Ghent University
Faculty of Arts and
Philosophy
2009-2010
Hunter S. Thompson and the Sixties
Fear and Loathing in Retrospect
Supervisor:
Prof. Dr. Ilka Saal
May 2010
Paper submitted in partial
fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of “Master in
de Vergelijkende Moderne
Letterkunde”
By Catherine Kosters
2
3
Foreword
There are many people I would to thank for their help in the realization of this
dissertation. First and foremost, I am thankful to my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Ilka Saal,
without whom I never would have succeeded. Her confidence, support, academic
guidance, and useful commentary and suggestions have contributed greatly to my work.
Furthermore, special thanks to her are in order for tending a light in the occasional
darkness of Jamesonian thought.
I am extremely grateful to Dries De Herdt, for his loving encouragement,
structural remarks and knowledge of politics.
My mother, Rose-Marie Vleugels, I would like to thank for her interest and
revisions.
I further appreciate the support I received from all my friends and family. I am
thankful in particular to Nele Augustyns, Inneke Baatsen, and Lien Smets for the efforts
they put in borrowing books for me from various libraries; and to Kerry Oxlade, who
introduced me to the author who has become the main subject of my thesis.
Finally, I am infinitely obliged to the late great HST.
“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
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Table of Contents
Foreword................................................................................................................3
Table of Contents....................................................................................................4
1. Introduction
........................................................................................................6
2. The Sixties: A Time of Revolution
.....................................................................12
2.1. Chapter Outline....................................................................................................12
2.2. Winds of Change...................................................................................................13
2.2.1. A symbol of meteoric proportions.............................................................................13
2.2.2. Politics in the sixties: The times they were a-changing.............................................14
2.2.2.1. The rise and fall of activism..............................................................................................15
2.2.2.2. Presidents of the United States of Love...........................................................................20
a. JFK’s Camelot presidency....................................................................................................20
b. “LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”..............................................................................23
c. Tricky Dick and the silent majority.........................................................................................25
2.2.3. Sixties counterculture: The Children of the Revolution.............................................29
2.2.3.1. A multitude of movements................................................................................................31
2.2.3.2. From the Summer of Love to the Days of Rage...............................................................35
3. HST: The Man and the Myth...............................................................................40
3.1. Chapter Outline....................................................................................................40
3.2. A Portrait of the Gonzo Journalist as a Young Man............................................42
3.3. A New Journalism.................................................................................................45
3.4. When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro ..............................................47
3.5. The Birth of Gonzo Journalism............................................................................49
3.6. The Era of Fear and Loathing...............................................................................52
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3.7. The Freak Kingdom..............................................................................................57
3.8. The weird never die ..........................................................................................62
4. Hunter S. Thompson and the 1960s...............................................................65
4.1. Chapter Outline....................................................................................................65
4.2. Periodizing the Sixties..........................................................................................66
4.2.1. Demarcating a decade.............................................................................................66
4.2.2. To periodize or not to periodize................................................................................67
4.2.3. New beginnings and ends........................................................................................69
4.2.4. Fear and loathing in periodization............................................................................73
4.2.5. The 60s periodized...................................................................................................77
4.3. The Sixties in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: The Wave...................................78
4.3.1. The corruption of the American Dream ....................................................................79
4.3.2. A transformation of the American Jeremiad .............................................................84
4.4. The Sixties in Gonzo Journalism .........................................................................87
4.4.1. “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved”...................................................88
4.4.2. “Fear and Loathing in the Bunker”............................................................................91
4.4.3. “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll”...............................................94
5. Conclusion........................................................................................................97
Bibliography.......................................................................................................101
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1. Introduction
In 1969, the decade known as the sixties ended. This historical assertion does
not only derive its legitimacy from the numerological change from 6 to 7 that occurred at
the turning of the year. More important was a series of significant events that stood in
such contrast with the so-called spirit of the 1960s that they are said to have marked the
decay of the era and the demise of its generation. The inauguration of right-wing
president Richard Milhaus Nixon; the struggle between neighborhood activists and the
authorities over the communal area of People’s Park; and the death of an eighteenyear-old student during the Altamont Speedway Free Festival; all headlined the front
pages of American newspapers during the eventful year. Although incidents such as
these were not connected in any direct way, they seemed to form a destructive chain
that smothered the aura of hope that had enveloped America for nearly ten years.
One “academic” who has subscribed to such a fatalistic view of the years
surrounding the turn of the decade is “Doctor of Journalism” Hunter Stockton
Thompson. The Good Doctor, as he preferred to be called, linked certain unfortunate
events as if they were a dividing line between the glorious sixties and the dark times
that were to follow. In his most famous work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he
describes the brusque and chilling change as follows:
“KILL THE BODY AND THE HEAD WILL DIE”
This line appears in my notebook, for some reason. Perhaps some
connection with Joe Frazier. Is he still alive? Still able to talk? I watched
that fight in Seattle—horribly twisted about four seats down the aisle from
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the Governor. A very painful experience in every way, a proper end to the
sixties: Tim Leary a prisoner of Eldridge Cleaver in Algeria, Bob Dylan
clipping coupons in Greenwich Village, both Kennedys murdered by
mutants, Owsley folding napkins on Terminal Island, and finally Cassius/Ali
belted incredibly off his pedestal by a human hamburger, a man on the
verge of death. Joe Frazier, like Nixon, had finally prevailed for reasons
that people like me refused to understand – at least not out loud.
(Thompson, Fear and Loathing 22-23)
Dr. Thompson’s self-appointed academic title is telling as he belonged to the first
wave of the so-called New Journalism, a journalistic style developed by reporters who
sought to elevate their trade to a higher status, preferably one equal to that of the novel.
In order to succeed, the New Journalists adopted the subjectivity of fiction writers,
amongst other techniques. Thompson, however, preferred the term “Gonzo journalist” to
“New Journalist” and, in appropriating the former epitaph, cradled the often imitated, but
seldom equaled literary style that is Gonzo journalism.
Thompson gradually developed this legendary blend of fact and fiction
throughout the 1960s. Early traces of it can be found in the 1966 bestseller Hell’s
Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs and the 1970
article on the Kentucky Derby entitled The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved,
which reads more like a short story than a sports report. With Gonzo, a genre
inextricably connected to the sixties in terms of themes and style, the decade enabled
Thompson to find his true voice and led him to critical acclaim as well as cult status.
It is thus no wonder that the writer felt disappointed and bitter even as he acutely
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realized that the positive influence the sixties had spread in America was beginning to
wane. Sharp observations on the demise of the decade, such as the one cited above,
became legion in Thompson’s work. His entire writing career would in fact resemble a
never-ending search for whatever was left of the spirit of the era, symbolized in the
desperate quest for the American Dream. The obstinacy to bury the past may have
been a result of the success the bygone era had brought him, but perhaps more so of
his personal involvement in the hippie counterculture. With legendary figures such as
Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg among his friends, the Gonzo journalist was entranced
right from the outset by this exciting alternative to main-stream society. Although
Thompson, an avid gun collector and self-proclaimed bigot, was by no means as
tolerant as the average stereotypical hippie, he did sympathize with the cause of the
new movement and genuinely believed that by their combined efforts, an improved
world of hope and ideals would be brought to fruition.
On the personal, professional and political level, the sixties would come to
represent a utopian past. The Gonzo masterpiece, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A
Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, provided the starting shot for the
author’s obsession with the decade. Written in 1971, this manifesto on irresponsible
journalistic practice can be seen as a post mortem tribute to the sixties and an attack on
Richard Nixon’s America. The sense of doom that came over the journalist at the
thought of ten eventful, but glorious years gone to waste seemed to ignite a holy fire
within his chest that would rage until the author’s death in 2005. His strong emotions
with regard to the end of the sixties are already present in the book’s title. The
popularity of Fear and Loathing and its 1998 film adaptation is one of the main reasons
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Thompson is still widely read and has ensured that he will be permanently considered
one of the quintessential authors on the sixties.
In this dissertation, I will study Thompson’s appraisal of the watershed moment in
American history called the sixties. The alternation between bitterness and regret
expressed in the excerpt cited above provides the starting point. The fragment
showcases an intriguing combination of criticism and nostalgia with regard to the sixties.
This ambivalence pervades Fear and Loathing, the author’s most famous work, but may
be present in the rest of Thompson’s oeuvre as well. The phrase “fear and loathing,” for
example, would resurface again and again in his work to refer to the grim slide of
society from the sixties to the present. To determine whether a nostalgic retrospect also
reappears, I will examine several exemplary works of Gonzo. First, however, an outline
of the sixties and of Thompson’s life is needed. Such information is necessary to grasp
the context in which he wrote and will facilitate an understanding of his ambivalent
historical attitude.
In chapter one, I will provide a background to my thesis by discussing sixties
politics and the emergence of the counterculture. These two angles are essential as
they form significant aspects of Thompson’s work. The second chapter then is devoted
to the man himself or, more specifically, to the man and the myth since the writer's
flamboyant personality as well as his innovative and controversial way of writing have
raised him to star status. In the third part of my thesis, I will at last examine the Gonzo
appraisal of the sixties. First, I will ruminate the possibility of characterizing a decade by
discussing the concept of periodization and the difficulties it entails. Then the
ambivalent attitude towards the sixties in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas will be studied
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in order to discover whether a comparable duality can be traced in work that preceded
and followed the Gonzo masterpiece. I will approach his view via the techniques
Thompson uses to shape them and the themes he resorts to in order to get his point
across. After all, we must not forget that Thompson is a journalist and will use various
rhetorical means to communicate his ideas on the 1960s, whether they come in the
form of a defense, a critique or both.
Yet another work of research on the topic of the sixties in America may seem
redundant, but the debate over the importance of this decade has in effect not yet been
closed. On the contrary, opinions voiced publicly about the era differ as greatly as ever.
Appraisal degenerates easily into either nostalgic glorification or downright
condemnation – as will become apparent when we discuss sixties politics and
counterculture. In part due to the popular tendency to adopt any of these extreme views,
the sixties remain unceasingly relevant. They serve as a timeless reference point in
defining our current position and it is their enduring importance which makes it all the
more vital to keep examining and questioning these years. Thompson, who manages to
amalgamate glorification and condemnation, is an appealing, albeit unreliable guide.
Since his viewpoints on the sixties have not been the focus of elaborate study, they may
add to a twenty-first-century reappraisal of the decade.
In spite of his personal bond to the era, Thompson manages to avoid certain
pitfalls of the melancholic. Like a modern-day Shakespearean fool, he remains aloof
and, shrouded in wit, reveals the starkest truths. Akin to those who describe the
inauguration of Nixon and the Battle of People’s Park as writings on the wall for the
demise of the sixties1, Thompson is sorry the era had to end, but all the same does not
1
Rob Kirkpatrick, M.J. Heale.
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hesitate to trace the origins of the decade’s failure back to its own inner qualities. The
combination of indisputable love and crude scrutiny may be present in the journalist’s
entire oeuvre. Throughout this dissertation, I will frame Thompson’s dualistic evaluation
of the sixties in wider criticism and try to prove that the ambiguity is vintage Gonzo. Past
and present, nostalgia and criticism, the personal and the political, fact and fiction, all
are expressly fused like fear and loathing in the work of one of America’s most
mythologized journalists ever and all contribute to his extremely personal and yet
universally insightful appraisal of one of America’s most mythologized decades.
