Hunter S. Thompson's Death

I don't know the events surrounding the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson. However, the similarity to another suicide is possible. Ernest Hemingway shot himself at age 61 in Ketchum, Idaho, Richard Brautigan shot himself at age 49 in Pine Creek, Montana, and now Thompson at age 67 is dead at his Woody Creek farm outside Aspen, Colorado. My American Government honors class is reading his account of the 1992 Presidential election, "Better than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie," and they seem to enjoy it despite the obvious timeline gap: they are twenty somethings, and the election was 13 years ago, so they really have no direct memories of it. The Duke's best work is Fear and Loathing on the the Campaign Trail 1972, but its so esoteric I haven't used it in class. His best essay was the eulogy for the death of Richard Nixon. I guess we still have Jim Carville to provide us with cutting political analysis, but he is not as funny or outrageous as HST: HST found the humor in politics, as bleak as it might be. I have found myself laughing so hard while reading his books that I have to stop and put the book down to compose myself - that has never happened while listening to Carville on a morning show. I have some posts about HST other locations on this blog.