Fear and Loathing Worldwide: Gonzo Journalism Beyond Hunter S. Thompson

by Robert Alexander, Christine Isager

Overview

For more than 40 years, the radically subjective style of participatory journalism known as Gonzo has been inextricably associated with the American writer Hunter S. Thompson. Around the world, however, other journalists approach unconventional material in risky ways, placing themselves in the middle of off-beat stories, and relate those accounts in the supercharged rhetoric of Gonzo. In some cases, Thompson's influence is apparent, even explicit; in others, writers have crafted their journalistic provocations independently, only later to have that work labelled "Gonzo." In either case, Gonzo journalism has clearly become an international phenomenon.

In Fear and Loathing Worldwide, scholars from fourteen countries discuss writers from Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australia, whose work bears unmistakable traces of the mutant Gonzo gene. In each chapter, "Gonzo" emerges as a powerful but unstable signifier, read and practiced with different accents and emphases in the various national, cultural, political, and journalistic contexts in which it has erupted. Whether immersed in the Dutch crack scene, exploring the Polish version of Route 66, following the trail of the 2014 South African General Election, or committing unspeakable acts on the bus to Turku, the writers described in this volume are driven by the same fearless disdain for convention and profound commitment to rattling received opinion with which the "outlaw journalist" Thompson scorched his way into the American consciousness in the 1960s, '70s, and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501361661
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/23/2020
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Robert Alexander is Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at Brock University, Ontario, Canada. A former reporter, his academic work has appeared in Literary Journalism Studies, Language and Communication, Semiotic Inquiry/Recherches Sémiotiques, and Criticism.

Christine Isager is Associate Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her studies in the field of written communication in general and literary journalism in particular have appeared in Rhetorica Scandinavica, Philosophy & Rhetoric, Journalistica, and Literary Journalism Studies.

Hometown:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Date of Birth:

August 23, 1952

Place of Birth:

Chicago, Illinois

Education:

B.A. in Russian Language and Creative Writing, Michigan State University, 1976

Table of Contents

Contents

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements

Introduction
Robert Alexander (Brock University, Canada)

Part I: First Waves, Currents of Tradition

1. Gonzo Down Under: Matthew Thompson and the Literary and Political Legacy of Hunter S. Thompson
Christopher Kremmer (University of New South Wales, Australia)

2. Diffusion of the Inimitable: Helge Timmerberg and the Advent of German Gonzo
Tobias Eberwein (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria)

3. Gonzo Journalism in France: Another Kind of Journalism is Possible
Honorine Reussard (Journalist, Paris, France)

4. Gonzo Brazilian Style: Arthur Veríssimo´s Adaptations of Thompson's Journalism
Monica Martinez and Mateus Yuri Passos


Part II: Gonzo as Socio-Political Intervention

5. Australia’s Elisabeth Wynhausen and a Century of Gonzo Ethnography
Sue Joseph (University of Technology Sydney, Australia)

6. Loathing in Southern Denmark: Gonzo Ethos in a Showdown with Tabloid Journalism
Christine Isager (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

7. “Among Madmen and Crooks”: Stella Braam’s Strange and Terrible Saga of Total Immersion in Amsterdam
Hilde Van Belle (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)

8. The Truth is Always Gonzo: David Leigh, Politics, and the Frontiers of Secrecy
Nick Nuttall (University of Lincoln, UK)

Part III: Gender and the Osmotic Gonzo Body

9. “Mastering the Art of Being Powerless and Completely Stupid”: Australian Gonzo as l’Écriture Masculine
Fiona Giles (University of Sydney, Australia)

10. La Revista Prohibida Para las Mujeres: Gonzo By Women in SoHo Magazine of Colombia, South America
Carlos A. Cortés-Martínez, Berkley Hudson, and Joy Jenkins (Missouri School of Journalism, USA)

11. The Return of Gonzo through the Female Body: Gabriela Wiener and the Journalist as a Sexual Vortex
Pablo Calvi


Part IV: Edgework, Fantasy, and Truth

12. Scatological Anecdotes, Heavy Drinking, and Backpacker Culture: Gonzo humor and Edgework in Contemporary Finnish Journalism
Joonas Koivukoski (University of Helsinki, Finland) and Janne Zareff (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

13. Fear and Loathing in the Desert of the Real: Hunter S. Thompson, “Hannibal Elector,” and the 2014 South African General Election
Robert Alexander

14. Cultural Insight by Way of Distortion: Ziemowit Szczerek’s Introduction and Immediate Deconstruction of Gonzo in Poland
Mateusz Zimnoch (Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland)


Part V: The Continuing Story of Gonzo Worldwide

15. The Hijacking of “Gonzo”: In Name Only, Hunter S. Thompson’s Style is Everywhere on the Internet
Jacqueline Marino

16. Future Gonzo by Spider Jerusalem: Thompson’s Journalism Adapted to the World of the Graphic Novel
Ashlee Nelson

Afterword: Gonzo Without End, Amen
William McKeen

Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

Hunter Thompson once told a young audience in Boulder, Colorado, not to trust him. He 'used to test drugs at Rolling Stone Magazine,' for heaven's sake. Don't trust anyone, he said. Go find out for yourself. His advice has been taken by the contributors to this volume, which revives the legacy of the good Doctor of Journalism all around the world.” —Norman Sims, author of True Stories: A Century of Literary Journalism

From the Publisher