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2. The Sixties: A Time of Revolution
2.1. Chapter Outline
In this first chapter, I will discuss the period known as the 1960s. Given the
importance of this decade in the development of Western and, arguably, global culture,
an impressive amount of research has been carried out. I will specifically discuss
existing work on two subtopics: contemporary politics and the history of the
counterculture. These topics are interconnected as the government and new hippie and
protest movements came to face each other throughout the decade.
While there is a large body of research, the field of study is marked by a general
lack of consensus. Points on which scholars disagree are diverse and inevitably include
politics and the significance of the counterculture. I will attempt to include a variety of
stances and interpretations. By emphasizing that there are multiple readings of history,
we may better understand Thompson’s ambivalent view. Furthermore, an inclusion of
the political and socio-cultural is indispensible to appreciate his vision of the sixties, in
which references to society’s gyrations are abundant. These two specific subjects will
thus help us to substantiate the hypothesis of ambivalence and to comprehend the
contextual references in Thompson’s work.
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2.2. Winds of Change
2.2.1. A symbol of meteoric proportions
The ‘winds of change’ are a constant in revolutionary discourse, so popular a
symbol that it has even been taken over by mainstream pop music. Although its origins
may probably be traced back to ancient folklore, the instance of meteorological
symbolism is bound more tightly to the sixties than to any other decade. Many of the
numerous rock bands that sprung up during the period made use of the phrase. Eric
Burdon & The Animals, risen from the ashes of the original The Animals, used it as a
telltale image for America’s transition from blues to psychedelic music in their song
“Winds of Change,” released on the eponymic album in 1967. The last lines of the song
make reference to one of Thompson’s favorite musicians, a folk singer who has come to
embody the move into psychedelica as he traded in his acoustic guitar for an electric
exemplar:
Bob Dylan sang about the winds of change
Blowing, it's all blowing, the winds of change2
(Eric Burdon & The Animals)
The most illustrious use of the phrase ‘wind of change’ must, however, be sought
outside of popular culture. In 1960, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan resorted to
the image in the Wind of Change speeches he held in the British colony of the Gold
Coast and in South Africa. The two almost identical addresses foreshadowed the
impending independence of various African nations and marked a change in the policy
2
The song to which The Animals allude is the opening track of Dylan’s – still acoustic – 1963 album The
Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” in which he calls for social change.
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of the British government on colonialism as well as an increasing disapproval of
apartheid. Macmillan famously said: “The wind of change is blowing through this
continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a
political fact.” He also spoke of “the political destinies of free men” (Macmillan).
Examples of references to the ‘winds of change’ in the sixties are manifold. The
connection between this political and countercultural image, which formed part of a
larger symbolism of change, and the decade under discussion is provided by historical
reality. The reason why revolution has rarely been glorified as extensively in song, in
speech, in literature and film, as it has during this era, is found in the groundbreaking
political and socio-cultural shifts that occurred. However, it would be inaccurate to
consider the sixties as synonymous with change or, more specifically, leftist
progressivism3; and to evaluate those years purely positively would hint at a biased
point of view, which it is not my ambition to represent. Like Thompson, one must
consider various evaluations. Moreover, I will attempt to present a balanced spectrum
by considering what remained unchanged in American society and politics as well as by
studying the evolutions, gradual and sudden, which took place. In cultural critic Fredric
Jameson’s phrasing, “only against a certain conception of what is historically dominant
or hegemonic [can] the full value of the exceptional … be assessed” (“Periodizing” 178).
2.2.2. Politics in the sixties: The times they were a-changing4
3
George F. Will points out that “it was not a decade of the left ascendant. Rampant, perhaps, but not
ascendant.” (3)
4
Reference to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They are a-Changing,” title song of his eponymic third studio
album, released in 1964.
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The following sections are devoted to American politics. It can be argued that the
political atmosphere of the 1960s was above all typified by activism. I will first use this
defining feature as a guideline to sketch that atmosphere in its historical context,
particularly paying attention to the decades that preceded and followed the sixties. Part
of the exceptionality of this period will thus become apparent. Thompson for one saw
the increased personal involvement in politics as the greatest legacy of the sixties. He
did not only actively support various politicians, among whom his acquaintance Joe
Edwards in the Aspen mayoral election in 1969 and George McGovern in the 1972
presidential election, but also ran for sheriff of Pitkin County himself in 1970 under the
rallying cry “Freak Power.”
After a general contextualization, I will zoom in on the developments that
occurred under the reign of the three Presidents of the United States that held office in
the sixties. They are, of course, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson and
Richard Milhaus Nixon. Because politics is not the main topic of my dissertation, this
chapter will not be as extensive as it could be. Largely based on M.J. Heale’s insightful
work The Sixties in America: History, Politics and Protest, it will concentrate on
characterizing main trends and cataloging major events. I nonetheless hope to establish
a certain degree of familiarity with the contemporary affairs of state. A basic knowledge
of sixties politics is indispensable to an adequate understanding of the era and to a
study of Thompson, to whom the label ‘political journalist’ could easily be applied.
2.2.2.1. The rise and fall of activism
Thompson did not stand alone in his apprehension that the sixties seemed to
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inspire individual action more than any preceding decade. From the streets to the Oval
Office, there seemed to be a universal perception that change was possible if only
people would take action. As Sally Banes claims in the introduction to Greenwich
Village 1963: Avant-Garde Performance and the Effervescent Body:
It was not only the policymakers in Washington who were shaping
American postwar (sic) culture, but also, importantly, groups of individuals
setting forth models of daily life for a generation. (1-2)
The activist aspect of the politics of the era has been the subject of much debate
over the last few decades. On the one hand, there has been a tendency to look back
nostalgically onto a time in which people strove together for a better world, when
change actually seemed possible. On the other, severe cynicism has been triggered by
the failures of the decade, especially by the realization that the combined efforts of so
many protesters and believers were not sufficient to accomplish the desired societal
transformation. Both viewpoints may lay claim to some validity, as the sixties were
undoubtedly a time of exhilarating revolution, but also one of naivety and indolence.
Sally Banes chooses to emphasize the former aspect since her book highlights 1963, a
year in which nothing seemed impossible as activism was still deemed effective. The
spirit of positivism that pervaded the nation at that time develops into a significant
thread throughout her work. Already in Banes’ introduction, the pivotal year and
optimism are linked:
In 1963 the American Dream5 of freedom, equality, and abundance
seemed as if it could come true. Not that it had – but that it was just about
to. Expectations were rising after the economically and culturally stagnant
5
This symbol will be discussed extensively in chapter 4.
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decade of the Fifties … Although the country had its problems at home
and abroad, the official mood was optimistic. (3)
M.J. Heale also makes the comparison to the “dreary fifties6” in his introduction.
Heale contrasts the political activism of the sixties to the “apparent placidity of the
Eisenhower era” (Heale 11). However, the fragment from Sally Banes’ book cited above
portrays the early sixties in an equally placid way, and logic states that in a hopeful
climate, there should be little cause for complaint. Perhaps the dissent and protest for
which the sixties are remembered were thus exclusively characteristic of the later part of
the era. Then again, Banes herself contradicts this assertion. Although the general air
was tranquil in 1963, the activist drive of certain groups in society already seemed to
manifest itself. In the following fragment, the author lucidly outlines the evolutions that
contributed to the early optimism and simultaneously locates the seeds of revolution
that had yet to ripen:
The increasing postwar affluence of the Fifties seemed by the early sixties
to be spiraling boundlessly (if at times somewhat unevenly), and in 1963
the economy was boosted by a new spurt, with even further gains
promised by Kennedy’s proposed tax cut (finally passed in 1964). The cold
war began to thaw, first with the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis in
1962 and then with the signing of the nuclear test ban treaty, which passed
the Senate in September 1963. Even our increasing military involvement in
Vietnam still seemed, in he liberal view, to be part of a Pax Americana. By
1963-64 there were, to be sure, a vocal antinuclear movement and
6
The phrase is used by Todd Gitlin: “On New Year’s Eve, as 1958 slipped into 1959, I wasn’t especially
aware that I was living in the dead, dreary Fifties” (1).
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nascent anti-Vietnam war and student movements, but these, like the civil
rights movement, operated in an arena of hope that was leavened by an
increasing sense of entitlement. (4)
Even if the call for revolution grew louder as the decade progressed, protest
movements were already present in the political landscape of the early sixties. In
general, “an old American trait was asserting itself, the desire to be master of one’s own
fate; … people were seeking empowerment – the power of the individual, the group, the
government” (Heale 13).
What happened at the end of the decade, when the erosion of what Banes
describes as ‘Pax Americana’ began to be felt, is also alluded to by Heale. He describes
a historical evolution in which America awakened to the momentariness of general
economic prosperity and the utopian ideals accompanying it:
The optimism and idealism which inspired so much of the activity of the
decade [the sixties] rested in no small part on a buoyant economy, just as
the darker and more introspective mood of the Seventies was related to
the widespread realisation (sic) that a besieged economy could no longer
perform miracles. Much the same could be said of the political system,
which in the early Sixties offered itself as a vehicle of progress, but which
in the aftermath of the decade has seemed incapable of supplying
coherent and constructive government, at least at a national level. (Heale
6)
By the early seventies, historical reality dawned on many aficionados of political
activism. Sycophants turned into cynics as liberalism failed, the war in Vietnam raged
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on and the economic system came under strain. Soon enough, “the Sixties’ belief in
action was in retreat” (Heale 26). The disillusionment that ensued found a source in the
conviction that in spite of all efforts, little had changed during the last ten years. To
many, the sixties suddenly seemed the era of missed opportunities.
Regardless of the fact that the structure of American society may not have been
radically altered and that the traditional hegemony was never fully ruptured, the sixties
were a defining and unique moment in history. In between the rise and fall of activism or
the docile fifties and the dark seventies, those who had never before been heard spoke
out. Either they invested their hope in politicians or they attempted to seize power
themselves. Whichever way, politics became increasingly important in every aspect of
American life. In this sense and others, the sixties were of tremendous significance. As
Heale argues:
The Sixties formed a watershed … It separated one kind of America from
the other. Of course, since no society is ever held in suspended animation
every period is an ‘era of transition’, but even so the 1960s stand out as
one when seismic shifts took place. (7)
I will now try to discover what exactly were these “seismic shifts,” as I discuss the
presidencies of JFK, LBJ and Tricky Dick alongside the actual political events of the
decade. Special attention will go to the individuals, groups and governments that were
involved, all those who stirred up, drifted on or fought against the winds of change.
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2.2.2.2. Presidents of the United States of Love7
a. JFK’s Camelot presidency8
In the course of the sixties, political authority was increasingly questioned and
literal interpretations of the democratic institution demanded a redistribution of power. It
is thus important to acknowledge the new energies that interacted with the older ones.
However, traditional politics remained the principal mode for governance throughout the
decade. Heale can claim with reason that “the actions taken by governments are crucial
to an understanding of the 1960s” (49). Much of the optimism that is associated with the
early sixties and has been discussed above can, for example, be traced back to the
presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The vigorous Democrat’s political rise roused
Thompson to return from South America. Thompson intuited that a new era was
dawning in his homeland. Kennedy held office from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.
