"I do not advocate the use of dangerous drugs, wild amounts of alcohol and violence and weirdness -- but they've always worked for me"

Bob Dylan penned the line "To live outside the law you must be honest" for his song "Absolutely Sweet Marie", and Hunter Thompson seemed to take it to heart - he used it to berate both Nixon and Dubya Bush - both men who try (or tried!) to ignore the rule of law, but lacked any sort of integrity - and, as a modern-day outlaw himself, living on a fortified farm with a large supply of drugs and guns, he understood its truth.
I've spent the day trying to read his obituaries. I won't try to write one myself, because I couldn't do him justice. What do you say? A precis of his life can be found anywhere. A summary of his work? How? For instance, Jon Ronson - a splendid and entertaining writer - wrote an article in today's Guardian. Much of it was, I thought, valid - how many aspiring journalists want to be Thompson, but get distracted by the whole drugs/alcohol thing, whereas the importance is an involvement in the story - a genuine passion, often driven by anger or a feeling of righteous indignation, a desire to right injustice. This is what Hunter had. Ronson, however, I thought, was overly dismissive of his later work. True, some of it - indeed quite a bit of it - lacks the quality of his earlier writing. But not all of it - I would contend that his polemics against GW Bush are amongst some of his finest, and his book, "Kingdom of Fear" is as perceptive an analysis of modern-day America and its paranoia as has been written. Meanwhile other writers have tried to summarise his opinions through the use of isolated quotes - always a bad idea with Hunter, who could say something he didn't even remotely believe, merely to elicit a reaction in his audience.
Ultimately, though, I still feel saddened by his death. I don't normally get like this with people I didn't know. I just feel that another of the great writers and fighters has been taken from us when we still needed him.