Hunter S. Thompson was one of the 20th century’s greatest literary social critics,
and one of the most anti-authoritarian.
In the tradition of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken,
Thompson never flinched at exposing the hypocrisies and contradictions of American life and ideology,
and his contempt for authority permeated not just his writing but his life as well.
Thompson killed himself in 2005, shortly before his remains were shot out of a giant cannon in Aspen, Colorado.
Yet, right up to the end, Thompson made himself a gadfly and a nuisance and an enemy of the agents of the state
who have so much power over the lives of the powerless.