- AFP
Late Hunter S. Thompson wanted ashes to be fired from a cannon : friend
Tue Feb 22, 6:29 PM ET U.S. National - AFP
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - US author Hunter S. Thompson, who committed suicide last weekend, wanted to exit this world in a style befitting his extraordinary life: being fired from a cannon, a friend revealed.
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The larger-than-life writer of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" stated in his will that he wanted his ashes to be fired out of a cannon following his funeral, plans for which have yet to be announced.
"I believe he wanted to be shot out of a cannon," friend Troy Hooper told AFP.
"I understand it's in his will," said Hooper, associate editor of the Aspen Daily News, based near the Colorado home where Thompson, 67, apparently shot himself on Sunday.
"That's Hunter's style. That's how he would want it. He was a big fan of bonfires and explosions and anything that went bang and I'm sure he'd like to go bang as well," he said.
Hooper, who became friends with father of "gonzo" journalism about five years before his death, cited reports that Thompson told his son, Juan, that his after-life ambition was to become cannon fodder -- literally.
"That's exactly the kind of stuff he would say all the time," he said of one of the most important American literary figures of the 20th Century.
It was Juan Thompson who found his father's body in his rural home in Woody Creek, near the ski resort of Aspen, after he apparently shot himself in the head on Sunday night.
Hooper, who saw Thompson last week, said Thompson had been in pain following recent back surgery, following a hip replacement and after he broke his leg recently.
But Thompson, famed for his LSD- and alcohol-fuelled literary exploits, did not seem "more distraught than usual" in the days before he died, Hooper said, adding that Thompson was "often either up or down."
Sheriff's department investigators in Woody Creek, where Thompson lived for more than 40 years, said he appeared to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Thompson became a sharp-witted icon of 1960s counter-culture after the publications of "Fear and Loathing" in 1972 in which he pioneered "gonzo" journalism, in which the writer inserts himself and his personal views into the story.
His work, written in the first person, hit a chord with America's youth at the height of the unpopular Vietnam and the social rebellion of the 1960s and 70s.
Thompson described the birth of gonzo journalism in a 1974 interview with Playboy, saying he was covering the Kentucky Derby on deadline, but "I'd blown my mind, couldn't work."
"So finally I just started jerking pages out of my notebook and numbering them and sending them to the printer. I was sure it was the last article I was ever going to do for anybody."
Thompson rose to fame in 1966 with the publication of his book "Hell's Angels," the story of his infiltration of the then-feared Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, an adventure that got him savagely beaten.
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is the apocryphal tale of a wild, drug-fuelled weekend spent in the desert gambling hub of Las Vegas by protagonist Raoul Duke, a thinly-disguised version of Thompson.
The adventure was recreated in a 1998 Hollywood film starring Johnny Depp.
The stories of Thompson's heady experiences earned him a popular reputation as a wild-living, hard-drinking, LSD-crazed writer bent on self-destruction.
His other works include "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72," a collection of articles he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine while covering the election campaigns of then-president Richard Nixon and his opponent, Senator George McGovern.
