Hunter S. Thompson. Author, journalist and creator of Gonzo Journalism. He has approximately 146 works in 398 publications in 16 languages. He has a huge cult following around the world which continues to grow even after his death in 2005. He counted the likes of Johnny Depp, Senator George McGovern, Ed Bradley, Charlie Rose, Jack Nicholson, Ralph Steadman and many more as his friends.

I was going to write a brief bio about Hunter as a lead-up to this series but in the interest of space saving I thought I’d look for a decent, brief bio on the web, you can find it here.

I was somewhat concerned that the title HST For Beginners would sound a bit patronizing, but the idea of this series is aimed firstly at anyone new to the Hunter S. Thompson world. A plus side is that any seasoned HST campaigners will find the contributors’ views just as interesting. I felt it was important that we heard from some people that knew Hunter, worked with him and socialized with him to a point. It’s also important to get thoughts from some folks who only know Hunter from reading his work, just to get a view from all angles as it were.

For me Hunter Thompson is about the writing. He turned the methods of journalism as we know it on its head, maybe his journalistic methods didn’t catch on but among his fans these methods are the core of his work and the reason for his popularity. Yes there was a crazy side to the man and it is fun to see it included in his work, but it’s important for you as the new fan and us the longtime fans to strike a balance between the antics and the work.

The bottom line is there is more to Hunter S. Thompson than the drug crazed loony he’s made out to be. He was a writer first and his so called loony side was secondary to that. Yes, both sides went hand-in-hand through his life, and he did struggle with trying to keep them separate; and more often than not his Raoul Duke persona smothered what he tried protect which was his writing legacy. I’m not saying ignore his crazy side just don’t let it get in the way of his writing talent and maybe it will go towards doing our bit to keep his literary memory alive.

I have been consulting with David Wills on this series, and we came up with three parts.

1. The separation of Hunter and Raoul.

2 Gonzo Journalism defined by his fans. Should it be emulated?

3. Hunter S. Thompson and his place in American Literature.

Many thanks to David Wills for his help, ideas and fresh eye on this ongoing project. Also huge thanks to all who took the time to write their thoughts for this cause.

Please feel free to leave comments, thoughts or your take on this subject.

So here is Part 1. The separation of Hunter and Raoul. The contributers are as follows.

William McKeen Professor and Chair University of Florida Department of Journalism, author and Hunter Thompson biographer. Hunter had great respect for William and his work.

Simone Corday spent time in Hunter’s storm during his time in San Francisco and is author of 91/2 Years Behind the Green Door (in which Hunter makes regular appearances.)

Wayne Ewing, film maker, producer, director and a friend of Hunter S. Wayne has spent many hours filming Hunter at work and play, not something many can attest to.

David S. Wills, Hunter fan, writer, publisher, teacher, editor, book seller and owner of Beatdom Magazine.

Noel Davila, Hunter fan, musician, journalist and member of the great up and coming band Ophelia.

Ron Mexico, Hunter fan, owner of Totally Gonzo, lecturer, writer, and master of all things Hunter S. Thompson. (Ron’s piece is not here but as soon as he has time he’ll be sending it on.)

Peter W. Knox, Gonzo Beat reporter at Washington College, Peter went to Woody Creek to cover Hunter’s “Blastoff service” for the premier issue of Five magazine . Peter also did his undergraduate thesis on the theme of The American Dream throughout the life and literature of Hunter S. Thompson

Marty.

Duke The Spook by Noel Davila.

Hunter S. Thompson’s motivations for creating Raoul Duke – occasional surrogate writer and alter ego – are greatly varied. What was he trying to hide? Was the fear and loathing that overwhelming? Many questions arise, but there aren’t many clear answers. What is clear, however, is the fact that whenever Duke was included in Hunter’s writing, a work of genius would inevitably ensue. It’s no wonder then, that to this day, Raoul Duke is still listed amongst Rolling Stone’s staff in every issue of the magazine – this nearly 5 years after the good Doctor’s impetuous check-out.

