LEGENDARY US AUTHOR SHOOTS HIMSELF

THE legendary American author Hunter S Thompson has died after shooting
himself at his remote ranch, police in the United States said today.

The acerbic counterculture writer - whose most famous book Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas was turned into a film starring Johnny Depp and
Benicio Del Toro - was found by his son, Juan, at the ranch near Aspen,
Colorado, last night. He was 67.

Thompson, who was credited with popularising a new form of fictional
journalism in his novels, had become a reclusive figure in recent years.

"Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect
that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan Thompson said in a
statement released to the Aspen Daily News.

Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, a personal friend of Thompson, confirmed
the death. Thompson's wife, Anita, was not home at the time his body was found.

Besides the 1972 drug-hazed 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 with pioneering New Journalism - or, as he dubbed it,
"gonzo journalism" - in which the writer made himself an essential
component of the story. Much of his earliest work appeared in Rolling Stone
magazine.

"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairytale artist," Thompson
said 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."

His compound in Woody Creek, not far from Aspen, was almost as legendary as
Thompson. He prized peacocks and weapons and indulged both loves there.

He is said to have taken potshots at unwelcome guests.

In 2000, he accidentally shot and slightly wounded his assistant, Deborah
Fuller, trying to chase a bear off his property.

An acute observer of the decadence and depravity in American life, 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
Richard Nixon once said he represented "that dark, venal, and incurably
violent side of the American character".