WRITER HUNTER S. THOMPSON KILLS HIMSELF

ASPEN, Colo. - Hunter S. Thompson, the hard-living writer who inserted
himself into his accounts of America's underbelly and popularized a
first-person form of journalism in books such as "Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas," has committed suicide.

Thompson was found dead Sunday in his Aspen-area home of an apparent
self-inflicted gunshot wound, sheriff's officials said. He was 67.
Thompson's wife, Anita, had gone out before the shooting and was not home
at the time.

Besides the 1972 classic about Thompson's visit to Las Vegas, he also wrote
"Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72." The central character in
those wild, sprawling satires was "Dr. Thompson," a snarling, drug- and
alcohol-crazed observer and participant.

Thompson is credited alongside Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese with helping
pioneer New Journalism _ or, as he dubbed it, "gonzo journalism" _ in which
the writer made himself an essential component of the story.

Thompson, whose early writings mostly appeared in Rolling Stone magazine,
often portrayed himself as wildly intoxicated as he reported on such
historic figures as Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist," Thompson
told The Associated Press in 2003. "You have to get your knowledge of life
from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before
you alter it."

Thompson also wrote such collections as "Generation of Swine" and "Songs of
the Doomed." His first ever novel, "The Rum Diary," written in 1959, was
first published in 1998.

Thompson was a counterculture icon at the height of the Watergate era, and
once said Richard Nixon represented "that dark, venal, and incurably
violent side of the American character."

Thompson also was the model for Garry Trudeau's balding "Uncle Duke" in the
comic strip "Doonesbury" and was portrayed on screen by Johnny Depp in a
film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

That book, perhaps Thompson's most famous, begins: "We were somewhere
around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

Other books include "The Great Shark Hunt," "Hell's Angels" and "The Proud
Highway." His most recent effort was "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush
Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness."

"He may have died relatively young but he made up for it in quality if not
quantity of years," Paul Krassner, the veteran radical journalist and one
of Thompson's former editors, told The Associated Press by phone from his
Southern California home.

"It was hard to say sometimes whether he was being provocative for its own
sake or if he was just being drunk and stoned and irresponsible," quipped
Krassner, founder of the leftist publication The Realist and co-founder of
the Youth International (YIPPIE) party.

"But every editor that I know, myself included, was willing to accept a
certain prima donna journalism in the demands he would make to cover a
particular story," he said. "They were willing to risk all of his
irresponsible behavior in order to share his talent with their readers."

The writer's compound in Woody Creek, not far from Aspen, was almost as
legendary as Thompson. He prized peacocks and weapons; in 2000, he
accidentally shot and slightly wounded his assistant trying to chase a bear
off his property.

He also is survived by his son, Juan Thompson.

Born July 18, 1937, in Kentucky, Hunter Stocton Thompson served two years
in the Air Force, where he was a newspaper sports editor. He later became a
proud member of the National Rifle Association and almost was elected
sheriff in Aspen in 1970 under the Freak Power Party banner.

Thompson's heyday came in the 1970s, when his larger-than-life persona was
gobbled up by magazines. His pieces were of legendary length and so was his
appetite for adventure and trouble; his purported fights with Rolling Stone
editor Jann Wenner were rumored in many cases to hinge on expense accounts
for stories that didn't materialize.

It was the content that raised eyebrows and tempers. His book on the 1972
presidential campaign involving, among others, Edmund Muskie, Hubert
Humphrey and Nixon was famous for its scathing opinion.

Working for Muskie, Thompson wrote, "was something like being locked in a
rolling box car with a vicious 200-pound water rat." Nixon and his "Barbie
doll" family were "America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks
for the werewolf in us."

Humphrey? Of him, Thompson wrote: "There is no way to grasp what a shallow,
contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until
you've followed him around for a while."

The approach won him praise among the masses as well as critical acclaim.
Writing in The New York Times in 1973, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt worried
Thompson might someday "lapse into good taste."

"That would be a shame, for while he doesn't see America as Grandma Moses
depicted it, or the way they painted it for us in civics class, he does in
his own mad way betray a profound democratic concern for the polity," he
wrote. "And in its own mad way, it's damned refreshing."