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Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson: An…
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Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson: An Oral Biography (edition 2007)

by Jann Wenner (Author), Jann S. Wenner (Foreword), Johnny Depp (Introduction), Corey Seymour (Author)

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627940,031 (4.05)7
This is a depressing biography of someone I knew very little about. I was reading this to prepare for reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Fear and Loathing was a major fiction work by Thompson whereby he made a literary name for himself. He had written a journalistic piece on the Hells Angels which also started his fandom and reputation among Rolling Stone Magazine readers. I have not read that either. Apparently, the Hell’s Angels serial piece was also much admired by the East Coast literati.
This “Life-of” take from various personalities who give short monologues about Thompson chronologically sequenced before his suicidal death by self-inflicted gunshot blast. He was said, perhaps unsurprisingly now, to be writing a piece for ESPN at the time. There was a time when ESPN was very good on sports commentary, especially for the NFL and NBA.
This book has stayed with me even though Thompson apparently wasn’t a very likeable person. In writing he’s off-putting as well. Gonzo has a few excepts from his works for illustration. His writing is earnest and entertaining but not uplifting nor seeking any depth. That is not a criticism it just seems to be what he was trying to set as a goal. Overall, to me, Thompson just wanted to be a conversationalist. A conversationalist on an infinite number of topics. There is nothing wrong with that, especially if that desire allows someone to network many people at the apex of their professional fields or pop culture. Thompson seemed to want to be accepted on any level but to also still reserve the prerogative of being contrarian when it suited him. Thompson wanted to be Kerouac, Dylan, William S Burroughs, and Fitzgerald all at once. This aspect of Thompson is very normal for most American men and Gonzo readers would be sympathetic to Thompson at least in this respect.
Thompson’s career as a journalist was new to me. His style was out of the ordinary but not revolutionary. Injecting himself into the story was not journalism but fiction as get noted early in Gonzo. This was not even rare during the 60s and 70s. There were many Vietnam memoirs which did this, melded Vietnam War events with personal experience but with changed names and places. Some of the best books, for my taste, were Vietnam tales, some fictional while others non-fiction but heavily edited and redacted. This was one of the more satisfying innovations that came of the soldiers who returned home to use their GI Bill for school. This also happened after the Iraq and Afghan wars. Although Thompson served in the military he did not go to Vietnam as a soldier or combat reporter. Thompson later left a Vietnam War news reporting assignment, being unable to deal with the widescale threat of immediate death and maiming. When it came to real guns Thompson didn’t like them in other people’s hands. Especially the Vietcong or NVA.
Much of the book laments the waste of talent by Thompson by friends in the business. Thompson thought he had achieved much (popular celebrity) but couldn’t continue it on his own later in life resulting from his alcoholism and drug use.
Stylistically, and fallaciously, Thompson felt that no journalist was perfectly objective (no one can be). And since no journalist can ever be objective then it is not just plausible but necessary to inject oneself into the reported account of all events. Therefore, in this line of thinking, “Gonzo reporting” is an actual fact which everyone else must publicly deny ever occurs while simultaneously employing it in practice. Thompson then took the thesis further and began to conjure up nonexistent things and add them for the desired effect to Thompson’s own hidden agenda. As noted earlier, others had done this as well yet felt fiction was the best way to categorize their work. Thompson instead chose to call his slanted point of view ‘journalism’.
One thing I gleaned from Gonzo was that Thompson seemed the prototype for the modern limousine liberal. Thompson apparently thought Bill Clinton wasn’t liberal enough. Thus, paving the way for George W. Bush. I found this to be insightful about the democrat political party. Thompson’s death was not preordained as some in the book claim including his own son. As someone who has dealt with crisis management situations for depressed and the drug addicted, when someone’s last typed word on paper is “counseling” they most likely did not want to die, they wanted help to survive the current moment.
