Thompson traveled to Ernest Hemingway's home in Ketchum, Idaho, to write an article for The National Observer about "this outback little Idaho village that struck such a responsive chord in America's most famous writer." While he was there, Thompson stole a pair of antlers from the front door of the "comfortable-looking chalet," where Hemingway had shot himself three years earlier.

For decades, the elk antlers hung inside Thompson's Owl Farm ranch in Woody Creek, Colorado. Thompson and his wife allegedly planned to take a road trip back to Ketchum and quietly return them. Like Hemingway, Thompson shot himself in his home. Now, after 52 years, the antlers have made it back to the Hemingway family, as Hunter's widow, Anita Thompson, drove them back to Idaho this month where she returned them to the home—now owned by charity the Nature Conservancy.

Thompson, it turned out, had gotten a little caught up in the moment (as the gonzo journalist tended to do) when he stole the antlers in '64, Anita said. He was always a little embarrassed about stealing them, even though he hung them in his hot tub room for decades.

[H/T: The Guardian

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Hemingway’s Family Is Getting Some Antlers Back 52 Years After Hunter S. Thompson Stole Them

A wrong will be righted..

Hunter S. Thompson Widow Returns Stolen Hemingway #Elk Antlers https://t.co/HekpU6nIix pic.twitter.com/M2ZE13muLT — Backcountry Hunters (@Backcountry_H_A) August 16, 2016

In 1964, a young Hunter S. Thompson went to the Ketchum, Idaho, home of Ernest Hemingway, who, three years prior, had shot himself.

Thompson was there to investigate the suicide for a now-defunct national weekly, but he ended up leaving Ketchum with more than just a story: He also left with some mounted antlers, a bit of taxidermy that he’d stolen from the Hemingway house after getting “caught up in the moment,” his widow, Anita Thompson, told  BroBible . 

The antlers are, apparently, the result of one of Hemingway’s famed hunts, and hung in Thompson’s garage until recently, when Anita Thompson decided to return them. 

So she drove them back to the Ketchum property, which is now owned by a nature conservancy. There, she met the current owners of the home, who were “warm and tickled” by the gesture, she said, before later hearing from Hemingway’s family. 

The antlers will now be shipped to New York, where Sean Hemingway, a grandson, will take possession permanently. 

Anita Thompson said that her husband never talked about the stolen antlers much, mostly out of shame. He was also, potentially, worried about copycats.

“He wrote that piece of paper that he stuck to the door [at his home] that’s still there that said ‘Please don’t steal from this home, by the management,’” she told BroBible . “You can’t expect people to behave well in your own home if you have a piece of stolen art.”

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Here's What Hunter S. Thompson Stole From Ernest Hemingway

At one time, legendary gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson was like any young aspiring writer. He didn't know if his natural inclination to be a working writer was something that was realistically attainable, especially because he likely knew his approach to storytelling was unorthodox. But another American writer had already proven that it was possible to write prose in a new way and be successful. That writer was Ernest Hemingway . 

According to Cliffs Notes , Hemingway was a pioneer of modern literature, ditching the commonly used British styles that were wordy and filled with adjectives, adverbs, colons, and semi-colons. He simplified the language yet maintained the impact in his stories. When Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, the committee singled out his "forceful and style-making mastery of the art of modern narration." According to Lit Hub , a 1934 Vanity Fair described Hemingway as "hard-drinking, hard-fighting, hard-loving — all for art's sake," and this appealed to Thompson.

Thompson would later say that Hemingway was the writer who taught him the most. Per  The Narrative Art , Thompson said when he was a young, hopeful writer, Hemingway's work showed him that, "You can want to be a writer and get away with it. You can be a writer. And that was very important at the time ... it was nice to find out that somebody had gotten away with it." 

Hunter S. Thompson stole elk antlers from Ernest Hemingway's cabin

It was because of his great appreciation for Ernest Hemingway that Hunter S. Thompson traveled to Ketchum, Idaho, in 1964 — three years after Hemingway died in the small ski town — to write an article about what prompted his idol to go there to commit suicide at the age of 61, CBS News reported. Thompson would've been about 27 at the time, and his impulses got the better of him when he took a set of elk antlers from the cabin where Hemingway killed himself. 

According to what Thompson's wife, Anita, told BroBible , "He got caught up in the moment. He had so much respect for Hemingway. He was actually very embarrassed by it." Yet until the end of his life in 2005 — when  Thompson took his own life just like Hemingway did — he never returned the antlers, which hung in his garage. Finally, Anita returned the elk antlers to the Hemingway family in 2016. She said the family, who didn't know Thompson had stolen the antlers, "were warm and kind of tickled... they were so open and grateful, there was no weirdness."

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

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Hunter s. thompson , the art of journalism no. 1, issue 156, fall 2000.

In an October 1957 letter to a friend who had recommended he read Ayn Rand’s  The Fountainhead , Hunter S. Thompson wrote, “Although I don’t feel that it’s at all necessary to tell you how I feel about the principle of individuality, I know that I’m going to have to spend the rest of my life expressing it one way or another, and I think that I’ll accomplish more by expressing it on the keys of a typewriter than by letting it express itself in sudden outbursts of frustrated violence. . . .”

Thompson carved out his niche early. He was born in 1937, in Louisville, Kentucky, where his fiction and poetry earned him induction into the local Athenaeum Literary Association while he was still in high school. Thompson continued his literary pursuits in the United States Air Force, writing a weekly sports column for the base newspaper. After two years of service, Thompson endured a series of newspaper jobs—all of which ended badly—before he took to freelancing from Puerto Rico and South America for a variety of publications. The vocation quickly developed into a compulsion.

Thompson completed  The Rum Diary , his only novel to date, before he turned twenty-five; bought by Ballantine Books, it finally was published—to glowing reviews—in 1998. In 1967, Thompson published his first nonfiction book, Hell’s Angels, a harsh and incisive firsthand investigation into the infamous motorcycle gang then making the heartland of America nervous.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , which first appeared in Rolling Stone in November 1971, sealed Thompson’s reputation as an outlandish stylist successfully straddling the line between journalism and fiction writing. As the subtitle warns, the book tells of “a savage journey to the heart of the American Dream” in full-tilt gonzo style—Thompson’s hilarious first-person approach—and is accented by British illustrator Ralph Steadman’s appropriate drawings.

