What's Veeky Forums's opinion on Hunter S. Thompson?

Brilliant and caustic comedic prose stylist. Lacked the discipline after the 70's to continue to produce quality wiriting consistently, but still had moments of genius. Truly moral American voice of outrage and horror. As others have said, and as he often admitted, the myths and expectations placed upon him by others destroyed his psyche in a lot of ways as he tried to live up to the character that others read into his work. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, for my money, is one of the major American prose works of the 20th century. We could sorely use a Hunter on the American scene right now.

Did D'Annunzio write any specifically political non-fiction? I'd love to read some.

Kingdom of Fear is a pretty good read

Fantastic writer until he burned out in the late 70s/early 80s and became more or less a parody of himself, just repeating his greatest hits and Capitalizing words for no particular Reason. I used to analyze his prose style, the rhythms and sentence structures of it, to see what made it tick. The first few pages of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail do a good job of showing off his writing skills, the way it starts in the early morning in the hotel room and then moves through various digressions before settling into the book's main theme. He had a great skill at going on such meanderings and then snapping home into the point.
From what little I know of it, he was a fairly shitty person to his friends, family, and creditors. But I'm really not well read enough in his personal life to be sure about that.
His most typical first person narrator makes me think of a nasty, abrasive version of Philip Marlowe - now a journalist instead of a private eye, a vulnerable badass who faces off against great forces of wickedness and just barely hangs on by virtue of cleverness, an unpleasant man to be around but fundamentally good at the core, using a whole assortment of drugs rather than just alcohol.
From the political point of view, people of the general type of his persona are sorely needed in our society. Gun-packing and rough but socially liberal, not afraid to get dirty, not just seeing everything second-hand through the lens of either the left-wing or the right-wing cult, but willing to pound the pavement and dig out the truth.

>From what little I know of it, he was a fairly shitty person to his friends, family, and creditors. But I'm really not well read enough in his personal life to be sure about that.

His personal life was basically a trainwreck. His son was the only person he was half decent too. He was drunk and high on coke for thirty years constantly, and as a result alienated pretty much everyone he knew and also had no money whatsoever. He was basically in constant debt, and became really skilled and telling his creditors to go fuck themselves and never paying them. He had enough cash to basically just pay for his house and his booze and coke, that's about it.

His son talked a lot in his book about how huge of a deal it was to have Hunter pay his college tuition, like it was a serious strain on Hunter's finances, he barely managed it.

He was kept afloat in his later years basically by his rich and powerful friends who would pay off his bills when things got bonkers.

A legend who lived an interesting life and pioneered gonzo journalism. A tradition continued these days most infamously by James O'Keefe, the ACORN and project veritas guy.

Made a lot of shit up. Was kind of a dick.

damn he slurred hard

Very talented writer. He often wrote fiction through the eyes of Raoul Duke, his more extreme alter ego. Eventually, people began to confuse Thompson with his alter ego. He wrote that when he was invited to speak at a college he didn't know if they wanted Hunter Thompson or Raoul Duke.

All in all, he was a great writer first, and a batshit crazy person second.

Meme'd himself to death. He's more known for his cult of personality than anything else at this point.

That's just how he talked man. Why participate in the thread if you know nothing of the guy?

He actually had a slight speech impediment.

in a society built upon spectacles...
if your not creating your own, you're simply a captive to someone else's.

This, his son's book is pretty good. Very honest about Hunter and the wreck he became later in life.

He did, and the volume is 310 pages long.
It seems like it hasn't been translated into English, though.

Wrong picture, sorry

Another thing that sheds some light that I forgot to mention here is that he was also incredibly active in local Aspen politics the entire time he lived there, not just during his sheriff's campaign. Even in his later life, when he lacked the discipline to continue producing quality work at the same level of consistency as during his most productive period, he was still living according to some fairly consistent and admirable political principles - even when his personal life was a mess.

It's his best book!

He never wanted to live past 40 anyway, so it's not surprising he let his life fall apart in the last couple decades. He could definitely turn a phrase in his early works, though. Hell's Angels is a fun read.