Evan Wright, unflinching author of ‘Generation Kill,’ dies at 59

Evan Wright, a modern-day gonzo journalist who embedded with an elite U.S. Marine battalion in Iraq for prizewinning articles that were published in Rolling Stone and grew into the book and HBO miniseries “Generation Kill,” died July 12 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 59.

The cause was suicide, according to his family.

Wright wrote for magazines including Time and Vanity Fair but was perhaps best known for his contributions to Rolling Stone, the literary home beginning in the 1970s of Hunter S. Thompson, the renegade writer who embodied the personal, sometimes subversive brand of reportage known as gonzo journalism.

Wright rejected the frequent comparisons between him and Thompson.

“ ‘Gonzo’ speaks of writing that is more about the reporter than the subject,” he wrote in a book-length collection of his articles, “Hella Nation: Looking for Happy Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Side Pipe, Wingnut’s War Against the Gap, and Other Adventures With the Totally Lost Tribes of America” (2009). “With few exceptions, my intent has always been to focus on my subjects in all of their imperfect glory.”

But for better or worse, the analogy stuck. To readers interested in the affairs of the world beyond those reported in the columns of more tradition-bound publications, Wright’s byline carried the promise of a riveting, insightful, visceral read. He infiltrated a gathering of neo-Nazis in Idaho, reported from the trenches of anarchist groups and chronicled the lives of sorority girls at Ohio State University, in addition to profiling show business celebrities including Shakira and Quentin Tarantino.

Wright was most celebrated, however, as a war correspondent, embedding first with the U.S. military during the Afghan war and then, in 2003, with the Marine First Reconnaissance Battalion in Iraq. His writings from Iraq, a three-part series published in Rolling Stone as “The Killer Elite,” received the 2004 National Magazine Award for reporting.

“Writer-photographer Evan Wright risked his life to get this story – a rollicking, profane, brutal look at the Marines of Bravo Company, who led the charge into Iraq last year,” read the citation. “In the course of myriad firefights, mortar shellings and ambushes, Wright won the trust of his subjects, but he remained clear-eyed, depicting the soldier’s cold-bloodedness as well as their humanity. Brilliant down to the last detail.”

Wright expanded his articles into the book “Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War,” published in 2004 and adapted in 2008 into an HBO miniseries that Mr. Wright co-wrote with David Simon and Ed Burns, both of “The Wire.” In a post on X after Mr. Wright’s death, Simon recalled him as “charming, funny and not a little bit feral, as many reporters are.”

In Iraq, Wright rode at the front of a column of Marines, regularly coming under fire from IEDs, machine guns and rockets, as they moved toward Baghdad. He returned with an unsparing, but deeply empathetic portrait of a group of young men whom he described as “more or less America’s first generation of disposable children.”

“More than half the guys in the platoon come from broken homes,” he wrote in “Generation Kill.” “Many are on more intimate terms with video games, reality TV shows and Internet porn than they are with their own parents. Before the ‘War on Terrorism’ began, not a whole lot was expected of this generation other than the hope that those in it would squeak through high school without pulling too many more mass shootings in the manner of Columbine.”

Wright said that he aspired to give a full picture of the Marines, one that went beyond the oft-peddled caricatures either lionizing or vilifying the military.

He described Marines shooting at a car that had driven through a checkpoint – and then discovering that their bullets had killed a 3-year-old Iraqi girl. But he also recounted the actions of a lance corporal who encountered a group of refugees on foot and, with tears streaming down his face, took a baby in his arms because the mother, after walking for days, was too weak to hold her own child.

Wright was drawn to servicemen and women, he told the Philadelphia Inquirer, because “the voices of actual people in the military are voices that society tends to ignore.”

Evan Alan Wright, the youngest of three siblings, was born in Cleveland on Dec. 28, 1964. His father, an assistant county prosecutor and later a corporate lawyer, left the family when Mr. Wright was about 8. He was raised after that point mainly by his mother, a homemaker who then went to law school and entered private practice.

Wright recently wrote on X that he was “still searching for a support group for Adult Children of Alcoholic Lawyers.” But both his siblings, Nora Wright and Walter Wright, said in interviews that all three siblings were immensely proud of their mother for obtaining her law decree.

“I have a soft spot for lawyers,” Wright told an interviewer. “If you can find an honest lawyer, as my parents were, there is nothing better. But as a writer, if you can find crooked ones as subjects, they’re God’s gift.”

Wright attended public and private schools before being sent to a center for juvenile delinquents called the Seed. His offense, his sister said, was rolling joints that he had made not with marijuana, but with catnip. Years later, interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Wright said that the place “used North Korean brainwashing techniques to straighten out kids: sleep deprivation, threats of physical violence, humiliation and boxing.”

Wright described his schooling experience on a TV series, “Teen Torture, Inc.,” that began streaming on Max the day before he died. He wrote on X, “Anyone who sees the documentary I’m in this week could reasonably conclude that I’ve probably done a lot of work on my mental health ever since those experiences I had.”

He enrolled in college, ultimately receiving a bachelor’s degree in medieval and Renaissance studies from Vassar College in 1987. Several years after his graduation, he moved to Los Angeles hoping to make it as a screenwriter.

When the career plan did not work out, he got a job as entertainment editor at Hustler, effectively working as a reviewer of porn movies. It was, he said, his first “steady paycheck and a dental plan.” He began freelancing on the side, establishing the reputation that would bring him to the attention of Rolling Stone.

In addition to the collection of his magazine writings and “Generation Kill,” Mr. Wright wrote books including “American Desperado: My Life – From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset,” written with Jon Roberts (2011), and “How to Get Away With Murder in America: Drug Lords, Dirty Pols, Obsessed Cops, and the Quiet Man Who Became the CIA’s Master Killer” (2012).

Wright’s marriages to Susan Matheson and Laura Jameson ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of three years, the former Kelli Helms, of Los Angeles; three children from his third marriage, Carter Wright, Evan Wright Jr. and Kennedy Wright, all of Los Angeles; and his siblings.

Journalism, Wright found in his career, was a “refuge for rogues and miscreants.” But it suited him, he said, because it allowed him to access parts of life that few people outside those quarters ever see, and to bring back from them stories that might not otherwise have been told. “It’s a powerful experience,” he remarked, “to merge with somebody.”

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