In contrast to his predecessor Dwight Eisenhower, the new president stood for youth,
energy and above all, hope. Naturally, this view has been influenced in part by the
brevity of Kennedy’s career and by its dramatic conclusion, but JFK’s dynamic
personality and penchant for undertaking action also contributed to the positive
portrayal. Because of the hope it spawned, the Kennedy administration has, however,
been charged with the accusation of raising unrealistic expectations. M.J. Heale subtly
refutes this allegation:
There is little doubt that the rhetoric of the New Frontier did lift hopes and
7
“President of the United States of Love” is a line of lyrics from “I’m Black/Colored Spade,” a song from
the 1968 Broadway musical Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical.
8
Reference to Kennedy’s well-known nickname and allusion to his association with the mythical realm of
King Arthur, which will be explained infra.
21
inspire an idealism among many Americans that could not survive a brutal
reality, but the Kennedy message was also that there were no easy
solutions. Kennedy was throwing down a challenge, not promising a
utopia. (52)
Of course, not all criticism can be countered by this last argument and I will
explore the more negative realms of Kennedy’s rule as well, but the bright aura
surrounding his figure remains powerful. The two years he resided in the Oval Office
have after all been dubbed the ‘Camelot presidency9’ and such symbolism is impossible
to eradicate.
A second cluster of imagery is tied to a term mentioned in the quote above. ‘New
Frontier’ is a phrase used by Kennedy in the acceptance speech that concluded the
1960 presidential campaign. With it, he referred to “uncharted areas of science and
space, unresolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and
prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus” (Kennedy qtd. in Heale 52). In
other words, the New Frontier consisted of all the challenges the new president together
with the American people would have to face. The term became a label for Kennedy’s
foreign and domestic plans of action.
Although his agenda would never be completed, Kennedy managed to make
considerable progress in various domains. His administration was not committed to
reform in the first place, but to action10. Then again the new government did not act
rashly or ill-advisedly. Kennedy’s call for action was matched by his appreciation of
9
Kennedy’s favorite musical composition was the soundtrack to the 1960 Broadway musical Camelot.
This resulted in the portrayal of the murdered president as a modern-day king Arthur.
10
The distinction between reform and action is seen here as one between a preference for either
legislative or executive measures.
22
prudence. To explain what this meant, I refer to the stance on civil rights favored by the
president and his fellow Democrats:
A Massachusetts Democrat more attuned to labour than to race issues,
Kennedy had never been a spokesman for civil rights, although he had
signaled his sympathy for the cause in the 1960 campaign. For many
northern politicians at this time civil rights was a matter for the South. …
The Democratic party nationally depended on the votes of both northern
blacks and southern whites and its leaders had no wish to offend either
constituency. (Heale 57-58)
It must be said, however, that Kennedy’s commitment to the civil rights cause
increased as he became more aware of the urgency of the matter. As upsurges of racial
violence became more common and resistance against emancipatory policies grew in
the South, the president realized that federal legislation was needed. In a televised
address five months before he would be assassinated, Kennedy famously said:
We preach freedom around the world…, and we cherish our freedom here
at home, but are we to say … that this is a land of the free except for the
Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes? (qtd. in
Heale 61)
Kennedy would not live to witness the passing of his civil rights bill, but he could
truthfully claim that his administration had booked significant progress in advancing the
interests of African Americans. Although some of the more radical civil rights activists
were disappointed in him because they had expected faster and more sweeping
changes, many felt they had found an ally. The former group would of course demand
23
most attention, as they would be at the base of the Black Power movement.
The paradoxical combination of action and prudence typical of the Kennedy
administration could also be noticed in the economic strategy. Although there was no
recession, the president proposed a tax cut to boost the economy. The reasoning
behind this unexpected measure was that an increase in personal capital would lead to
greater expenditure and thus an augmentation of the government revenues that were
needed to carry out domestic and foreign programs. This plan may seem daringly
progressive, but was in fact a precursor for today’s conservative economic politics
(Heale 55).
When John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, a shock wave was
sent through the entire nation. As Heale puts it, “the hope that this young leader had
personified, both for his country and the wider world, was momentarily shaken” (62). It
is, however, important to note the word “momentarily” since the death of the king of
Camelot did not obliterate America’s early sixties optimism. As maintained by Banes,
“Kennedy’s assassination threw the nation into shock, but it did not stop the momentum”
(4).
b. “LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”11
The man following in Kennedy’s footsteps was Lyndon Baines Johnson, a liberal
Democrat who after twenty-three years in Congress had become one of the most
11
Reference to Johnson’s nickname and to a provocative slogan popular among protesters against the
Vietnam War during his presidency.
24
powerful figures in Washington. Although he differed from his predecessor in many
ways, Johnson “committed himself to delivering the promises of the slain leader” (Heale
62). He safeguarded the two most important bills bequeathed onto him by the previous
administration: the tax cut proposal and the new federal civil rights legislation. Johnson
saw both bills through Congress in the course of 1964. Although the new president thus
paid respect to the Camelot legacy and divulged an even greater resolve to reform,
Johnson was by no means as well loved as Kennedy. In the introduction to an essay
included in Alexander Bloom’s Long Time Gone: Sixties America Then and Now, Tom
Wicker remembers noting the following in a discussion with former members of
Johnson’s cabinet on the subject of LBJ’s unpopularity:
“It’s the war. They hate him because of the war.” …
American participation in the war in Vietnam actually had begun, with
national approval – or indifference, interpreted in Washington as approval
– during the Kennedy administration. But few, then or now, blamed JFK,
while many hated Lyndon Johnson. (Wicker 99)
Although he is indeed remembered largely as the president who pushed the war
America was losing, Vietnam was not Johnson’s main concern at the start of his first
term. As a self-declared heir to Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal, which was a
series of reform programs to counter the Great Depression of the thirties, Johnson
advocated the ‘Great Society.’ He meant to increase the level of wealth and decrease
the amount of injustice in the United States by respectively combating poverty12 and
improving the conditions of African Americans13 (Wicker 101). Somehow, the war
12
13
For the War on Poverty, see Heale, p. 64 and further, and Wicker, p. 101 and further.
By implementing Kennedy’s civil rights bill, including the Voting Rights Act. See Wicker, p. 101.
25
managed to gradually capture the president’s attention in spite of his reformatory
resolutions. In February 1965, he ordered the bombing of North Vietnam and during the
next couple of months the number of American troops in the region rose dramatically.
Polls14 taken that same year reveal the start of a drastic drop in popularity, which in the
course of 1966 was accelerated as the “white backlash” to the new civil rights legislation
transpired (Wicker 106).
Johnson’s obstinate determination to win the war as well as realize his Great
Society added to a negative image. He persisted in the belief that a poor country like
Vietnam “would … buckle under American bombs” (Appy and Bloom 51), but would not
give up his domestic programs to procure larger resources. As a result, the deep-rooted
social reform he endorsed would never be realized and the securing of the withdrawal of
troops from Vietnam would be left to his successor, the Republican Richard Nixon.
c. Tricky Dick15 and the silent majority
The last years of Johnson’s presidency had been marked by an increasing
number of fatalities. Race riots16 in the ghettos brought a wave of violence to the streets
and several leading figures in protest and politics were assassinated. African American
radical Malcolm X was gunned down in 1965, Martin Luther King in ’68 and later that
year, Democratic presidential candidate and brother to JFK, Robert “Bobby” Kennedy.
The spiraling number of foreign casualties incited unparalleled protest, and not just
14
Surveys taken in 1966, but not the well-known Gallup polls. See Wicker, p. 106.
Reference to the nickname given to Nixon by in an ad for the Democratic Party.
16
Among which the Watts riots in 1965 and the Newark and Detroit riots in ‘67. See Heale, p. 94.
15
26
among the hippies, who in 1967 were celebrating the Summer of Love. At the end of the
year, less than one third of the American population approved of Johnson’s war policy
(Heale 97).
In 1960, Richard Nixon had lost to John Kennedy in the presidential elections.
The youthfulness and handsome features of the latter obviously appealed more to the
public than the sternness and receding hairline of the former. When Nixon did win in
1968, the victory “owed more to disenchantment with the Johnson administration than it
did to his own personal appeal” (Heale 100). Be that as it may, the presidential
candidate managed to convey his competence and intelligence throughout both
campaigns and only lost by a hairbreadth in the first one. A first sign of Nixon’s
cleverness was his outspoken appeal to the great ‘silent majority.’ His triumph was the
triumph of “the unyoung, the unblack, and the unpoor” (Heale 101). Although he can be
seen as a moderate conservative, the new president’s politics clearly represented a
move away from the New Left forged by students, protesters, rioters and hippies and
thus a turning point in the course of the sixties.
Nixon’s aversion to the previous government and to the various protest
movements is the reason why “Nixon’s Coming” is the first chapter in Rob Kirkpatrick’s
1969: The Year Everything Changed. In this book, Kirkpatrick charts the events that
shaped the pivotal year 1969, among which the Battle of People’s Park and the fight at
Altamont mentioned in the introduction. Highs and lows would swiftly succeed each
other in ’69 and lead to the demise of the counterculture and the end of the sixties. For
all of this, the election of Richard Nixon can be seen as an omen. It is, however, all too
easy to demonize ‘Tricky Dick’ while he was left to find solutions for the problems that
27
had already faced his predecessors and when the countercultural movement had fallen
victim to its own internal shortcomings. I will therefore attempt to present a balanced
view of Nixon’s politics, which will nevertheless be toppled again later by Thompson’s
merciless portrayal of the man he perceived as the ultimate crook.
The central issue of the 1968 campaign had been the question who would be
“best able to free the United States from Vietnam” (Heale 99). For the newly elected
president, the war was thus America’s greatest priority. Nixon was resolutely antiCommunist. When the North Vietnamese army violated the truce that Johnson had
negotiated by launching an offensive against South Vietnam from Cambodia, ‘Operation
Menu’ was devised and carried out covertly. This bombing of Cambodia was hushed up
for several years because the president’s cabinet realized that a prolongation of
hostilities would reflect poorly on them (Kirkpatrick 7-8).
The secret series of missions in Cambodia were the starting point of “a balancing
act for Nixon, one in which he would begin to bring troops back home while at the same
time escalating the war in Southeast Asia” (Kirkpatrick 8). Such seeming
inconsistencies would give the impression that Nixon was untrustworthy, a scheming
villain in Thompson’s unsubtle portrayal. In fact, Nixon was just highly pragmatic. Herein
he resembled his old enemy John Kennedy, who displayed unparalleled pragmatism in
his early civil rights policy.
During his first year in office, Nixon divulged a governmental strategy meant to
reduce bureaucracy in Washington and expand local management. This program was
called the ‘New Federalism.’ In some areas, however, decentralization would be unwise,
in the recently booming domain of environmentalism, for example. To secure power
28
over ecological matters from Congress, Nixon therefore brought them under executive
direction. Some may have seen this as another example of Tricky Dick’s deviousness,
but the approach proved rather effective in enlarging authority and thus the amount of
federal refunds at state level (Heale 101-102).
