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Early years

A Louisville, Kentucky native, Thompson attended Louisville Male High School. His parents, Jack (d. 1952) and Virginia (d. 1999), married in 1935. Jack died when Hunter was 14 years old, leaving three sons — Hunter, Davison, and James (d. 1994) — to be brought up by their mother. Thompson was detained in 1956 for robbery. After crashing an employer's delivery truck, he joined the U.S. Air Force during the mandatory waiting period before army conscription. After working in the information services department at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida in 1956, he became the sports editor of the base's newspaper, The Command Courier. He also wrote for several local newspapers, which was against Air Force regulations. He was honorably discharged in 1958 as an airman second class, having been recommended for an early discharge by his commanding officer. In summary, this airman, although talented will not be guided by policy, Col. W.S. Evans, chief of information services wrote to the Eglin personnel office. Sometimes his rebel and superior attitude seems to rub off on other airmen staff members. Thompson claimed in a mock press release he wrote about the end of his duty to have been issued a "totally unclassifiable" status. After the Air Force, he worked as sports editor for a newspaper in Jersey Shore, PA. before moving to New York City and on the GI Bill attended Columbia University's School of General Studies where he took classes on short story writing. During this time he worked briefly for Time Magazine as a copyboy for $51 a week. While working, he copied F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms using a typewriter, saying that he wanted to learn about the writing styles of the authors. In 1959, Time fired him for insubordination. Later that year, he worked as a reporter for the Middletown Daily Record in Upstate New York. He was fired from this job after damaging an office candy machine and arguing with the owner of a local restaurant who happened to be an advertiser with the paper. In 1960 Thompson moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico to take a job with the sporting magazine El Sportivo which soon folded. But the move to Puerto Rico allowed Thompson to travel in the Caribbean and South America writing freelance articles for several American daily newspapers. While in Puerto Rico he befriended journalist William Kennedy. After returning to the States, he lived and worked as a security guard and caretaker at Big Sur Hot Springs for an eight-month period in 1961, just before it became the Esalen Institute. While there, he was able to publish his first magazine feature in the nationally distributed Rogue magazine on the artisan and bohemian culture of Big Sur. The article would get him fired from his job as caretaker. During this time period, Thompson wrote two novels, Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary, and submitted many fictional short stories to publishers with little success. The Rum Diary was eventually published in 1998, long after Thompson had become famous. Kennedy later remarked that at the time he and Thompson were both failed novelists who had turned to journalism to make a living. From May 1962 to May 1963, Thompson returned to South America as a correspondent for a Dow Jones-owned weekly newspaper, the National Observer. When Thompson returned to the United States he promptly married his longtime girlfriend Sandra Dawn Conklin (aka Sandy Conklin Thompson, now Sondi Wright) and the two moved to Aspen, Colorado. Thompson and Conklin were married on May 19, 1963 and they had one son, Juan Fitzgerald Thompson, born March 23, 1964. The couple conceived five more times together. Three were miscarriages and two died shortly after birth. In a tribute issue for Hunter in Rolling Stone issue 970, Sandy wrote, " I ... want to acknowledge the five children Hunter and I lost — two full-term babies, three miscarriages.... I had so wanted more Hunters! One of the most beautiful gifts that Hunter ever gave me ... Sarah, our full-term, eight-pound baby, lived about twelve hours. I lay there in Aspen Valley Hospital waiting, and when I saw the doctor's face it was unbearable. I thought I might go mad. Hunter leaned over the bed and said, 'Sandy, if you want to go out there for a while — do that, just know that Juan and I really need you.' I was back." After nineteen years together and seventeen years of marriage, Hunter and Sandy divorced in 1980; the two remained close friends until Hunter's death. Thompson, while living in Glen Ellen, California, continued to write for the National Observer on an array of domestic subjects, including a story about his 1964 pilgrimage to Ketchum, Idaho in order to investigate the reasons for Ernest Hemingway's suicide. Thompson and the editors at the Observer eventually had a falling out as he moved to San Francisco, California, immersing himself in the drug and hippie culture of the time, while also writing for the Berkeley, California underground paper The Spider. In 1965, Carey McWilliams editor of The Nation, offered Thompson an opportunity to write a story based on his experience with the California-based Hells Angels motorcycle gang. After The Nation published the article (May 17, 1965), Thompson received several book offers and spent the next year living and riding with the Hells Angels. The relationship broke down when the bikers suspected that Thompson would make money from his writing. The gang demanded a share of the profits and Thompson ended up with a savage beating, or 'stomping' as the Angels referred to it. Random House published the well-received hard cover Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs in 1966. A reviewer for The New York Times praised it as an "angry, knowledgeable, fascinating and excitedly written book," that shows the Hell's Angels "not so much as dropouts from society but as total misfits, or unfits – emotionally, intellectually and educationally unfit to achieve the rewards, such as they are, that the contemporary social order offers." The reviewer also praised Thompson as a "spirited, witty, observant and original writer; his prose crackles like motorcycle exhaust." In late 1966, Thompson and his family moved into what Thompson described as his "fortified compound" in Woody Creek, Colorado, a small mountain hamlet outlying Aspen where he would reside for the rest of his life.