From the first mentions of Duke in Air Force articles in the late 1950s, to his inclusion in Hell’s Angels; from the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, to a decompression chamber in Miami – Raoul Duke has been a constant presence in many of Hunter’s distinctive works. Described occasionally as a “sports writer friend”, Duke and his inescapable, drug-fueled antics have been at the forefront of some of Hunter’s best writing, including the classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Necessity being the mother of invention, Hunter used Duke as a means to break the old rules, and push forward his own form of factual and fictional reporting known as Gonzo journalism.

Raoul Duke was constantly mentioned in the letters of Fear and Loathing in America, and at one point, Hunter entertained the idea of writing ‘The First Fictional Documentary Novel’ titled Hey Rube! The Memoirs of Raoul Duke…. Around 1968 Hunter began research for a book on the American Dream that would eventually become Las Vegas. The idea was that Duke, like Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, would illustrate what Hunter perceived to be the death of the American Dream. Curiously enough, Hunter admitted to his editor at Random House that he was not on drugs while in Las Vegas, but rather used his drug memories to enhance Duke’s reality within the book, and properly document the ‘Savage Journey to the heart of the American Dream’.

Initially used to protect his identity, the name Raoul Duke eventually became an albatross around Hunter’s neck. The Duke myth grew to the point that Hunter was trapped by the persona he’d created: “When I get invited to universities to speak, I’m not sure who they’re inviting, Duke or Thompson…”. His ‘ghost writer’ became a double-edged sword that pushed its creator so far that he was unable, or unwilling, to turn back.

The world Hunter created with Raoul Duke was one of possibility mixed with excess and adventure, which yielded astounding results. Many of Hunter’s readers have lived vicariously through him, and we’ll continue to do so through his writing. Every issue of Rolling Stone magazine – in which the good Doctor’s name is printed at the bottom of the staff list – makes it seem as if Hunter is still among us in one way or another, compelling us with his words, one page at a time.

Noel Davila. (From his site) “Singer/songwriter, blogger, music journalist, poet… Noel Dávila sits amongst a breed of artists who find the need to be working on something creative at all times, whether it involves playing an instrument or not. He works as a freelance journalist and provides commercial music and jingles for an array of different projects.” His site is http://www.noeldavila.net/

Hunter and Duke by William McKeen

I was a reporter and anyone who’s worked in that lonely trade knows the frustration. You know a story. You know what needs to be said. You just can’t find anyone to say it.

You can’t make up a quote. Given the rules of journalism, you can’t do that shit. So you struggle and sometimes your story falls short.

However, in Gonzo journalism the rules – such as they are – are quite different.

Raoul Duke began appearing in Hunter S. Thompson’s writing back in the days when he was the sports editor of the Command Courier, the official newspaper of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. It was the late fifties and when Hunter couldn’t find a bystander or a source or an expert to say what he wanted, he quoted “Raoul Duke.”

Hunter, of course, was Raoul Duke.

Looking back on Hunter’s stories, you see quotes from people Duke and Bloor and Squane, and they are all Hunter Thompson. He invented these people to say the things that needed to be said. It turned parts of his journalism into fiction, but he was fond of reminding his readers that there was often greater truth to be found in fiction.

Raoul Duke has a special place in this pantheon on phantoms. It was the name Hunter plucked from his past to use as his nom de plume when he wrote “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” for Rolling Stone. The work was serialized as the work of Duke in two issues in November 1971. Hard to believe that that magnificent bit of prose is nearly forty years old.

As a young reader, I was confused. Who was this Duke guy and why did he have his messages sent – as reported midway through one of the episodes – care of someone named Hunter S. Thompson?

The confusion continued with regard to Duke and Hunter. Where did one stop and the other begin?