In spite of the similarity to Kennedy noted above, Nixon was obviously less
progressive. The differences between the two previous Democratic presidents and the
new Republican leader were perhaps clearest in the welfare sphere. Nixon’s will to
combat poverty was accompanied by a conservative endorsement of the work ethic.
The ‘Family Assistance Plan’ would provide every American family with a minimum
income. Surprisingly, this included the ones with a steady income. The goal was that
“those who work would be no longer discriminated against” (Nixon qtd. in Heale 102).
Conservative beliefs were also reflected in the claim that employment would lead
to racial equality. Apart from some issues that improved work conditions for members of
minorities, however, the strategy on race issues was “benign neglect” (Pat Moynihan
qtd. in Heale 103). Desegregation of the South was carried out further, but civil rights
advocates could no longer count on much support from the government, or even
tolerance. The radical African American faction Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
was targeted most of all by the secret services. The Panther headquarters were
frequently raided and many members were arrested, sometimes on little legal ground.
Furthermore, the police often brutally squelched protests, which resulted in the deaths
of several students. The most famous case is the Battle for People’s Park, a riot over a
communal park at Berkeley University in which one student was fatally wounded and
numerous other protesters were injured, but there were other incidents as well. In April
29
1970, for example, four students were killed during a demonstration at Kent State
University against the Cambodian attacks that had gradually been revealed.
Nixon’s reelection in 1972 proved that there was still a silent majority backing him
on his severe actions toward radicals and protesters, and that the continuing war in Asia
proved less of a stumbling block than it had been for Johnson, now that the number of
troops had been reduced. Democratic candidate George McGovern, whose campaign is
vividly portrayed in Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail ’72, did not
stand a chance, as he was associated with a counterculture that had outlived its
heyday.
I end this subchapter with a quote by M.J. Heale that stresses the significance of
Nixon’s presidency in the whole of sixties politics:
The Nixon administration marked the ending of the Sixties. “Above all,”
Arthur Schlesinger17 had written at the outset of the decade, “there will be
a sense of motion, of leadership, and of hope.” Those characteristics did
seem to be present for a time, but hope had eventually given way to
cynicism. Richard Nixon’s election was made possible by the crumbling of
the New Deal Order, by disillusionment with New Frontier and Great
Society liberalism, and by the sorry Johnson record in Vietnam. His reelection represented a repudiation of street politics. (Heale 107)
2.2.3. Sixties counterculture: The Children of the Revolution
The status of the sixties as one of the most mythologized decades of the
17
Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
30
twentieth century owes in large part to the countercultural movement it saw emerge. Beins, Woodstock, acid tests, anti-Vietnam marches and the Summer of Love still excite
the imagination of many in the noughties and early tens. In this chapter, I will discuss
the character and role of the new movements and outline their most important
manifestations. First of all, it is necessary to situate the sixties counterculture in a
broader context. In the fifties, the Beat subculture already paved the way for the hippies
and in the sixties, a host of movements intersected.
A working definition of the hippie movement in its historical context will lead to a
focused history of the sixties. Whereas the previous section examined governmental
action, this subchapter provides a countercultural perspective. Several significant
events in which students and hippies engaged have already been referred to since the
counterculture and the political establishment are inseparable. Their antagonistic roles
created a mutual dependence. The hippie movement would never have gained such
momentum if there had been no common enemy to revolt against. Conversely, a
president like Richard Nixon would perhaps never have been elected if no “long-haired,
good-for-nothing” hippies had called the silent majority to action. In other words, the
counterculture and the government unwittingly cooperated to fashion the watershed
moment known as the sixties.
Such codependence is argued by M.J. Heale as well, whose book continued to
act as my guide in writing this chapter. When Thompson sarcastically dedicated The
Great Shark Hunt18 to “Richard Milhaus Nixon, who never let [him] down,” however, he
probably was not thinking about the president’s defining influence. The intention behind
18
In The Gonzo Papers Anthology, which includes The Great Shark Hunt, Generation of Swine, and
Songs of the Doomed.
31
this dedication will be revealed later, but first, we must turn our attention to the children
of the revolution whom Thompson regarded with equally ambiguous feelings.
2.2.3.1. A multitude of movements
The hippie movement is arguably the biggest and most influential youth
movement the twentieth-century West has known. Its rise was, however, not
unannounced. The fifties had already been witness to one of America’s first subcultures.
More literary than political, the Beat Generation voiced the concerns of disaffected
adolescents and presented an alternative to mainstream society by advocating an
adventurous and spontaneous life filled with free love, drugs and bebop. Jack Kerouac’s
On the Road, the Beat Bible, tells the autobiographical tale of a young writer who
traverses the great American continent in search of kicks, stories and a meaning to his
own life. Allen Ginsberg, author of the poem “Howl,” was the most politically inspired
author of all Beats and sought to turn the literary circle of friends into a true
counterculture. Under the lead of authors like Ginsberg, the Beats anticipated many of
the interests of the hippie movement. Defenses of civil rights, homosexuality and
women’s rights were often present in their work, although not always explicitly. The
Beats furthermore believed in consciousness expansion through drug use, meditation
and music, and they led the way towards the sexual revolution.
The main difference between the Beat Generation and its natural successor thus
did not lie in the issues it tackled, but in its scope. The former was for the most part a
literary movement with some influence in other arts. The critiques of the establishment it
32
offered therefore carried little political weight. As the hippie movement spoke to the
mass of American youth and not just to an elite group of Greenwich Village artists with a
curiosity for the marginal side of life, it gained much more force and was able to
pressure the establishment into actual changes. Todd Gitlin, however, notes that the
protest movements of the sixties were still rather undemocratic as they were
generationally defined and class-bound (xii). Notwithstanding this remark, the evolution
from a subculture in the fifties to a counterculture in the sixties marked the dawning of a
more egalitarian America. The increase in support and thus vigor was also a dream
come true for Ginsberg, who became one of the new movement’s main spokesmen.
Kerouac, on the other hand, who had always shunned political statements, saw the call
for change as a waste of time. Although Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
was greatly influenced by On the Road and the Gonzo journalist took Ginsberg’s side
on political issues, neither Beats were spared any criticism. Thompson both
reprimanded Kerouac for his apolitical reclusion and ridiculed Ginsberg for his esoteric
spiritualism, as befitted his role of merciless commentator of the counterculture.
Apart from realizing that others paved the way for the hippie movement, it is
important that the hippie movement did not exist in a historical vacuum. The
counterculture of the sixties was a complex accordance of different social forces. In the
conclusion of his article “Periodizing the 60s,” Fredric Jameson fully explicates the
singularity of the sixties in terms of new powers disrupting the traditional capitalist model
of society:
We have described the 60s as a moment in which the enlargement of
capitalism on a global scale simultaneously produced an immense freeing
33
or unbinding of social energies, a prodigious release of untheorized new
forces: the ethnic forces of black and “minority” or third world movements
everywhere, regionalisms, the development of new and militant bearers of
“surplus consciousness” in the student and women’s movements, as well
as in a host of struggles of other kinds. (“Periodizing” 208)
This kind of thinking is in line with the general stance adopted in The 60s Without
Apology, a collection of sixties criticism. The editors, among whom Jameson himself,
define the sixties as a “disruption of late-capitalist ideological and political hegemony”
(Sayres et al. 2). This disruption was caused by the new historical subjects that
emerged as people were able to free themselves from the dominant social institutions
and the subordination to capital production. Of course civil rights, women’s and student
movements had existed before, but during the sixties, the booming economy triggered
such a mass release of social energy that for the first time, these movements became
actual forces able to upset the traditional order of American society.
Whereas the concerns of civil rights activists, defenders of gay rights and
feminists may be delineated more of less easily, it is rather difficult to pinpoint the main
interest of the hippie movement. The reason for its vague character is the extent of
overlap with the aforementioned groups. Barry Melton’s essay about the San
Franciscan counterculture in Bloom’s Long Time Gone illustrates this:
There was actually a range of causes to become aligned with in Berkeley
during that period [1965]. While the anti-war movement, the civil rights
movement, and the free speech movement each had its own focus,
demonstrations, and leadership, there was a good deal of overlap. (150-
34
151)
A defining feature for the hippie movement may be its origins as a youth
movement. It needs to be noted, however, that the hippie culture is not identical to the
student movement since many hippies refused to take part in the American educational
system, which they saw as inadequate. Protest against the war in Vietnam is often
regarded as the essential political trait, but Heale differentiates between the youth
movement and peace movement (132). Later on, however, he mixes up the two as he
speaks of both free speech and pacifist protests initiated by students (137-138).
The hippie movement thus seems to defy definition. Most scholars, like Heale,
simply ignore the term and employ vague intersecting categories. For the purpose of
this thesis, I have devised a characterization that incorporates elements from the
various authors19 already referred to. A workable definition might be that the hippies
were a group, mainly consisting of American youths, which adopted concerns from
various factions with political goals and added to these a newly conceived lifestyle.
Their way of life stressed tolerance, spirituality, sexual freedom and consciousness
expansion. The primary issues they embraced were civil rights, gay and women’s rights,
environmentalism, freedom of speech and pacifism.
Although the term ‘hippie’ perhaps primarily denotes a lifestyle in the popular
mind, the movement undeniably influenced the political landscape of America in the
sixties as much as it did the cultural and social domains. Its impact can be felt, for
example, in popular music and contemporary sexual morals, but also in the sexual and
racial equality we take for granted, but which has in fact not yet been realized. Gitlin
describes the development towards egalitarianism, inspired by hippies and other
19
Charters, Gitlin, Heale, Melton, Sayres et al.
35
countercultural movements, more positively. He wrote the following in 1988, but his
argument is still valid:
The ghettoes are intractable, feminists embattled. There are a million
obstacles. But the fact remains that the Sixties relaunched the long, long
trek toward equality. (xi)
Most importantly, the hippie movement has helped increase awareness of the
democratic potential of the Western world by establishing the right to be heard
regardless of age, sex or ethnicity.
2.2.3.2. From the Summer of Love to the Days of Rage
Of the various other protest movements listed above, the student movement
probably exhibits the greatest degree of overlap with the hippie counterculture. In 1960,
Students for a Democratic Society or the SDS was founded at the University of
Michigan. Impressed by the actions of civil rights activists and rooted in industrial
democracy, the main goal of the SDS was to revitalize American politics through
democratic participation. Politically, the organization was closely linked to the New Left,
a group of progressive radicals that was “egalitarian, communitarian and suspicious of
hierarchy and established institutions” (Heale 136). Distancing itself from the old
Marxism, the New Left sought to free the individual rather than the class.
Another anti-establishment student group emerged at the Berkeley campus of the
University of California. When educational authorities, under pressure from the state
government, prohibited the use of a certain campus area known as the Berkeley Strip
36
for the recruitment for political activities in 1964, students united in the Free Speech
Movement. After the occupation of a university building and hundreds of subsequent
arrests, the College Board finally forfeited by declaring that there ought to be no more
restrictions on speech. The Berkeley students, however, were not satisfied so easily. In
the eyes of many of them, the university had revealed itself as a government ally (Heale
138-139). In 1969, the conflict would reemerge as governor Ronald Reagan ordered the
California Highway Patrol and police force to secure People’s Park, a community patch
seen as a haven for “beatniks, radicals and filthy speech advocates20.” The incident
corroborated the dichotomy between students and the establishment.