Johnny Depp himself seems to have personally morphed into a high flying and well-heeled version of Thompson. This book is a good synopsis of the 1960s and how counter cultural ideas played themselves out in the new Millenia. Terry Gilliam (12 Monkeys, Brazil) did Thompson a great service by directing the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and making sense of its chaotic vision. This book helps to appreciate what occurred in that film adaptation.
Index, Contributor Glossary, B&W Photos, No Bibliography. Introduction by Johnny Depp (played lead role in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas while Thompson was still living). ( )
  sacredheart25 | May 6, 2023 |
Showing 9 of 9
This is a depressing biography of someone I knew very little about. I was reading this to prepare for reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Fear and Loathing was a major fiction work by Thompson whereby he made a literary name for himself. He had written a journalistic piece on the Hells Angels which also started his fandom and reputation among Rolling Stone Magazine readers. I have not read that either. Apparently, the Hell’s Angels serial piece was also much admired by the East Coast literati.
This “Life-of” take from various personalities who give short monologues about Thompson chronologically sequenced before his suicidal death by self-inflicted gunshot blast. He was said, perhaps unsurprisingly now, to be writing a piece for ESPN at the time. There was a time when ESPN was very good on sports commentary, especially for the NFL and NBA.
This book has stayed with me even though Thompson apparently wasn’t a very likeable person. In writing he’s off-putting as well. Gonzo has a few excepts from his works for illustration. His writing is earnest and entertaining but not uplifting nor seeking any depth. That is not a criticism it just seems to be what he was trying to set as a goal. Overall, to me, Thompson just wanted to be a conversationalist. A conversationalist on an infinite number of topics. There is nothing wrong with that, especially if that desire allows someone to network many people at the apex of their professional fields or pop culture. Thompson seemed to want to be accepted on any level but to also still reserve the prerogative of being contrarian when it suited him. Thompson wanted to be Kerouac, Dylan, William S Burroughs, and Fitzgerald all at once. This aspect of Thompson is very normal for most American men and Gonzo readers would be sympathetic to Thompson at least in this respect.
Thompson’s career as a journalist was new to me. His style was out of the ordinary but not revolutionary. Injecting himself into the story was not journalism but fiction as get noted early in Gonzo. This was not even rare during the 60s and 70s. There were many Vietnam memoirs which did this, melded Vietnam War events with personal experience but with changed names and places. Some of the best books, for my taste, were Vietnam tales, some fictional while others non-fiction but heavily edited and redacted. This was one of the more satisfying innovations that came of the soldiers who returned home to use their GI Bill for school. This also happened after the Iraq and Afghan wars. Although Thompson served in the military he did not go to Vietnam as a soldier or combat reporter. Thompson later left a Vietnam War news reporting assignment, being unable to deal with the widescale threat of immediate death and maiming. When it came to real guns Thompson didn’t like them in other people’s hands. Especially the Vietcong or NVA.
Much of the book laments the waste of talent by Thompson by friends in the business. Thompson thought he had achieved much (popular celebrity) but couldn’t continue it on his own later in life resulting from his alcoholism and drug use.
Stylistically, and fallaciously, Thompson felt that no journalist was perfectly objective (no one can be). And since no journalist can ever be objective then it is not just plausible but necessary to inject oneself into the reported account of all events. Therefore, in this line of thinking, “Gonzo reporting” is an actual fact which everyone else must publicly deny ever occurs while simultaneously employing it in practice. Thompson then took the thesis further and began to conjure up nonexistent things and add them for the desired effect to Thompson’s own hidden agenda. As noted earlier, others had done this as well yet felt fiction was the best way to categorize their work. Thompson instead chose to call his slanted point of view ‘journalism’.
One thing I gleaned from Gonzo was that Thompson seemed the prototype for the modern limousine liberal. Thompson apparently thought Bill Clinton wasn’t liberal enough. Thus, paving the way for George W. Bush. I found this to be insightful about the democrat political party. Thompson’s death was not preordained as some in the book claim including his own son. As someone who has dealt with crisis management situations for depressed and the drug addicted, when someone’s last typed word on paper is “counseling” they most likely did not want to die, they wanted help to survive the current moment.