All these years later, we know much more about Hunter and Duke and Las Vegas. Hunter was compulsive about documenting his life, in photographs and on tape. Now that selections from his personal tape recordings have been made available to the public – in a handsome boxed set edition called The Gonzo Tapes – it’s possible to hear his dictated observations and comments as he lives the experience that became “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

He certainly doesn’t sound like a foaming-at-the-mouth madman running amuck in Las Vegas. If anything, he is the opposite – lucid, inquisitive, thoughtful, observant.
But in the writing, he took himself and amped up the madness lurking in his brain. And that’s when Duke emerged.

What happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas. But Hunter took those events – and his personality – and heightened the reality. He once told me, “I warped a few things. It was an incredible feat of balance more than literature.” When published in book form, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was credited to “Hunter S. Thompson,” not Raoul Duke.

Problem was, readers thought the exaggerated caricature called Raoul Duke was Hunter S. Thompson. Though they shared the same DNA, they were not identical twins.

The Duke caricature followed him the rest of his life. It was a role that the real man could easily adopt and play, pleasing his fans. On signal, he could perform as Duke. But he was not the same without an audience.

And so he was caught in the duality. He had created the Duke character, one of the great literary inventions of his time. It was a brilliant achievement. And it was also a burden. It might have been a trap. If he cast off the Duke persona, would his readers follow him? Or would it be like slitting the throat of the golden goose?

It was a problem he wrestled with, apparently without resolution, until the end of his life.

Copyright William McKeen 2009

William McKeen
Professor and Chair
University of Florida Department of Journalism.
Author of Hunter S. Thompson (1991), Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (2008)
Highway 61 (2003) Tom Wolfe (1995) Bob Dylan A Biography (1993)
and many more. William’s site is at http://www.williammckeen.com/

Hunter S. Thompson, A “Road Man for the Lords of Karma”–HST

–by Simone Corday

Years before I met Hunter, I fell for his writing. Not only was he the most brilliant, original satirist, he was a sharp observer of how western culture was turning. Beneath Hunter’s satire is a depth, a generosity of spirit, an astute intelligence, that was evident to people who got to know him.

I am still in awe when I read some of his gems, like The Curse of Lono; “Bad Craziness in Palm Beach, I Told Her It Was Wrong,” (about the Roxanne Pulitzer divorce case) from Songs of the Doomed; his shorter pieces like hisSan Francisco Examiner columns in Generation of Swine; stories like “Fear and Loathing in Elko” and—where can I stop? Many of Hunter’s works seem so timely because they highlight the corruption in politics and make some farsighted, rather haunting predictions. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was the first book of his that I read, in grad school, that knocked me out with its outrageous images and its commentary.

Hunter wasn’t born into privilege. Maybe this helped him develop a keen eye for hypocrisy and injustice. His determination to work hard to become a good writer as a young man led him to re-type all of Fitzgerald’s classicThe Great Gatsby to sense the rhythm of the words. Although later he acknowledged getting high as part of his process and life, his original style came from a deep well of talent, developed by persistence and hard work. Hunter had a knack for inventive humor that will never be matched.

I didn’t see Hunter being out-of-control indulging in drugs or booze, but as possessing a clear, penetrating eye for what was actually going on. Of course, I knew him against the backdrop of the O’Farrell Theater, a wild, crazy strip club run by the notorious Mitchell Brothers who did quite a bit of hard-partying on their own. Hunter possessed a genuine curiosity about the people at Mitchell Brothers and the dynamics of the place, and got an advance to write a novel about it. He went out of his way to be kind to me. I am reminded of a line from a review of my book by Henry Jones in San Francisco Magazine: “In what other setting could Hunter Thompson turn out to be the most level-headed character?”

Hunter was a self-made man, a witness to great social change, who became a forceful advocate for independent thought and for challenging corruption. This is why Hunter’s work is still so relevant. So, read Hunter because his words feel and sound so current, and because his writing can lift you with its brilliance, its laughter—or skewer the values of modern culture, often simultaneously. I am fortunate to have crossed paths with—as Hunter called himself–this “road man for the lords of karma.”