By the mid-sixties, Berkeley students, the SDS and other organizations started
rallying against the war in Vietnam. The outrage at the bombing of North Vietnam even
set in motion the first noteworthy student protests against American foreign policy.
Teach-ins, mass university gatherings with pacifist aims, spread from Michigan to
campuses across the country; and the march on the White House organized by the
SDS in April 1965 remains the largest anti-war demonstration in the history of the
United States21.
The Vietnam War can ironically be seen as one of the greatest unifying forces of
the sixties counterculture. It provided one of the rare causes shared by white and black
protest groups apart from the civil rights struggle itself. One organization that
temporarily joined forces with the likes of the SDS was the Black Panther Party, founded
in 1966 in Oakland, California. Their goal was a “revolutionary reconstruction of
American society” (Heale 125). Although other African-American radicals advocated
20
21
Ronald Reagan quoted in Rosenfeld
Attended by some 20000 people (Heale 137).
37
violence more overtly than the Panthers did, they nonetheless became the FBI’s
primary target under the Nixon administration (supra). In Thompson’s article on the
Kentucky Derby, the notoriety of the faction is demonstrated as the author describes the
fear roused by rumors of possible Panther attacks on the Derby and on Yale University.
The counterculture was, however, also marked by disagreement. Even the war
itself at times divided the once united protesters. A growing opposition could, for
example, be noted between civil rights activists who kept criticizing America’s foreign
policy and those who began to display more prudency when they realized that their
protest might bereave them of the support of a government who defended their
emancipatory cause as well as the war in Asia. Within the white New Left, some political
radicals wished to dissociate themselves from the hippies who had joined in the anti-war
demonstrations. Reason for the discord was the psychedelic lifestyle of the latter. In
spite of the tensions, the New Left remained relatively unified during the second half of
the sixties. Anti-authoritarianism brought left-wingers, students, African-Americans and
hippies with a craving for revolution together. In the hippies’ case, this ‘bringing
together’ can be interpreted literally since the mid-sixties were witness to a proliferation
of bohemian communities.
In the early days of the hippie movement, the core of creative innovation had
been Greenwich Village. Gradually, however, more and more young people, political
dissenters, social deviants and artists spread to that other Beat stronghold, the HaightAshbury district in San Francisco. Several developments accompanying this
geographical move form the source of the hippie stereotype still in fashion today.
Musically, rock replaced folk. Already referred to is Bob Dylan’s groundbreaking switch
38
from acoustic to electric instruments in 1965. The psychedelic music that soon became
popular appeared to be the perfect soundtrack to an era in which drugs circulated freely.
LSD was not yet illegal and was used widely in communes, at festivals and ‘happenings’
such as the Acid Tests. These were parties organized by Ken Kesey, leader of the band
of hippies known as the Merry Pranksters and author of the bestseller One Flew Over
the Cuckoo’s Nest. The gatherings always circled around the drug, popularly called
acid, and often included a performance by Jerry Garcia’s legendary rock band Grateful
Dead. Another famous countercultural manifestation was the 1967 Be-In during which
psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary coined the phrase: “Turn on, tune in, drop
out.” With this sentence he expressed the hippies’ interests in music and drugs and their
dislike for mainstream society. Leary’s words became a slogan that would ring
throughout the subsequent San Franciscan Summer of Love. In 1969, the atmosphere
of ’67 was successfully reinvigorated at the Woodstock festival, but extinguished only a
few months later. The Altamont Speedway Free Festival, though devised as a
Woodstock out West, resulted in the death of eighteen-year-old Meredith Hunter, who
got involved in a skirmish with some Hell’s Angels during the Rolling Stones’
performance. The incident brutally put a stop to hippie naivety and earned Altamont the
label of end of an era.
The hippie lifestyle outlasted the counterculture’s utopian political ideals.
Radicalization of the New Left led to fragmentation in the last years of the decade.
During the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Youth International Party or
Yippies, who politicized hippie ideology, SDS and other protest groups rioted in the
streets of Chicago as a sign of protest against the war in Vietnam that had escalated
39
during the presidency of Democrat Johnson. The protesters’ main intent was to get as
much media attention as possible. In the aftermath of the events, eight protest leaders,
among whom Tom Hayden of the SDS and Yippies co-founder Abbie Hoffman, were
charged for conspiracy and incitement. They became notoriously known as the Chicago
Eight. Surrounding the days of their trials, another radical faction called the
Weathermen22 staged their Days of Rage23. The objective was to “bring the war home,”
as the slogan devised by former SDS member John Jacobs declared (Gitlin 392). The
outbursts of violence that typified both the riots during the Democratic Convention and
the Days of Rage alienated the New Left from its original pacifist stance and isolated
radical agitators from the majority of more moderate activists.
The anti-war movement, which brought together the majority of countercultural
protest movements, would continue to exist in the late sixties. The largest peace
demonstrations took place in 1967, which was in many ways the height of the sixties,
but persisted under Nixon’s rule. This illustrates the movement’s “detachment from the
New Left” (Heale 144), which by the end of 1968 had lost its luster and largely
collapsed. What remained were thus occasional protests, but there was also a growing
tendency to resign from activism all together. The hippie movement, for one,
increasingly offered an escape from society rather than a way to change it. Greenwich
Village and the Haight-Ashbury housed great numbers of hippies living communal lives
away from street action. Woodstock symbolized a final resurgence of America’s most
famous youth movement, but afterwards, the famed counterculture was left to wither
away into marginality and the world of stereotypes.
22
23
Also known as the Weather Underground Organization.
This series of events inspired Todd Gitlin to name his book The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.
40
In spite of its fleetingness, the hippie and other protest movements had an
enduring influence on America and in fact the entire world. Many of the ideals they
endorsed have entered mainstream culture. According to Gitlin, the sixties
counterculture accomplished “the irreversible entry of blacks [and] women … into
American politics and professional life,” a lasting anti-war ethic, increased
environmental awareness, the end of the Cold War, sexual liberation, accountability for
corporations and government institutions, esteem for idealism and in general, a more
progressive climate (xi-xii). Both Gitlin and Heale agree that perhaps the greatest victory
of the sixties is the triumph of diversity, the understanding that a mosaic of identities is
more powerful than the old Anglo-Saxon melting pot. In the final chapter of this
dissertation, we will reexamine the evolutions that led to this presumed insight from one
man’s highly conspicuous viewpoint, but first he needs a proper introduction. We thus
return to a time in which the sixties tidal wave could not yet be fathomed, 1937, the birth
year of Hunter Thompson.
3. HST: The Man and the Myth
3.1. Chapter Outline
In this chapter, I will provide a biography of Hunter Thompson. The main focal
point will be the development of Gonzo journalism since the last chapter will deal
specifically with this genre. Gonzo is often seen as a reaction to the end of the sixties
and as an attempt to reinvigorate countercultural rebellion. Therefore Thompson’s work
41
from 1970 onwards, when the new style was invented, is the proper choice for an
investigation into the author’s sixties appraisal. An outline of where this genre originated
and how it developed is thus necessary. A second emphasis in this chapter will lie on
the blurring dichotomy between Thompson and his image. Numerous readers have
deduced an impression of the writer from the first lines of Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas, which often form the first encounter with the man’s work. The legendary book
begins as follows:
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert
when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something
like “I feel a bit light-headed; maybe you should drive …” And
suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full
of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and
diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an
hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming:
“Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?” (3)
Although drugs play an important role in Thompson’s life and work, the image of
Hunter Thompson the reckless, raving mad drug omnivore is incorrect. Many of the
chemically enhanced antics described in works such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
are fictional exaggerations of the author’s experiences with narcotics. Cult status,
however, brought with it the downside that these wild exploits began to dominate
Thompson’s biography. Ironically, the deliberate blurring of fact and fiction in Gonzo
journalism seems to have spread to the writer’s own life. Although it can be regarded as
testament to the force of Thompson’s writing, this bizarre twist was not completely
42
intended. A troubled mind, HST on one hand promoted his own outrageous image, but
on the other suffered from it since he knew he was becoming a caricature.
The title of the biography that forms the basis of this chapter divulges a related
duality: Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson. Author and
personal acquaintance of Thompson William McKeen implicitly acknowledges the
Gonzo journalist’s nonconformist position in contemporary journalism as well as the
cartoonish misrepresentation that followed from it. In the next few sections, I will provide
a discussion of the writer’s life and work that challenges the stereotype McKeen refers
to and considers the development of his journalism. The blurring of the distinction
between his person and persona is particularly connected to Thompson’s bond with the
sixties. In the era that commenced when Nixon was elected, odd behavior and
excessive substance abuse became Thompson’s tactic to extend the revolt of the
period gone by.
3.2. A Portrait of the Gonzo Journalist as a Young Man24
Hunter Stockton Thompson’s life began in an era that contrasts greatly with the
positivity and exuberance of the early and mid-sixties. He was born in the aftermath of
the Great Depression, on July 18, 1937, as the son of Jack Thompson and Virginia Ray
in Louisville, Kentucky. Young Hunter grew up a popular boy who did not only engage in
increasingly less innocent shenanigans with his comrades, but also read voraciously
and wrote articles for a neighborhood newspaper edited by one of his friends while they
were in fourth grade. After an early encounter with the FBI on account of a destroyed
24
Reference to James Joyce’s well-known novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
43
mailbox, Thompson slowly showed more and more signs of criminal behavior. His
juvenile delinquency reached its peak when he was arrested for robbing and threatening
to rape a girl and sentenced to sixty days in jail. The period in prison and the feat that
caused it were a source of shame to Hunter, who saw his friends graduating and
making plans, but had no prospects of going to college himself. His hopelessness
ultimately drove him to enlist in the Air Force, in spite of severe authority issues.
Although the main reason behind the unusual choice was the lack of other
options, Thompson’s time in the army proved rather valuable in retrospect. After an
attempt at working as an electronics technician, he landed a job at the base’s
newspaper, the Command Courier, where he became a sports writer. Whereas his
stories were steeped in clichés at first, they steadily exhibited more originality and
permitted Thompson to develop the hyperbolical style for which he would become
famous years later. His newly discovered love for the trade of reporter did not stop him
from flaunting traits of military disobedience. Heavy drinking and an obvious disliking for
the army’s hierarchical system resulted in an honorary discharge, exactly the ticket out
of the armed forces Thompson was waiting for.
After a short-lived career as journalist for a Pennsylvania newspaper, Thompson
decided it was time to try his luck in New York. He combined work as a copyboy for
Time magazine with classes at Columbia University. During this period in his life, the
would-be writer famously retyped The Great Gatsby to get a sense of the book’s
cadence. Thompson also formed the centre of a small party scene but after a while, he
felt “he was imprisoned by his guests and his compulsion to socialize” (McKeen 44). He
consequently quit the job at Time and left the city. In upstate New York, Thompson was
44
hired by the Middletown Daily Record after lying about his education and work
experience. In spite of his promising writing, editor Al Romm soon fired the
noncompliant new journalist by saying: “At this point in your career, your idiosyncrasies
outweigh your talents” (qtd. in McKeen 47).
