{"id":12577,"date":"2016-10-05T09:00:54","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T16:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12577"},"modified":"2016-10-03T14:06:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-03T21:06:22","slug":"lit-matters-going-gonzo-with-hunter-s-thompson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/10\/05\/lit-matters-going-gonzo-with-hunter-s-thompson\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Matters<\/em>: Going gonzo with Hunter S. Thompson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they\u2019ve always worked for me,\u201d Hunter S. Thompson, the father of gonzo journalism, once said.<\/p>\n

Thompson first gained notoriety as the writer of Hell\u2019s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs<\/i>, <\/i>a book he researched by spending a year riding and hanging out with the Hell\u2019s Angels; he was severely beaten when the Angels realized he was using them for his own personal gain.<\/p>\n

In 1971, Thompson published Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas<\/i>, and the \u201cgonzo\u201d writing movement was born. The book is a semi-fictionalized account of a reporter travelling to Las Vegas to cover a district attorney convention and a desert motorcycle race. The narrator spends most of his time on drugs, grappling with chaotic disappointment at the state of his generation.<\/p>\n

What made the book unique was the way Thompson placed himself as a character in the centre of the action. The \u201cnew journalism\u201d movement had already produced a style of reporting that rejected the idea of an objective reporter. Truman Capote, Joan Diddion, and Thomas Wolfe all wrote books and magazine stories in which they observed themselves observing the action.<\/p>\n

Thompson\u2019s innovation was to actively involve himself in the action he was reporting. \u201cBuy the ticket, take the ride,\u201d he wrote, and, he proceeded to do just that.<\/p>\n

By the early 1970s, the failure of the hippies\u2019 counter-culture revolution was a common theme among the new journalists. Thompson\u2019s drug-addled, frenetic style reflected the chaos and disappointment of this latest failure of the American dream. It also represented a type of desperate hope that out of the ashes of the hippies something new would emerge. After all, he reasoned, \u201cWhen the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunter S. Thompson must-read:
\n<\/b>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
\n<\/i>(Public Library Oak Bay Branch: 920.573 THO)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they\u2019ve always worked for me,\u201d Hunter S. Thompson, the father of gonzo journalism, once said. Thompson first gained notoriety as the writer of Hell\u2019s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, a book he researched by spending a year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-october-5-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12579,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12577\/revisions\/12579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}