Editing Hunter S. Thompson (section)

==Middle years==
===Aspen sheriff campaign===

{{See also|The Battle of Aspen}}
{{stack|[[File:Thompson for 1970 Aspen, Colorado Sheriff poster.jpg|thumb|upright=0.82|alt=Poster with a symbol of a red two-thumbed fist holding a peyote button superimposed on a six-pointed star-shaped sheriff's badge|"Thompson for 1970 Aspen, Colorado Sheriff" poster by [[Thomas W. Benton]]]]}}
{{stack|[[File:Thompson & Whitmire at the sheriff's debate (1970-10-12).jpg|thumb|alt=Photograph; see caption|Thompson (''right'') at a debate with Sheriff Carrol D. Whitmire (''left''), his incumbent opponent.]]}}
{{Infobox election
| election_name = 1970 Pitkin County Sheriff election
| type = presidential
| ongoing = no
| image_size = 125x136px
| image1 = 
| nominee1 = '''Carrol D. Whitmire'''
| party1 = Democratic Party (US)
| popular_vote1 = '''1,533 '''
| percentage1 = '''55.36%'''
| image2 = 
| nominee2 = Hunter S. Thompson
| party2 = [[Gonzo journalism|Freak Power]]
| popular_vote2 = 1,065
| percentage2 = 38.46%
| title = Sheriff
| before_election = Carrol D. Whitmire
| before_party = Democratic Party (US)
| after_election = Carrol D. Whitmire
| after_party = Democratic Party (US)
}}

In 1970, Thompson ran for [[Sheriffs in the United States|sheriff]] of [[Pitkin County, Colorado]], as part of a group of citizens running for local offices on the [[The Battle of Aspen|"Freak Power"]] ticket. The platform included promoting the [[decriminalization of drugs]] (for personal use only, not trafficking, as he disapproved of [[profiteering]]), tearing up the streets and turning them into grassy [[pedestrian mall]]s, banning any building so tall as to obscure the view of the mountains, disarming all police forces, and renaming Aspen "Fat City" to deter investors. Thompson, having shaved his head, referred to the [[crew cut]]-wearing [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] candidate as "my [[hippy|long-haired]] opponent".<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Gilbert |first=Sophie |date=June 26, 2014 |title=When Hunter S. Thompson Ran for Sheriff of Aspen |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/06/when-hunter-s-thompson-ran-for-sheriff-of-aspen/372949/ |url-status=live |magazine=The Atlantic |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180326141632/https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/06/when-hunter-s-thompson-ran-for-sheriff-of-aspen/372949/ |archive-date=March 26, 2018 |access-date=March 25, 2018}}</ref>

With polls showing him with a slight lead in a three-way race, Thompson appeared at ''Rolling Stone'' magazine headquarters in San Francisco with a six-pack of beer in hand, and declared to editor [[Jann Wenner]] that he was about to be elected sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, and wished to write about the "Freak Power" movement.<ref name="interviews1976">{{Citation |last=Anson |first=Robert Sam |title=Rolling Stone, Part 2; Hunter Thompson Meets Fear and Loathing Face to Face |date=December 10, 1970 |work=[[New Times (magazine)|New Times]]}}</ref> "[[The Battle of Aspen]]" was Thompson's first feature for the magazine carrying the byline "By: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (Candidate for Sheriff)". (Thompson's "Dr" certification was obtained from a mail-order church while he was in San Francisco in the '60s.) Despite the publicity, Thompson lost the election. While carrying the city of Aspen, he garnered only 44% of the county-wide vote in what had become, after the withdrawal of the Republican candidate, a two-way race. Thompson later said that the ''Rolling Stone'' article mobilized more opposition to the Freak Power ticket than supporters.<ref>Hunter S. Thompson (2003), ''[[Kingdom of Fear (book)|Kingdom of Fear]]'', Simon & Schuster, p. 95.</ref> The episode was the subject of the 2020 documentary film ''[[Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb]].'' Writing of the episode more than 50 years later, Wenner wrote, "Aspen didn't get a new sheriff, but I realized that, in Hunter, I had a fellow traveler."<ref name=wennerbook />

===Birth of Gonzo===
{{Main|Gonzo journalism}}
Also in 1970, Thompson wrote an article entitled "[[The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved]]" for the short-lived New Journalism magazine ''[[Scanlan's Monthly]]''. For that article, editor [[Warren Hinckle]] paired Thompson with illustrator [[Ralph Steadman]], who drew [[expressionist]] illustrations with lipstick and eyeliner. Thompson's story virtually ignored the race and focused, instead, on the drunken revelry surrounding the annual event in his hometown. Writing in the first person, he sets the debauchery against the backdrop of the American political scene of the moment: President [[Richard Nixon]] had ordered bombing of [[Cambodia]] and four students had been killed by [[Ohio National Guard]] troops at [[Kent State University]], in a [[Kent State shootings|massacre]], which occurred only two days later.

