Hunter S. Thompson: The Death of Gonzo Journalism

CHRONWATCH.COM ^ | FEBRUARY 22, 2005 | DR. GREGORY BORSE

[CHARLITE]

Hunter S. Thompson did not invent Gonzo Journalism—but in a line borrowed from David Mamet, he gave it a name. Truman Capote attempted, with “In Cold Blood,” to fuse the fictional with the factual. Thomas Wolfe is a pioneer of the “new journalism” of the sixties, the meshing of the personal with the public. In academia, Stephen Greenblatt and the New Historicists solidified the idea that history could only be known fully by being reduced to the personal.

But Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream” (1971) sits as a kind of manifesto on the vanguard of the death of the mainstream media in a way that his suicide serves to punctuate. For the heart of Thompson’s narrative is the way in which subjective reality overwhelms any sense of so-called journalistic objectivity. Yes, Thompson’s rants in that book were apparently drug-fueled—but that only masks a deeper shift in culture that itself was larger than the person of Hunter S. Thompson. Perhaps those forces by which he found himself swept overcame him. Perhaps he simply lost hope in the dream that reality is merely a matter of self-determination; or perhaps he discovered that the life ruled by self-determination alone is not worth living. Perhaps, more fittingly, Hunter Thompson did things for reasons that have nothing to do with anything anyone could ever really understand. Whatever the reason, Hunter Thompson killed himself on Sunday night.

The story goes that Thompson happened upon what would become Gonzo Journalism while he was covering the Kentucky Derby in his hometown of Louisville. As the New York Times notes:

It was in the heat of deadline that gonzo journalism was born while he was writing a story about the Kentucky Derby for Scanlan's magazine, he recounted years later in an interview in Playboy magazine.

‘I'd blown my mind, couldn't work,’ he told Playboy. ‘So finally I just started jerking pages out of my notebook and numbering them and sending them to the printer. I was sure it was the last article I was ever going to do for anybody.’

Instead, he said, the story drew raves and he was inundated with letters and phone calls from people calling it ‘a breakthrough in journalism,’ an experience he likened to ‘falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids.’

In light of recent events, T.S. Eliot could not have put it better: “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing to me.”

So, Hunter S. Thompson, in a fit of professional pique, rips random notes of his personal experience from his notebook and sends them to the printer and journalism itself seizes a new mode of expression, forever to be changed by the Romantic idea that the story is important according to the narrator’s participation in its events.

There should be no surprise, then, that Thompson committed suicide at just that moment that witnessed the eclipsing of the idea that the teller was more important than the told. Eliot’s contemporary, Yeats, asked whether we could tell the dancer from the dance. He did so in the perhaps even more romantic notion that there was something valuable and artistic in the fusion of the dancer with the dance—that such was art and that such art had some claim to truth. But the modern and post-modern reaction to the Romantic notion of the relationship between the dancer and the dance was to privilege the dancer. For the hoplessly Romantic (that is to say, the sentimental), it is the dancer that gives value to the dance—and reduces it to the danced.

But recently, Dan Rather illustrated the darker side of identifying the teller with the told. Of course, Rather attempted to defend the Presidential Texas National Guard fiasco by saying that the “substance” of the story was true, even if the “facts” did not support it. But Thompson never would have made such a claim. He would have said something like the experience of tracking down whatever the story was was the substance of the very story that nobody was looking for in the first place. That’s Gonzo Journalism and that was the essence of what Thompson did.

Which is to say that Thompson did not practice journalism. He practiced autobiography.

In any event—that autobiography has come to an end at just that moment when the mainstream media has begun to discover (but not quickly enough) that there is a place for autobiography in media as well as in journalism. It’s just that people appreciate knowing the difference.

Thompson never attempted to dupe his audience—even if the style he helped to invent was the result of entirely selfish motivations. What you got from “Gonzo” was “Gonzo” and he made no bones about it.

