Stories I Tell Myself ─ Growing Up With Hunter S. Thompson

An intimate, close-up portrait of Hunter S. Thompson, fearless outlaw journalist, "avenging proxy for the American polity," whose manic first-person articles and exposes, so interwoven with the getting of the story, gave rise to gonzo journalism (gonzagas: "fooled you"; bizarre). A portrait of the man: writer, brother, husband, manic searching soul who grew up with the times he inhabited, and in part created; a portrait most of all of the father: the alcoholic, drug-fueled, charismatic, irresponsible, idealistic, sensitive man, by the son who lived through it all and thrived to tell the dangerous, complex, loving tale.

Hunter S. Thompson, "smart hillbilly," boy of the South, born and bred in Louisville, Kentucky, son of an insurance salesman and a stay-at-home mom, public school-educated, jailed at seventeen on a bogus petty robbery charge, and, in exchange for a reduced sentence, U.S. Air Force, Airmen Second Class, and radio technician trainee, later copy boy forTime, writer for National Observer, etc. From the outset he was the wild man of American journalism with a journalistic appetite that touched on any and all subjects that drove his heightened sense of justice and intrigue, from biker gangs and 1960s counterculture to presidential campaigns and psychedelic drugs.

Now Juan F. Thompson tells the story of father and son, of their getting to know each other during their forty-one fraught years together. He writes of the many dark, scary times; of how far they ricocheted away from each other, and how they found their way back together before it was too late.

JUAN F. THOMPSON, the only son of gonzo author Hunter S. Thompson, is a computer guy who lives in Colorado with his wife and son.