Rise and Fall of Gonzo: Book explores life of Hunter S. Thompson 

“High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism” is the new book from David S. Wills that explores Hunter S. Thompson and his legacy of Gonzo journalism. Thompson’s novel “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” marked its 50th anniversary last year. The 1971 book is his most famous and was adapted into two major movies with Bill Murray (“Where the Buffalo Roam” 1980) and Johnny Depp (“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” 1998). Thompson’s other books include “Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga” (1967) and “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.” (1973)

David S. Wills is the founder and editor of Beatdom Literary Journal and his book “Scientologist! William S. Burroughs and the Weird Cult” was published in 2013. Born in Scotland, Wills has travelled to 49 countries and for the last two years has lived in rural Cambodia. He told the Sentinel, “Cambodia is probably my favorite country in the world. It’s chaotic and weird, but it’s beautiful. I’ve been in Asia about half my life now.” The Sentinel spoke with Wills about the life and journalism of Hunter S. Thompson.

Rise and Fall

Q: “Your book doesn’t treat Hunter S. Thompson simply as a pure hero, as some previous books have.”

A: “I wanted to explore the rise and the fall of Hunter S. Thompson. He’s famous for creating this literary genre of Gonzo,” said Wills. “The question that struck me is; how did he get there? And then there’s the fall; how did he go from writing ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ to writings which are depressingly poor in quality? The first half of the book is about how he got this incredible style of writing and the second is how he lost that ability. I’m a big fan of Hunter and there’s just nothing that took him seriously before.”

Q: “What were Hunter’s greatest impacts on journalism and the political scene?”

A: “Hunter Thompson is famous for creating Gonzo journalism. This term is thrown around a lot these days, but I would contend that he was the only person that was Gonzo. It was a one-man literary genre and it was marked by complete subjectivity. He would write in a way that didn’t pretend to be objective, which was quite revolutionary,” Wills explained.

“But more so, he blended fact and fiction in such a way that you never really knew what was real and what wasn’t. He spent his first decade of journalism talking about how awful journalism was and writing to editors telling them how terrible their newspaper was. It was amazing he ever got anywhere! But when he got the freedom, he just broke all the rules. And this led to a radically different style of reportage that was quite hard for people to classify.

“Early 1970, the term Gonzo was coined. In 1971, he went off to Las Vegas and had this adventure with his friend Oscar Acosta and wrote “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” his most famous work. He then applied this Gonzo template to cover the 1972 American presidential campaign and basically redefined how we cover politics. (“Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72”) His main influence was essentially taking rules and shattering them in both a literary and journalistic sense.”

Force himself into the story

Q: “He tended to place himself at the center of his writing, no matter the situation.”

A: “If you read his letters, you can see he’s exaggerating everything and making things up, following the footsteps of his literary idols like Hemingway,” Wills told the Sentinel. “In his earliest attempts at journalism, you can see he’s clearly trying to force himself into the story, even when there’s absolutely no call for it. And the more respect and fame he got, the more he was able to get away with that. If you read his collection “The Great Shark Hunt” (1979) and then you look at the original stories as they appeared in newspapers, a lot of editors cut him to a great degree out of the stories. When he was able to publish it himself, he put himself back in.”

Mumbling consequences

Q: “One thing that always struck me is that there seemed to be no consequences for his actions, which exudes a kind of irresponsible freedom. But later in life he seemed so out of it, literally mumbling during interviews and events.”

A: “He writes like there’s no consequences to his actions but there were personal consequences later, due to the overuse of drugs. There were definitely consequences for the people around him. He was verbally and physically abusive. His wife left him in 1980 after nearly two decades of abuse,” Wills recalls.

“As to the personal consequences; the mumbling. The Gonzo Tapes are an audio archive of his recordings from throughout his career and life. Even in high school he got a tape recorder and recorded himself and found this was a wonderful thing. He’d make audio notes and whenever he had to write he’d have some whiskey, put on some music and listen to his tapes and that would bring back images and memories.

