I still don't get what Gonzo journalism is or what the point of this book was
>dude gonzo is like, when you're like THERE bro
You're a fricking journalist, of course you're there
I still don't get what Gonzo journalism is or what the point of this book was
From what I understand, it's basically "lying".
What Thompson did was blend journalism with fiction. You're supposed to understand that the stuff he wrote wasn't entirely the true story, but it captures some essence of the true story, or whatever.
homie what
Gonzo journalism is making shit up, but more pretentious.
And having a drug-addled mind doesn't hurt either.
This. Thompson's main distinction is that his lies were more blatant than those of regular journalists.
You’re a zoomer. That’s the problem. A few decades ago, mainstream journalism was as objective as possible or at least pretended to be. Nowadays, journalism is all gonzo minus snorting cocaine. You can’t tell the difference because there’s no difference with mainstream journalism today. However, if you take a minute to read what newspapers the rich read, you will notice a difference.
>95
>zoom
>mainstream journalism was as objective as possible or at least pretended to be
You really covered both motte and bailey there kek
He's not entirely wrong, we only got hyper-polarized cable news after they repealed the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Now it's pretty much a given that most news outlet exist to flatter a specific worldview.
what newspapers do the rich read, anon?
I thought gonzo journalism is when the journalist is not just there, but actively taking part in the events instead of being a passive bystander?
Derby article in 1969
>LOUISVILLE, April 29 -- Ack Ack rattled off a track record-breaking time of 1:34 2-5 for the mile at Churchill Downs in winning the Derby Trial today. The Cain Hoy Stable's bay colt, with Manuel Ycaza riding, beat Indian Emerald by seven lengths in the $16,050 test. Fleet Allied was third in the field of seven 3-year-olds, all eligible for the $125,000 Kentucky Derby on Saturday.
Derby article in 1970
>I got off the plane around midnight and no one spoke as I crossed the dark runway to the terminal. The air was thick and hot, like wandering into a steam bath. Inside, people hugged each other and shook hands … big grins and a whoop here and there: “By God! You old bastard! Good to see you, boy! Damn good … and I mean it!”
>In the air-conditioned lounge I met a man from Houston who said his name was something or other — “but just call me Jimbo” — and he was here to get it on. “I’m ready for anything, by God! Anything at all. Yeah, what are you drinkin?” I ordered a Margarita with ice, but he wouldn’t hear of it: “Naw, naw … what the hell kind of drink is that for Kentucky Derby time? What’s wrong with you, boy?” He grinned and winked at the bartender. “Goddam, we gotta educate this boy. Get him some good whiskey … ”
>ACK ACK
the point of this book is "drugs lmao" and nothing else
I believe it's something about how the "American Dream" materialises as a kind of deranged predatory hunger for wealth and leisure. That and "drugs lmao".
That and how the great failed cultural revolution of the 60s turned into that material hunger and we live looking at the high water mark of the promises it made and the excess which could also never be topped. It's like a world after an apocalypse, and Vegas is the logical extreme of it.
>you see everything after my hedonism was actually super culturally relevant and important guys
>everything after this is all fake bullshit :^)
Shut the frick up thompson
That's the opposite of what he's saying. The promises of the hippie movement didn't amount to anything. People only really liked the hedonism. No one ended up more free, and we didn't all learn to love each other.
>Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
It's when the journalist becomes an integral part of the story, not just a bystander, from what I understand .
The best thing Hunter S. Thompson did with his hands was pull the trigger.
edgy
Can't get much edgier than him.
Look it is kind of a "vibe" to an extent but basically it's like you try to "live" the story then tell it.
The point I think is to break down the barrier between the journalist and it's subject as much as possible
All of new journalism is kind of just saying "yeah do whatever you want"
The traditional reporter archetype is like a robot (wearing a khaki trenchcoat and a brimmed hat with a PRESS card sticking out of it) who collects facts and presents them like a computer would.
Gonzo journalism has had a lot of influence but that's been basically every VICE documentary. Hunter S. Thompson did it in an extreme way that was part of the counterculture in the 1960s and was taken up by magazines like Playboy, Rolling Stone and alt-weeklies like the Village Voice.
fear and loathing is a novel ya dingus
You can shit on gonzo journalism all you want, but it at least should be commended for dropping all pretensions of objectivity and neutrality. Journalism has always been gonzo.
Gonzo was just the name Thompson used for his writing, which as others have pointed out was basically hyperbolized journalistic diary and opinion pieces. Anyone who isn't Hunter S. Thompson and claims to be a gonzo writer is a pretentious douche.
Journalism is essentially humanistic since only secular humanists have created the job of journalist and they love the idea of a journalist as the gatekeeper of secular humanism by denouncing some Human rights violations, political scandals and enlightening the plebs, because journalists like any wienerroach humanist cling to their idea that they are the gatekeepers of the truths.
All the journalists 100 years ago were already self righteous atheist buttholes addicted to their brain poops.
Journalism has always been pathetic.
If this came out today we would call it "autofiction". The idea of writing about actual events in the style associated with fiction has been around for ages. Journey to the End of the Night would easily qualify as "gonzo journalism", as well as Slaughterhouse V, The Grapes of Wrath, and Down and Out in Paris and London.
The only things that really distinguish Hunter, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, and the few other names we associate with "gonzo" are that they were paid by journalistic publications rather than literary ones and that they put out their work in a timely manner. Neither of these facts means anything at all to us readers of the 21st century.
The fact that we still refer to Hunter's work as "gonzo" just goes to show how effective at marketing/PR he was. Gotta respect the grift, I suppose. Maybe I should try to sell my writing as "dissociative memoirism" or something.