RIP: Hunter S. Thompson

Just found out that Hunter S. Thompson commited suicide over the weekend. Not terribly suprising, but sad nonetheless. I didn't read all of his works, but what I read, I admired. The man lived as he wanted.


-mht

That is sad, I've read, and laughed out loud at most of his stuff!!

Mad Genius.

The last piece I read from him, one he wrote last year for Playboy's 50th anniversary, led me to wonder how long before we read the current news, and yet, it was bizarrely brilliant for all its unpretentiousness.

Hunter S. Thompson, the world's first blogger.

Mad is right... Definitely not shocked by the news, but saddened none the less..

I enjoyed Bill Muray's funny portrayal of Hunter in "Where the Buffalo Roam"... cheezy flick, but funny... kinda get a taste of Hunter with a Bill Murray twist...

Hunter Thompson Dies, CBS News Anchor Field Narrows

(2005-02-21) -- With the announcement that columnist and so-called 'gonzo journalist' Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide over the weekend, the field of potential replacements for Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News has "narrowed significantly," according to one network source.

Mr. Thompson, whose stock-in-trade subjectivity and vigorous injection of personal opinion became the template for much of modern journalism, was author of several books including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and A Generation of Swine. But he was perhaps best known to the elderly as the inspiration for the Doonesbury comic character, Duke.

"Hunter Thompson was a natural to inherit the big desk at CBS," said the unnamed network source. "Edgy, acerbic and not afraid to weave his political agenda into the story...many viewers would have simply thought that Dan Rather had ditched the toupee."

quite a character....

The family is looking into whether Thompson’s cremated remains can be blasted out of a cannon, a wish the gun-loving writer often expressed, Brinkley said.

I had many a great laugh reading Hunter through the years. Fear and Loathing is a brilliant work. I always understood through his musings (fictional or not) that, although he admitted to using drugs and alcohol to escape, he had a strong enough constitution to walk away from any of those issues. To hear that he blew his brains out dropped him off my list of admired people. Such a weak, selfish and thoughtless way to solve his problems. Did he ever think "Man, my son is probably going to walk in here, find me dead and see my brains splattered all over that wall. I wonder how that will affect the rest of his life?"