Copyright By Simone Corday 2009

Simone Corday is the author of 9 1/2 Years Behind the Green Door, A Memoir: A Mitchell Brothers Stripper Remembers her Lover Artie Mitchell, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Killing That Rocked San Francisco. Simone’s site is at http://www.greendoorbook.com/index.php

Wayne Ewing. Hunter and the Beast.

“He who makes a beast of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man,” Dr. Johnson

This epigram about drinking opens Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It took many years of hanging out with Hunter for me to truly understand Samuel Johnson’s observation. Since I have been called “Hunter’s Boswell” by William McKeen, perhaps it’s only appropriate that I use this quote from Boswell’s subject, Dr. Johnson, to dispel a myth about Dr. Thompson.

The myth is that there were two Hunter’s – one, the talented writer, and, two, the drunken Raoul Duke, the alter ego he created for Fear and Lathing that began to take over his personality in real life. This myth was first perpetrated by Hunter in the 1978 BBC documentary Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood, and then amplified by Alex Gibney in Gonzo, using clips from the BBC film and an interview with Hunter’s first wife Sandy.

The fact is Hunter was both a heavily drinking drug user and a great writer, just not necessarily at the same time. This pattern began early in life, during his teenage years when he was “the Billy the Kid of Louisville” as he says in my film Breakfast with Hunter. Between robbing liquor stores, he still managed to write some very good prose for his high school literary group – The Athenaeum Society.

Raoul Duke is just an exaggerated extension of Louisville’s Billy the Kid, so named because Hunter truly feared retribution for such admitted excess. For the same reason, he tried to mask the identity of Oscar Acosta – an attorney who risked disbarment – as “Dr. Gonzo” and was shocked when Oscar insisted on having his real name mentioned on the back of the book with the famous picture of them in a casino lounge.

The wild, unexpected success of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas gave Hunter a sense of immunity for his excesses since they were now celebrated in the popular culture and rewarded with further book contracts and magazine assignments. Then the myth began to merge with reality as increasing heavy drinking and drugging kept Hunter from writing. The two habits – writing and intoxication – had always co-existed, but by the late seventies success had lead to more wild turkey than daring insights, and by the end of his life the drugs and the drink had all but killed the writer in him.

The interesting question to me was what compelled the man to make a beast of himself. Johnson’s “pain of being a man.” Was clearly the answer, as Hunter indicates by giving that quote first before all the madness of Vegas. But what is that pain, and how did drinking and drugs lessen it?

What I learned over the years was that the truth is painful, and Hunter had an unnerving ability to see the inner truth in any situation – whether it was the death of the American Dream in the excess of Las Vegas, or the effect of 911 on this country thirty years later. To know that patriotism would be turned into a means of oppression, a reason to kill hundreds of thousands, and trample the constitution was not a pretty vision, yet Hunter saw that almost instantly as the planes hit the towers. Then he wrote about it in his sports column, and kept on drinking until he became the Beast Who Knows No Pain.

Copyright 2009 By Wayne Ewing

Wayne’s site is at http://www.hunterthompsonfilms.com/
You can buy Breakfast with Hunter, When I Die and Free Lisl from Wayne’s site. You’ll also find a wealth of stuff there including videos, reviews, fourms and a lot more. Also go to Wayne’s Vodcast at http://hunterthompsonfilms.com/vodcast/ where you’ll find some great stories and footage of HST.