His next book,  Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 , was a brutally perceptive take on the 1972 Nixon-McGovern presidential campaign. A self-confessed political junkie, Thompson chronicled the 1992 presidential campaign in  Better than Sex  (1994). Thompson’s other books include  The Curse of Lono  (1983), a bizarre South Seas tale, and three collections of Gonzo Papers:  The Great Shark Hunt  (1979),  Generation of Swine  (1988) and  Songs of the Doomed  (1990).

In 1997,  The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 , the first volume of Thompson’s correspondence with everyone from his mother to Lyndon Johnson, was published. The second volume of letters,  Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976, has just been released.

Located in the mostly posh neighborhood of western Colorado’s Woody Creek Canyon, ten miles or so down-valley from Aspen, Owl Farm is a rustic ranch with an old-fashioned Wild West charm. Although Thompson’s beloved peacocks roam his property freely, it’s the flowers blooming around the ranch house that provide an unexpected high-country tranquility. Jimmy Carter, George McGovern and Keith Richards, among dozens of others, have shot clay pigeons and stationary targets on the property, which is a designated Rod and Gun Club and shares a border with the White River National Forest. Almost daily, Thompson leaves Owl Farm in either his Great Red Shark Convertible or Jeep Grand Cherokee to mingle at the nearby Woody Creek Tavern.

Visitors to Thompson’s house are greeted by a variety of sculptures, weapons, boxes of books and a bicycle before entering the nerve center of Owl Farm, Thompson’s obvious command post on the kitchen side of a peninsula counter that separates him from a lounge area dominated by an always-on Panasonic TV, always tuned to news or sports. An antique upright piano is piled high and deep enough with books to engulf any reader for a decade. Above the piano hangs a large Ralph Steadman portrait of “Belinda”—the Slut Goddess of Polo. On another wall covered with political buttons hangs a Che Guevara banner acquired on Thompson’s last tour of Cuba. On the counter sits an IBM Selectric typewriter—a Macintosh computer is set up in an office in the back wing of the house.

The most striking thing about Thompson’s house is that it isn’t the weirdness one notices first: it’s the words. They’re everywhere—handwritten in his elegant lettering, mostly in fading red Sharpie on the blizzard of bits of paper festooning every wall and surface: stuck to the sleek black leather refrigerator, taped to the giant TV, tacked up on the lampshades; inscribed by others on framed photos with lines like, “For Hunter, who saw not only fear and loathing, but hope and joy in ’72—George McGovern”; typed in IBM Selectric on reams of originals and copies in fat manila folders that slide in piles off every counter and table top; and noted in many hands and inks across the endless flurry of pages.

Thompson extricates his large frame from his ergonomically correct office chair facing the TV and lumbers over graciously to administer a hearty handshake or kiss to each caller according to gender, all with an easy effortlessness and unexpectedly old-world way that somehow underscores just who is in charge.

We talked with Thompson for twelve hours straight. This was nothing out of the ordinary for the host: Owl Farm operates like an eighteenth-century salon, where people from all walks of life congregate in the wee hours for free exchanges about everything from theoretical physics to local water rights, depending on who’s there. Walter Isaacson, managing editor of  Time , was present during parts of this interview, as were a steady stream of friends. Given the very late hours Thompson keeps, it is fitting that the most prominently posted quote in the room, in Thompson’s hand, twists the last line of Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”: “Rage, rage against the coming of the light.”

For most of the half-day that we talked, Thompson sat at his command post, chain-smoking red Dunhills through a German-made gold-tipped cigarette filter and rocking back and forth in his swivel chair. Behind Thompson’s sui generis personality lurks a trenchant humorist with a sharp moral sensibility. His exaggerated style may defy easy categorization, but his career-long autopsy on the death of the American dream places him among the twentieth century’s most exciting writers. The comic savagery of his best work will continue to electrify readers for generations to come.

. . . I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the  Book of Revelation  than from anything else in the English Language—and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Well, wanting to and having to are two different things. Originally I hadn’t thought about writing as a solution to my problems. But I had a good grounding in literature in high school. We’d cut school and go down to a café on Bardstown Road where we would drink beer and read and discuss Plato’s parable of the cave. We had a literary society in town, the Athenaeum; we met in coat and tie on Saturday nights. I hadn’t adjusted too well to society—I was in jail for the night of my high school graduation—but I learned at the age of fifteen that to get by you had to find the one thing you can do better than anybody else . . . at least this was so in my case. I figured that out early. It was writing. It was the rock in my sock. Easier than algebra. It was always work, but it was always worthwhile work. I was fascinated early by seeing my byline in print. It was a rush. Still is.

When I got to the Air Force, writing got me out of trouble. I was assigned to pilot training at Eglin Air Force Base near Pensacola in northwest Florida, but I was shifted to electronics . . . advanced, very intense, eight-month school with bright guys . . . I enjoyed it but I wanted to get back to pilot training. Besides, I’m afraid of electricity. So I went up there to the base education office one day and signed up for some classes at Florida State. I got along well with a guy named Ed and I asked him about literary possibilities. He asked me if I knew anything about sports, and I said that I had been the editor of my high-school paper. He said, “Well, we might be in luck.” It turned out that the sports editor of the base newspaper, a staff sergeant, had been arrested in Pensacola and put in jail for public drunkenness, pissing against the side of a building; it was the third time and they wouldn’t let him out.

So I went to the base library and found three books on journalism. I stayed there reading them until it closed. Basic journalism. I learned about headlines, leads: who, when, what, where, that sort of thing. I barely slept that night. This was my ticket to ride, my ticket to get out of that damn place. So I started as an editor. Boy, what a joy. I wrote long Grantland Rice-type stories. The sports editor of my hometown  Louisville Courier Journal  always had a column, left-hand side of the page. So I started a column.

By the second week I had the whole thing down. I could work at night. I wore civilian clothes, worked off base, had no hours, but I worked constantly. I wrote not only for the base paper,  The Command Courier , but also the local paper,  The Playground News . I’d put things in the local paper that I couldn’t put in the base paper. Really inflammatory shit. I wrote for a professional wrestling newsletter. The Air Force got very angry about it. I was constantly doing things that violated regulations. I wrote a critical column about how Arthur Godfrey, who’d been invited to the base to be the master of ceremonies at a firepower demonstration, had been busted for shooting animals from the air in Alaska. The base commander told me: “Goddamn it, son, why did you have to write about Arthur Godfrey that way?”

