by Ogelthorpe Q. Sighvatson

Created on: April 08, 2009

Hunter S. Thompson began his career and ended his life as a sports writer. He got his start in 1956 covering intramural sports while serving in the US Air Force and wrote a column for ESPN.com in the year leading up to his death in 2005. In the half century between those two gigs, he penned a number of American classics and invented an entirely new sub-genre of journalism while influencing generations of writers.

Too many people think of Hunter S. Thompson exclusively in the context of his best known work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The fact of the matter is that Fear and Loathing was Thompson's second major book. The first, published in 1966, was Hell's Angels: a relatively straight-laced account of the notorious motorcycle gang. Thompson' approach to the Hell's Angels project was a classic example of what was being called "The New Journalism." Like Tom Wolfe hanging out with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters or George Plimpton playing quarterback for the Lions, Thompson lived among the Hell's Angels to deliver the story from inside the organization.

He was able to handle this, in no small part, due to his years of experience covering Latin American affairs for a wide variety of mainstream publications. From 1960-1963, Hunter S. Thompson travelled throughout the Carribean and South America on little more than his wits and press credentials; facing danger and weirdness in almost every direction. The detailed articles that came out of this bore a distinctive writing style influenced by Hemingway and Fitzgerald, but were by no means unconventional. The work of this period certainly was not "Gonzo."

Hell's Angels, while a sensationalistic and dangerous piece of work, still could be defined within the borders of traditional journalism. Thompson addresses the often controversial material with a brutal candor and conversational tone that would seem unique even today, but the material was still very much grounded in actual fact. This was what The New Journalism was all about: truthful yet freewheeling and editorialized accounts of culturally relevant topics. Gonzo Journalism was what happened when Thompson took the next not so logical step.

It is often said that inside every cynic is a betrayed idealist. The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago rattled Thompson to his core. During the riots, Thompson was in the midst of the brutal crackdown on protesters. He was gassed in the streets along with hundreds of others and watched people literally get their

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