Johnny Depp himself seems to have personally morphed into a high flying and well-heeled version of Thompson. This book is a good synopsis of the 1960s and how counter cultural ideas played themselves out in the new Millenia. Terry Gilliam (12 Monkeys, Brazil) did Thompson a great service by directing the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and making sense of its chaotic vision. This book helps to appreciate what occurred in that film adaptation.
Index, Contributor Glossary, B&W Photos, No Bibliography. Introduction by Johnny Depp (played lead role in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas while Thompson was still living). ( )
  sacredheart25 | May 6, 2023 |
Compiled from interviews with the people that knew him the best from the beginning of his life to the end, Gonzo is a fascinating portrait of the complex, immensely talented, and extremely flawed writer, Hunter S. Thompson. The format, basically an oral biography, ensures an authenticity and immediacy that a single biographer couldn’t duplicate. ( )
1 vote Hagelstein | Jul 28, 2010 |
I have only read The Gonzo Papers Volume 3 so far of his actual works. And having now read this book, I wish I had just stuck to reading some more of his original works. But there is nothing wrong with this book as oral biographies go. It is quite well done. Some of the other reviewers on LibraryThing have commented justly on some of the concerns about this genre of type of biography and about some of the the lacunae of this example of the genre. I almost wish I didn't know about all the examples of vile behaviour that he engaged in. I would have liked to have just stuck to the journalism itself. Oh, well, too late. Today I just bought Volume 1 of The Gonzo Papers and that will be my next book. I will try to link all the biographical sequence I remember from the book under review to the date stamp of the articles that I will see in The Gonzo Papers.
  libraryhermit | May 20, 2010 |
As a biography, I loved this book for its format. So many impressions from so many people close to Thompson were documented, I did feel like I got to know him in as a balanced a way as you can achieve with a biography. ( )
  harrisfi | Jun 15, 2009 |
I had realised that Thompson must have been a sort of living hurricane, leaving mile-wide trails of destruction in his wake. I hadn't realised just how complex it was.

This biography is pieced together from recollections of several dozen people Thompson knew, from childhood friends to girlfriends to friends to enemies. You hear of his irresistable charisma, which could seduce women and make men into his friends and sidekicks. You hear of his early devotion to his craft. You hear that he was an awful, abusive husband.

You also hear of his quixotic side. His passion for the underdog, and his generosity. You hear that his son was afraid of him and his dark, uncertain moods. You hear that he believed the drugs and alcohol fuelled his creativity. Perhaps that's why he eventually allowed them destroy his ability to work. You learn of his violent, petulant rages when he was thwarted.

You hear too damn much, or at least too much for it to make sense. I just can't understand how even someone of his talent and charisma could get away with treating people the way he did. I realise that he was most likely a lonely and insecure man underneath it all, and some of his friends seem to have responded to that - but there are limits to one's patience.

I'm not done with him yet - I've added some more books to my library list, and maybe I can come up with a more rounded picture of him. In the meantime, read this book; it's a very interesting read and got me thinking. ( )
  Cynara | Jun 10, 2009 |
(Adding this parenthetical comment about two months later. I had never heard of "Oral Biographies" when I read this book. I have found out, since, that it is all the rave. I am not a fan. Please read the review with this caveat in mind.)

This is an unconventional telling of an unconventional life. Rather than tell the story of Hunter Thompson, the choice was made to have others tell that story. (Hence, the statement on the cover “An Oral Biography.”) This biography is made up of Thompson’s friends, lovers, partners, etc. talking about that life. None of the quotes are more than two pages long (some just one sentence), but it still tells a coherent story (at least as coherent as possible with Thompson.) And, while it does justice to the haphazardness that was Thompson’s life, there is something missing. This only drives home the fact that any biography is only part the story of someone’s life, the rest being the author’s interpretation of that life. And it is that interpretation that seems to be missing. Of course, that might be a good thing. But even in editing the quotes to be used, the “authors” are making judgments about that life and what will be told.