When I left the Air Force I knew I could get by as a journalist. So I went to apply for a job at  Sports Illustrated . I had my clippings, my bylines, and I thought that was magic . . . my passport. The personnel director just laughed at me. I said, “Wait a minute. I’ve been sports editor for  two  papers.” He told me that their writers were judged not by the work they’d done, but where they’d done it. He said, “Our writers are all Pulitzer Prize winners from  The New York Times . This is a helluva place for you to  start . Go out into the boondocks and improve yourself.”

I was shocked. After all, I’d broken the Bart Starr story.

INTERVIEWER

What was that?

At Eglin Air Force Base we always had these great football teams. The Eagles. Championship teams. We could beat up on the University of Virginia. Our bird-colonel Sparks wasn’t just any yo-yo coach. We recruited. We had these great players serving their military time in ROTC. We had Zeke Bratkowski, the Green Bay quarterback. We had Max McGee of the Packers. Violent, wild, wonderful drunk. At the start of the season McGee went AWOL, appeared at the Green Bay camp and he never came back. I was somehow blamed for his leaving. The sun fell out of the firmament. Then the word came that we were getting Bart Starr, the All-American from Alabama. The Eagles were going to roll! But then the staff sergeant across the street came in and said, “I’ve got a terrible story for you. Bart Starr’s not coming.” I managed to break into an office and get out his files. I printed the order that showed he was being discharged medically. Very serious leak.

The Bart Starr story was not enough to impress  Sports Illustrated ?

The personnel guy there said, “Well, we do have this trainee program.” So I became a kind of copy boy.

You eventually ended up in San Francisco. With the publication in 1967 of  Hell’s Angels , your life must have taken an upward spin.

All of a sudden I had a book out. At the time I was twenty-nine years old and I couldn’t even get a job driving a cab in San Francisco, much less writing. Sure, I had written important articles for  The Nation  and  The Observer , but only a few good journalists really knew my byline. The book enabled me to buy a brand new BSA 650 Lightning, the fastest motorcycle ever tested by  Hot Rod  magazine. It validated everything I had been working toward. If  Hell’s Angels  hadn’t happened I never would have been able to write  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas  or anything else. To be able to earn a living as a freelance writer in this country is damned hard; there are very few people who can do that.  Hell’s Angels  all of a sudden proved to me that, Holy Jesus, maybe I can do this. I knew I was a good journalist. I knew I was a good writer, but I felt like I got through a door just as it was closing.

With the swell of creative energy flowing throughout the San Francisco scene at the time, did you interact with or were you influenced by any other writers?

Ken Kesey for one. His novels  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest  and  Sometimes a Great Notion  had quite an impact on me. I looked up to him hugely. One day I went down to the television station to do a roundtable show with other writers, like Kay Boyle, and Kesey was there. Afterwards we went across the street to a local tavern and had several beers together. I told him about the Angels, who I planned to meet later that day, and I said, “Well, why don’t you come along?” He said, “Whoa, I’d  like  to meet these guys.” Then I got second thoughts, because it’s never a good idea to take strangers along to meet the Angels. But I figured that this was Ken Kesey, so I’d try. By the end of the night Kesey had invited them all down to La Honda, his woodsy retreat outside of San Francisco. It was a time of extreme turbulence—riots in Berkeley. He was always under assault by the police—day in and day out, so La Honda was like a war zone. But he had a lot of the literary, intellectual crowd down there, Stanford people also, visiting editors, and Hell’s Angels. Kesey’s place was a real cultural vortex.

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By the time I arrived in New York in the late seventies, Lapham was established in the city’s editorial elite, up there with William Shawn at The New Yorker and Barbara Epstein and Bob Silvers at The New York Review of Books . He was a glamorous fixture at literary parties and a regular at Elaine’s. In 1988, he raised plutocratic hackles by publishing Money and Class in America , a mordant indictment of our obsession with wealth. For a brief but glorious couple of years, he hosted a literary chat show on public TV called Bookmark , trading repartee with guests such as Joyce Carol Oates, Gore Vidal, Alison Lurie, and Edward Said. All the while, a new issue of Harper’s would hit the newsstands every month, with a lead essay by Lapham that couched his erudite observations on American society and politics in Augustan prose.

Today Lapham is the rare surviving eminence from that literary world. But he has managed to keep a handsome bit of it alive—so I observed when I went to interview him last summer in the offices of Lapham’s , a book-filled, crepuscular warren on a high floor of an old building just off Union Square. There he presides over a compact but bustling editorial operation, with an improbably youthful crew of subeditors. One LQ intern, who had also done stints at other magazines, told me that Lapham was singular among top editors for the personal attention he showed to each member of his staff.

Our conversation took place over several sessions, each around ninety minutes. Despite the heat, he was always impeccably attired: well-tailored blue blazer, silk tie, cuff links, and elegant loafers with no socks. He speaks in a relaxed baritone, punctuated by an occasional cough of almost orchestral resonance—a product, perhaps, of the Parliaments he is always dashing outside to smoke. The frequency with which he chuckles attests to a vision of life that is essentially comic, in which the most pervasive evils are folly and pretension.

I was familiar with such aspects of the Lapham persona. But what surprised me was his candid revelation of the struggle and self-doubt that lay behind what I had imagined to be his effortlessness. Those essays, so coolly modulated and intellectually assured, are the outcome of a creative process filled with arduous redrafting, rejiggering, revision, and last-minute amendment in the teeth of the printing press. And it is a creative process that always begins—as it did with his model, Montaigne—not with a dogmatic axiom to be unpacked but in a state of skeptical self-questioning: What do I really know? If there a unifying core to Lapham’s dual career as an editor and an essayist, that may be it.

— Jim Holt

From the Archive, Issue 229

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Hunter S. Thompson's Widow Returns Ernest Hemingway's Elk Horns

The gonzo journalist was so enamored with Hemingway that early in his career he traveled to the Idaho cabin where Hemingway died. After 52 years, the antlers he took were returned to the Hemingways.

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Correction Aug. 12, 2016

In an earlier headline, we misspelled Ernest Hemingway's first name. His name was not "Earnest."

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Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter s. thompson, doctor of gonzo journalism, died on february 20th, aged 67.

THERE were always way too many guns around at Hunter S. Thompson's farm in Woody Creek: .44 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns, black snubnosed Colt Pythons with bevelled cylinders, .22 calibre mounted machineguns. He also kept explosives, to blow the legs off pool tables or to pack in a barrel for target practice. His quiet bourgeois neighbours near Aspen, Colorado, complained that he rocked the foundations of their houses.

