The Who-Where-When-What (did I just read?) Of Dr Hunter S. Thompson’s Gonzo Journalism Or “Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride”
A Portrait
Like many things that ended up obsessing me, I discovered Hunter S. Thompson later than I would’ve liked to. We had a brief encounter during my journalism studies, but I rapidly dismissed the whole matter with a shrug and “eh, a Joan Didion on drugs”. About a decade later, on the streets of Brussels, HST was brought back to my attention by someone who would later become one of my best friends. And, boy, I went on a spree.
Hunter Stockton Thompson was a larger-than-life (extremely prolific) writer and journalist, clear-cut diagnostician and radiographer of the American society, father of Gonzo journalism, professional and passionate hell-raiser and troublemaker, guns and explosive enthusiast, sports and politics aficionado, inventor of shotgun golf, notorious mumbler, drugs and alcohol addict, and all-in-all a gung-ho human mayhem. An icon of the American counterculture, Thompson was a link between the beatniks (whom he loved) and the hippies (of whom, it seems, he did not really know what to believe). HST is also remembered as the biggest hater of Richard-Watergate-Nixon who ever walked the face of the Earth, and as the man who once paused an interview to have a gunfight with his neighbour at Owl Farm. This list is not exhaustive.
Thompson was born on July 18th 1937, in Louisville, Kentucky — by all accounts, to the end of his life, he could charm with kindness, courtesy, and Southern manners. When he was not too busy gobbling on drugs and alcohol, that is. His father died early, and his mother (raising three children on a librarian’s salary) succumbed to alcoholism. HST never got to his graduation because he was in jail. As a result of the incarceration, he served in the army for eighteen months, where he worked as a sports reporter (by lying about his journalistic experience) for the base newspaper, discovering his enduring love for writing and journalism. In 1957, he received an honorary discharge from the US Air Force, saying: “In summary, this airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy.” Yeah, that tracks!
Fear And Loathing
Although in the United States, he was popular to the point of becoming a cult, Thompson’s international fame mainly started with a homonymous 1998 adaptation of his 1971 cult-novel Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas: A Savage Journey To The Heart Of The American Dream. A roman à clef, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas ( 50000 words) was initially a Sports Illustrated commission for a 300-word article on the Mint 400 motorcycle race, and it debuts with what became one of the most recognisable phrases of American literature:
“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”
The characters are Raoul Duke — Thompson’s pseudonym (played by Johnny Depp) and his lawyer, Dr Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro), a fictionalised surrogate of Oscar Zeta Acosta (dubbed the Brown Buffalo).
The novel also contains the phrase that became synonymous with Thompson’s life and work: “Buy the ticket, take the ride!”.
Two other films contributing to creating the enduring myth of Dr Hunter S. Thompson were The Rum Diary (2011), with Johhny Depp and Where The Buffalo Roam (1980), with Bill Murray as HST. Both Depp and Murray became close friends of Thompson.
The Doc Or Sheriff Thompson
In 1967, Thompson moved to Woddy Creek, Colorado, the hippie paradise of the 60s and 70s. Soon after, he became involved in local politics, and in 1970, he ran to become the sheriff of Pitkin County (while wearing a blonde wig). That story made it into a 2021 film, Fear And Loathing In Aspen.
The “Gonzo fist”, the symbol for gonzo journalism (two thumbs and four fingers holding a peyote button), was initially used in his campaign for sheriff.
In the Rolling Stone article The Battle Of Aspen, covering the 1969 mayoral elections in Aspen and Thompson running for sheriff, he self-assigns himself the title of Doctor (of Journalism). His friend started calling him “Doc”, and it stuck, although Thompson never got a PhD in anything. He was also referring to himself as a Doctor of Divinity (I will not dignify that with proper research, but if anyone knows more, please bring me up to speed).
Hell’s Angels Or Only A Punk Beats His Wife And Dog
In the US, HST rose to fame in the 60s after infiltrating the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club and publishing Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1967). Thompson accompanied the violent gang for almost a year, starting in 1964, living and riding with them, becoming one of them (well, up to a certain point, at least).
