Gonzo journalist and counter-cultural icon Hunter S. Thompson died today of an apparent suicide. Thompson was the author of the classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a book that inspired multitudes to take lots of drugs and go to Vegas, and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, still one of the best books about American politics. Although it's been a long time since SFist has been at college, we hope his chemistry fueled whacked out takes on late 60's, early 70's America are still as much a part of college as bong hits and spouting off Marxist Literary Theory.

Thompson was one of the leading practitioners of ""new journalism", a tenet made famous by Tom Wolfe and is now practically the template for most magazine articles written these days. Basically "new journalism" is about writing a particular event through the eyes of the writer, using their perspective to filter the story. Thompson himself said that he wrote "gonzo journalism" which is like new journalism except that the reporter became as much a part of the story as the story and the stories would be peppered with enough fiction to always make you wonder what was real and what wasn't. For instance, see the amazing amount of drugs he claims to have taken throughout his books. After awhile, Thompson became more famous as a character than for his writing (he's the inspiration behind the character Duke in Doonesbury) and became one of those people who felt they had to live up to their reputations. We saw him speak in college and could barely understand a word he said as he was completely and totally trashed throughout the night.

Photo of Hunter Thompson by Annie Leibovitz for Rolling Stone

As befitting an icon of the counter-culture, Thompson had a lot of ties to the Bay Area. He frequently mentioned the Beats as his inspiration (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily be his On the Road) and moved here in the mid-to-late 60's to work on his first book, Hells Angels." To write Hells Angels he lived amongst the Hells Angels (duh) for a year and survived several ass-whoopings in writing it. After Hells Angels came out, his first big articles were published by San Francisco based Ramparts Magazine, a Magazine published by noted barfly and Daschund lover Warren Hinckle, and then became a regular columnist for a little locally based magazine called Rolling Stone. He also returned to the Bay Area years later to do a still unpublished book on the Mitchell Brothers and the porn industry. During that time, he also wrote the occasional column for the San Francisco Examiner.

If you haven't read any of his books, do so. Now. While a bit on the relic side with it's attendant Nixon paranoia and freak power idealism, Thompson's tales were often passionate and skewed critiques of the dark underbelly of American culture. Not to mention darn funny.