Explosions were his speciality. Indeed, writing and shooting were much the same. His very first newspaper story, written when he was ten for a neighbourhood newsletter in Louisville, Kentucky, was headlined “WAR!” (“The Voits declared war on Hunter's gang on Oct. 1, 1947. At 3.00 Hunter's gang attacked the Voits”). Later, as a working journalist, he fired off reckless fusillades of words that were meant to shock and entertain and wreak collateral damage.

He had always been a problem, kicked early out of high school (drinking, vandalism) and rapidly out of the air force, but his casual smashing of the rules of American journalism happened more or less by accident. Assigned to cover the Kentucky Derby in 1970, his mind was too blown with drugs, as usual, to write the story. One by one, with his trembling hands, he ripped the pages of whiskey-fuelled ramblings out of his notebook and sent them to the printer. The piece that resulted, “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved”, was a runaway success, though he had neither described the race nor mentioned the winner. And he was astonished: it was like “falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids.”

A friend called his style “totally gonzo”. The name stuck, though, as he confessed, nobody knew what the hell it meant. For the literary, he could explain that it followed William Faulkner's dictum that “the best fiction is more true than any kind of journalism.” Mr Thompson stalked, rifle in hand, cigarette (in holder) dangling, on the wild borderlands between fact and fiction, leaving readers to decide what was true and what was not.

Editors tried to control him, but failed. Journalistic objectivity was a nonsense to him; he threw it away, and turned his gaze on himself. He and his excursions into depravity became the central and only theme of every story he wrote. Sent to Puerto Rico for the New York Herald Tribune , in 1959, he shot rats at the San Juan city dump until he was arrested. Assigned in 1971 to write a 300-word caption on the Mint 400 motor-cycle race for Sports Illustrated , he wrote the 50,000 words of mayhem that became “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. It began: “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” Posted to Zaire in 1974 to cover the fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, he never watched the boxing. Instead he floated naked in the hotel pool, into which he had thrown a pound and a half of marijuana, and let the green slick gather round him.

“Fear and Loathing” made him famous: so famous that the Republicans came courting him, although he was a Democrat. It was not just the guns, but the fact that he wore a twisted sort of patriotism on his sleeve. That journey through the Californian desert to find fame and fortune, stocked up with “two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-coloured uppers”, was also, Mr Thompson claimed, “a classic confirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character.” (“Jesus! Did I say that?”)

Nixon's men wondered if this madman could be their bridge to the alienated, war-hating young. But they were playing with fire. Mr Thompson thought Nixon a liar and a bastard. He covered the 1972 election in typically take-no-prisoners style, producing what one campaign aide called “the least accurate and most factual” book about it; and when he toyed with politics it was on the Freak Power ticket, running for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, where he could blow things away in the woods.

At Hemingway's grave

He did not give “a flying fuck” what he smoked, or ingested, or did, but there was a thoughtful side. Early in his career, in an obituary of a friend, he wrote of “the dead-end loneliness of a man who makes his own rules.” He was often melancholy, and wild conviviality and celebrity made no difference to that. The epigram to “Fear and Loathing” quoted Dr Johnson: “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” It was not thought surprising that his death was a suicide.

In 1964 he had made a long journey to Ketchum, Idaho, to the grave of Ernest Hemingway, one of his models and heroes. He wanted to understand why Hemingway had killed himself in his cabin in the woods, and concluded that he had lost his sense of control in a changing world:

It is not just a writer's crisis, but they are the most obvious victims because the function of art is supposedly to bring order out of chaos, a tall order even when the chaos is static, and a superhuman task when chaos is multiplying...So finally, and for what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun.

This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “Hunter S. Thompson”

From the February 26th 2005 edition

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Hunter S. Thompson stole what from Hemingway?

BOISE, Idaho — A young Hunter S. Thompson went to Idaho to write about Ernest Hemingway and decided to take a piece of his hero home with him — a set of trophy elk antlers.

More than half a century later, the gonzo journalist's wife returned the antlers to Hemingway's house in the mountain town of Ketchum.

"He was embarrassed that he took them," Anita Thompson told The Associated Press on Thursday, noting the deep respect her husband had for Hemingway's work. "He wished he hadn't taken them. He was young, it was 1964, and he got caught up in the moment.

"He talked about it several times, about taking a road trip and returning them," she said.

She gave back the antlers Aug. 5 to Ketchum Community Library, which helps catalog and preserve items in the residence where the author took his own life. It's now owned by the Nature Conservancy.

In 1964, Hunter Thompson, then 27, came to Ketchum when he was still a conventional journalist. He had not yet developed his signature style, dubbed gonzo journalism, that involved inserting himself, often outrageously, into his reporting and that propelled him into a larger-than-life figure.

Thompson was writing a story for the National Observer about why the globe-trotting Hemingway shot and killed himself at his home three years earlier at age 61. Thompson attributed the suicide in part to rapid changes in the world that led to upheavals in places Hemingway loved most — Africa and Cuba.

Even Ketchum, which in the 1930s and 1940s attracted luminaries such as Gary Cooper, had fallen off the map of cafe society by the late 1950s, Thompson wrote.

In the story, later collected in his book "The Great Shark Hunt," he noted the problem of tourists taking chunks of earth from around Hemingway's grave as souvenirs.

Early in the piece, he wrote about the large elk antlers over Hemingway's front door but never mentioned taking them.

For decades, the antlers hung in a garage at Thompson's home near Aspen, Colorado.

"One of the stories that has often been told over the years is the story of Hunter S. Thompson taking the antlers," said the library's Jenny Emery Davidson, who helped accept the trophy. "These are two great literary figures who came together over the item of the antlers."

Davidson said historian Douglas Brinkley, who spoke at the library in May and was familiar with the antler story after interviewing the writer, contacted Anita Thompson. She called the library on Aug. 1.

Davidson said the antlers have since been shipped to a Hemingway grandson in New York who wanted them. It's not clear if the antlers came from an elk killed by the author, who was a noted big game hunter, or if they were a gift.

Sean Hemingway didn't respond to emails or phone messages seeking comment.

Like Ernest Hemingway, Thompson ended his own life by shooting himself, dying in 2005 at age 67 at his Colorado home.

His widow wants to turn the house where he lived and worked into a museum, planning to open it next year by invitation only. Like Hemingway's home, it's much the same as it was when Thompson was alive.

"I couldn't open it with a clear conscious knowing there's a stolen pair of antlers," Anita Thompson said, noting the theft was unusual behavior, even by her husband's standards.

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How Hunter S. Thompson Became a Legend

By Patrick Doyle

Patrick Doyle

Adapted from the book “50 Years of Rolling Stone ” (Abrams), which is available here . 

