Comicsartist

Coherent look at gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson
Author William McKeen

Jim Abbott

Sentinel Pop Music Critic

July 6, 2008

Hunter S. Thompson, of course, was a character.

Bill Murray and Johnny Depp played him in the movies. Uncle Duke in "Doonesbury" traced his life so closely that Thompson's divorce was reflected in a story line.

The antics of the iconic Rolling Stone journalist, who invented Gonzo journalism in the 1970s with books about the Hell's Angels and politics as well as the counterculture classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, make easy fodder for a biographer. But author William McKeen wanted to peel away the caricature in Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson, a new book in stores July 18.

McKeen, journalism chair at the University of Florida, became an acquaintance of Thompson's after hosting a university speaking engagement by the author in the late 1970s.

"The one thing missing in every telling of his story is coherence," McKeen says. "People get so caught up in the craziness."


Filling in the blanks

To construct the story, McKeen printed blank calendar pages representing 30 years of Thompson's life. Then, he did some 80 interviews and waded into a formidable stack of the author's published work and personal correspondence to fill in the blanks.

And, yes, there are plenty of crazy stories: A pig's head in a toilet in Key West. Scores of battered office vending machines. Drug smugglers. Motorcycles. Pills. Fast cars. Explosions. Jail. Guns.

Yet there's also the truth that Thompson was a true journalist, who went where things were happening: After breaking into the business as a military reporter at Eglin Air Force Base in Pensacola, Thompson brushed, almost Forrest Gump-like, against the biggest stories of his era.

He was swimming laps in the pool at the Watergate Hotel on the day of the infamous break-in. He covered the 1972 presidential campaign. He was at the fall of Saigon.

Outlaw Journalist also examines Thompson's commitment to his craft. One of his exercises was to retype the famous works of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald to experience what it might have been like to create them.

He used music to inspire him, particularly songs by Bob Dylan. After his suicide in 2005, Thompson left his red IBM Selectric II to Dylan for providing 40 years of "fuel."


A hero for 'oddballs'

McKeen, 53, traces his interest in Thompson back to his teenage years working as a cub reporter in Bloomington, Ind. A copy of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Thompson's book on the 1972 presidential race, was passed around the newsroom so much that it fell apart.

"We were all a bunch of oddballs," McKeen says. "We'd read it out loud, and he just jangled everybody. Like Tom Wolfe, he was a liberating force for that era of journalism."

Thompson's larger-than-life persona eventually interfered with his ability to report. McKeen recalls seeing him in the press room at the 1984 Democratic Convention, where reporters surrounded him for autographs.

That celebrity -- Thompson despised his connection to "Doonesbury" -- combined with crippling health problems led the author to shoot himself in the head at his Colorado home. His ashes were fired out of a cannon at a star-studded memorial service that cost actor Depp $2.5 million.

Another good story, but McKeen hopes that his book reveals something more.

"He put the highest value on honesty, no matter how ugly the honesty might be," he says. "And he really believed in the purity of the American dream. That's what he tracked his whole life: How are we doing?"


How it started
In his writing and correspondence, the inventor of gonzo journalism was a master of inventive, if often profane, wordplay. Here are some examples, starting with Thompson's astonished reaction to the praise lavished on his 1970 essay on the Kentucky Derby, lauded as the advent of gonzo journalism:

"If I can write like this and get away with it, why should I keep trying to write like The New York Times," Thompson said. "It was like falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids."


And what is gonzo journalism?

"Gonzo is just a word I picked up because I liked the sound of it -- which is not to say there isn't a basic difference between the kind of writing I do and the [Tom] Wolfe/[Gay] Talese style," Thompson said. "They tend to go back and re-create stories that have already happened, while I like to get right in the middle of whatever I'm writing about -- as personally involved as possible."
In Outlaw Journalist, author William McKeen traces the word to the French Canadian gonzeaux and derivations that refer to the last man standing after a night of drinking. There also was a regional radio hit, "Gonzo," that used to be a Thompson favorite.


His ticket to the world

Thompson's journalism took him to unexpected places. That included the Roxanne Pulitzer divorce trial in West Palm Beach, which he covered for Rolling Stone in 1984. His appraisal of the tony courtroom crowd included this description:

"Roxanne Pulitzer is not a beautiful woman. There is nothing especially striking about her body or facial bone structure, and age thirty-one, she looks more like a jaded senior stewardess from Pan Am than an international sex symbol. . . . Her legs are too thin, her hips are too wide, and her skin is a bit too loose for modeling work. But she has a definite physical presence. There is no mistaking the aura of good-humored, out-front sexuality. This is clearly a woman who likes to sleep late in the morning."


It's good for you

Thompson considered writing to be therapeutic: "One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it," he wrote in 1990. "You might be wrong but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it. So I use writing as a learning tool."
Coherent look at gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson -- OrlandoSentinel.com

Pay no attention to the July 18th date. The book is available now.

Amazon.com: Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times...

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michelemichele

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If you guys haven't bought them yet, I strongly strongly urge you to pick up these books -





Kind of bummed me out as I was reading the second volume -- one really gets a sense of who this person was.

The third volume of his letters won't be out til Feb 2009. Feels like a long, long wait:

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(((start the music)))

Danimal

I hadn't realized they had printed his letters, thanks for the heads-up. It really is a great way to learn about the real person, I had a similar experience with "The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1945-1959" I look forward to reading Thompson on a more personal level. I really can't express how much I respect HST, his constant need to question authority with humour and intelligence has been a inspiration to me for years. his love of all personal freedoms, whether it be the right to bear arms or the right not to bear children, made him the ultimate American in my opinion.

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I don't hate people, I just like it better when they're not around. -Charles Bukowski

michelemichele

These are huge, the volume of his correspondence was staggering... (you're in for such a treat, Dan)

Just brace yourself: it can be sad when you meet the man behind the 'gonzo' humour, and he wasn't perfect, which somehow ends up falling in his favour (can't express it so well)

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(((start the music)))

HarperLee

I am behind the curve here. I just noticed that a new documentary called Gonzo opens at the art theater here this weekend.

Has anyone seen it?

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Oliver Stone on George W. Bush: "the banality of evil"

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

HarperLee

Here is link to NYTimes review of Gonzo documentary, Fear and Loathing on the Documentary Screen:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/mo...ts&oref=slogin

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Oliver Stone on George W. Bush: "the banality of evil"

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

serum114

I saw it a couple of weeks ago definitely worth seeing for any HST fan. Some footage I hadn't seen before.

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The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
Hunter S. Thompson

"The bad news is, the aliens have landed. The good news is, they eat Mormons and piss gasoline!"
Utah Phillips