Middle years

In 1970 Thompson ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado on the "Freak Power" ticket promoting the decriminalization of drugs (for personal use only, not trafficking, as he disapproved of profiteering), tearing up the streets and turning them into grassy pedestrian malls, banning any building so tall as to obscure the view of the mountains, and renaming Aspen, Colorado "Fat City." The incumbent Republican sheriff whom he ran against had a crew cut, prompting Thompson to shave his head bald and refer to his opposition as "my long-haired opponent." With polls actually showing him with a slight lead in the race, Thompson appeared at Rolling Stone magazine headquarters in San Francisco with a six-pack of beer in hand and declared to editor Jann Wenner that he was about to be elected the next sheriff of Aspen, Colorado and wished to write about it. Thus, Thompson's first article in Rolling Stone was published as The Battle of Aspen with the byline "By: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (Candidate for Sheriff)." Despite the publicity, Thompson ended up narrowly losing the election. The majority of Thompson's most popular and acclaimed work was to appear within the pages of Rolling Stone. Thompson went on to work as a political correspondent for the magazine, retaining the title of chief of the "National Affairs Desk" on the magazine's masthead for over thirty years until his death. Two of his books, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, were first serialized there. Along with Joe Eszterhas and David Felton, Thompson would be instrumental in expanding the focus of the magazine past music criticism; indeed, Thompson was the only staff writer of the epoch never to contribute a music feature to the magazine. Nevertheless, his articles were always peppered with a wide array of pop music references ranging from Howlin' Wolf to Lou Reed. Armed with early fax machines wherever he went, he became notorious for haphazardly sending sometimes illegible material to the magazine's San Francisco offices immediately as they were to go to press. Birth of Gonzo Also in 1970, Thompson wrote an article entitled The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved for the short-lived new journalism magazine Scanlan's Monthly. Although it was not widely read at the time, the article is the first of Thompson's to use techniques of Gonzo journalism, a style he would later employ in almost every literary endeavor. The manic, first-person subjectivity of the story was reportedly the result of Thompson's sheer desperation; he was facing a looming deadline and started sending the magazine pages ripped out of his notebook. Ralph Steadman, who would later collaborate with Thompson on several projects, contributed expressionist pen and ink illustrations. The first use of the word Gonzo to describe Thompson's work is credited to the journalist Bill Cardoso. Cardoso had first met Thompson on a bus full of journalists covering the 1968 New Hampshire Primary. In 1970, Cardoso (by which time had become the editor of The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine) wrote Thompson praising the "Kentucky Derby" piece in Scanlan's Monthly as a breakthrough: "This is it, this is pure Gonzo. If this is a start, keep rolling." Thompson took to the word right away, and according to illustrator Ralph Steadman said "Okay, that's what I do. Gonzo." Thompson's next piece for Rolling Stone was an expose on the controversial death of Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar by the Los Angeles Police Department. Finding it difficult to talk in the racially tense atmosphere of Los Angeles, Thompson and Chicano activist/attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta decided to travel to Las Vegas, Nevada and take advantage of an assignment by Sports Illustrated to write a 250-word photograph caption for the Mint 400 motorcycle race held there. The result of the trip to Las Vegas became the 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, first appearing in Rolling Stone as a two-part series. The book is a first-person account by a journalist named Raoul Duke on a trip to Las Vegas with Dr. Gonzo, his "300-pound Samoan attorney," to cover a narcotics officers' convention and the "fabulous Mint 400". During the trip, Duke and his lawyer (always referred to as "my attorney") become sidetracked by a search for the American dream, with the aid of copious amounts of alcohol, LSD, ether, adrenochrome, mescaline, cocaine, marijuana and other drugs. Coming to terms with the failure of the 1960s countercultural movement is a major theme of the novel, and the book was greeted with considerable critical acclaim, including being heralded as "by far the best book yet written on the decade of dope" by the New York Times and a "scorching epochal sensation" by author Tom Wolfe. "The Vegas Book", as Thompson referred to it, was a mainstream success and the first widely-read work of Thompson's that employed his gonzo journalism techniques, and the novel introduced his style to the masses. Thompson first submitted to Sports Illustrated a manuscript of 2,500 words, which was, as he later wrote "aggressively rejected." Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner was said to have liked "the first 20 or so jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication — which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it," Thompson later wrote. Thompson's first published use of the word gonzo appears in book's passage: "Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it now: pure Gonzo journalism." Within the next year, Thompson wrote extensively for Rolling Stone while covering the election campaigns of President Richard M. Nixon and his unsuccessful opponent, Senator George McGovern. The articles were soon combined and published as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. As the title suggests, Thompson spent nearly all of his time traveling the "campaign trail" and his coverage focuses largely on the Democratic Party's primaries (Nixon, as an incumbent, performed little campaign work) and its breakdown due to splits between the different candidates; McGovern was extolled throughout while fellow candidates Ed Muskie and Hubert Humphrey were ridiculed. As an early supporter of McGovern, it could be argued that his unflattering coverage of the rival campaigns along with the rapidly expanding circulation of Rolling Stone played a role in the senator's nomination. Thompson would go on to become a fierce critic of Nixon, both during and after his presidency. After Nixon's death in 1994, Thompson famously described him in Rolling Stone as a man who "could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time" and said "his casket [should] have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. [He] was an evil man—evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it." The one passion they shared was a love of football, which is discussed in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Thompson was to provide Rolling Stone similar coverage for the 1976 Presidential Campaign that would appear in a book published by the magazine. Reportedly, as Thompson was waiting for a $75,000 advance check to arrive, he learned that Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner had pulled the plug on the endeavor without telling Thompson.[14] Wenner then asked Thompson to travel to Vietnam to report on what appeared to be the closing of the Vietnam War. Thompson accepted, and left for Saigon immediately. He arrived with the country in chaos, just as the United States was preparing to evacuate and other journalists were scrambling to find transportation out of the region. While there, Thompson learned that Wenner had pulled the plug on this excursion as well, and Thompson found himself in Vietnam without health insurance or additional financial support. Thompson's story about the fall of Saigon would not be published in Rolling Stone until ten years later.[15] These two incidents severely strained the relationship between the author and the magazine, and Thompson would contribute far less to the publication in future years.