In January 1970, Hunter S. Thompson wrote Jann S. Wenner a letter praising Rolling Stone ‘s definitive coverage of the disastrous Altamont festival. “[Print’s] a hell of a good medium by any standard, from Hemingway to the Airplane,” Thompson wrote. “Don’t fuck it up with pompous bullshit; the demise of RS would leave a nasty hole.” A bond was formed, and over the next 30 years, Thompson would do much to redefine journalism in the pages of the magazine. He lived and wrote on the edge in a style that would come to be called Gonzo journalism. That term captured his lifestyle, but it didn’t really do justice to Thompson’s command of language, his fearless reporting or his fearsome intellect.

Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky, served in the Air Force, and worked as a journalist in Puerto Rico before moving to San Francisco, where an article about the Hells Angels turned into a book project. He spent almost two years riding with the outlaw motorcycle gang , and in 1966 he published a bestseller that took readers deep inside a subculture largely inaccessible to the outside world.

In that sense, Thompson and Rolling Stone were kindred spirits. After he wrote to the magazine, Wenner invited him to the office to discuss a piece that would be called “The Battle of Aspen,” about Thompson’s effort to bring “freak power” to the Rockies. Thompson had tried to get Joe Edwards, a 29-year-old pot-smoking lawyer, elected mayor; Thompson himself was running for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado. “He stood six-three,” Wenner remembered years later, “shaved bald, dark glasses, smoking, carrying two six-packs of beer; he sat down, slowly unpacked a leather satchel full of travel necessities onto my desk – mainly hardware, flashlights, a siren, boxes of cigarettes, flares – and didn’t leave for three hours. By the end, I was suddenly deep into his campaign.” Thompson and Edwards lost their bids by slim margins, but Thompson’s fate as a self-described “political junkie” was sealed.

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A year later, Thompson sent Rolling Stone the first section of a new piece he was working on. “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold,” it began. “I remember saying something like, ‘I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…’ And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about 100 miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.”

“ Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ” became Thompson’s defining piece, and a defining literary experience for generations of readers. It had begun as an assignment from Sports Illustrated when Thompson was asked to go to Las Vegas to write a 250-word photo caption on a motorcycle race, the Mint 400. Introducing himself as a “doctor of journalism,” he chronicled the fuel he brought along: “two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers . . . and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls… Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”

The trip became less about covering the race and more of, in Thompson’s words, “a savage journey into the heart of the American dream.” When he submitted 2,500 words to Sports Illustrated, the piece was rejected, along with his expenses. But when Wenner read it, he seized on it. “We were flat knocked out,” recalls then-managing editor Paul Scanlon. “Between fits of laughter, we ran our favorite lines back and forth to one another: ‘One toke? You poor fool. Wait until you see those goddamned bats!'”

Rolling Stone sent Thompson back to Vegas to expand the piece, reporting on the National District Attorneys Association’s Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. The results were hilarious and electrifying. “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” ran in two parts, in the issues of November 11th and 25th, 1971, with illustrations by Ralph Steadman, and was published in book form the next year. (In 1998, it became a film starring Johnny Depp.)

Thompson was also reshaping what it meant to write about politics. He filed 14 dispatches for Rolling Stone from the 1972 presidential campaign trail. He lacerated the “waterheads,” “swine” and “fatcats” of D.C. culture – a tone far different from the reverent approach of the time – and lifted the curtain on the mechanics of press coverage. He exposed “pack journalism,” puff pieces born out of schmoozing sessions between journalists and campaign aides. Many of Thompson’s observations ring true today: “It’s come to the point where you almost can’t run [for president] unless you can cause people to salivate and whip on each other with big sticks,” he wrote. “You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.”

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Rolling stone at 50: shaping contrasting narratives of woodstock, altamont.

But getting work out of Thompson was becoming difficult. The magazine put him up at hotels in San Francisco or Florida, and stocked his room with booze, grapefruit and speed. A primitive fax machine, which Thompson called his “Mojo Wire,” was installed in the Rolling Stone offices, and he’d transmit his copy a few pages at a time at odd hours, adding the transitions and endings later. He would often call Wenner at 2 a.m. to discuss the pieces. “It was a bit like being a cornerman for Ali,” said Wenner. “Editing Hunter required stamina, but I was young, and this was once in a lifetime.”

In correspondence between Thompson and Wenner, Thompson demanded albums and speed; Wenner chastised him for blowing deadlines, keeping the staff late and even stealing cassettes from his house. (“I did a lot of rotten things out there but I didn’t steal your fucking cassettes,” Thompson wrote.)

Thompson had become a celebrity – and it slowed him down. He was immortalized as Uncle Duke in Doonesbury . “All that kind of trapped him, between the fame and the drugs,” said Wenner. “After the election and Watergate, he wrote small things for us. But he’d miss flights and never turn anything in.” In one memo from around that time, Wenner checked in on seven features, none of which ever came to fruition. In 1975, Thompson traveled to a failing Saigon for a planned epic Vietnam piece, but he spent most of his time there drinking in the hotel courtyard with other correspondents. He conducted several interviews with Jimmy Carter that the former president remembered as lengthy and revealing, but Thompson lost the tapes.

Still, there were flashes of brilliance, such as his coverage of the 1982 Pulitzer divorce trial in Palm Beach, Florida, which summed up the Eighties culture of greed as it was still taking form. In 1992, he published “ Fear and Loathing in Elko ,” a surreal fiction piece in which he met future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, stranded on a road with two prostitutes. “It was a remarkable comeback,” said Wenner, who saw “Elko” as a bookend to the 1971 classic. “ ’Vegas’ is so fun and hopeful. ‘Elko’ is this bitter, very dark tale, kind of a descent into some of the worst impulses of the human spirit.”

Thompson wrote one final piece for Rolling Stone , in 2004. In an uncharacteristically humble tone, he made a plea to readers to vote. By that point, Thompson’s back pain had become chronic, and he required a wheelchair. His book editor Douglas Brinkley recalled taking a trip with Thompson to New Orleans in January 2005, where he was humiliated when he couldn’t climb the stairs at a party thrown by James Carville. “He sulked at the downstairs bar, muttering cryptic things like, ‘My time has come to die, Dougie,’ ” Brinkley remembered. A month later, Brinkley reported that Thompson got into a shouting match with his wife, Anita Thompson, after he nearly shot her with a pellet gun. They made up the next day, but when she phoned Thompson from a nearby health club, she heard strange clicking noises. After she hung up, he put a .45-caliber gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Thompson left a suicide note, titled “Football Season Is Over,” which was printed in Rolling Stone . “67,” Thompson wrote. “That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun – for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax – This won’t hurt.” Thompson’s death recalled the suicide of his literary hero Ernest Hemingway. “Hunter had really gone from being a celebrity to being a legend,” Wenner said. “Part of that legend is his suicide, much like Hemingway.”

