Melville House Books

In her first extended interview, Anita Thompson, the widow of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, says the writer “began saying that suicide wasn’t a dishonorable thing a few months before he shot himself. . . .” In an interview with Dan Elliott of the Associated Press published Friday, she says her husband was feeling “at the peak of his life,” and that “If he quit now, he would feel he was a champion.” Says Elliott, “Days after losing her husband, Anita Thompson talks calmly, if sometimes tearfully, about the moment he swept her off her feet, the brilliance she saw in his writing, her plans to keep alive his legacy and the love letters he wrote her that help ease the pangs of grief and regret.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.