If you don’t know the full life of Hunter S. Thompson, this will fill you in. And it is as truthful as any biography can be. I just had two complaints. First, because it was made up of people telling their stories about Thompson, a few of them tell more about themselves than about Thompson. In particular, the stories from his first wife (Sandy Thompson) start out talking about him, but wind up being about her. Second, the book redundantly seems to swing between “he was on drugs”, “he was nice guy”, “he was on drugs”, “he was a nice guy”. I’m sure both are true, and both were true throughout his life. But the structure of this collection seems to try and focus on each at different times. But when the book is strong, it is very strong – never as evident as when his son and friends tell about Thompson’s last days. What does come out (even if unevenly told) is that Thompson was what we expected - a genius addict who was a decent human being. ( )
  figre | Aug 24, 2008 |
This oral history was compiled from interviews with friends and family by the editorial staff at Rolling Stone, for whom Dr. Thompson wrote much of his best work. While it is nice to get a context for much of Thompson's work, the overall impression is that, while much of his work is quite good, he never lived up to his own aspirations to be his generation's Hemmingway or Fitzgerald. It is clear that his addictions to drugs and alcohol limited his writing to small fragments that he would assemble with the help of many patient editors, the result of which can be amazingly beautiful (no one can turn a phrase like Hunter Thompson), but perhaps does not live up to the promise of Hells Angels. In the end his loyalty and sense of fun made him beloved by friends and family despite his addictions, emotionally and physically abusive behavior, and fiscal irresponsibility. An honest if not always fun to read book.
  ebenlindsey | Feb 10, 2008 |
Many of us are familiar with the mad and eccentric character of Hunter S. Thompson, and his depraved expedition to Las Vegas. This writer/journalist, who shot himself on February 20th 2005, developed a cult following with the enormous popularity of his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the 1998 movie version starring Johnny Depp. ‘Colonel Depp’, as Hunter called him, will return to a similar role in a film based on Hunter’s book The Rum Diary, as Paul Kemp. This film is currently scheduled for a 2008 release.
Hunter is famous for his Gonzo-brand style of subjective journalism, a mash of fact and fiction, numerous embellishments and a scathing wit. It is the style of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He insisted most of the book is true.
People are quick to point out that Raoul Duke (the protagonist of Fear and Loathing) and Paul Kemp are not just based on Hunter himself, but very literally are him. Depp is considered to be playing Hunter, not just his fictional character, but his ‘alter-ego’. Depp even moved into Hunter's basement to study his behaviour before assuming his role in the film, and mimicked him constantly while there. So there must be little or no distinction between Hunter and Raoul… so far as we can tell, Hunter is just a drug-crazed lunatic.
But is that all there is to him? Drugs, booze, and more drugs? What about the real Hunter; the man, the father, the husband, the reporter?
Perhaps the recent oral biography of him by Jann S. Wenner and Corey Seymour entitled Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson can sate my curiosity. Both of them worked with him in Rolling Stone magazine. It is essentially a collection of interviews with people who knew him, arranged so that they form a chronological narration of his life. They occasionally put in samples of his writing, but I feel that the book could have profited a lot by putting some more of what Hunter has said, maybe some transcripts of interviews with him, just to keep it more focused and show people what he had to say about his life and other things.
People talk about their personal experiences with him, and the book doesn’t shy away from subjects like the effects of his substance abuse and his abuse, at time physical, of his first wife. Even his enemy Sonny Barger gets a word in.
So it is no surprise that the book is filled with conflicting views on Hunter. Depp in his introduction insists that he was a ‘southern gentleman, all chivalry and charm’. Some women have a similar opinion of him. He always opened doors for them, and so forth. But then there’s the side of him that goes around punching out light bulbs in a restaurant. Plus he was a serious alcoholic, drug-addict and womaniser. Here’s one hilarious anecdote: Once Hunter and a friend were drinking in a bar, and two fans, one male and one female, come up to them. The guy offered Hunter a vial of coke, and the girl was wearing a rather revealing top. So he took the coke, emptied it on her breasts and buried his face in them. Yes, he definitely had a way with the ladies. There are many more stories like this that will have you laughing out loud. It’s strange though; I get the feeling that there were two Hunters, the charming quiet one and the ‘myth’, his public persona.