Although their history and fame stretched long before that, the Californian bikers gang came to public attention in 1964 when several members were charged with the rape and assault of two underage girls. The extensive media coverage of the events generated two societal responses: on the one hand, the angels became victims of unfair treatment (including job loss and harassment) and brutality from police and vigilantes, the main drive for HST to accept the commissioning of the piece. On the other hand, the fascination for the outlawed motorcycle club — started with the 1953 movie The Wild One starring Marlon Brando — grew. By the middle of 1965, they were “appearing in hundreds of wire-serviced newspapers and a half dozen magazines” and “posed for television cameramen and answered questions on radio call-in shows. They issued statements to the press, appeared at various rallies and bargained with Hollywood narks and magazine editors. They were sought out by mystics and poets, cheered on by student rebels and invited to parties given by liberals and intellectuals. “(Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs)
The saga ended with HST being stomped by the angels. The incident is discussed in this video of Hunter S. Thompson meeting a Hell’s Angel. It seems that one gang member was beating his wife, and HST intervened, saying that “only a punk beats his wife and dog”. The response was, “Do you want some of this too, Hunter?”. Hunter said “no” but “got it anyway”. The Hell’s Angel proceeds to explain that this was a private affair and that “to keep a woman in line, you gotta beat them like a rock from time to time”. One can only (hopefully) sympathise with Doc (and the dog) after watching the footage.
Of course, the end of that not-so-beautiful friendship was the result of a more complex, slow deterioration, with Thompson exposing to the public eye more than the gang would have wanted.
To this day, Hell’s Angels remains one of the most insightful, well-written, thoroughly (and dangerously) documented pieces of investigative journalism (not yet Gonzo, but also not entirely objective and observational). A true vintage Hunter S. Thompson.
The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent And Depraved Or Gonzo
In 1970, Thompson was commissioned to write a piece on the Kentucky Derby, the prestigious American horse race. HST described the sports event as “thousands of people fainting, crying, copulating, trampling each other and fighting with broken whiskey bottles.”
This marked the birth of a new style of journalism, not unlike the New Journalism of Norman Mailer and Joan Didion, with the reporter emerging himself into the story, written in first person, with a subjective perspective and no claim of objectivity.
Thompson showed the finished piece to a friend who called it “totally gonzo”. The rest is history.
The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent And Depraved also marked the beginning of the long collaboration and friendship between Hunter and the British illustrator Ralph Steadman. The essay debuts with the disclaimer “Sketched with eyebrow pencil and lipstick by Ralph Steadman”, and — it seems — that was not a Thompsonian exaggeration, as Steadman forgot his colours and ended up using Revlon make-up for the initial drawings.
The piece, with Steadman’s illustrations, can be read here.
More Fear And Loathing (On The Campaign Trail’ 72)
Like many of that generation, the work and political views of Dr Thompson were fundamentally impacted by several events: the killing of John F. Kennedy in 1963 (followed by the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy), the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, the Vietnam War, and the elections of Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972. HST believed Richard Nixon embodied the “dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character”, the catalyst for waking up the Mr Hyde, the latent “Werewolf” in American society.
In 1971, when the democrat underdog George McGovern announced his intention to candidate for President, that generation immediately considered him the only viable alternative to Nixon, the hope and (pacifist) breath of fresh air that the country needed, as a 2005 documentary titled One Bright Shining Moment shows.
Hunter Thompson was no exception, saying that McGovern was “the only candidate worth voting for.”
Thompson analysed the “71/’72 campaign for Rolling Stone and, in 1973, published Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’72 (illustrated by Ralph Steadman) — an extensive and well-documented recount of the campaign. In pure Gonzo-style, the line between fiction and reality is blurred — but never with the intent of deceiving. The perspective is very subjective:
“Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen.”
It was described as the “least factual and most accurate” coverage of the campaign.
“Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride!”
By all accounts, Thompson was a deeply caring, loving and generous human who could also be mean and cruel and an absent and sometimes abusive father and husband. His son, Juan Fitzgerald Thompson (born in 1964), wrote a book about their love-and-hate relationship titled Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up With Hunter S. Thompson.
HST was a champion of the little man, individual rights and social justice, but also the man who would call people “spineless lizards and lazy c***suckers”.
His long-term editor, Alan Rinzler, describes him as of an “iconoclastic humour” and “rebellious inner rage” but a “highly sensitive”, “acutely intelligent observer”. In the 2008 documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, his second wife, Anita, said that he was acutely aware, although not always in control, of the extremes within himself. His first wife, Sondi, described him as an agonised human being.
On February 20th 2005, Thompson committed suicide in his home in Woody Creek. In his last years, he battled depression and a rapidly declining health. The people close to him said it was always known that death by self-inflicted gunshot would be how HST would leave this world (just like his idol, Ernest Hemingway). It was a matter of when. Never of if or how. Thompson always made a case for having a car and absolute control of your mobility. He loved cars and motorcycles, and he loved driving them, even — or especially — when intoxicated. That one firearm was, just like a fast car, his way out, always at his disposal.
Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes were blasted out of a cannon in Woody Creek, Colorado, from a 47-meter (153-foot) high tower shaped like the Gonzo fist, in the sound of fireworks and Norman Greenbaum’s 1969 anthem “Spirit in the Sky”.
His suicide note reads:
“No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt.”