Thompson had one final wish. In August 2005, more than 200 friends, including Wenner, Jack Nicholson, John Kerry and Johnny Depp, gathered at Thompson’s Colorado home, where his ashes were shot out of a 153-foot cannon under a full moon. In March 2005, Thompson appeared on the cover of the magazine, with remembrances from Depp, George McGovern and Thompson’s son, Juan, among others. Included was a letter Thompson wrote to Wenner in 1998, recalling his early days at Rolling Stone : “My central memory of that time is that everything we were doing seemed to work. . . . Buy the ticket, take the ride. Like an amusement park. … Thanx for the rush.”

From running for Sheriff of Pitkin County to being the inspiration behind ‘Uncle Duke,’ here are 5 things you didn’t know about Hunter S. Thompson.

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20 great articles and essays by hunter s. thompson, misadventure, the kentucky derby is decadent and depraved, doomed love at the taco stand, on politics, freak power in the rockies, he was a crook, the motorcycle gangs, strange rumblings in aztlan, prisoner of denver, see also..., 150 great articles and essays.

Hunter Thompson’s experience and writing style Analytical Essay

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Introduction

Hunter thompson’s experiences, his writing style, impact to journalism, works cited.

The essay is a critical examination of Hunter Thompson’s experiences and writing style. The current events, activities and procedures have a strong link with the contributions of all those who came before us. Their experiences as well as the manner with which they did their activities have a bearing with what we are currently doing in the corresponding fields.

According to Nocera 44 Hunter Stockton Thomson was a great American journalist of his time. He was behind the publication of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as well as Fear and Loathing on Campaign Trail in the years 1971 and 1973 respectively.

He was born in July 18, 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky as the first son of Robert Thomson (a public insurance adjuster) and Virginia Davison (a librarian). His father died when he was only fourteen years.

Hunter joined Louisville Castlewood Athletic Club where he was a pro in baseball. He also attended I.N Bloom Elementary School. He later joined Highland Middle School before transferred to Atherton High School then moved to Louisville Male High School. At the school he joined Athenaeum Literary Association where he contributed immensely in development of the yearbook of the club.

However he lost his membership after being accused of robbery. He later joined Air Force and his quest to be an aviator was not realized. While in service he was a sports editor. This gave him an opportunity to travel across the United States of America. However he was honourably discharged from service in 1958.

Thomson continued working as a sports editor although with different employers. He got married to his long-term girlfriend Conklin in 1963. Through his work, he came up with a writing style known as “ Gonzo journalism which entails a concept where a reporter actively involves him/herself in the action to such a degree that he becomes central figures of their stories ” (Thomson 91)

He lacked the affection of his father. In my humble opinion, Hunter had trouble in school; this can be depicted by the several numbers of schools he attended. Despite his contribution to the club’s yearbook, he lost membership when he was found in a stolen car. This landed him a jail term of two months.

After joining the Air Force he studied electronics but his desire to be an aviator was thwarted forcing him to transfer to Eglin Air Force Base. He gained interest in being a sports editor and worked for The Command Courier covering base football team.

After four years of service, he was honourably discharged from service and the ground of dismissal is summarized; “This airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy… Sometimes his rebel and superior attitude seems to rub off on other airmen staff members” (Nocera 49).

He landed a job as a sports editor in Jersey Shore. Moving to New York City he enrolled for part-time studies in Columbia University School of General Studies studying creative writing.

Working for Times as a copy boy he engaged himself in trying to understand the writing styles of such great artists as Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. He was later fired for insubordination. He moved on and worked for The Middletown Daily Records but was fired when he destroyed a candy machine (Nocera 45).

Thomson relocated to Puerto Rico and got a job with El Sportivo magazine, the company later collapsed forcing him to look for a job elsewhere leading to The San Juan Star .

Thomson later returned to the United States of America and worked as a security guard in Big Sur, California. During this time he published an article feature in Rogue magazine. His article was about “ artisan and bohemian culture of Big Sur” . This kind of undesired publicity made him loss his job.

Two novels were written immediately he lost his job- Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary . His efforts to submit several short stories for publication hit a snag. He moved to South America and worked as a correspondent for National Observer newspaper. Additionally he worked as a reporter in Brazil.

After marrying his long-term girlfriend, they managed to give birth to a son. The desire to have additional children was not achieved as the pregnancy was either miscarried or the infants died immediately after birth. After 17 years of marriage the two divorced. His family relocated to California in 1964 where he continued working with the National Observer .

He fell out with his employer after his work The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby was not published. This prompted him to move to San Francisco where he was a drug addict and took a job as a writer for The Spyder (Nocera 44).

Hunter was offered a chance to write a story by McWilliams who by then was the editor of The Nation; the article was his (Hunters) experience while he was working with Hells Angel motorcycle club . After the publication, Hunter received numerous book offers. However things turned out the other way round when the gang established that Hunter would gain from such partnership.

This prompted them to demand for a share of the profit Hunter accrued leading to an argument. He was thoroughly beaten up. This happened in 1965. With the success of Hells Angel , Hunter was able to publish numerous works in well known and established magazines.

In 1968, he is remembered for vowing not to pay tax raising serious concerns about the war in Vietnam. During the same time, he was among the team that was trailing the presidential campaign and from his hotel room; he saw the fight between the civilians and the police. This shaped his political stand.

The desire to publish the book was never realize, however the theme was of American dream was evident in his later works. He published his first book; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1972. A year after moving to Colarado he ran for a local office but narrowly lost. The Rolling Stone magazine shown Hunter carrying beer which he claimed was used to derail his campaign.

A year after publishing his famous book, he worked for Rolling Stone and extensively covered presidential campaign of Nixon. His desire to provide the same coverage to the magazine he was working for with presidential campaign 3 years later did not see the light as an advance check was pulled out by the company’s publisher (Nocera 46).

He was later sent to Vietnam to cover stories related to the war. His health insurance and financial support was withheld by the same publisher making his life difficult prompted him to distance himself from the magazine. Thereafter, Hunter engaged in other literal works such as novel, short stories as well as movies.

