If you understand the workings of a .45-caliber pistol, you realize there's something unmistakably American about it. A star-spangled blast in every bullet fired that's cheap enough to become almost democratic. While it's bathed in the glitz of Hollywood films, it's also available at every pawnshop in the ghettoes. A lot of the contradictions you can use to describe the weapon are applicable to famed journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who used it to finally depart Earth in the fullest sense Sunday evening at his home in Woody Creek, Colo.
Like the .45, his personality was a magnet for pain and power, injury and glamour, "fear and loathing." But also like the gun, he was too dangerous to belong to his owner very long. It would become apparent that America was Thompson's owner, wielding and manipulating him with an itchy trigger finger.
Thompson's origins do not stray particularly far from similar authors like Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs or Kurt Vonnegut. His career began in 1956 as a sports editor while an airman in the U.S. Air Force. As is the case over most of his career, documented proof of Thompson's earlier life emerged retroactively. When his success became greater, the roots of his mythology expanded to an equal degree. When his Air Force records were put into print, the results were humorous in retrospect: He baffled his superior officers by finagling an "honorable discharge" in spite of drunken antics, and the assessments of the psychological wing of the service deemed him "totally unclassifiable."
After working as a copy editor for Time magazine, Thompson traveled throughout Latin America as a freelance journalist, where he observed the leftist response to the Cold Warrior philosophies of the West. During this time he would write several unpublished novels and short stories.
With the publication of Thompson's first book in 1966, "Hell's Angels," came his huge breakthrough in the journalistic world. The media and entertainment world had feared and demonized the Hell's Angels biker gang for not conforming to constraints of societal dress or overzealous law enforcement. Thompson penetrated the myth by following the West Coast chapters for a year and exploring their history of rampant sex, graphic brawling and prolific drug use. This work would become the template for what he would dub "Gonzo Journalism." Over the years, Gonzo would be defined as the act of a reporter throwing himself into the subject matter of a story until he either became the story or his personal experience drowned in its sheer sentiment.
During this same time, he became immersed in the 1960s counter-culture and the peace movements in the greater San Francisco area. These years also marked Thompson's start with heavy drug experimentation, cementing his decade ascent into counter-culture.
It was in the '70s that Thompson made the leap from innovative journalist to cultural icon. The '60s revolution withered and died, and like many revolutionaries, all Thompson would have left was the stimulation of enough drugs to make Nixon-era America a livable place. His seminal work, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," was published as a serialized feature in Rolling Stone in two November issues of 1971 and eventually put into book form. Following the book's success came "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trial '72." It was Thompson's coverage of the presidential campaign of that year for Rolling Stone that gained him notoriety in mainstream press for his innovative detailing of backstage antics and the deep personal and ideological flaws present in both party structures and candidates.
Thompson's later years saw a decline in health and, to some extent, mental saliency. Thompson was arrested frequently, and his fixation on drugs and guns would lead to many public complaints, arrests and estrangement from family. Despite this, his work was prolific and would undergo a revival in popularity.
His last truly memorable piece was his ESPN.com editorial titled "Fear and Loathing in America," published on Sept. 12, 2001. In it he describes how attacks of the previous day would inspire a perpetual war with foreign enemies too numerous to fight because of an American government too far gone and clueless to do anything but declare war.
Thompson was without company when he died, having to face himself alone in his fortified compound, asking himself questions we could scarcely understand from his perspective. His dying wishes are said to be having his cremated earthly remains shot out of a cannon. Of all enemies Thompson had to target - alive or dead, ideological or brutally physical, important or obscure - they'll all eventually be touched soon. Whether by his now unearthly presence in the great unknown or the scattering of his ashes across the American frontier from several miles in the air, we'll all feel him again soon enough. He'll be everywhere one more time.
