Hunter S. Thompson
(July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author. He is credited as the creator of gonzo journalism, a style of reporting which blurs distinctions between author and subject, fiction and nonfiction.
Birth of Gonzo
In 1970, Thompson wrote an article entitled The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved for an obscure sports magazine called Scanlan's Monthly. Although it was not widely read at the time, the article is the first of Thompson's to use techniques of gonzo journalism, a style he would later employ in almost every literary endeavor. The manic, first person subjectivity of the story was reportedly the result of sheer desperation by the way of Thompson, who was facing a looming deadline and started sending the magazine pages ripped out of his notebook. Ralph Steadman, who would later collaborate with Thompson on several projects, contributed expressionist pen and ink illustrations.
The first use of the word Gonzo to describe Thompson's work is credited to the journalist Bill Cardoso. Cardoso had first met Thompson on a bus full of journalists covering the 1968 New Hampshire Primary. In 1970, by which time Cardoso had become the editor of The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, he wrote Thompson praising the "Kentucky Derby" piece in Scanlan's Monthly as a breakthrough: "This is it, this is pure Gonzo. If this is a start, keep rolling." Thompson took to the word right away, and according to illustrator Ralph Steadman said "Okay, that's what I do. Gonzo."
Thompson's first published use of the word appears in 1971's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, where he wrote the passage: "Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it now: pure Gonzo journalism." Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas first appeared in Rolling Stone as two-part series. The book is a first-person account by a journalist (Thompson himself, under the pseudonym "Raoul Duke") on a trip to Las Vegas with his "300-pound Samoan" attorney, "Dr. Gonzo" (a character inspired by Thompson's friend, Chicano lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta) to cover a narcotics officers' convention and the "fabulous Mint 400" motorcycle race.
During the trip, he and his lawyer, always referred to as "my attorney" become sidetracked by a search for the American dream, with the aid of copious amounts of alcohol, LSD, ether, adrenochrome, mescaline, cocaine, marijuana and other drugs.
The Gonzo Papers
Despite publishing a novel and numerous newspaper and magazine articles, the majority of Thompson's literary output after the late 1970's took the form of a 4-volume series of books called The Gonzo Papers. Beginning with The Great Shark Hunt in 1979 and ending with Better than Sex in 1994, the series is largely a collection of rare newspaper and magazine pieces from the pre-gonzo period, along with almost all of his Rolling Stone short pieces, excerpts from the Fear and Loathing... books, and etc.
By the late 1970s, Thompson received complaints from critics, fans and friends alike that he was regurgitating his past glories without much in the way of new innovation on his part [13]; these concerns are alluded to in the introduction of The Great Shark Hunt, where Thompson eerily suggested that his "old self" commit suicide.
Perhaps in response to this, as well as the strained relationship with Rolling Stone, and the failure of his marriage, Thompson became more reclusive after 1980, often retreating to his compound in Woody Creek and rejecting and/or refusing to complete assignments. Despite the dearth of new material, Wenner kept Thompson on the Rolling Stone masthead as chief of the "National Affairs Desk", a position he would hold until his death.