Background
Hunter Stockton Thompson was born on July 18, 1939, in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. He was the son of Jack and Virginia (Ray) Thompson. His father was an insurance agent.
(Here, for the first time, is the private and most intimat...)
Here, for the first time, is the private and most intimate correspondence of one of America's most influential and incisive journalists--Hunter S. Thompson. In letters to a Who's Who of luminaries from Norman Mailer to Charles Kuralt, Tom Wolfe to Lyndon Johnson, William Styron to Joan Baez--not to mention his mother, the NRA, and a chain of newspaper editors--Thompson vividly catches the tenor of the times in 1960s America and channels it all through his own razor-sharp perspective. Passionate in their admiration, merciless in their scorn, and never anything less than fascinating, the dispatches of The Proud Highway offer an unprecedented and penetrating gaze into the evolution of the most outrageous raconteur/provocateur ever to assault a typewriter.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345377966/?tag=2022091-20
(Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the bes...)
Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the bestselling "Gonzo Papers" is now back in print. The Great Shark Hunt is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. These essays offer brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in signature Thompson style. Ranging in date from the National Observer days to the era of Rolling Stone, The Great Shark Hunt offers myriad, highly charged entries, including the first Hunter S. Thompson piece to be dubbed "gonzo" -- "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved," which appeared in Scanlan's Monthly in 1970. From this essay a new journalistic movement sprang which would change the shape of American letters. Thompson's razor-sharp insight and crystal clarity capture the crazy, hypocritical, degenerate, and redeeming aspects of the explosive and colorful '60s and '70s.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743250451/?tag=2022091-20
(From the legendary journalist and creator of Gonzo jour...)
From the legendary journalist and creator of Gonzo journalism Hunter S. Thompson comes the bestselling critical look at Nixon and McGoverns 1972 presidential election. Forty years after its original publication, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72 remains a cornerstone of American political journalism and one of the bestselling campaign books of all time. Hunter S. Thompsons searing account of the battle for the 1972 presidencyfrom the Democratic primaries to the eventual showdown between George McGovern and Richard Nixonis infused with the characteristic wit, intensity, and emotional engagement that made Thompson the flamboyant apostle and avatar of gonzo journalism (The New York Times). Hilarious, terrifying, insightful, and compulsively readable, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72 is an epic political adventure that captures the feel of the American democratic process better than any other book ever written.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451691572/?tag=2022091-20
(World-wide famous novel by a gonzo-writer H. S. Thompson ...)
World-wide famous novel by a gonzo-writer H. S. Thompson is now available in Ukrainian! Translated by Borys Previr
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1475240236/?tag=2022091-20
(Made into a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp, Th...)
Made into a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp, The Rum Diarya national bestseller and New York Times Notable Bookis Hunter S. Thompsons brilliant love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent lust in the Caribbean. Begun in 1959 by a twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary is a brilliantly tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s. The narrator, freelance journalist Paul Kemp, irresistibly drawn to a sexy, mysterious woman, is soon thrust into a world where corruption and get-rich-quick schemes rule, and anything (including murder) is permissible. Exuberant and mad, youthful and energetic, this dazzling comedic romp provides a fictional excursion as riveting and outrageous as Thompsons Fear and Loathing books.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684856476/?tag=2022091-20
(Brilliant, provocative, outrageous, and brazen, Hunter S....)
Brilliant, provocative, outrageous, and brazen, Hunter S. Thompson's infamous rule breaking -- in his journalism, in his life, and of the law -- changed the shape of American letters and the face of American icons. "Kingdom of Fear" traces the course of Thompson's life as a rebel -- from a smart-mouthed Kentucky kid flouting all authority to a convention-defying journalist who came to personify a wild fusion of fact, fiction, and mind-altering substances. Call it the evolution of an outlaw. Here are the formative experiences that comprise Thompson's legendary trajectory alongside the weird and the ugly. Whether detailing his exploits as a foreign correspondent in Rio, his job as night manager of the notorious O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, his epic run for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, or the sensational legal maneuvering that led to his full acquittal in the famous 99 Days trial, Thompson is at the peak of his narrative powers in "Kingdom of Fear." And this boisterous, blistering ride illuminates as never before the professional and ideological risk taking of a literary genius and transgressive icon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684873249/?tag=2022091-20
Hunter Stockton Thompson was born on July 18, 1939, in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. He was the son of Jack and Virginia (Ray) Thompson. His father was an insurance agent.
After attending public schools, Thompson joined the Air Force.