Later years

1980 marked both his divorce from Sandra Conklin and the release of Where The Buffalo Roam, a loose film adaptation of situations from Thompson's early 1970s work, with Bill Murray starring as the author. After the lukewarm reception of the film, Thompson temporarily relocated to Hawaii to work on a novel. The Curse of Lono was a gonzo-style account of a marathon in the state that was extensively illustrated by Ralph Steadman, first appearing in Running magazine in 1981 as "The Charge of the Weird Brigade" and before being excerpted in Playboy in 1983 On July 21, 1981 in Aspen Colorado Thompson ran a stop sign at 2 am and began to "rave" at a state trooper. He also refused to take alcohol tests. Because of his refusal he was detained, although during a trial the drunk-driving charges against the journalist were dropped because there was no basis for the charges. In 1983, he covered the U.S. invasion of Grenada but would not discuss these experiences until the publication of Kingdom of Fear 20 years later. Later that year he authored a piece for Rolling Stone called "A Dog Took My Place," an expose of the scandalous Roxanne Pulitzer divorce and what he termed the "Palm Beach lifestyle." The article contained dubious insinuations of bestiality (among other things) but was considered to be a return to proper form by many. Shortly thereafter, Thompson accepted an advance to write about "couples pornography" for Playboy. As part of his research, he spent time at the O'Farrell Theater strip club in San Francisco and his experience there eventually evolved into a full-length nonfiction novel tentatively titled The Night Manager. Neither the novel nor the article ever materialized, and San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen erroneously reported that Thompson was "working as the O'Farrell's night manager" By the early 1990s Thompson was said to be working on a fictional novel called Polo Is My Life, which was briefly excerpted in Rolling Stone in 1994, and which Hunter himself described in 1996 as "...a sex book — you know, sex, drugs and rock and roll. It's about the manager of a sex theater who's forced to leave and flee to the mountains. He falls in love and gets in even more trouble than he was in the sex theater in San Francisco.". The novel was slated to be released by Random House in 1999, and was even assigned ISBN number 0679406948, but was never actually published. At the behest of old friend and editor Warren Hinckle, Thompson became a media critic for the San Francisco Examiner from the mid-1980s until the end of that decade. Thompson continued to contribute irregularly to Rolling Stone. "Fear and Loathing in Elko," published in 1992, was a well received fictional rallying cry against Clarence Thomas, while "Mr. Bill's Neighborhood" was a largely non-fictional account of an interview with Bill Clinton in an Arkansas diner. Rather than embarking on the campaign trail as he had done in previous presidential elections, Thompson monitored the proceedings from cable television; Better than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie, his account of the 1992 campaign, is composed of reactionary faxes sent to Rolling Stone. A decade later, he contributed "Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004" — an account of a road jaunt with John Kerry during his presidential campaign that would be Thompson's final magazine feature.