My kind of writer...

"Too many people in this gutless world, have come under the impression that writers are a race of finks, queers and candy asses to be bilked, cheated and mocked as a form of commercial sport. It should be noted, therefore ... that some writers possess .44 Magnums and can puncture beer cans with ... that weapon at a distance of 150 yards." Hunter S. Thompson

William Burroughs
In 1951, Burroughs shot and killed Joan Vollmer, his common law wife, in a drunken game of "William Tell" at a party. He spent 13 days in jail before his brother came to Mexico City and bribed Mexican lawyers and officials, which allowed Burroughs to be released on bail while he awaited trial for the killing, which was ruled culpable homicide. Burroughs reported every Monday morning to the jail in Mexico City while his prominent Mexican attorney worked to resolve the case. According to James Grauerholz two witnesses had agreed to testify that the gun had gone off accidentally while he was checking to see if it was loaded, and the ballistics experts were bribed to support this story. Nevertheless, the trial was continuously delayed and Burroughs began to write what would eventually become the short novel "Queer" while awaiting his trial. However, when his attorney fled Mexico after his own legal problems, Burroughs decided, to "skip" and return to the United States. He was convicted in absentia of homicide and sentenced to two years, which was suspended. Although Burroughs was writing before the shooting of Joan Vollmer, this event marked him and, biographers argue, his work for the rest of his life.

Ken Kesey
At Stanford in 1959, Kesey volunteered to take part in a CIA-financed study named Project MKULTRA at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital. The project studied the effects of psychoactive drugs, particularly LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, AMT, and DMT on people. Kesey wrote many detailed accounts of his experiences with these drugs, both during the Project MKULTRA study and in the years of private experimentation that followed. His role as a medical guinea pig inspired Kesey to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1962.
He frequently entertained friends and many others with parties he called "Acid Tests" involving music (such as Kesey's favorite band, The Warlocks, later known as the Grateful Dead), black lights, fluorescent paint, strobes and other "psychedelic" effects, and, of course, LSD. These parties were noted in some of Allen Ginsberg's poems and are also described in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, as well as Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs by Hunter S. Thompson and Freewheelin Frank, Secretary of the Hell's Angels by Frank Reynolds. Ken Kesey was also said to have experimented with LSD with Ringo Starr in 1965 and in fact influenced the set up for their future performances in the UK.

Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway attempted suicide in the spring of 1961, and received ECT treatment again. On the morning of July 2, 1961, some three weeks short of his 62nd birthday, he died at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, the result of a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head. Judged not mentally responsible for his final act, he was buried in a Roman Catholic service.

To be continued...