Thompson and Steadman collaborated regularly after that. Although it was not widely read, the article was the first to use the techniques of [[Gonzo journalism]], a style Thompson later employed in almost every literary endeavor. The manic [[First-person narrative|first-person]] subjectivity of the story was reportedly the result of sheer desperation; he was facing a looming deadline and started sending the magazine pages ripped out of his notebook.

The first use of the word "Gonzo" to describe Thompson's work is credited to journalist [[Bill Cardoso]], who first met Thompson on a bus full of journalists covering the [[New Hampshire primary#1968|1968 New Hampshire primary]]. In 1970, Cardoso (who was then the editor of ''[[The Boston Globe]] Sunday Magazine'') wrote to Thompson praising the "Kentucky Derby" piece as a breakthrough: "This is it, this is pure Gonzo. If this is a start, keep rolling." According to Steadman, Thompson took to the word right away and said, "Okay, that's what I do. Gonzo."<ref name="cardoso-obit">{{Cite news |last=Martin |first=Douglas |date=March 16, 2006 |title=Bill Cardoso, 68, Editor Who Coined 'Gonzo', Is Dead |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/national/16cardoso.html |url-status=live |access-date=August 3, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130523023233/http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/national/16cardoso.html?_r=1&ei=5088&en=c7b5fe5f62a5d95e&ex=1300165200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print |archive-date=May 23, 2013}}</ref> Thompson's first published use of the word appears in ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'': "Free Enterprise. The [[American Dream]]. [[Horatio Alger]] gone mad on drugs in [[Las Vegas Valley|Las Vegas]]. Do it ''now'': pure Gonzo journalism."

===''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas''===
{{Main|Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas}}
[[File:Hunter S. Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta, Las Vegas 1971.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|alt=Photograph of two men seated at a table with drinks|Thompson's 1971 trip to Las Vegas with [[Oscar Zeta Acosta]] (''right'') served as the basis for his most famous novel, ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas''.]]

The book for which Thompson gained most of his fame began during the research for "[[Strange Rumblings in Aztlan]]," an exposé for ''Rolling Stone'' on the 1970 killing of the [[Mexican-American]] television journalist [[Rubén Salazar]]. Salazar had been shot in the head at close range with a tear-gas canister fired by officers of the [[Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department]] during the [[National Chicano Moratorium March]] against the Vietnam War. One of Thompson's sources for the story was [[Oscar Zeta Acosta]], a prominent Mexican-American activist and attorney. Finding it difficult to talk in the racially tense atmosphere of Los Angeles, Thompson and Acosta decided to travel to [[Las Vegas]], and take advantage of an assignment by ''[[Sports Illustrated]]'' to write a 250-word photograph caption on the [[Mint 400]] motorcycle race held there.

What was to be a short caption quickly grew into something else entirely. Thompson first submitted to ''Sports Illustrated'' a manuscript of 2,500 words, which was, as he later wrote, "aggressively rejected". ''Rolling Stone'' publisher [[Jann Wenner]] liked "the first 20 or so jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication&nbsp;— which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it", Thompson wrote.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Thompson |first=Hunter |title=The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time |publisher=[[Summit Books]] |year=1979 |isbn=0-671-40046-0 |edition=1st |pages=105–109}}</ref> Wenner, describing his first impression of it years later, called it "Sharp and insane".<ref name=wennerbook>{{Cite book |last=Wenner |first=Jan |title=Like A Rolling Stone: A Memoir |publisher=[[Little, Brown and Company]] |year=2022 |isbn=9780316415194 |edition=1st}}</ref>

To develop the story, Thompson and Acosta returned to Las Vegas to attend a drug-enforcement conference. The two trips became the basis for "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", which ''Rolling Stone'' serialized in two parts in November 1971. Random House published a book version the following year. It is written as a first-person account by a journalist named [[Raoul Duke]] with [[Oscar Zeta Acosta|Dr. Gonzo]], his "300-pound [[Samoans|Samoan]] attorney", During the trip, Duke and his companion (always referred to as "my attorney") become sidetracked by a search for the American Dream, with "two bags of [[cannabis (drug)|grass]], 75 pellets of [[mescaline]], five sheets of high-powered [[Lysergic acid diethylamide|blotter acid]], a salt shaker half full of [[cocaine]], and a whole galaxy of multicolored [[Amphetamine|uppers]], [[Barbiturates|downers]], [[Methamphetamine|screamers]], [[Nitrous Oxide|laughers]]&nbsp;... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw [[Diethyl ether|ether]], and two dozen [[amyls]]."