During the following stretch of unemployment, Thompson worked on a novel
entitled Prince Jellyfish and on several short stories. Continuous rejection by publishers
and financial difficulties, however, impelled him to search for a new job. He had
considered applying for one in exotic Puerto Rico and eventually moved to the island,
where he was hired by Sportivo. He persuaded Sandy Conklin, a girl he had met in New
York, to come to Puerto Rico and together they traveled around the Caribbean islands.
Meanwhile, Thompson had started writing a second novel, The Rum Diary, which was
loosely based on his Puerto Rican experience, and had managed to sell several articles
to American newspapers as a free-lancer. Of the novels, neither was accepted for
publication.
It was the beginning of the sixties and Thompson’s interest in politics grew
considerably as he realized that John Kennedy might win the presidential elections.
McKeen quotes him on the subject: “That was when I first understood that the world of
Ike and Nixon was vulnerable … and that Nixon, along with all the rotting bullshit he
stood for, might conceivably be beaten” (60). With Sandy, he moved to the writer’s
colony of Big Sur, popular among Beats and members of the emerging counterculture.
The two were deeply in love, but outsiders saw the relationship as demanding too much
of Sandy, who worked several jobs and took care of the household and Thompson’s
every need so that he could devote his time to writing. His first publication in a national
45
magazine could have been the first step on the road towards success had it not been in
Rogue, a more pornographic and less literary version of Playboy. Soon, however,
Thompson was able to add publications in more respectable periodicals to his résumé
as well and he began planning his next career move.
3.3. A New Journalism
According to McKeen, Thompson “felt that South America was underreported (or
ineptly reported) in the North American press, and he likewise felt that he was the man
to rectify the situation” (68). In 1962, he would journey through Puerto Rica, Aruba,
Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay and Brazil, where he would stay until May
1963. During this adventurous period of traveling, Thompson sold free-lance articles to
various U.S. newspapers. The most important of these was the National Observer, a
weekly sister publication of the Wall Street Journal that offered the journalist a lucrative
contract. The Observer was a newly conceived periodical that had yet to develop a
particular style. As a result, Thompson was given free rein in his writing and gradually,
his voice grew stronger. Some Gonzo aspects could already be identified in the South
American articles. The main character in most of these stories, for example, is the writer
himself. Secondly, the articles usually revolve around the reporter’s attempts to cover a
story instead of around the events themselves. As McKeen argues: “getting the story
became the story” (73). The corruption the journalist encountered in the unknown
continent also inspired him to write his first pieces of political analysis, a genre in which
he would come to excel.
46
The South American installment in Thompson’s life thus proved extremely
important in his development as a writer. He nevertheless believed “Rio was the end of
the foreign correspondent’s road” and life in the United States gripped him more now he
was so far removed from it (Thompson qtd. in McKeen 81). Kennedy’s election had
made him realize that change was possible in conservative America. Times were
exciting and Thompson felt they had to be documented properly, so he decided to go
back home, lay aside fiction and concentrate on journalism.
Apart from political developments, a considerable revolution was sweeping the
field of journalism as well. Reporters like Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese and Jimmy Breslin
were producing innovative work for Esquire, The New York Times and the New York
Herald Tribune. A new genre in journalism seemed to emerge and Wolfe proclaimed
himself its theorist and official promoter. By employing techniques from fiction writing
such as scene construction, the recording of full dialogue, adoption of third-person point
of view and the depiction of everyday actions and situations, New Journalism aspired to
topple the novel and rise as the era’s leading literary mode (Wolfe 36).
As Wolfe acknowledges, one could hardly speak of a movement in 1963 (37).
When Thompson returned to the United States, however, he noticed the change that
had taken place in the journalistic domain and was encouraged to further develop the
personal style he had begun to create whilst in South America. After getting married to
Sandy and spending part of their honeymoon in Aspen, Colorado, where they would
later settle, the newlyweds moved to San Francisco. Thompson needed to be closer to
work and the blossoming counterculture. It was around this time that his son Juan was
born. He wrote an article about the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley that was
47
rejected by the Observer and for reasons that remain unclear, left his former employer.
The piece, which emphasized the significance of the student movement, would later be
published by The Nation25. Carey McWilliams, editor of this liberal journal, admired
Thompson’s work and pitched him an idea that would lead to national fame and
provided the incentive to the creation of Gonzo journalism. Thompson instantly loved
McWilliams’ proposal. He would write about the notorious motor gang that was stirring
up trouble across the country, the Hell’s Angels.
3.4. “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”26
By 1965, the Hell’s Angels had become America’s scarecrow. While little was
actually known about the organization, they were a cause of fear and the subject of
heightened police investigation. When Thompson accepted the proposal to write about
the gang led by Sonny Barger, it was immediately clear to him that he would include
their side of the story as well, something no reporter before him had endeavored. The
courage Thompson displayed in setting up a meeting surprised the Angels and earned
the journalist some respect although he looked “every inch the geek” to the aggressive
bikers (Weingarten 132). By now, he had also adopted the title of doctor, a right
supposedly granted to him by a mail-order ‘doctor of divinity’ degree. All of his life,
Thompson would play around with the epithet and enjoy being referred to as ‘the Good
25
26
The article was entitled “The Nonstudent Left.”
One of Thompson’s famous slogans; also the motto of The Great Shark Hunt.
48
Doctor,’ but in his dealings with the Angels, he put aside his jocular arrogance. Instead,
he tried to impress his interviewees by firing his gun out of the window of his San
Franciscan apartment and drinking excessively. After a while, the bikers and the
reporter got along seemingly well for, in Thompson’s own phrasing, “crazies always
recognize each other” (qtd. in McKeen 98).
After publication of the article “The Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders” in
The Nation, offers to write a book on the Angels started pouring in. Since the bikers
approved of the published piece, which was well written and refuted some charges held
against them, they did not mind Thompson hanging around some more. This time,
however, the journalist did not just tag along, but proved an important catalyst in the
story. He introduced Barger and his gang to the San Franciscan party scene, which in
the mid-sixties revolved in large part around Ken Kesey and his Pranksters. What
followed was an unstable alliance between the violent bikers and peace-loving hippies.
When Kesey invited the Angels to a party at his compound in La Honda, LSD was
distributed freely among the guests, who were unfamiliar with the drug. For Thompson,
it would be the beginning of “his love affair with acid” (McKeen 107). The low point of
the night occurred when several Angels, who were high on LSD, gang-raped a young
woman. The scene is described in Thompson’s book as well as in Tom Wolfe’s The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which charts the life of the Pranksters. Wolfe actually was
not present at the party, but borrowed Thompson’s material, including tape recordings,
to write about the infamous rape.
Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs
was published by Jim Silberman, Thompson’s editor at Random House, and became
49
somewhat of a bestseller. Its first part can be seen as an example of old-fashioned
reporting, more objective than many of the South American articles for instance, but in
the latter half, the writer himself occupies the center stage. The “crusty observer” turns
into the “in-your-face participant” (McKeen 109). This personal participation formed an
abode for the imminent dawn of Gonzo journalism. The book’s postscript, in which
Thompson describes how he got beat up by one of the Angels after interfering in a
dispute, provides the perfect example of the journalist’s interference in the events.
Furthermore, it added to the writer’s reputation as a daredevil. Barger, however, claims
that Thompson deliberately provoked a fight because he needed a shocking ending.
Whatever the truth may be, Thompson was finally on his way to fame although fortune
was still lacking. The question now was how to top riding with the Angels.
3.5. The Birth of Gonzo Journalism
Although both the series of South American articles and the Hell’s Angels book
had displayed innovative qualities, Thompson still had one foot in traditional journalism.
The work that followed his Random House publication would show how he struggled to
create his new style and especially to see it in print. In 1969, Playboy solicited
Thompson to write a profile piece on former Olympic skier Jean-Claude Killy. The retired
French athlete had sold himself to the automobile industry as a “celebrity huckster”
(McKeen 136). Instead of portraying Killy as the slick and sexy sportsman the public
was interested in, Thompson focuses on the dullness, phoniness and frustration of a
man “trapped in an image he could not tolerate” (McKeen 136). When Playboy rejected
50
the article, Warren Hinckle offered to print it in the first issue of his new magazine,
Scanlan’s Monthly. “The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy” contains all the elements of
Gonzo journalism, albeit in slightly subdued form. The writer and his attempts at
covering the events are central to the story; the factual account is at times infused with
fancy; and Thompson makes increased use of invective. The article confirmed his
rightful position among the innovating New Journalists as many characteristics of this
genre, such as scene-by-scene construction and a focus on everyday situations,
surfaced as well.
Thompson’s next major assignment would establish him as the creator of his very
own brand of journalism, although the revolutionary act of inventing a new genre was
not exactly intended. When Scanlan’s approved of the idea to cover the 1970 Kentucky
Derby, Hinckle decided that British illustrator Ralph Steadman was to accompany
Thompson. The latter regarded the resulting article, a “classic of irresponsible
journalism,” as a failure and believed it would certainly lead to unemployment
(Thompson qtd. in McKeen 149). “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved”
indeed differed from anything else written at the time. Filled with highly abusive
language and gross diatribes aimed at the whiskey gentry of Kentucky, the piece
principally ignores the race itself and instead zooms in on the aggressive crowd and the
deterioration of Thompson and Steadman into raving drunks. As the protagonist himself
admits:
Unlike most of the others in the press box, we didn’t give a hoot
in hell what was happening on the track. We had come there to
watch the real beasts perform. (Thompson, “Derby” 202)
51
On the last day of their trip, Thompson and Steadman realize that they “both look
worse than anything [Steadman has] drawn” (Thompson, “Derby” 211). Much to the
author’s surprise, the report of their “journey into the innermost circle of southern hell”
was soon called a breakthrough in contemporary journalism (Weingarten 233). Wolfe
applauded its “manic, highly adrenal first-person style” and the Céline-like fantastic
quality, while Bill Cardoso of The Boston Globe called it “totally gonzo” (qtd. in McKeen
149). Finally, the long anticipated style had a name.
The origins of the word are uncertain and its meaning contested. Some see it as a
derivation of the supposedly French Canadian ‘gonzeaux,’ which denotes a ‘shining
path27.’ Although this etymology complies with Thompson’s Faulknerian drive to reveal
the truth by mixing fact and fiction (infra), it is more likely that Cardoso used the word in
its “Boston-bar derivation, referring to the last man standing after a night of drinking”
(McKeen 150). As soon as it was applied to Thompson’s writing, ‘gonzo’ took on a set of
new meanings that linked it to chemical intoxication, brashness, importunity and
flamboyance. In general, the term’s connotation evolved in the direction of
‘nonconformist’ (Tamony 73-74). Thompson himself liked to think of Gonzo28 journalism
as reportage without editing while John Bruce-Novoa defines the style in more
rebellious terms, as “a literary Molotov cocktail,” an attempt to outrage the reader
stemming from the author’s own outrage at what has happened to the American Dream
(40).
The significance of the symbol of the American Dream in Thompson’s writing will
be expounded in the last chapter, but it is important to note that Fear and Loathing in
27
28
Postscript to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, p. 15.
When the term refers to Thompson’s writing, it is written with a capital.
