Hunter S. Thompson Dead, Suicide

[embalmer42]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk


At whom?

No one so far as I am aware - I believe he wanted to be shot over his property but I could be wrong.

[Berzerker]

Stephen Schwartz, an author and journalist, is author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror. A vociferous critic of Wahhabism, Schwartz is a frequent contributor to National Review, The Weekly Standard, and other publications.

I smell payback for the Nixon obit

The suicide of Hunter S. Thompson, aged 65, according to the New York Times, or 67, according to the Washington Post, at his home in Aspen, may definitively mark the conclusion of the chaotic "baby-boomer" rebellion that began in the 1950s and crested in the 1960s, and which was dignified with the title of "the counter-culture."

"Counter" it was, as an expression of defiance toward everything normal and reliable in society. "Culture" it was not, any more than Thompson's incoherent scribblings constituted, as they were so often indulgently described, a form of journalism.

That "normal" and "reliable" culture brought us the immense stability known as the Vietnam War and the culmination of Jim Crow.

[-Jrabbit]

As a person who makes his living as a writer, guys, I appreciate the kind words.

Schwartz's opinion of Thompson, the 60s, Rolling Stone, et al., are clearly the words of one who did not live in that era. He's entitled to his opinion, and there is some validity to it.

But the phenomena we lived tharough were real, whether relevant to the post-9/11 world or not, and Hunter S. Thompson was an important participant and reporter of that age.

[Ramo]

But if his work is taught to the young, it is as an exemplar of the madness of the '60s, not as [...] journalism.

[...]

Schwartz is a frequent contributor to National Review, The Weekly Standard, and other publications.

Irony has just died.

Their books were reissued but now sit inertly on bookstore shelves, incapable of inspiring younger readers, or even nostalgic baby boomers, to purchase them.

Bald assertion allert. This "younger reader" has purchased four HST books. And many of my friends are big fans.

[Agathon]

Schwartz, like all tories, is deeply uncool and anal to boot.

HST's stuff, along with Burroughs and Ginsberg is still loved by hip young people.

Counterculture.

A couple of years ago, I shared an office at UTM with a guy who was a big HST fan and who kept copies of most of his books in the office.

I spent most of the term reading them again.

We need more Hunter S. Thompsons.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Pekka
JRabbit, good read

Anyway, I'm pretty familiar with this character too, though I must admit I only took interest in him when I saw Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas right when it came here, as I was in this freaky mode of liking these drug movies. It gets better every time I see it. SO, I then saw the BBC documentary about him made in the 70s and OMG! He was the exact image of Johnny Depp's character, well, I mean Depp was able to do a great imitation. And he was such an interesting person, I mean how can you not look at it and wonder 'wow', but it's not negative or positive, it's just 'wow' .. you distance yourself from reality and what you see as normal and not normal, because you can't think of him with those terms... he was just a rare man, a man of his own, definitely interesting, inspiring and with a ... curious mind.

Well, ANyway, to my point, has anyone read Hell's Angels he wrote? I want to read it so I was thinking what you guys think of it..

Hell's Angels is great, a much more serious scholarly work than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But very interesting. I liked both, but for different reasons.

[MosesPresley]

[embalmer42]

Originally posted by MosesPresley

[-Jrabbit]

Awesome cartoon, Moses. Thx.

[The Mad Monk]

'Loving' farewell to writer

Wife details family gathering with Thompson dead in chair

By Jeff Kass, © 2005, Rocky Mountain News
February 25, 2005

ASPEN — Hunter S. Thompson heard the ice clinking.

The literary champ was sitting in his command post kitchen chair, a piece of blank paper in his favorite typewriter, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot through the mouth hours earlier.

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But a small circle of family and friends gathered around with stories, as he wished, with glasses full of his favored elixir — Chivas Regal on ice.

"It was very loving. It was not a panic, or ugly, or freaky," Thompson's wife, Anita Thompson, said Thursday night in her first spoken comments since the icon's death Sunday. "It was just like Hunter wanted. He was in control here."