In several occasions he found himself in the wrong side with the authorities, however most cases brought forth against him were dismissed. I believe all these experiences are what contributed to his writing style where he expressed his feelings while reporting-the Gonzo writing style.

One thing that made and will continue making Hunter so famous at his time, now and even in the future is his journalist style the Gonzo. Writing style “that blurs distinctions between fiction and nonfiction” that came to the limelight between 1960s and 1970s. His efforts aimed at changing the “objective style mainstream reporting during his time ” (Thomson 74).

Most of his work was written in first person accompanied by personal experiences as well as emotions. A close look at his work reveals that they were colourful, hilarious and peculiar with lots of exaggeration to attract the attention of readers. Hunter acknowledged that;

[I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language… because l love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music.] (Nocera 49).

The concept of language and madness are evident in his work. His style of reporting took the “form of volatile denunciatory literary jeremiads, challenging and reproving conventional morality, politics, and culture” (Nocera 48).

The use of certain words in his work for instance ‘certain death’, ‘total failure’ among others made people feels nauseous and he hinted that such words are worth listening to. In this style of journalism the reporter take the role of a performer and this is summarized by what he said “True Gonzo reporting needs the talents of a master journalist, the eye of an artist/photographer and the heavy balls of an actor” (Thomson 125).

A typical example of his writing style was depicted in the book titled Hell’s Angel in which he narrated his experiences with the motorcycle gang in which he used such strong words as “riding, loafing, plotting, and eventually being stomped” (Thomson 279).

It is no doubt that he injected himself as an active participant in narrations which was closely linked with invention of metaphoric element that led to a product that brought with it “amalgam of facts and fiction notable for the deliberately blurred lines between one and the other” ( Nocera 50).

Additionally his writing style was full of weird humour as well as strident invective. This contributed to making his work distinct from the normal straight forward reporting. To him satire and humour contribute to creation of a good work that will leave readers at the edge of their seat trying to establish what is in the next line.

Hunter managed to “wields them with deadly and hilarious vengeance” (Nocera 47). There are some examples that clearly illustrate this concept. In reference to George Bush he wrote;

[He has the instincts of a dung beetle. No living politician can match his talent for soiling himself in public. Bush will seek out filth wherever it lives… and when he finds a new heap he will fall down and wallow crazily in it, making snorting sounds out of his nose and rolling over on his back and kicking his legs up in the air like a wild hog coming to water] (Thomson 228).

On the same note Hunter more often than not used ‘harsh and strong words’ words to make his points. For instance in a case where he was denouncing televangelist he said that these individuals are nothing but “the scum of the earth who act like a gang of baboon” .

Although it has been suggested that Hunter’s style of writing and reportage had roots from Wolfe’s the later said of the former’s style, “…part journalism and part personal memoir admixed with powers of wild invention and wilder rhetoric” (Nocera 49)

It is worth mentioning that other journalists were of the view that Hunter was undermining the professional way of reportage and he was branded “quintessential outlaw journalist”. However there were those who praised his work, for instance Nocera noted Hunter’s work led to a new reportage with “a new general form that would merge fact writing and opinion-writing” (Nocera 45)

It is no doubt that Hunter’s Gonzo writing style had tremendous influence in what is happening in the field of journalism. He paved way for contemporary journalism in which reporters actively got involved in their stories.

This continuously makes the readers to “grasp a better sense of happenings and situations .” The style has made it possible for current journalists to witness an event and immediately record it making the magazines and other print media to be understood into facts and opinions.

Additionally his writing style made it possible for the field of journalism to come to terms with the fact that reporting or writing in first person is acceptable. The contribution of this was a product or article that logically flow and unique. Similarly the desire to use humour, colour, metaphor, satire as well as personal peculiar accounts made journalism to be not only informative but entertaining.

More importantly, his writing style went a head in trying to seek the highest degree of truth. His efforts yielded higher levels of truth compared to conventional journalism. His influence in journalism can be seen through the efforts of current journalists who have tried but failed to impress and fit into his shoes.

From the review of experiences and writing style of Hunter Thomson, it is evident that his writing style Gonzo was shaped by what he went through while in school and the numerous jobs he took.

He is credited for coming up with a reportage style in which the reporter takes the role of a performer and fully indulge himself in writing using the first person. Hunter is known to use very harsh words to air his views. It is apparent that his work has been described as full of satire, humour, bizarre account that contributed in making his work informative and entertaining.

It is no doubt that his efforts had a clear impact on contemporary reporting, although some criticized him. His style of reporting resulted to soliciting for higher truth. Future generations will continue going through his work since there is no other work that can match Hunter’s as it gives truthful insight on American life.

Nocera, Joseph. How Hunter Thompson killed new journalism. Washington Monthly , 13.2 (1981), 44-50. Print.

Thompson, Hunter. Hell’s Angels: A strange and terrible saga . New York: Random House, 1966. Print

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IvyPanda. (2018, June 4). Hunter Thompson’s experience and writing style. https://ivypanda.com/essays/hunter-thompsons-experience-and-writing-style/

"Hunter Thompson’s experience and writing style." IvyPanda , 4 June 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/hunter-thompsons-experience-and-writing-style/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Hunter Thompson’s experience and writing style'. 4 June.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Hunter Thompson’s experience and writing style." June 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/hunter-thompsons-experience-and-writing-style/.

1. IvyPanda . "Hunter Thompson’s experience and writing style." June 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/hunter-thompsons-experience-and-writing-style/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Hunter Thompson’s experience and writing style." June 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/hunter-thompsons-experience-and-writing-style/.

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The Great Gatsby & A Farewell to Arms Word for Word: A Method for Learning How to Write Like the Masters">Hunter S. Thompson Typed Out The Great Gatsby & A Farewell to Arms Word for Word: A Method for Learning How to Write Like the Masters

in Literature , Writing | June 5th, 2017 1 Comment

Image  via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The word quixot­ic derives, of course, from Miguel Cer­vantes’ irrev­er­ent ear­ly 17th cen­tu­ry satire, Don Quixote . From the novel’s epony­mous char­ac­ter it car­ries con­no­ta­tions of anti­quat­ed, extrav­a­gant chival­ry. But in mod­ern usage, quixot­ic  usu­al­ly  means “fool­ish­ly imprac­ti­cal, marked by rash lofty roman­tic ideas.” Such des­ig­na­tions apply in the case of Jorge Luis Borges’ sto­ry, “ Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote ,” in which the tit­u­lar aca­d­e­m­ic writes his own Quixote by recre­at­ing Cer­vantes’ nov­el word-for-word.

