Regarded as one of the most legendary writers of the 20th century, . . .

Only by pretentious lefty Boomers. The rest of us barely noticed him.

He is also credited with pioneering gonzo journalism - a style of writing that breaks tradition rules of news reporting and is purposefully slanted.

And this is different from "journalism" as practiced by the New York Times . . . how, exactly?

He wrote little more than ill-informed, badly crafted drivel. All news reporting is slanted.

His death is merely addition by subtraction.

The guy was an enigma and not that easy to pigeonhole. Anyone surprised he used a gun? He was well into them. I'm sorry he left a mess like that for his son to find. What are people thinking? (For the cleanest suicide in literature, see Martin Eden by Jack London.) I thought Fear and Loathing rocked - depraved, but we all loved reading it and laughed ourselves silly all nigth, unable to put it down. He was something else, that's for sure. I didn't like him all that much and I thought he was politicaly a moron, but hey - he was an American character and God rest his soul.

Hell's Angels is a satisfying emotional read because after he's praised the cretins for several hundred pages the book ends with them beating the crap out of him.

Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe were the left and right bookends for the "New Jornalism" that came out of the 1960s, in which the stylings of the author were as much at the forefront of the story as the topic itself.

But the difference was that Wolfe, writing from the conservative side, saw that there was much beusement, if not outright humor, to be derived from writing about the emerging counterculture or the altenative/underground lifestyle and wanna-bes. So have could have a great time following Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters around or attending Leonard Berstein's party for the Black Panthers and recounting the absurdity of it all.

Thompson came at it from the opposite angle -- instead of following Ken Kesey, his personna was to out-Kesey Kesey, and to cover seemingly normal topics from the angle of someone involved with the underground culture. So you had Hunter perplexing the candidates and the press corps during the 1972 election or befuddling the straights on convention in Las Vegas, which was fine for its time, because there were still tons of folks out there who were not very pop-culture savy, plus his body could bounce back better from the abuse when he was in his early and mid-30s. But history didn't go in his direction.

Nowadays, it's the conservative side that has the better sense of humor while the left is dour and paranoid, and much of Thompson's final writings reflected that change. The '04 election results may have been one of the factors that pushed him to suicide, but trying to live up to his image of 35 years ago is in large part why Hunter was grinding out uninteresting MoveOn-type drivel for ESPN's Page 2 in his final days while Wolfe is touring the country touting his new book parodying life on American college campuses, which have some of the most dour and paranoid people in the country on staff nowadays. Were it not for Thompson's love of guns, he and they would have been tottally in synch about the way the country has gone to hell since the glory days of Vietnam and Watergate.

Anybody who bumped up against Thompson's early writings knew that suicide was the most likely close to the story. The guy's fear and loathing looked exactly like a projection of self-hatred. Add his fascination with guns, and the conclusion seems pretty obvious.

It's too bad that he fell into obscurity and forgettable, cliched writing as he aged. He probably knew that he was producing second-rate, tenth-rate work. Which made that gun look even more appealing.

It didn't have anything to do with the 2004 election.

Isnt' 67 pretty later to figure out you've got a date with a gun?

Maybe he just sobered up real good, for once.

Thompson loved guns all his life. One of them finally found the real target of his fear and loathing. Yeah, it took some time, but the end was no surprise.

I read his ravings when I was a kid in college. I thought that it was cool that they didn't make sense then. Since then I have grown up.