David S. Wills. Thompson and Duke

In my opinion, the work of Hunter S. Thompson can be divided into two periods – the early work, which focuses largely the author and the world around him; and the late work, which focuses more on politics, whilst featuring Thompson as a protagonist to a certain extent.
In this early period we see Thompson as the roving reporter, working for small newspapers and cutting his teeth as a journalist. I would argue that this period extends from no particular start point, and ends shortly after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was with this book that Raoul Duke emerged, yet it is the work prior to it that I think we must study to understand the relationship between Thompson and Duke.
For many, the ‘Vegas book’ is utter fiction. It is the ultimate split between Thompson the man and Duke the beast. It is a development upon the ‘frantic loser’ created in ‘The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved’, which in turn was somewhat of an exaggerated version of the protagonist Thompson became in Hell’s Angels.
However, we can study Thompson’s life and works and weigh together what he said and what he did and uncover the truth behind the myths. It is interesting to read the memoirs of his friends and families, and to compare his own varying accounts, and determine that Duke was neither entirely fantasy nor reality. He lay somewhere between. He was a carefully crafted character Thompson used for journalistic purpose.
Although the name “Raoul Duke” appears sporadically throughout the work of Hunter S. Thompson, I think he was always present. Certainly, if he is to be considered an amped up version of Thompson, he was there since the beginning. It is not hard to see his presence in the mind of the young Thompson we see in The Proud Highway, nor is it a stretch of the imagination to view Paul Kemp as a young Raoul Duke. I believe Duke represents Thompson’s madness and his fantasies. Moreover, he is a literary device.
Tearing Duke from Thompson is something that would take thousands of words to accomplish, but it is something I will instead invite you to do for yourself. Reading his letters, his articles, and the works prior to the formal advent of Duke, I ask you to look for wild exaggerations and ask for what purpose they serve.

Copyright 2009 David S. Wills

A few of David’s sites are as follows–
http://www.beatdom.com/
http://www.cityofrecovery.com/
http://www.daegubooks.com/

Peter W. Knox

I was nursing a sweating beer outside the Woody Creek Tavern on a sunny Saturday afternoon in late August when approached by a reporter for the Denver Post. My favorite writer of all time was to be launched out of a 153 foot double thumbed fist shaped cannon in a few hours and I was nervously feeding the man quotes for about fifteen minutes before he moved on to someone else, leaving me to drown my beer and calm my nerves. The next morning I would scan the paper only to find something I had said, pulled out and displayed across the bottom of the article in large type:

“Fear and Loathing isn’t just a drug-induced nightmare – it’s great writing.”

I was surprised to see it printed so prominently, but not surprised at what the news editor chose to highlight.

The idea that someone could be famous for being stomped by Hell’s Angels, consuming lethal amounts of dangerous drugs, showing up late and too wasted to perform, destroying hotel rooms and skipping out on huge expense tabs, and many more Page-Six worthy exploits isn’t shocking. What’s shocking is that this legend doesn’t play a musical instrument or make blockbuster movies, but instead puts words to print and has a book in the Library of Congress.

What Hendrix could with a guitar, Thompson did with a typewriter and people will always think they will successfully be able to emulate their heroes just by doing the drugs and living the lifestyle those icons perpetuated. But before Thompson showed up staggeringly drunk to cover a 1970 Kentucky Derby for a fledgling magazine, he learned how to write by studying the greats – copying books like The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises in longhand (“to incorporate their rhythms” and see what it felt like to write those words) and giving himself an army-issue journalism education to stay out of prison. He became a writer because he it was his one way out and lucked into finding genuine talent in himself.

But for every thousand kids playing guitar in the 60s, only one became Jimi Hendrix just the same ways only one traveling journalist became Hunter S. Thompson. His skills paved the way for the rock-star fame and lifestyle that followed and would eventually overshadow the strong writing that got him there. The difference, however, between those that stay at the top of their game and the one-hit-wonders of the world is the ability to deliver on your skillset. And for a long stretch of time, any editorial staff would gladly suffer the long nights, drug binges, late copy, and temperamental ego that is Hunter S. Thompson because he backed it up doing what no one had ever did before him and no one would manage after him.

Like the introduction of the forward pass in American football, Thompson broke the rules that no one else even thought were there, and ended up changing the game forever.

-Peter W. Knox

Peter’s great site is at http://www.huntersthompsonthesis.com/ There are some great links there to pictures he took while in Woody Creek. Also you can read his undergraduate thesis on Hunter Thompson.