Why does this fic­tion­al minor crit­ic do such a thing? Borges’ expla­na­tions are as cir­cuitous­ly mys­te­ri­ous as you might expect. But we can get a much more straight­for­ward answer from a mod­ern-day Quixote—an indi­vid­ual who has under­tak­en many a “fool­ish­ly imprac­ti­cal” quest: Hunter S. Thomp­son . Though he would nev­er be mis­tak­en for a knight-errant, Thomp­son did tilt at more than a few wind­mills, includ­ing Fitzgerald’s The Great Gats­by and Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms , from which he typed whole pages, word-for-word “just to get the feel­ing,” writes Louis Menand at The New York­er , “of what it was like to write that way.”

“You know Hunter typed The Great Gats­by,” an awestruck John­ny Depp told The Guardian in 2011 , after he’d played Thomp­son him­self in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas  and a fic­tion­al­ized ver­sion of him in an adap­ta­tion of Thompson’s lost nov­el The Rum Diaries . “He’d look at each page Fitzger­ald wrote, and he copied it. The entire book. And more than once. Because he want­ed to know what it felt like to write a mas­ter­piece .” This exer­cise pre­pared him to write one, or his cracked ver­sion of one, 1972’s gonzo account of a more-than-quixot­ic road trip, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas . Menand points out that Thomp­son first called the book The Death of the Amer­i­can Dream , like­ly inspired by Fitzgerald’s first Gats­by title, The Death of the Red White and Blue .

Thomp­son referred to Gats­by fre­quent­ly in books and let­ters. Just as often, he ref­er­enced anoth­er lit­er­ary hero—and pugna­cious Fitzger­ald com­peti­tor —Ernest Hem­ing­way. He first began typ­ing out Gats­by while employed at Time mag­a­zine as a copy boy in 1958, one of many mag­a­zine and news­pa­per jobs in a “pat­tern of dis­rup­tive employ­ment,” writes biog­ra­ph­er Kevin T. McE­neaney . “Thomp­son appro­pri­at­ed arm­loads of office sup­plies” for the task, and also typed out Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and “some of Faulkner’s stories—an unusu­al method for learn­ing prose rhythm.” He was fired the fol­low­ing year, not for mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion, but for “his unpar­don­able, insult­ing wit at a Christ­mas par­ty.”

In a 1958 let­ter to his home­town girl­friend Ann Frick , Thomp­son named the Fitzger­ald and Hem­ing­way nov­els as two espe­cial­ly influ­en­tial books, along with Brave New World , William Whyte’s The Orga­ni­za­tion Man , and Rona Jaffe’s  The Best of Every­thing  (or “ Girls before Girls ”), a nov­el that “hard­ly belongs in the above­men­tioned com­pa­ny,” he wrote, and which he did not, pre­sum­ably, copy out on his type­writer at work. Sure­ly, how­ev­er, many a Thomp­son close read­er has dis­cerned the traces of Fitzger­ald, Faulkn­er, and Hem­ing­way in his work, par­tic­u­lar­ly the lat­ter, whose macho escapades and epic drink­ing bouts sure­ly inspired more than just Thompson’s writ­ing.

In Borges’ “Pierre Menard,” the title char­ac­ter first sets out to “ be Miguel de Cervantes”—to “Learn Span­ish, return to Catholi­cism, fight against the Moor or Turk, for­get the his­to­ry of Europe from 1602 to 1918….” He finds the under­tak­ing not only “impos­si­ble from the out­set,” but also “the least inter­est­ing” way to go about writ­ing his own Quixote . Thomp­son may have dis­cov­ered the same as he worked his way through his influ­ences. He could not become his heroes. He would have to take what he’d learned from inhab­it­ing their prose, and use it as fuel for his lit­er­ary firebombs–or, seen dif­fer­ent­ly, for his ide­al­is­tic, imprac­ti­cal, yet strange­ly noble (in their way) knight’s quests.

Not since Thomp­son’s Nixon­ian hey­day has there been such need for a fero­cious out­law voice like his. He may have become a stock char­ac­ter by the end of his life, car­i­ca­tured as Uncle Duke in Doones­bury , giv­en pop cul­ture saint­hood by Dep­p’s unhinged por­tray­al. But “at its best,” writes Menand, “Thomp­son’s anger, in writ­ing, was a beau­ti­ful thing, fear­less and fun­ny and, after all, not wrong about the shab­bi­ness and hypocrisy of Amer­i­can offi­cial­dom.” Per­haps even now, some hun­gry young intern is typ­ing out Fear and Loathing  word-for-word, prepar­ing to absorb it into his or her own 21st cen­tu­ry reper­toire of barbed-wire truth-telling about “the death of the Amer­i­can dream.” The method, it seems, may work with any great writer, be it Cer­vantes, Fitzger­ald, or Hunter S. Thomp­son.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Hunter S. Thomp­son Gave Birth to Gonzo Jour­nal­ism: Short Film Revis­its Thompson’s Sem­i­nal 1970 Piece on the Ken­tucky Der­by

Read 18 Lost Sto­ries From Hunter S. Thompson’s For­got­ten Stint As a For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Josh Jones  is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at  @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Comments (1) |

Related posts:

Comments (1), 1 comment so far.

Very cool and very true. To have anoth­er’s words run through your fin­gers and up the arms to one’s con­scious­ness (wher­ev­er that may be) … from my own expe­ri­ence, an excel­lent teach­ing expe­ri­ence: to embody anoth­er’s words vis­cer­al­ly. Close to real under­stand­ing.

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Hunter S. Thompson's 9/11 Essay Is Still Chillingly Accurate 16 Years Later

Senior Reporter, HuffPost

When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, no one knew exactly what the future would hold.

However, writer Hunter S. Thompson turned out to be amazingly prescient.

Shortly after the tragedy, the famed gonzo journalist wrote an essay for ESPN.com where he laid out his thoughts on what could happen in this new era.

Sixteen years later, his remarks are still chillingly accurate:

“Boom! Boom! Just like that. The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. “Make no mistake about it: We are At War now ― with somebody ― and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.”

Thompson wrote that the United States is “going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say.”

He continued:

“Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.”

Thompson, who died in 2005 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, also laid out how then-President George W. Bush would react to the attack and how his decisions would affect the lives of everyday Americans.

“This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed ― for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. “ He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won’t hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force. Good luck. He is in for a profoundly difficult job ― armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy.”

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