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Hunter S Thompson.
July 17, 1937 - February 20, 2005
 The "Notes For New Writers" sheet which I've given to every new dB Magazine contributor over the past few years concludes, after detailing formatting protocols and file sizes and suchlike, with "You are probably not Hunter S Thompson." It's partially a reminder that I want articles to deal with the subject at hand rather than the experiences of the writer themselves (the very subjective "gonzo journalism" that Thompson pretty much invented with his seminal 'Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas'), but also a statement of fact: there was only one Hunter S Thompson, and he ended his life at the age of 67 on Sun 20 Feb by putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger.
It's a weirdly appropriate way for the man to go out. After all, he was something of a gun nut with his own shooting range on his Colorado compound, as well as a vocal devotee of fellow gun suicide Ernest Hemingway; certainly it would have been hard to picture the Doctor going gently into that good night during his peaceful old age. His work of the last few years hadn't been spectacular: while still entertaining, few would dispute that his star had flared and more or less burnt out by the late 70s, and his last regular writing job was for the ESPN sports network's website. According to family statements he'd been talking about suicide for a while and had left very specific instructions on how we wanted his legacy dealt with; but his son Juan, who discovered the body, considers that he simply felt that his time had come and didn't want to overstay his welcome.
Like William Burroughs, he was possibly more famous for his legendary prodigious drug intake than for his writing (hence the oft-quoted "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me"). In many ways he was the basis for the caricature of the drug-fuelled journalist (for that matter, he was also quite literally a caricature, in that he was the model for Uncle Duke in the 'Doonesbury'comic strip). However, the thing that a lot of people seemingly failed to notice - or at least, failed to make a point of in the recent flurry of obituaries - is that, first and foremost, Thompson was a hell of a writer. Despite his long tenure at Rolling Stone (who first published 'Fear & Loathing...' in two instalments) I don't remember seeing Thompson ever review an album or talk to a rock star; and yet, along with the late Greil Marcus, he remains one of the patron saints of every music journalist, indeed of any writer who wanted to convey the visceral excitement of lived experience. And whatever your taste in literature, there are precious few opening lines better than, "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."
His ashes are apparently to be blasted out of a cannon, as per his wishes. He'll long be remembered for the way he went out; but I'm going to remember him for the writing.
Andrew P Street
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