Anita Thompson also echoes the comments that have been made by Hunter Thompson's son and daughter-in-law: That her husband's suicide did not come from the bottom of the well, but was a gesture of strength and ultimate control made as his life was at a high-water mark.

"This is a triumph of his, not a desperate, tragic failure," Anita Thompson said by phone, recounting that she was sitting in her husband's chair he called his catbird seat in the Rockies.

She added: "He lived a beautiful life and he lived it on his own terms, all the way from the very beginning to the very end."

Anita Thompson, like her husband's other close relatives, understood how Hunter Thompson wanted to make his ultimate exit.

"I always knew that Hunter was going to die before me," Anita Thompson, 32, said of her 67-year-old husband. "I'd accepted that. I just did not know it was going to be like this. I would rather have him back."

Yet Anita Thompson quickly came to embrace Hunter Thompson's gesture with a .45-caliber handgun.

She was at the gym when her husband took his life. And when family friend and Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis confirmed the news, her mind raced. "I have enough will power," she thought. "I can turn back time. No, no, no. This is not right. This can't happen."

But upon seeing Hunter Thompson's body, she embraced him. "Since he'd done this, I did not want to make it difficult for his spirit," she said. "I wanted to make it loving."

Anita Thompson believes she will stay on at the expansive property and famous house that was an ever-changing archive of political, literary and name-your-category items. And she will continue to help administer Hunter Thompson's works.

"I'm going to keep on working for Hunter," she said. "He wanted this. He made sure that I was in place to continue on. I'll just do my job until I can be with him again."

She adds, citing the property's nickname: "It will remain Owl Farm. It will remain Hunter Thompson's Owl Farm."

The last book they had read out loud together was parts of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a dense classic that explores the fragility of civilization by one of Hunter Thompson's favorite authors. Yet, said Anita Thompson, "He thinks Conrad is funny."

Anita Thompson and her husband had a small tiff that afternoon. Hunter Thompson told her to leave the kitchen that was known across the world as his funky and sacred work space. A weird look came across his face.

"I don't know why he wanted me to leave the room," she said. "It's all speculation. He'd never asked me to leave the room before."

But Anita Thompson did not go to the office with Hunter Thompson's son, as he had requested. Instead, she left the house.
"I'm going to get my gym bag. I'm going," she recalled. "He said, 'I don't want you to leave the house.'"

But she went to the gym. At 5:16 p.m., according to her cell-phone display, she called and spoke with Hunter Thompson for 10 minutes and 22 seconds.

Hunter Thompson put almost everyone on speakerphone. But he picked up the handset to speak with his wife.

"I knew it was odd, first of all, that he picked up with the handset ... I thought, 'That's sweet,'" she said.

The talk was good.

"He said, 'I want you to come home after you work out. Come home and we'll work on a column,'" she recalled.

The conversation, however, never really ended. Before formal goodbyes, Anita Thompson heard a clicking sound. She thought Hunter Thompson might have put down the handset and was typing. Or maybe it was the television. She waited. Maybe a minute passed.

"He did not say anything about killing himself," she said.

The official time of death is 5:42 p.m.

But did Hunter Thompson shoot himself while on the phone with his wife?

"I did not hear any bang," she says, noting that Hunter Thompson's son, who was in the house at the time, believed that a book had fallen when he heard the shot.

Anita Thompson can imagine what was going through Hunter Thompson's mind before the fatal shot: My beloved son, grandson and daughter-in-law are here. I'm in my perch. The fireplace has fire.

"I don't know if it mattered if I was here," Anita Thompson says. "I just like to think, and believe in my heart, he felt happy in his life."

A woman at the gym saw Anita Thompson in the bathroom. She asked if Hunter Thompson was OK. Anita Thompson pretty much blew it off. Rumors about Hunter Thompson were always in the air. Anita Thompson replied, "Oh yeah," but added, "he's been pretty stressed out lately."

A strange look was on the woman's face. She told Anita Thompson to check her phone messages. The woman said she would stay at her side.

Now she was shaking, and could barely dial.

There was a message from Juan Thompson, Hunter's son. "Anita, you have to come home now, he's dead."

Anita Thompson then spoke to the sheriff on the phone.

