Hunter S. Thompson

His father adjusted insurance claims and had served in the first war. His mother was head librarian at the Louisville Free Public Library. On July 3, 1952, when Hunter was 14, Jack Thompson died of myasthenia gravis at 58, and Virginia raised three sons on a librarian's salary, drinking heavily. The boy got into the Athenaeum Literary Association, a school club dating to 1862 whose members came from Louisville's best families, and worked on its yearbook until it threw him out in 1955. He had been in a car with someone who committed a robbery. The court gave him 60 days, he served 31, and the refusal to let him sit his final exams cost him his diploma. He enlisted in the Air Force on release.

He lied about his experience to get the sports editor's desk at the Command Courier at Eglin, and his colonel recommended early discharge in 1958 on the grounds that the airman, though talented, would not be guided by policy. Time fired him for insubordination. A New York paper fired him for wrecking a candy machine. Puerto Rico, Big Sur, The Rum Diary, then a year riding with the Hells Angels for The Nation and Random House that ended with the club beating him. In 1970 Scanlan's put him with Ralph Steadman on the Kentucky Derby, and he filed a first-person account of the crowd that never mentioned the race. Bill Cardoso wrote to him: this is pure Gonzo. A 250-word caption assignment for Sports Illustrated then turned into Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Then it stopped. He first took cocaine in 1973, and the people around him watched it take the work. Rolling Stone sent him to Kinshasa in 1974 for Foreman and Ali and he stayed in the hotel and filed nothing, which Jann Wenner summed up as after Africa he just could not write. Sent to cover the fall of Saigon in 1975, he filed an unfinished dispatch, went on to Bangkok, and had a brass plaque made reading Rolling Stone Global Affairs Suite. A novel called Polo Is My Life got an ISBN and a 1999 publication date and never appeared. In March 1990 Gail Palmer accused him of throwing a drink at her and twisting her breast, and he was charged with five felonies and three misdemeanours before the case was dropped two months later.

At 5:42 in the afternoon on February 20, 2005 he shot himself at Owl Farm while on the phone with his wife. His son, daughter-in-law and grandson were in the house and took the shot for a falling book. Rolling Stone printed the note as Football Season Is Over. On August 20 his ashes were fired from a cannon on a 153-foot tower shaped like a two-thumbed fist gripping a peyote button, the emblem of his 1970 sheriff campaign, before 280 people, at a cost of about three million dollars that Johnny Depp paid. In September 2025 the Colorado Bureau of Investigation reopened the file, and on January 23, 2026 closed it again, finding nothing to suggest anything but suicide.

Hunter S. Thompson's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs book
  A year riding with the club, ending with the club beating him 1967
• The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved article
  Written in panic on deadline, and the first thing anyone called Gonzo 1970
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas book
  Grew out of a 250-word caption assignment for Sports Illustrated 1972
• Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 book
  Fourteen instalments for Rolling Stone, the last on November 9, 1972 1973
• The Great Shark Hunt book
  First of the four Gonzo Papers volumes 1979
• Hey Rube article
  The weekly ESPN.com column he wrote from 2000 until his death 2000

• July 3, 1952 aged 14 His father dies of myasthenia gravis Hunter was 14. His mother raised three sons on a librarian's salary.
• 1955 aged ~18 Serves 31 days in the Jefferson County jail and loses his diploma Charged as an accessory to robbery for sitting in the car. He enlisted in the Air Force on release.
• 1958 aged ~21 Discharged early from the Air Force His colonel wrote that the airman, although talented, would not be guided by policy.
• May 17, 1965 aged 27 The Nation publishes his first piece on the Hells Angels
• 1970 aged ~33 Writes the Kentucky Derby piece and loses the Pitkin County sheriff race He took the city of Aspen and 44 percent of the county.
• November 1971 aged 34 Rolling Stone serialises Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in two parts
• 1974 aged ~37 Goes to Zaire for Foreman and Ali and files nothing at all
• April 23, 2003 aged 65 Marries Anita Bejmuk
• February 20, 2005 aged 67 Shoots himself at Owl Farm at 5:42 in the afternoon

• Richard Nixon 1913–1994
  37th President whose foreign policy achievements were overshadowed by the Watergate scandal. the subject he never let go of
• George McGovern 1922–2012
  South Dakota senator and 1972 presidential nominee who led opposition to the Vietnam War. the candidate he covered and backed
• Ernest Hemingway 1899–1961
  Nobel Prize-winning novelist whose spare prose style defined 20th-century American fiction. whose Ketchum cabin he stole elk antlers from
• Tom Wolfe 1930–2018
  New Journalism pioneer whose The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities chronicled American culture. called him the greatest American comic writer of the century
• Johnny Depp b. 1963
  Versatile actor known for transformative roles from Edward Scissorhands to Pirates of the Caribbean. played him and paid for the funeral