52
Las Vegas was conceived as an obituary for this Dream. Two articles for Jann Wenner’s
hip new magazine Rolling Stone formed the preliminary to the legendary Vegas trip and
the Gonzo masterpiece it resulted in. One deals with Thompson’s illustrious Freak
Power campaign to become sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, and the other
investigates the death of Chicano reporter Ruben Salazar. “The Battle of Aspen”29 would
help Thompson realize that the American Dream was as much political as it was
individual and that its death owed to the many illusions of the sixties and their
debunking, while “Strange Rumblings in Aztlan” provided the occasion to invite Oscar
Zeta Acosta, later immortalized as Dr. Gonzo, to Las Vegas.
3.6. The Era of Fear and Loathing
Right after the publication of Hell’s Angels, Thompson had agreed with Jim
Silberman that he would write a book on the death of the American Dream. Over the
next few years, the promise lurked in the dark corners of Thompson’s mind and caused
him great distress since he had no idea how to begin such an epic undertaking. The
atmosphere of violence Thompson experienced during the 1968 Democratic Convention
in Chicago and the sense of doom he felt when Nixon was elected in that same year
hinted at a connection between the American Dream, the counterculture and politics,
but Thompson still was not able to put the pieces together. Only when he became
involved in local politics did he see the bigger picture. By registering the ‘freak vote,’
which consisted of normally politically apathetic misfits, hippies and heads30, Thompson
29
30
Also known as “Freak Power in the Rockies.”
Drug users.
53
managed to gather an unexpected amount of support for his political cause. Although
he lost eventually, he now realized that the American Dream lay in the possibility to
change the system and that this possibility had all but vanished by the end of the
decade. Soon the opportunity would present itself to write the book that had been
torturing him for so long, but as always in Thompson’s career, this happened
unexpectedly.
The idea for the Ruben Salazar piece had come from Oscar Zeta Acosta, a
Chicano activist, lawyer and writer whom Thompson had befriended. When the article
was almost finished, Sports Illustrated offered Thompson a chance to travel to Las
Vegas to report the Mint 400 motorcycle race. The journalist decided to bring Acosta
along in order to discuss the final details of the Salazar story. Legend has it, since so it
is told in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, that Thompson and Acosta received the
deciding call from Sports Illustrated over a pink telephone handed to them by a dwarf
waiter in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel. They immediately rented a car and
drove to Las Vegas, but once arrived, soon lost interest in the race and spent their time
in the many bars and casinos of the Neon City, gorging large amounts of alcohol and
drugs. The long weekend proved rather fruitful as it enabled Thompson to finish his
Salazar article as well as turn in a 25,000-word manuscript on the trip to Vegas.
Although he had left out his chemically enhanced adventures with Acosta and written a
semi-informed report on the race, framed in a history of Sin City and its gambling
industry, Sports Illustrated rejected the piece. It was too long and not at all what the
magazine had requested. Thompson was furious and refused to let the case rest.
To amuse himself back in Colorado, he rewrote the rejected article and
54
incorporated the antics of excess he and Acosta had indulged in. Their names were
changed to Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo, a Samoan instead of Mexican attorney, and
facts were occasionally enhanced. When Thompson presented the manuscript to his
editors at Rolling Stone, they were lyrical and urged him to continue. To extend the
narrative, the journalist and his sidekick revisited Las Vegas during the National District
Attorneys Convention on Drug Abuse. The contrast between those attending the
conference to be warned about the dangers of narcotics and the hallucinating duo could
not have been greater.
The two-part text Thompson finally handed in was a “twisted buddy saga”
(McKeen 164) starting with an epic road trip that could rival Kerouac’s in On the Road
and interwoven throughout with elegiac memories of the sixties. Drugs are abundant,
from Duke’s entrance in the hotel, when LSD twists the images of people at the bar into
copulating dinosaurs, to his drunk driving in the middle of the book and the ultimate
departure by plane, when he says goodbye to Vegas by snorting an amyl. However, the
book also contains some of the sharpest observations on the demise of the
counterculture and the rise of Richard Nixon. Both the social satire and over-the-top
inebriation will be discussed in detail in the next chapter, since they are part of
Thompson’s ambivalent vision of the sixties.
When Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the
American Dream was printed in Rolling Stone, Thompson was catapulted to nation-wide
fame and the popularity of Gonzo journalism was corroborated. Some stumbled over
Thompson’s “heightened version of reality,” but most critics heralded the distortion of
reality as a revolutionary invention (McKeen 164). The book rights were sold to Random
55
House. This did not free Thompson from the vow he had made to Silberman years
earlier. The definitive book on the death of the American Dream would never be written,
but the search for it would continue, as the investigation into America’s marrow, which
he had begun in Vegas, became an obsession that occupied him until his death.
The success of Fear and Loathing had turned Thompson into Jann Wenner’s
prize reporter. At Rolling Stone, he could now write whatever he wanted and “what
Hunter wanted was one of the things Wenner had tried to avoid: politics” (McKeen 178).
Thompson had followed the 1968 presidential campaign from up close and would not let
the opportunity pass to do so again in 1972. Together with Timothy Crouse, he would
cover the entire campaign, from the primaries to the final battle. Thompson saw George
McGovern as the only respectable Democratic candidate, but acknowledged that he
seemed to stand no chance running against the likes of Edmund Muskie, Hubert
Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy. Of all of the candidates, Thompson loathed Muskie
most. In order to explain the man’s occasional temperamental upsurges on national
television, the Gonzo journalist spread the rumor that Muskie was addicted to a
dangerous Brazilian hallucinogenic called Ibogaine. An obvious joke to Thompson, the
gossip took on a life of its own when it was printed in Rolling Stone and did not do
Muskie’s campaign any good.
When McGovern ultimately won the primary election and became the official
Democratic candidate, Thompson’s was initially ecstatic. His familiarity and friendship
with McGovern and his staff, however, had as a result that he came to expect too much
from them. Nixon’s opponent lost some of his credibility when it was revealed that his
running mate Thomas Eagleton had an unknown history of mental illness and shock
56
treatment. McGovern expended Thompson’s approval by conspiring with the old party
regulars, many of whom had been responsible for the police violence in Chicago in
1968. Although McGovern was no longer faultless in the journalist’s eyes, his defeat to
Nixon still tasted bitter:
The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern … is really one of
the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this
century who really understands (sic) what a fantastic monument to
all the best instincts of the human race this country might have
been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little
hustlers like Richard Nixon. (Thompson qtd. in McKeen 199)
Thompson saw the campaign he had covered as a testament to the impossibility
of “true political reform” (McKeen 197). Professionally, however, the period proved
productive. The Gonzo style was developed further as Thompson cultivated a way with
words that would come to typify him. Deadlines were henceforth “brutal” and editors
“savage and obscene” (McKeen 188). Furthermore, the campaign articles displayed
heightened degrees of insult. Calling Nixon a “greedy little hustler,” as in the excerpt
cited above, was not exceptional for Thompson. According to political reporter Curtis
Wilkie, his caricatures of politicians were exaggerated, but surprisingly truthful, and
McGovern’s adviser Frank Mankiewicz described Thompson’s reporting as “the most
accurate and the least factual” (qtd. in McKeen 191 & 194).
More than anything, Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail ’72 raised
Thompson’s status as a journalist. He was still a rogue reporter, but now he was read
and respected beyond the Rolling Stone audience. Paradoxically, his venture into the
57
serious world of political journalism was accompanied by the propagation of his alter
ego Raoul Duke. As interest in both Thompson the journalist and Duke the crazed
junkie increased, separating the two became harder. Before long, Thompson would start
to feel trapped in the image he helped to create.
3.7. The Freak Kingdom31
In the seventies and eighties, Thompson lived the life of a rock star. He wrote
less and partied more, developing a drug habit and engaging in numerous sexual
affairs. While the Watergate scandal infuriated him so that he had to unleash his wrath
in reportage, he only published an article or gave an occasional college lecture in order
to sustain himself financially during the remainder of the decade. His involvement in the
organization of an “all-powers conference of Democratic Party heavyweights” ended in
disappointment because no one seemed to have the key to filling the vacuum that
would be left by Nixon (McKeen 212). Furthermore, the absence of an entertaining “bad
guy” like Tricky Dick crippled Thompson’s talent for political vitriol32. The number of fans
grew steadily as new generations read the Fear and Loathing saga, but “many merely
responded to the outrageousness in his writing” (McKeen 221). The creation of the
character Uncle Duke, an irresponsible and unpredictable drug-using journalist clearly
based on Thompson, in Gary Trudeau’s comic Doonesbury worsened matters.
31
“Just another freak in the Freak Kingdom” (Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 83).
Thompson liked Nixon, in a way, or at least liked writing about him. This is why Thompson dedicated
The Great Shark Hunt to him.
32
58
Thompson felt his celebrity status had mushroomed to nightmarish proportions.
Several of the writing assignments he did accept in the seventies took him years
to finish. There was the report on a fishing tournament for Playboy; covering the
‘Rumble in the Jungle’ between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire with
Steadman; and a tribute to Acosta33, who had been missing for several months after
boarding a smugglers’ boat and was later reported dead. Thompson also traveled to
Saigon to witness the final stage of a conflict that had spanned much of his adult life.
Inexperienced as a war correspondent and unaccustomed to life-threatening danger, he
was extremely ill qualified. Although he missed the actual evacuation of the city, he
nonetheless managed to capture the mixed feelings of triumph and despair that reigned
at the front in those final days34. While the war in Vietnam ended, his family life burst at
the seams. The loss of two newborn infants over the years had traumatized Sandy and
she had taken to drinking. Once she became aware of her husband’s infidelity, it was
only a matter of time before she filed for divorce. Thompson was devastated as he saw
his only security disappear.
With the help of new girlfriend Laila Nabulsi, however, he gradually managed to
get his life back on track. In 1979, the couple moved to Key West. Although Thompson
disliked leaving his beloved Owl Farm in Woody Creek, Colorado, the change of scene
was just what he needed. His newfound sense of invigoration along with a cash
shortage inspired him to comply to the offer to publish an anthology of his Gonzo work
from the late fifties up till then. The result displayed Thompson’s knack for catchy titles
as it was called The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time. Included
33
34
The article was entitled “The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat.”
In “Dance of the Doomed.”
59
were all of his hard-to-find articles for Scanlan’s, his pieces for Rolling Stone and The
Nation, and his more recent work, some of which had not yet been published
separately. Reviewers who managed to move beyond the messy editing agreed that the
anthology demonstrated Thompson’s unique voice and fans were thrilled that new
Gonzo material was finally available.
During the next decades, the anthology would remain Thompson’s preferred
modus operandi35. Apart from the unsuccessful The Curse of Lono, which describes the
adventures of the author and Steadman in Hawaii infused with obscure references to
island folklore, he would not publish anything else. In 1988, Generation of Swine: Tales
of Shame and Degradation in the '80s appeared, a collection of his much admired
columns in the San Francisco Examiner. These essays, in which eighties politics and
culture are ruthlessly analyzed with a Gonzo eye for the absurd, show a journalist who
is back on top of his game. The drugs and obscenity for which Thompson was known
are largely absent and the columns were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished
commentary, a sign of recognition the author found highly gratifying.
