HUNTER THOMPSON MADE WEIRD A NOBLE CALLING.

Byline: Phil Perrier

I was 12 when I read ``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' for the first time. Nothing has been quite the same since. The twisted tale of a sports journalist and his ``attorney'' taking a road trip to Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race, while ingesting a veritable medical digest of illegal chemicals, had as profound an effect on my brain as a frontal lobotomy.

``As the hitchhiker talked I admired the shape of his skull. My attorney said 'Relax, we're not like the others.'''

You don't get images like that from John Steinbeck. ``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' was the first book to describe the thought processes of someone in the grips of a powerful drug, be it LSD, ether or mescaline, in vivid detail. And while the book chronicled general chaos, the novel itself was a beautifully concise, tightly written masterpiece.

It was followed by the 1972 Thompson classic ``Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail,'' Thompson's narrative of covering the George McGovern campaign against President Richard Nixon. The two ``Fear and Loathing'' books and Thompson's first book, ``The Hell's Angels'' - a true account of Thompson's life with the outlaw motorcycle gang - would represent a sort of Holy Trinity of Hunter Thompson works.

If it is true that great times make great men, then the '60s made Hunter Thompson. No other voice captured the spirit of the counterculture like his. While Tom Wolfe documented the seismic societal upheaval of the era in his classic ``The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test,'' Thompson documented it while living it in his early books.

Amazingly, Thompson was able to juggle sex, drugs, motorcycles, booze, firearms and insanity while churning out the clearest, most cogent prose of his generation. Despite his gonzo lifestyle, when it came to writing, Thompson was the consummate perfectionist. In his book ``Proud Highways,'' Thompson writes letters to friends about how he ``wrote'' ``The Great Gatsby'' word for word on his typewriter to ``get the rhythm of it.'' He felt that ``Gatsby'' was the ultimate American novel, and when he began writing ``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,'' he had every intention of creating nothing short of greatness.

Thompson's gift of language created a style that was simply intoxicating for his readers. He swore often and well and used gripping words like ``brutal'' and ``savage,'' and called people ``greed heads'' and ``bad crazies.'' All the while, displaying a deep knowledge of politics and a profound sensitivity to the society around him.

Thompson was at his best when there was a fire in his belly. The battles and injustices of the '60s fueled his best work, with his ultimate foe being Nixon. Conservatism and conformity were Thompson's enemies, and Nixon came to represent the living embodiment of both in his work. He wrote of Nixon with a mixture of hatred and fascination. He clearly felt that Nixon was as close to pure evil as anyone in American politics. Perhaps the lack of a worthy opponent explains why Thompson's later works, while sometimes brilliant, never packed the punch of his first three.

As Thompson's fame grew, he became a hero to a generation of young males, much as Hemingway had been a hero to an earlier generation. Writing was believed to be a profession for tweedy little geeks, then along came Thompson to turn that stereotype on its ear. Here was a man among men: a guy who drank, fornicated with women and lived life in big, violent, gulps.

In his aviator shades, wide-brimmed hat and Chuck Taylor sneakers, Hunter Thompson cut a dashing if weird figure. And while he made being a writer a cool job, he also made being weird a noble calling. ``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' became a bible for the terminally weird. Asking me how many times I read the book during my teens would be like asking a preacher how many times he has read the Scriptures. The truth never seems to get old.

Hunter Thompson lived weird and he died weird. Hunter Thompson was not like the others.