Writing Gonzo

I should say that I teach writing.  That disclaimer allows me to admit I haven't read anything interesting lately.  Although the writing I read is summarily more proficient than any of it was, say, ten years ago, the overall proficiency pronounces apathy in slow tones and predictable syntaxes.  The subjects stray sometimes into the range of mighty pit bullian struggles in suburban backyards.  Just yesterday, within the city limits, a grandfather shot a neighbor's pit bull at the fenceline.  Each member of the pit bull's family claimed she was something other than a pit bull -- a rat terrier, a lab mix, part boxer.  That fact alone, though not highlighted by the ever-correct journalist who merely reported the details, reveals the truth, that the dog was mighty vicious, and we're all better off now that she's dead.  Simply put, each family member proclaimed her "not vicious," but since they each had a different story about her breeding, the tendency to exaggerate the truth cannot go unnoticed.  But the sentences and the scene were drawn with the bland perfection of a paragraph with a topic sentence.  I read the story over coffee, recovering from my dreams.  Before I went to bed, I watched Hunter S. Thompson in the documentary, Gonzo.

Wouldn't it be something, to watch someone tense at a typewriter?  For real?  Just that, the mere act of awaiting genius, tossing out wild hours of television viewing to seek some fine verbiage, would pepper my landscape with semiautomatic thrills.  I guess I have to move in with Jimmy Buffet and order steady margaritas and cocaine.  Hunter S. Thompson was a bit more complicated than drugs and alcohol, according to the movie.  He was all about the story.  And some of him missed the best of stories -- he seemed to be a man in pieces by the end of the documentary. 

I thought how so like me, he must have been out of step with contemporary life.  People I know would be hard-pressed to comprehend his motives for filming a gangbang by Hell's Angels, let alone writing sentences about the men behind the curtain.  I get the sense that he wasn't happy about those bikers and their drift and paunch, their tongues.  Yet he wrote them down.  Deviance interested him.  He made an art of it. 

I used to teach his essay, "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved."  Some who read it loved it.  The main impact of the essay, however, became some fascination with the woman who assigned it as reading in a college course.  Gonzo journalism doesn't have meaning in the current web of pop culture iconography.  Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan are not deviants.  They embrace common culture.  Irony is almost completely beyond their comprehension.  They take off their underpants and get out of limos because someone has a camera, not because they are making a statement about inhibition; and they are uninhibited because they are uncouth, not because they are wise.  Hunter S. Thompson, crazy wisdom, you are missed.

Comments

[Chris Boese]

Guess I just feel like talking with you today .

I remember assigning the Kentucky Derby essay too. Was that at Arkansas, or just a chestnut of comp readers?

Do they really take off their underpants in order to get out of limos for the cameras? I never really knew. I thought there must be some other, unspoken reason, and the cameras were just a side "benefit," as it were. Am not like thinking about the limo seats, tho, which were inevitably leather, even if the real purpose was quick access for whatevers.

Am thinking a lot about those who color outside the lines, and am enjoying status lines about Zordani's band on Facebook, just because it reminds me of rough edges.

And thinking about what book to immerse myself in over the holidays. Jim Harrison has a new one out called The English Major, and for some reason I really don't want to read it, even tho he is a color outside the lines guy whom I've seen shitfaced years ago.

Instead, I'm thinking a lot about this guy, Robert Bolonos, and a posthumous book 2666, which seems bizarre and wonderful and difficult and who knows what else. It is WAY outside of the lines, as in Juarez, Mexico outside.

Or is it time to try to figure out David Foster Wallace, at least Infinite Jest or something like it. After all, he was exactly my age, and wonky, and they let him get away with it, although it would have never flown at Arkansas. I'm still not sure if he really did what he did, or just wrote about talking about doing what he did.

I think he did. Maybe.

Chris

PS Just for fun, I want you to know that I've checked my brain, and that Jim Harrison sentence above has the correct case of "whom" in it, because the "who" is the object of a noun clause which is functioning as the subject correlative of the sentence. "Who" would technically be incorrect. Would Faulkner be proud?