Hunter S. Thompson

Garan Holcombe (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 18 Jul 1937
Died 20 Feb 2005
Activity 1957-2005

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Autobiographer
Journalist
Novelist
Story-writer

Resources

Thompson's Works

Save to Bookshelf

In his introduction to

The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

(1997), the first of a three volume collection of “The Fear and Loathing Letters”, William J. Kennedy, who won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for his novel

Ironweed

, offers this capsule description of Hunter S. Thompson: “bizarre wit, mockery without end, redundant excess, supreme self-confidence, the narrative of the wounded meritorious ego, and the idiopathic anger of the righteous outlaw.” Kennedy’s words serve as a perfect introduction to one of the most vital, original writers of the twentieth century, a man whose life continues to be celebrated: two of Thompson’s books have already been published as modern classics and four, mostly sensationalist biographies have been written about him.…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2858 words

Citation: Holcombe, Garan. "Hunter S. Thompson". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 September 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5886, accessed 23 April 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here