 Book
Reviews
with Robin Osborne
From Hipsters to Gonzo
How New Journalism Rewrote the World
By Marc Weingarten
Scribe $35.00
The interest sparked by the recent funeral of American journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, was a reminder of the impact that he, and a select few authors and journalists, had on the craft of writing in the 1960s and 70s.
Thompson lived in a manner as eccentric as the writing he began contributing to Rolling Stone. Initially a fringe figure, later a cult hero, he shot to fame on the strength of his first non-fiction work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and before taking his own life he decreed that his remains should be shot into the atmosphere from a large cannon. Actor Johnny Depp, who played him in a film of the book, was on hand to see his last wish come true.
Thompson's introduction to journalism was on an Air Force base in Florida where he'd been sent to serve a reduced sentence for harassing a courting for cigarettes. On the base he 'finangled' a job as sports editor of the Command Courier and went on to write and edit all the stories as well as pen a weekly column.
Working around the clock, he drank twenty coffees and smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. In his limited spare time he took speech and psychology classes at nearby Florida State University.
Later he became one of the finest writers of his time, taking the then-unusual step of writing himself into his stories, a practice that became known as 'gonzo' journalism, a term he coined.
'The New Journalists' is attributed to Tom Wolfe, a hack who put in the hard yards as a general assignment reporter with the New York Herald Tribune where he demonstrated plenty of chutzpah and a deft command of the English language. Wolfe, like the other subjects in this excellent study, became an acclaimed writer, in his case progressing to fictional successes such as Bonfire of the Vanities, which, gratifyingly, our Prime Minister claims to be his favourite modern novel.
Other careers, and the work methods that spawned them, include those of the late Truman Capote (In Cold Blood), Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, John Berendt (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) and Michael Herr, whose Vietnam account, Dispatches, is one of the finest of war memoirs.
As Marc Weingarten reminds us, good writing never dates, even if the events described might seem long ago, and today's writers could learn much from how his subjects approached their craft.
- Books available at Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore and at Lismore Shopping
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