There is an irony that his last column consisted of a conversation he had with Bill Murray about “Shotgun Golf,” a new sport Thompson had invented that consisted of having someone drive golf balls on a range while a partner attempted to shoot them with a shotgun—like skeet shooting. In Thompson’s mind, they could set up “Shotgun Golf” ranges just like the driving ranges in Japan—in high rise set ups in which participants drive from a platform within a multi-story building while their partners try to shoot their balls out of the air from towers that stretch fifteen or twenty stories into the sky. He called Bill Murray at 3:30 in the morning to discuss it with him.

But the column wasn’t really about “Shotgun Golf.” It was about being able to call Bill Murray at 3:30 in the morning for no good reason and have him pick up the phone.

And that was the problem.

It seems to me that the whole point of Gonzo Journalism was to make a statement about how the individual gets swallowed up by the machine of politics, society, and culture—to the extent that we lose that vital connection between the individual’s experience and the meaning of the wider world “out there.”

In the end, Hunter Thompson was making a living being paid by “the man” to imitate his rejection of the very world that in the end gave him a career.

Perhaps he became a contradiction to himself.

I won’t attempt to explain him—Mr. Thompson would not appreciate that and it would be false for an observer to do so.

God rest him, though.

About the Writer: Gregory Borse is assistant professor of English at Ivy Tech State College in Wabash, Indiana. Dr. Borse, a family man with "a beautiful wife and four beautiful children," enjoys writing, current events, media, politics, and disc golf. Gregory receives e-mail at

gregorbo@peoplepc.com.

[Borges]

Man, lots of articles about HST popping up here!

[Borges]

Thomas Wolfe is a pioneer of the “new journalism” of the sixties, the meshing of the personal with the public.

If that's the definition then the Icelandic Sagas were the first example. They say our distinctions between historical and fictional writing doesn't apply to them.

[rabidralph]

Because he's Deep Throat.

[Mr. K]

His writings were ... significant.

Someone shold have notices his decline into this stage of depression.

unless he didnt do it himself... (cue mysterious music)

[Semper Paratus]

‘I'd blown my mind, couldn't work,’ he told Playboy. ‘So finally I just started jerking pages out of my notebook and numbering them and sending them to the printer. I was sure it was the last article I was ever going to do for anybody.’

And pissed off a lot of drunken writers who did the same thing and got fired.

[martin_fierro]

Hunter S. Thompson: The Death of Gonzo Journalism

Gone. So?

[pabianice]

Who?

[Bommer]

Posted on Tue, Feb. 22, 2005

Author offered hints before suicide

By David Abel

The Boston Globe

If one of Hunter S. Thompson's last wishes comes true, the body of the maverick journalist will be cremated this week and his ashes blasted from a cannon across his sprawling ranch in Woody Creek, Colo.

That will be the extent of Thompson's funeral, as outlined in his will, said George Tobia Jr., a Boston-based entertainment lawyer who represented Thompson for the past 15 years. Tobia said he spent a few hours every week, often in the wee hours of the night, fielding requests from and chatting up the man who created gonzo journalism.

In a telephone interview Monday, Tobia said that only in retrospect does it makes sense that the 67-year-old author sat in his kitchen Sunday afternoon, stuck a .45-caliber handgun in his mouth, and killed himself while his wife listened on the phone and his son and daughter-in-law were in another room. His wife had no idea what had happened until she returned home later.

Thompson, a former Rolling Stone magazine contributor known for his self-styled, freewheeling writing, chronicled the downfall of President Nixon and authored books including Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Tobia, 43, who said he spoke to Thompson at least five times in the last week, said his client and friend didn't leave a note, only conversations and obscure directions to friends and family in recent days.

"This was definitely not spur of the moment," said Tobia, who plans to fly to Colorado today to help carry out Thompson's wishes.

"He arranged to have things dealt with, and he wanted his family close by, but he didn't want anyone to know -- he didn't want anyone to try to stop him. In a weird way, he wanted it to be, I think, a celebration."

Tobia noted that he and Thompson had discussed suicide in the past and that Thompson had discussed it with others.

The decision, Tobia said, had nothing to do with the re-election of President Bush or the trend in national politics; nor did Thompson have any significant financial problems.

Thompson's estate, including land, archives, royalties and other valuables, is worth millions, Tobia said.

The best explanation, perhaps, is that in recent months Thompson had chronic pain from back surgery and an artificial hip. He also broke his leg on a recent trip to Hawaii and was limping, which made it difficult for him to travel.

