Dr. Hunters S. Thompson

Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author, most famous for his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become central figures of their stories. He is also known for his promotion and use of psychedelics and other mind-altering substances (and to a lesser extent, alcohol and firearms), and his iconoclastic contempt for authority.

A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Thompson grew up in the Cherokee Triangle neighborhood of the Highlands. He was the first son of Jack Robert (1893 – 3 July 1952), an insurance adjuster and a U.S. Army veteran who served in France during World War I, and Virginia Davidson Ray (1908 – 1998). Introduced by a mutual friend from Jack's fraternity in 1934, they married in 1935.

Jack died of myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disease, on 3 July 1952, when Hunter was 14 years old, leaving three sons — Hunter, Davison, and James (1949–1993) — to be brought up by their mother. Contemporaries indicated that after Jack's death, Virginia became a "heavy drinker."

Interested in sports and athletically inclined from a young age, Thompson joined Louisville’s Castlewood Athletic Club, a sports club for teenagers that prepared them for high-school sports, where he excelled in baseball, though he never joined any sports teams in high school. He was constantly in trouble at school.

Thompson frequently referred to himself as "Raoul Duke" or "Dr. Gonzo." He received his certification from a mail-order church in the sixties.

Thompson, originally a sports journalist writing for various publications, worked for Rolling Stone magazine during the late 1960s and 1970s and published several books and numerous articles. He is noted for the creation of gonzo journalism, a writing style that combines extravagance (including the use of diverse and sometimes multiple recreational drugs), and an eccentric personality.

Thompson's style of reportage meshes fact with drug-sotted fantasy; the archetypal example being Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Published in 1971, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a travelogue of Thompson's trek (along with his attorney, Oscar Zeta Acosta) to cover a narcotics officers' convention in Nevada and the "fabulous Mint 400" motorcycle race. Instead, Thompson and Acosta wind up on a search for the American dream in Las Vegas with the aid of heroic amounts of LSD, ether, adrenochrome, and numerous other drugs.

Some of Thompson's other books include Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, a collection of Rolling Stone articles he wrote while covering the campaigns of President Richard M. Nixon and his unsuccessful opponent, Senator George McGovern, and Hell's Angels, an account of his travels with the infamous motorcycle gang. His penultimate book, Kingdom of Fear, is an angry commentary on the passing of the American Century. Thompson also wrote a Web column, "Hey Rube," for ESPN. He has at times also toured on the lecture circuit, once with John Belushi.

Cartoonist Garry Trudeau based his Doonesbury character Uncle Duke on Thompson, to loud protests from Thompson himself. A slogan of Thompson's, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro", appears as a chapter heading in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Another closely-related Gonzo journalist is Timothy Edward Jones, author of the highly-acclaimed book European Confession.

Thompson was an admitted fan of firearms and was known to keep a keg of gunpowder in his basement.