Posted by Hunter S. Thompson: They’re not laughing with you.
If I was a woman, and if Hunter Thompson wanted to marry me, I might make a list.
You are not going to shoot guns around this house. No drinking all day, every day. There will be no talk of suicide, at least not around me.
I could go on, but it is one of those things that is not even close.
The fun facts are something, particularly around Oscar Acosta–passed the bar at 31 and dead/lost at 38. For Thompson it was really just just Hells Angels, then Las Vegas, some out of the mainstream political reporting, and that was it in terms of his lasting writing career. The rest was fluff turned into a thirty-year record of disgrace.
Nowadays it isn’t a revelation at all to think just about every politician is a swine or bastard. It is not even news. The record is there with Thompson and his estate and others have produced books of letters, stories, novels, and other published or never published items. That is the writing side, and more continues every year in terms of fluff too.
The best insight in the post-Thompson era has come from Juan Thompson and Marco Acosta; maybe Sondi Wright (“great body” she said; and five miscarriages).