The Death of Hunter S. Thompson
”Shortly after Thompson’s death, I read Hey Rube, a collection of his columns for ESPN.com. His most chilling column was the one he wrote just hours after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”
Last Words: A Testament to Hunter Thompson
Friday, September 9, 2005
They found Hunter S. Thompson’s suicide note, and it twists our moral telescopes back into the focus we had when we first heard that he’d shot himself in the head.
You recall that on Sunday, Feb. 20, when he took himself out, we wanted to think that it was a .45-caliber hara-kiri, an act of honor by a 67-year-old cultural hero who hadn’t written much major work for 30 years, and now faced old age with a broken leg, a hip replacement, an addiction to alcohol and a habitual fondness for whatever else would light his crazed Christmas tree of a mind.
But no, we quickly learned that it wasn’t that pretty. He killed himself while talking on the phone with his wife, Anita. In the house with him were his son Juan, and his grandson. Not so honorable.
You’re supposed to go out behind the woodshed, face the existential solitude and let your loving survivors find you later.
Oh, well. His ashes were fired into the sky near his home in Woody Creek, Colo., on Aug. 20 with lots of fireworks. That seemed to bring us some kind of suitably mad “closure,” as the TV shrinks say.
Now, Rolling Stone magazine, for which he wrote a lot of his best stuff in the ’70s, has published a note he wrote to Anita four days before he killed himself in the kitchen.
The note doesn’t make you feel any better about his timing with the phone call and the son and grandson hearing the gun go off, but it turns out that our first, and nobler, explanations had some truth to them after all.
“No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt.”
With a sort of cryptic, ironic, metaphorical hilarity, he took a black marker and titled the note: “Football Season Is Over.”
Douglas Brinkley, a historian and Thompson’s “official biographer,” had a more mundane explanation for the title. In his piece on the Rolling Stone Web site, he wrote: “An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high-water mark of his year. February, by contrast, was doldrums time.”
How bizarre that Thompson, who despised all that was official, and spent his life writing his own stone-loon autobiography, has an “official biographer.”
Those who would like to think that Thompson killed himself over something more crucial than professional football can re-read the note.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Well it is far from being that obvious to me. Click on image below to see another side of the story. Just think. Far from being inactive was definitely onto something and was writing a book and smelled something fishy was going on. People have gone down for lot less than that… I think the FBI and/or the CIA or other undercover governmental organizations has killed people for a lot less… For sure Thompson would have had a field day with a book on 9/11 and for sure people would have listened to him, the guy who always instictivley hated Nixon way before the Watergate happened.
Loud Alien Noize 
Interesting read. I never knew him, though.
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He was a briliant journalist and writer. HS is known to have invented a new form of journalism called ”gonzo’ He was also the first to write an acurate article on the Hell’s Angels. There was a film that made him very popular called ”Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” with Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro and others.. He always hated Nixon and always said he was a man you cannot trust. He was proven right when the Watergate scandal put Nixon at the center of a terrible scandal at the White House while he was president. He had to resign almost immediately. As a person he was a heavy drinker and a gun lover. Johnny Depp paid for his funerals after he commited suicide leaving a touching note…. Many believe he was murdered because he was very much so way ahead of all the 9/11 conspiracies and he was a person people would definitely have listened to because he was right on so many subjects before. A very intersting character if I might say… I cannot say if you should or not dig up more on him or not… I leave that up to your good judgemnt my dear friend and again TY so much for your interest in my posts. It is always an honor to know I manage to spike your curiosity. I love your open mind. You are a wonderfull friend and blogger. TY for….being you. 🙂
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O btw I made another post about him before… Maybe you would find it interesting too..
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Here is this otyher post about HS Thompson I was refering to. I think you will like it a lot. https://tobedamit.com/2014/12/19/omnibus-1978/
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