William Rivers Pitt of TruthOut.org has an excellent and personal article about Hunter S. Thompson. Regrettably, I have not read any of Thompson's works. But now I'm even more interested. There seem to be so many parallels between his 1972 writing Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and the recent election cycles.
I think I'd like Thompson for the same reason I love William Burroughs - it's balls out, dirty, raw, and true (or just eerily poignant). And they lived their lives this same way.