"He did not want to exist as an invalid or as someone who needed constant care. It wouldn't suit his sense of self," Tobia said.

The one clue, in retrospect, that something changed recently was Thompson's decision that it wasn't so important that his papers and archives be sold to the highest bidder. The money would have helped him in later years.

Thompson told friends including Tobia, a trustee of Thompson's estate, last week that it was more important that his archives not be sold piecemeal and that a proper home, such as a university, be found for them.

"There was no one thing you would point to and say, 'Oh ... he's going to kill himself,' " Tobia said. "It wasn't clear last week suicide was imminent, but now it adds up."

[discostu]

the point of gonzo isn't about the individual getting swallowed up by anything, though that happened to HST, it's about personalizing the story. It's the difference between a dry and impersonal presentation of the facts discovered and allowing the reader/ viewer a peak behind the curtain to see how this was discovered. I think the biggest effect of gonzo can be seen in what's happened to educational/ documentary TV in the last 20 years, we've moved away from those dry Nova specials with the faceless narator to a style where you get to see people going after the story dealing with the sideline issues and commenting on their own efforts. It's the difference between showing the Steps of Moses and showing your show's host climbing the Steps of Moses commenting about the emotional weight of being there and the physical weight of being there in July when it's 120 degrees on the Sinai peninsula. The later is gonzo, and gives the viewers a sense of place.

[Servant of the 9]

Someone shold have notices his decline into this stage of depression.

And what?
Try to hold an intervention on HST?

I can't imagine a less likely subject.
He would have ripped out their spleens

So9

[Semper Paratus]

we've moved away from those dry Nova specials with the faceless narator to a style where you get to see people going after the story dealing with the sideline issues and commenting on their own efforts

Michael Moore immediatley comes to mind.

[discostu]

To a degree yes, but that shouldn't be held against gonzo, it's not gonzo's fault Moore is a lying bag of puss. But definitely putting the documentarian in front of the camera and showing his attempts to get the interview instead of just the interview is gonzo. IMHO the guy that moved gonzo to TV was James Burke with his series War Walks, that move from simply showing the room where Wellington gave final orders before battle to having the host stand in the room discussing what Wellington could view from there was a big change, and for the better as it really removed a lot of the dry dull shell from around documentaries, making them much more approachable and human.

[Bernard Marx]

Thomas Wolfe is a pioneer of the “new journalism” of the sixties, the meshing of the personal with the public.

You'd think a professor of English would know the difference between Tom Wolfe and his namesake Thomas Wolfe of "Look Homeward Angel" fame. Tom Wolfe did indeed venture into new literary waters with fine work like "The Kandy-Colored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby" and "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and more. And thankfully he's one of the more conservatively-oriented novelists writing today.

[cubreporter]

Who? Don't know who he was or what he did.

[Semper Paratus]

One journalistic form that HST blew away was the hagiography of Presidential candidates featured by Theodre White's treatment of the 1960 Presidential Election.

After 'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail' it was impossible to put the halo back on Presidential election campaigns.

[squirt-gun]

I read the accolades given Thompson by Tom Wolfe in today's WSJ...And I think Wolfe is a fantastic writer...

However, Thompson was a weird, confused person whose fame came from doing the unexpected and stupid which got him attention...such as sounding a boat horn in a restraunt.

The man was a psycho.

[discostu]

OK I'll admit it, I had to look up hagiography, but you're right. And of course not just the presidential candidates but the press on the campaign trail, the view of the zoo plane and press row during the conventions, it's now standard during any mass covered event like a convention or the Super Bowl to have some story about how the story is covered. My favorite example of that comes from PJ O'Rourke during the Gulf War when he goes to where all the TV journalists gather to write their stories and finds them pouring through the print accounts and says "you can't do that, everything we write is based on what we see on your shows".

[Semper Paratus]

PJ O'Rourke during the Gulf War

The funniest thing I ever read by him was when he covered the Nick-a-ra-wa election that threw the Sandanista thugs out of power. His discription of the deslolated American symps "The Sandalistas" still put me in stitches.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

'swhy you'll always be a rookie.