Hunter S. Thompson: The Gonzo Journo

It is fitting that Hunter S. Thompson should be remembered for birthing “Gonzo” journalism – the genre-bending, idiosyncratic style of guerrilla reportage that is executed with such gusto, in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. 

That drug-fuelled stream-of-consciousness account of a weekend in Sin City, however, is not considered the first literary deployment of Gonzo journalism. Bill Cardoso from the Boston Globe gave that crown to Hunter’s 1970 article, published in Scanlan’s Magazine, “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved”. After reading the piece, Bill declared it “totally Gonzo” – a term he believed originated from the French-Canadian word, “gonzeau”, which translates to “a shining path”. 

Indeed, for many – including myself – the work of Hunter S. Thompson is just that; a shining and inspirational path to follow. The very existence of journalists like Michael Moore are testament to Hunter’s profound impact on the literary world. 

Hunter himself thanked Beat Generation writers, like Jack Kerouac, for inspiring his rambling and personal journalistic style. The men-in-a-car narrative of On the Road is also present in 1968’s Electric Kool Aid Acid Test – a work by Hunter’s contemporary, Tom Wolfe. The pair were so intertwined, in fact, that Tom’s book was penned with the aid of recordings Hunter made during the Merry Pranksters’ trips. Evidently, the Further bus was the conduit for a raft of literary ideas and styles, such as typography, that would alter the genre of journalism forever. In his introduction to the New Journalism anthology in 1975, Tom wrote: “In the early 1960s, there grew a curious new notion that it might be possible to write journalism that would read like a novel”.  

Unlike Tom’s novel, however, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas both signifies and reflects the end of the hippie dream. Once finished, Hunter dubbed his work “a vile epitaph for the drug culture of the sixties”, and a “reluctant salute to that decade”.     

Ever since Rolling Stone published Hunter’s seminal book, in 1971, journalism-at-large has given less credence to the idea that a division should exist between itself and fiction. It is hard to overestimate the impact of this legacy. Hunter S. Thompson forged a form of reportage that abandons all pretence of objectivity, and places the reporter’s perception at the heart of the story. 

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas matters to journalists because – as William Faulkner would say – the best fiction is far truer than any kind of journalism. And therein lies what Gonzo journalism was made for – getting to the truth, even if it means lying along the way.