Stationed in Florida, Hunter Stockton Thompson became a sports reporter for the base newspaper. In 1958 he received a dishonorable discharge after an officer claimed his disregard for military dress and authority was having a bad influence on other airmen. After being fired from jobs with a small New York newspaper and TIME magazine, Thompson went to Puerto Rico and wrote briefly for a bowling magazine.
Returning to the United States in 1960, he traveled to California where he settled in Big Sur and wrote a novel that was never published.
In 1961 he left for South America and wrote lengthy stories for the Dow Jones-owned weekly, The National Observer.
In 1963 he returned again to the United States and continued writing for The National Observer on such topics as Indian fishing rights in Washington state. He quit the publication in 1964 when they wouldn't let him cover the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, California. Settling in San Francisco, he did odd jobs while working as a free-lance writer. He wrote a story on Berkeley student politics for The Nation magazine, but his big break came when an article for The Nation in May 1965 on the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang drew the attention of numerous publishers. He signed a contract with Random House and spent a year riding and living with the gang, which led to his first book, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966). Thompson had always admired author Nelsen Algren, whose novel A Walk on the Wild Side featured a marijuana-smoking country boy as a hero. Thompson's account of the notorious motorcycle gang was written in a conventional journalistic manner, but unlike the professional reporter, his personality resembled his subject. Thompson became a wild outlaw with a pen.
In the late 1960s he wrote for Ramparts and Scanlan's, two magazines that embraced his role in the counterculture.
Experiencing writer's block, a drunken Thompson submitted only his disorganized notes, which focused more on himself than the race.
Published intact and widely-acclaimed, Thompson's desperate deadline impulse gave birth to what was called "Gonzo" journalism. Thompson found a home for his new style in Rolling Stone magazine. His first piece was entitled "The Battle of Aspen: Freak Power in the Rockies. " The two-part story soon appeared as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971), quickly heralded as a masterpiece of the New Journalism.
His crazed persona, including such recognized trademarks as Hawaiian shirts, cigarette holder, and mirrored sunglasses, became the basis for Garry Trudeau's character Raoul Duke in the comic strip "Doonesbury. " The book contained some notable observations, such as being the first to predict George McGovern's nomination, but it was known more for his complete mockery of traditional reporting techniques. His utter lack of objectivity was often criticized, but Thompson, more than the candidates, was the real star of his writing, and some reporters envied his freedom. Thompson found it difficult to sustain a writing style in which his craziness was the real theme.
He went to Zaire to cover the Muhammed Ali fight, but he contracted malaria and didn't write a story. He was in Saigon before the end of the Vietnam War, but only wrote a short dispatch. His last article for Rolling Stone was a piece on presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976.
He was "America's quintessential outlaw journalist, " said one observer. His "Gonzo" journalism represented a new genre, but he also belonged to an older literary tradition beginning with Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. During the height of his popularity he became a cult figure and was solicited by such national publications as Playboy and The New Yorker. But Thompson claimed he had little literary aspiration.
He considered himself lazy and believed "writing is hard dollar. "
Journalism was a good way "to get someone else to pay to get me where the action really is, " he said.
A number of his early pieces were collected in "The Great Shark Hunt" (1979), in which he announced that the literary persona he invented was finished. In 1980 he worked on a film, "Where the Buffalo Roam, " about his adventures with attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta. In 1984 he published The Curse of Lono, a book about a trip to Hawaii.
In the mid 1980s he was living in the Florida Keys and writing a novel that introduced a new literary persona who expresses, according to Thompson, "a brutal attitude-anti-humanist. " From 1985 to 1989 Thompson wrote a column for the San Francisco Examiner that was later syndicated to about 25 papers nationally. A second collection of writings, Generation of Swine: Gonzo Paper Vol. 2: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's, appeared in 1988. Volume 3 of the "Gonzo Papers" was published in 1990 as Songs of the Doomed, a collection of snippets from 30 years of writing. By age 50, Thompson had mellowed little and was charged with five felony counts of possessing drugs and possessing and storing explosives illegally, which were later dropped. He then resumed work on his big "sex" novel, "Polo Is My Life". Thompson's autobiographical "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was re-released in 1996 on the 25th anniversary of its publication.
(Here, for the first time, is the private and most intimat...)
(Made into a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp, Th...)
(Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the bes...)
(From the legendary journalist and creator of Gonzo jour...)
(Brilliant, provocative, outrageous, and brazen, Hunter S....)
(World-wide famous novel by a gonzo-writer H. S. Thompson ...)