This biography is commendable for its critical look at Hunter, you can see him from the viewpoints of so many people: his wives, friends, enemies, and his son. The format of assorted personal accounts of people who knew him gives you a more intimate feel for what he was like. The snippets from interviews are not too long or short, so it keeps you engrossed. Every bit is worth reading. It’s a great book, and my only complaint is that there is a spelling mistake on page 226.
Fortunately I also found a 1978 BBC documentary on Hunter, ‘Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision’, which addressed my questions better. It shows the sad consequences of his growing myth. Commenting on the stress his fame was causing, he said ‘I’m never sure which one people expect me to be [Duke or himself], and very often they conflict… With people I don’t know, I’m expected to be Duke more than Thompson.’ He said ‘I’m really in the way as a person, and the myth is taking over. I find myself an appendage I’m eh… I’m no longer necessary. I’m in the way. It’d be much better if I died. Then people could take the myth and make films… I have no choice, I have to solve this problem. So I suppose my plans are to find a new identity.’ He was a troubled soul. I don’t think he ever found that new identity.
His drug intake is legendary. The documentary also shows him snorting coke rather conspicuously and smoking a joint, oblivious to the camera. His last wife, Anita Thompson, received stacks of fan mail after his death from young people bragging about the amount of drink and drugs they were taking, trying to emanate his success and style through this. It is a sad reflection on his readership. As Anita has said, drugs do not equal talent or hard work, which really got Hunter where he wanted. In 1989 he remarked ‘ I haven’t found a drug yet that can get you anywhere near as high as sitting at a desk writing.’ Anita has released a book, a tribute to her late husband called The Gonzo Way. Curiously, she is absent from the oral biography by Jann S. Wenner and Corey Seymour. One can’t help but wonder who else has been left out…
In his life and work, Hunter highlighted the blurred line between fact and fiction. Reality can be a lot stranger than fiction, and fiction a lot truer than fact. It seems to me that his life story has a tragic element. He wanted to be a literary giant like Hemingway, a serious writer. But he failed. Not that he was a failure; he found a unique voice distinct from all others and created a whole new style of writing, his famous Gonzo-style, which is a lot more than most successful writers achieve. He has earned a cult following and become legendary for both his writing and extreme lifestyle. But that was not what he wanted. Sandy, his first wife, says in Gonzo ‘he wanted to be read and thought of as a serious writer… he didn’t want to become this gonzo person…’ A friend once asked Hunter if he’d ever thought of doing a serious novel. He said he had. ‘But without that,’ he continued, indicating a satchel of drugs, ‘I’d have the brain of a second rate accountant.’ Ironic, since the drink and drugs ruined his ability to write. The divide between his public persona, the legendary drug-fiend Raoul Duke, and his private self, the ‘southern gentleman’, is as troubling to the reader as it must have been to him. He was a complicated man, and the story of his life is depressing. On the one hand you have this hilarious and brilliant writer, and on the other, an alcoholic drug-addict. I honestly don’t know what to think of him after reading this collection of interviews, but one thing is for sure: he was one of a kind. The man and myth co-existed, begrudgingly.
If you’re interested in this great writer (which it’s difficult not to be) read one of his many books or this biography. I promise you won’t be disappointed, and definitely not bored. ( )
2 vote kielyrobert | Feb 8, 2008 |
Drawing on interviews from many of the people who knew him, Wenner and Seymour complied this interesting insight into one of the more famous journalists of our times. The book has points of view from many people who knew Thompson which makes most of the story feel like a conversation at a party with many people present. Unfortunately, none of these people are Thompson himself and I often found myself wondering about his side of the story. Nonetheless, it is an enjoyable read for anyone wanting to know more about Thompson's life. ( )
1 vote pbirch01 | Nov 9, 2007 |
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