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Questions have been raised as to whether drugs played a part in his suicide; people wonder if he was “twisted” when he did it. Of course he was, he was nearly all the time - that’s Hunter. Dignity caused him to do it, according to his family. The family released a statement that Thompson was in great pain due to back surgery and that he wanted to skip the indignities of growing old.

Thompson is best known for his 1971 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. In it, he recounts his drug-crazed trip with attorney Oscar Acosta (in the book, he’s called Dr. Gonzo) to a motorcycle race and a police drug convention in Las Vegas. All along the way, he comments on the grim nature and ultimate death of the American dream. The book originated when Thompson was given an assignment by Sports Illustrated to write a short report on a motorcycle race in the Las Vegas desert. He saw it as an opportunity to hit the road and spend time alone with his friend Oscar Acosta, an outlaw civil rights attorney. Thompson wrote the piece in a style he called “gonzo journalism.”

Gonzo journalism, which is often times included in “new journalism,” is a type of journalism written in the first person. Thompson didn’t believe that journalists, or anyone for that matter, could ever be totally objective. On gonzo journalism, Thompson wrote, “It is a style of ‘reporting’ based on William Faulkner’s idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism - and the best journalists have always known this. Which is not to say that Fiction is necessarily “more true” than Journalism - or vice versa - but that both ‘fiction’ and ‘journalism’ are artificial categories.”

Thompson’s first entry into gonzo journalism was the 1970 Scanlan’s Monthly piece called “The Kentucky
Derby is Decadent and Depraved.” In it, he describes the Kentucky Derby as a drunken mob ready to riot at any second. Thompson said he had blown his mind and couldn’t write the story. So he simply submitted a notebook full of notes he had written while completely twisted, which means, in Hunter-speak, completely stoned.

But Thompson was much more than just a stoned journalist who didn’t know how to write objectively (which he could, but chose not to). To a lot of people, his dark visions of America where very true. Throughout his career, Thompson blamed Richard Nixon for ruining the American dream. In his 1994 book Better Than Sex, which covered the 1992 election and its aftermath, Thompson talked about the death of Richard Nixon. He wrote, “He could shake you hand and stab you in the back at the same time.

He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family.”

Thompson as usually stirred up a lot of controversy for this harsh treatment of Nixon in the wake of his death. But that’s the power and beauty of Thompson: He said it exactly as he saw it, and in doing so he caught some sort of truth in the meantime.

Even Nixon realized this during his life. In a report included in The Guardian, Nixon was reported as saying that Thompson represented “that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character.”

Thompson covered Nixon’s run in the book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. The New York
Times Book Review called it “the best account yet published of what it feels like to be out there in the middle of the American political process.”

He exposed the possibilities of the ’60s and the depravities of the ’70s. He dismantled the hippie ideal that many of us in my generation grew up idealizing. One of his most powerful passages appeared in Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas: “We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave
So now, less than five later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

“He stomped on the terra.”