Coming to terms with the failure of the 1960s [[counterculture|countercultural movement]] is a major theme of the novel, and the book was greeted with considerable critical acclaim. ''The New York Times'' praised it as "the best book yet written on the decade of dope".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Woods |first=Crawford |date=July 23, 1972 |title=Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/23/books/thompson-1972-vegar.html |url-status=live |access-date=August 3, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130403105014/http://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/23/books/thompson-1972-vegar.html |archive-date=April 3, 2013}}</ref> "The Vegas Book", as Thompson referred to it, was a mainstream success and introduced his Gonzo journalism techniques to a wide public.

===''Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72''===
{{Main|Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72}}

[[File:Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 (1973 1st ed jacket cover).jpg|left|upright|thumb|''Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72'' (1973)]]

In 1971, Wenner agreed to assign Thompson to cover the [[1972 United States presidential election]] for ''Rolling Stone.'' Thompson was paid a retainer of $1,000 per month ({{Inflation|US|1000|1971|fmt=eq}}) and rented a house near [[Rock Creek Park]] in Washington, DC, at the magazine's expense. He was also given a deal to publish a book on the campaign after its conclusion, which subsequently appeared as ''[[Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72]]'' in early 1973. Insider books on presidential politics had become popular during the prior decade starting with [[Theodore H. White]]'s ''Making of the President'' series, the first of which appeared in 1961, with additional volumes in 1965 and 1969. Their success raised the overall profile of journalists assigned to cover the quadrennial presidential election in the U.S., and it became a common phrase among them to say they were "...Doing a Teddy White," meaning they planned to write their own insider book on the campaign.<ref name=mckeen />

Wenner had decided that ''Rolling Stone'' would cover the presidential election in part because of the passage in 1971 of the [[Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution|26th Amendment]] to the [[Constitution of the United States]] which lowered the legal [[voting age]] from 21 to 18, making a large part of its mostly young readership suddenly eligible to vote. "We intended to politicize our generation and wrest this stirring force away from the fake politics of the revolutionary," Wenner wrote in his memoirs of the plan to collaborate with Thompson.<ref name=wennerbook />

[[File:McGovern Thompson 1972.jpg|thumb|alt=Photograph of two seated men having a conversation in a crowded busy room, the man on the left is giving "the finger" to the camera.|Thompson with [[George McGovern]] (''right'') in San Francisco, June 1972]]

Thompson's first campaign piece for ''Rolling Stone'' appeared as ''Fear and Loathing in Washington: Is This Trip Really Necessary?'' in the January 6, 1972, issue. The 14th and final installment appeared in the November 9 issue under the headline ''Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls....''<ref>{{cite web |url=https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8jh3svh/entire_text/ |title=Guide to the Eric C. Shoaf Collection on Hunter S. Thompson |author=Kate Dundon |date=2019 |website=Online Archive of California |publisher=University of California, Santa Cruz |access-date=April 13, 2023 |archive-date=April 13, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230413201431/https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8jh3svh/entire_text/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Throughout the year, Thompson traveled with candidates running in the [[1972 Democratic Party presidential primaries]] for the right to challenge the incumbent president, Republican Richard Nixon, in the general election. Thompson's coverage focused mainly on Sen. George McGovern of [[South Dakota]], Sen. [[Edmund Muskie]] of [[Maine]], the early leader, and former Vice President [[Hubert Humphrey]]. Thompson supported McGovern and wrote critical coverage of the rival campaigns.

In the April 13 installment entitled ''Fear and Loathing: The Banshee Screams in Florida,'' Thompson relates how someone having apparently lifted his press credential, and terrorized Muskie and his staff on a campaign train. The incident was later revealed to be an elaborate prank. In another installment, Thompson relates rumors — which he later admitted he had originated — that Muskie had become addicted to the psychoactive drug [[ibogaine]]. The story damaged Muskie's reputation and played a role in his loss of the nomination to McGovern. In another, he tracked down McGovern in a restroom to get a reaction quote after a senator from Iowa had switched his endorsement from McGovern to Muskie.

The series, and later, the book were both praised for breaking boundaries with a new approach to political journalism. Literary critic Morris Dickstein wrote that Thompson had learned to "approximate the effect of mind-blasting drugs in his prose style," and that he "recorded the nuts and bolts of a presidential campaign with all the contempt and incredulity that other reporters must feel, but censor out."<ref>{{cite book |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-link=Morris Dickstein |date=1977 |title=Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties |url=https://wwnorton.com/books/9780871404329 |location=New York |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-0465026319 |access-date=April 13, 2023 |archive-date=October 15, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231015213719/https://wwnorton.com/books/9780871404329 |url-status=live }}</ref>

[[Frank Mankiewicz]], McGovern's campaign director, often described it as the "most accurate and least factual" account of the 1972 campaign. In one vivid, yet invented anecdote, Thompson describes how Mankiewicz had leapt out from behind a bush to attack him with a hammer. To an uninitiated reader, at first, whether the action Thompson described was fanciful or factual might have been unclear, and that seemed to be part of the point. As biographer William McKeen wrote, "He wrote for his own amusement, and if others came along for the ride, that was all right."<ref name=mckeen />