The Excessive Life and Philosophy of Hunter S. Thompson: Gonzo Journalism and the American Situation
Hunter S. Thompson has been gone for 20 years now. When he went out, as the brand new Purswimsuit of Receivedder video on his life and work reminds us, he did so in a excessively American manner: with a gun, and for the time being of his personal choosing. Even his lengthytime followers who respected somefactor concerning the company evident in that selection naturally remorseted that he’d made it; many people have wished aloud that we may learn his judgments of the previous twenty years’ developments in U.S. politics, culture, and society, which might certainly slot in nicely sufficient with the narrative of decline he’d pursued for the reason that late sixties.
On the identical time, we recognize that Thompson’s manner of living would exhaustingly have allowed him to dwell into his late eighties (the person himself expressed surprise to have reached his sixties), and that it was inextricable from his manner of writing. Which isn’t to name it the principle ingredient: as generations of imitators have confirmed, ingestion of controlled substances and a disrespect for traditional narrative structure don’t, by themselves, constitute a recipe for the “gonzo journalism” Thompson pioneered. The truth is, he had a wholesome respect for structure, cultivated by his early profession in workaday reportage and a self-imposed practiceing regime that concerned re-typing the entire of A Farewell to Arms and The Nice Gatsby.
Gonzo journalism, according to the narrator of the video, actually has a serious question to ask: “Are usually not the particular subjective filters by which info and occasions are processed and imagined in a second in history as relevant because the info themselves in beneathstanding the reality of that second, or at the least a slice of the reality?” Thompson’s most extensively learn books Concern and Loathing in Las Vegas and Concern and Loathing on the Campaign Path ’72 stand as two makes an attempt at a solution. However from the late seventies onward, as his “lifelengthy companions of medication and chaotic behavior nestled closer, the strains between his larger-than-life character in his work, his public persona, and his true self started to blur.”
It could possibly be stated that Thompson never recovered the deceptive clarity of his Concern and Loathing-era work, although he remained professionallific to the top. Certainly, there’s a lot of value in his final three many years of writing for learners attuned to who he actually was. “He was not merely the character he portrayed in his work and public life, however the man who cared sufficient, and was talented sufficient, to create this character with a view to discover, beneathstand, and repredespatched a really nuanced condition of the world during his time.” It will, perhaps, have been guesster if he’d been in a position, sooner or later, to retire the medication, the firearms, the solarglasses, and the paranoia and give you a brand new persona. What saved him from doing so? Possibly the notion, as articulated by his nice inspiration Fitzgerald, that there are not any second acts in American lives.
Related content:
Hunter S. Thompson, Existentialist Life Coach, Provides Ideas for Discovering Implying in Life
Hunter S. Thompson’s Harrowing, Chemical-Crammed Daily Routine
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the e-book The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social internetwork formerly referred to as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