Had Hunter Thompson intended for his wife of two years to be in the house?

"I don't know, and it's not that important," Anita Thompson says. "I know he loved me. There's no question ... I know he did not want me to find him alone. He knew I was opposed to it."

After wading through the police officers outside, Anita Thompson recalls seeing her husband's dead body for the first time. "He was sitting in the chair when they brought me in, and I got to hug him and kiss him and rub his legs," she said. "All the anger was gone when I saw him."

Anita Thompson does not know why Hunter Thompson chose the .45 from his vast collection of guns. But he was deft with his death. "He did not destroy his face," Anita Thompson says. "He did it in his mouth. His face was beautiful. It was quick. It was not grisly or gruesome by any means. That's probably why he took that gun. He spared us a gruesome scene."

She adds: "His face did look calm and peaceful. He looked content. Like he wanted it."

For Tuesday's cremation, Anita Thompson dressed her husband. He was wearing a light blue, seersucker suit, a Tilly hat and his reading glasses, which he had on when he died. He had asked her to include a lock of her hair with him on this occasion. She complied, and more, cutting off her one-foot long blonde ponytail.

Anita Thompson is depending on mundane chores, but also family, friends and the estimated 50 messages a day.

"Being alone with Hunter in our bedroom, and I've been reading his letters to me," she added. "They have a different charge now. He wrote the most beautiful love letters I have ever seen ... I'm so lucky."

Then there was the flag. Hunter Thompson is an Air Force veteran. And following protocol, according to Anita Thompson, a deputy coroner from neighboring Garfield County presented her with a U.S. flag. It now hangs on a storyboard in the kitchen area, normally used for Hunter Thompson's works in progress. A white, silk scarf that the Dalai Lama presented to Hunter Thompson — the two men looked alike — drapes over the flag.

The house is filled to the brim with flowers — especially orchids, Hunter Thompson's favorite.

"It's nice in here," says Anita Thompson. "He would like it. He does like it, I guess."

Yes, Anita Thompson says, the landmark writer is nearby. "Mainly in moments when you're quiet, you can feel him; it's a different energy than when he was in his body," she says. "It's in the chest. It's all encompassing, but just for a second. It's beautiful."

Hunter Thompson was huge on swimming for his exercise. But he was also known for his love of fine whiskey, and to put it far too mildly, for experimenting with most every intoxicant known to man.

"He loved his body, look what he did to it," Anita Thompson jokes. She then adds a line that maybe even she fails, on its face, to grasp the significance of: "He gave his body everything it wanted."

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_3575306,00.html

[Drake Tungsten]

Jesus, what a bunch of nutters...

[The Mad Monk]

Indeed.

[Alexander's Horse]

Hunter S Thompson was a kind of heroe of mine - how did I end up in this suit?

He was a very gifted and entertaining writer, if a little uneven at times - usually due to drugs or booze or both.

He was a writer's writer, as you can see from those paying homage here. The wordsmiths will remember him. Anyone who can make Hubert Humphrey and failed Democrat Presidential campaigns sound interesting has a real knack. He does Las Vegas much better than Tom Wolfe in my opinion.

I don't feel sad - just a wry sense of loss. He went out as he would have wanted - although from what I read of the circumstances - mid phone call with his wife whilst having a mundane conversation - I wouldn't rule out accidental death. He could have easily have been playing with that gun. He always had firearms around in his Colorado phase and never showed much sign of using them safely.

But suicide will fit the legend better.

[Dis]

I have nothing against suicide, but when you have a family and loved one's it seems selfish. For guys like me it isn't so, since I have no family and loved ones (except for my dog ).

And if you are going to do it, don't do it in your home and tramatize your family having to see that mess (unless you do it in a non messy way). A gunshot from a shotgun is very messy.

It's hypocritical people denounce suicide as selfish all the time, but when someone famous like this does it, it's okay.

be consistant, that's all I ask.

[-Jrabbit]

FWIW he did a clean job of it with a handgun. Apparently he knew and planned exactly what he was doing.

I agree that suicide should not be a viable option, expecially if you have family. But it's no surprise to me that HSThompson would feel that rule did not apply to him.