Early Life in Louisville
Hunter Stockton Thompson was born on 18 July 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky. Raised in a middle-class family that fell on hard times after his father's death when Hunter was fourteen, Thompson developed an early rebelliousness that found expression in writing. He was a voracious reader and a natural provocateur who joined the Athenaeum Literary Association, one of Louisville's oldest literary clubs, while still in high school.
Thompson's youth was marked by brushes with the law. Shortly before his high school graduation in 1955, he was arrested as an accessory to robbery and spent thirty days in the Louisville jail, an experience that deepened his distrust of authority and his fascination with American violence. He enlisted in the United States Air Force, where he began writing for base newspapers and discovered his talent for journalism.
