If we had a dime for every time a book arrived in this cubicle, its young author touted as a second coming of Hunter S. Thompson, we wouldn’t need to work in a cubicle anymore. Such is the long shadow of the rowdy raconteur Thompson. It’s not even the writing, but rather the snarling attitude and the alternately hyperactive and barbituric eye for America at large that hopefuls wish to reclaim.

No one possibly could.

That’s the only conclusion we could draw after finishing Outlaw Journalist (W.W. Norton, $27.95), William McKeen’s exhaustive and definitive biography of gonzo journalism’s progenitor. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1937, Thompson almost immediately took up the role of the rogue, perpetrating pranks on his friends, family and neighbors with an abandon that he would retain for the rest of his life. The early chapters of Outlaw Journalist show Thompson as a charismatic troublemaker. But after several traumatic events (the death of his father, a questionable jailing), a dark streak opens wide in Thompson, and he becomes less of a scamp and more of a troubled young man.

McKeen does well to lay the foundation in the early chapters, but expectedly, the book really gathers steam when Thompson’s writing career does. We see Thompson as a young freelancer cutting his teeth in South America and then finally getting his big break in 1965 when he’s assigned an article on the country’s most notorious motorcycle gang. That article eventually led to a contract for Hell’s Angels, his first (and in our opinion, greatest) book, where he first showed signs of the gonzo journalism he pioneered and ratcheted up in his more famous work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. McKeen is also at his best in the chapters about Thompson’s work, where he acts not just as literary biographer but also as critic, picking apart trends in Thompson’s work and calling him out on mistakes and failed efforts.

Outlaw Journalist is McKeen’s second foray into documenting Thompson, the first, 1991’s Hunter S. Thompson, is long out of print. That book was written while Thompson—who shot himself in 2005—was still alive, which reportedly earned McKeen a note from Thompson that declared, among other things, “Now you’d better get fitted for a black eyepatch in case one of yours gets gouged out by a bushy-haired stranger in a dimly-lit parking lot.”

Digging into Thompson’s life after his death not only allowed McKeen to dodge physical repercussions, but also to persuade those close to Thompson to open up. Most fascinating is the respectful chattiness of Thompson’s friends, family and confidantes. When they speak—as when some are critical of young Thompson’s behavior toward his wife and son—one never feels covered in the slime of knowing intimate details that would best be left to intimates. McKeen, of course, deserves much credit for parsing it all.

The result is a biography that while not exactly perfectly pitched—it’s difficult to read about the birth of novelistic journalism in a matter-of-fact book bereft of the novel’s narrative arcs—certainly sings loud and clear. Thompson was an original, never to be duplicated, and McKeen’s book gives us proof in abundance.

Outlaw Journalist comes out on Friday 18, which would have been Thompson’s 71st birthday.