“If you listen to these tapes chronologically, you can hear he had this peculiar staccato cadence to his voice. But at a certain point – namely the introduction of cocaine – he goes from being coherent to incoherent. From being comical to genuinely abusive and paranoid. He’d go into restaurants and scream at waiters and friends. He had no idea what’s going on around him. And the mumbling, you can’t understand a word he’s saying. His friend, Sheriff Bob Browder called Hunter’s language mumble-ese. Sometimes, he would need a translator.”

Zaire boxing match

Q: “Thompson was sent to Zaire to cover this boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. It’s one of many times he runs up a huge hotel bill – $30,000 in this case – and Rolling Stone pays and Thompson never turns in a story.”

A: “Hunter was a massive fan of Muhammad Ali and considered him one of his very few heroes. It was quite a surprise that he didn’t write anything there at all,” Wills explained. “The fight was delayed and Hunter was there with access to unlimited cheap drugs in the company of all these journalists. His audio recordings from then are genuinely disturbing. He barely knows where he is. He’s rambling “The government is going to take our tickets. We’re not going to be able to watch the fight.” Later he gave away the tickets and went swimming when the fight was on! Ralph Steadman does these illustrations, but there’s no article to go with them. Hunter doesn’t care. He’s just had this incredible vacation in Africa, completely paid for. A lot of newspapers took gamble’s hiring him on the hope that they’d have a huge payday if he actually wrote anything. They paid his expenses and quite often he didn’t turn in anything at all.”

Gonzo ceased to be funny

Q: “I learned from your book that he went to Vietnam during the U.S. war.”

A: “When Hunter went to Vietnam he actually did write and his writing was very good, but there wasn’t much of it. And he was so angry with Rolling Stone that he didn’t give them the writing for ten years! He abandoned the woman that was with him when Saigon started to fall. He was very paranoid and he fucked over a lot of people. That was when Gonzo ceased to be funny,” Wills offered. “He was a celebrity amongst reporters but it was a warzone and you’re with this guy who’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt, out of his mind on drugs, screaming about pterodactyls flying around his head and there’s enemy soldiers around. He almost got himself and other people killed.”

Scientology

Q: “One of your books is about William S. Burroughs and Scientology.” Tell me about that.”

A: “Ten years ago a friend said, ‘I hear Burroughs was interested in Scientology.’ I said, “What are you talking about? That’s ridiculous.” He said, “You know “Ali’s Smile?” The short story where he’s kind of insulting Scientology?” I read that and thought, “So, he was a critic of Scientology.” But as I started to dig, it became obvious he was actually very interested in Scientology. I read all his biographies and wondered, “Why did none of them mention this?” The more I looked, I realized it wasn’t just a passing interest. He was actually a hardcore Scientology enthusiast for a full decade. And not just any decade, but the decade during which he wrote all his most important books!” Wills remembers, “When I started studying Scientology I was terrified by the prospect of being brainwashed, but thankfully it was too crazy for me to get into!  When I read his books after that I realized, “The language he’s using is L. Ron Hubbard’s jargon. And nobody’s noticed this.”

Brautigan and Murakami

Q: “I read your article about author Haruki Murakami. When I think of who Murakami reminds me of, the closest is perhaps Richard Brautigan.”

A: “My next book is going to be a study of Murakami. He’s an incredibly weird writer. It’s fascinating that he’s writing about modern Japan but doing it with literary influences like Richard Brautigan and Kurt Vonnegut. There’s this deadpan comedy to his work,” explains Wills. “You say, “Who is Murakami like?” Well, no one is the answer. Rather in the same way that, “Who is Hunter Thompson like?” He was trying to rip off Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Conrad and Donleavy. He had so many influences that ultimately, one day, it just clicked into something completely unique and original. And Murakami’s done the same.”

Listen to this interview with David S. Wills at noon Thursday on Transformation Highway with John Malkin on KZSC 88.1 FM / kzsc.org.