Only two years later, his third anthology of collected work was published. For
Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream, the journalist
and his posse, invariably consisting of two assistants and usually an intern as well,
collected relevant articles from five decades and conceived of the death of the American
Dream as a thread throughout the book. This assembly process was, however,
interrupted by a three-month trial, in which Thompson had to defend himself against
sexual assault charges. The supposed victim was a crazed fan who had refused to
35
Each of Thompson’s anthologies (there would be four in total) was conceived as one volume of The
Gonzo Papers. Later they were published together in an anthology of anthologies.
60
leave the writer’s house. The court hearings generated a flood of media attention that
Thompson was able to use to his advantage by turning the case into an indictment of
increased police power and a defense of the Fourth Amendment. He certainly had not
lost the Gonzo penchant for theatrics over the years.
The final anthology was called Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political
Junkie. The 1994 book deals with the Bush-Clinton campaign, recollects memories of
Thompson’s illustrious run for sheriff of Pitkin County and includes letters and faxes sent
to friends and celebrities. McKeen calls it “the least substantial work he produced,” but
nevertheless regards the obituary for Richard Nixon at the end of the volume as one of
the best things Thompson ever wrote (231). In spite of popular claims that his
journalistic genius was faltering, Thompson was still able to raise hell in his vicious ontrend political reporting or produce fireworks by letting his Gonzo side out, in real life or
in print. As Peter Whitmer argues, he remained “a literary bull in the China shop of
Western civilization” (84). His fan base kept increasing and a second movie adaptation
of his work was made. After Art Linson’s failed Where the Buffalo Roam, Terry Gilliam
managed to portray the drug-fueled dynamics between Thompson and Acosta
befittingly in the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Extremely popular,
reasonably respected and occasionally feared, Thompson had become a literary icon.
The incorporation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in the esteemed Modern
Library collection was a new cause of joy to the author, who had devoured Modern
Library editions as a child. Together with the aforementioned movie adaptation, the
event also marked the start of a true Thompson revival. Thompson’s private
correspondence was published to raving reviews in The Fear and Loathing Letters, Vol.
61
1: The Proud Highway: The Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955-1967 and
Vol. 2: Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist 19681976 and he came to be regarded as one of the best writers of his generation. Assisting
him during the collecting and editing of the second volume of letters was Anita Bejmuk.
Thompson had engaged in short-lived affairs with many of his interns and assistants,
but the relationship with Anita lasted and the couple would get married in 2003.
In 2000, Thompson started an online column for ESPN called “Hey Rube.”
Although he loved returning to the domain of sports writing, his essays acted often as a
platform for his anti-Bush criticism, especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the
World Trade Center. As a political analyst, he was becoming increasingly cynical of the
American state of affairs. This cynicism did not benefit from his dwindling health.
McKeen writes the following about the last years of Thompson’s life:
There had always been that joke – the one about how he should
really be dead, that his existence was an affront to all modern
medical knowledge, that he was an anomaly, a genetic miracle. The
joke was over. (347)
Considering the extreme substance abuse and deliberate search for danger he
had partaken in for almost fifty years, Thompson’s still being alive was indeed nothing
short of a miracle. By the middle of the new decade, his age and bad health finally
began to catch up with him. With his 2003 collection of stories Kingdom of Fear:
Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child In the Final Days of the American Century,
Thompson perpetuated his image as an outlaw journalist for the last time. He gradually
began to say goodbye to his friends and family in letters or telephone messages.
62
Having vowed in his youth not to live a day past 27, he felt he was overstaying his
welcome, getting too “greedy” as he wrote in a note to Anita on February 16, 2005 (qtd.
in McKeen 351). Four days later, Hunter Stockton Thompson was found dead by his
wife in their home in Woody Creek. He had shot himself.
3.8. “The weird never die”36
After the cremation and an intimate memorial, the festivities were not over.
During his life, Thompson had been very specific about his funeral. Johnny Depp, who
had become one of the author’s closest friends while preparing for his role as Raoul
Duke in Gilliam’s movie, offered to take care of the expenses. On August 20, 2005,
Thompson’s ashes were shot out of a canon shaped like the symbol of his Freak Power
campaign, a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button. Surrounded by fireworks,
smoke and colored lights, his family, friends, colleagues and admirers bade Hunter
Thompson farewell to the sounds of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” and
Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” The ceremony formed a suitably dramatic end to the life
of America’s jester, but also a sincere final tribute to one of its great writers.
In the years following his death, Thompson’s son Juan, wife Anita and literary
executor Douglas Brinkley devised a strategy to ensure that Thompson would never
become a “dismissed figure” (McKeen 359). The plan is to bring out unpublished work
gradually. A third volume of letters is scheduled for publication this year and
Thompson’s early novel Prince Jellyfish and a movie adaptation of The Rum Diary can
also be expected to appear soon. Outside the realm of his own writing, various
36
Another one of Thompson’s slogans
63
bibliographies and documentaries have paid tribute to Thompson. Of the latter, the most
recent is Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson directed in 2008 by Alex
Gibney. Thompson’s influence in the modern media is also considerable as journalists
increasingly occupy center stage in reportage.
We may presume that Thompson also would have been pleased to know that he
has become the subject of academic debate. There is as yet a limited amount of
research on Gonzo journalism, but this may be expected to increase. Furthermore, use
of the term “gonzo” and the phrase “fear and loathing” reach far beyond discussions of
Thompson writing. In academia, “gonzo” refers to a do-it-yourself mentality. This
denotation obviously stems from Thompson’s participatory journalistic attitude. An
illustration hereof is found in the work of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. In his book
Violence, Žižek discusses the rise of what has been called “gonzo pornography,” a trend
in which all narrative is omitted and the participants in the sexual act film the events as
well. The viewer is thus placed in the middle of the scene. The phrase “fear and
loathing,” on the other hand, is used by Fredric Jameson in his article “Fear and
Loathing in Globalization” to refer to cyberpunk37 author William Gibson’s portrayal of
the world in his novel Pattern Recognition. Whereas Thompson regarded earlyseventies Las Vegas with fear and loathing because the city stood as a metaphor for the
corruption of the American Dream, Gibson depicts the contemporary corporate climate
equally ruthlessly because it breeds obsession and alienation. Jameson describes
Gibson’s scene setting as “Hunter-Thompsonian global tourism” (“Fear”).
Allusion to “gonzo” and “fear and loathing” is, however, not restricted to the
37
A science-fiction genre combining technology and marginal characters. The latter allows for comparison
to Thompson’s writing, in which the protagonists are often described as losers and misfits.
64
academic world. The words are heard in popular usage as well. According to Tom
Wolfe, Thompson’s exceptional literary status lay in its democratic nature. Philip Roth,
John Updike and Norman Mailer are perhaps better-known twentieth-century American
writers, “but outside of the ‘litt-tree’ world, these are non-people, whereas Hunter
Thompson is all over the place” (qtd. in McKeen 361).
Thompson was a phenomenon, a literary celebrity. Those who read him
appreciated him for his humor and unparalleled political commentary, those who did not
enjoyed his anti-authoritarian rebellion and drug-addled adventures. As his friend Tim
Ferris prophesied after his death, “Hunter will become to journalism what Che was to
revolution” (qtd. in Hinckle 26). Thompson did, as he put the grit back in journalism. In
spite of his occasional seriousness, his ambition to become a great writer and the
substantial influence he had in journalism and fiction, he remains a rebel to the masses
and Gonzo will always have that revolutionary ring.
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4. Hunter S. Thompson and the 1960s
4.1. Chapter Outline
In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Thompson offers the reader a crazy road trip,
a nightmarish vision of the Neon City, a buddy saga filled with absurd humor, and a
metaphoric tale that investigates the end of the sixties. This last point is lost on many
readers, but provided the incentive for the story’s publication. It is also the starting point
for my study of the sixties in Thompson’s work. Before turning to his writing, it is
essential to ascertain how the author defines the decade. This preliminary step implies
an examination of the concept of periodization, one that will facilitate typifying
Thompson’s sense of history and ambivalent attitude. Then I will discuss the typical
rhetoric the Gonzo journalist employs in Fear and Loathing to realize his view. Finally, I
will attempt to expose the same rhetorical measures in other texts as well in order to
assess whether the duality is a constant in the Gonzo portrayal of the sixties.
The texts I have chosen are all representative of a particular period in
Thompson’s development as a writer. The view of the sixties presented in the respective
works may thus evolve along with the author’s own person and personae. The historical
and biographical outlines divulged in the two previous chapters underlie the following
discussion of my research question. Both sixties politics and the counterculture are
dominant topics in Thompson’s work and knowledge about his life and career is needed
to understand the conditions under which he wrote and the evolution his appraisal of the
sixties may undergo. Furthermore, the socio-political conditions of the time and the
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genre of Gonzo journalism can be said to have inspired the writer’s ambivalent view.
They respectively instigate or reflect a myriad of emotions in Thompson’s work, most
importantly fear and loathing.
4.2. Periodizing the Sixties38
4.2.1. Demarcating a decade
An inquiry into Thompson’s characterization of the sixties requires a discussion of
periodization. One must ask oneself whether it is possible to delineate a decade and
what kind of insights may be attained by this technique. The seeming self-evidence of
the claim that the sixties are a period of time in the twentieth century generates concord
among scholars. This agreement does not mean, however, that all of them endeavor to
periodize the era or even deem periodization possible or useful in any way. How long
academics that do periodize believe the time frame lasted and what they think it
encompassed further depends on their personal backgrounds and professional
paradigms. In what follows, I will discuss various attempts to delineate the sixties,
including Thompson’s, and gradually unfold the unexpected difficulties that arise when
demarcating a decade.
38
“Periodizing the 60s” is an article by Fredric Jameson that appeared in The 60s Without Apology, an
anthology of sixties criticism.
67
4.2.2. To periodize or not to periodize
The first scholar to which to refer vis-à-vis periodization is the author of this
subchapter’s title phrase, Fredric Jameson. As one of the editors of The 60s Without
Apology, a seminal work on the sixties published in the eighties, he contributed to the
debate over the significance of the decade and he also wrote an insightful article that is
published it in this particular volume. Under the title “Periodizing the 60s,” the cultural
philosopher and political theorist turns his attention to the dynamics of history and
provides us with an interesting definition and justification of periodization.
Objectively, periodization is defined as the division of a portion of time into
periods. Jameson’s use of the word, however, is more specific as it stems from a
Marxist understanding of history. In the first paragraph of his article, he explicates his
stance:
The following sketch starts from the position that History is necessity, that
the 60s had to happen the way it [sic] did, and that its opportunities and
failures were inextricably intertwined, marked by the objective constraints
and openings of a determinate historical situation, of which I thus wish to
offer a tentative and provisional model. (“Periodizing” 178)
To Jameson, periodization can thus be circumscribed not only as the delineation
of a definite period in time, but also as the depiction of a “determinate historical
situation.” Surprisingly, this definition allows for an assured range of variety. Jameson
discusses the seemingly paradoxical combination of diversity and uniformity in a
nuanced plea for periodization:
68
Now, this is not the place for a theoretical justification of periodization in
the writing of history, but to those who think that cultural periodization
implies some massive kinship and homogeneity or identity within a given
period, it may quickly be replied that it is surely only against a certain
conception of what is historically dominant or hegemonic that the full value
of the exceptional … can be assessed. Here, in any case, the “period” in
question is understood not as some omnipresent and uniform way of
thinking and acting, but rather as the sharing of a common objective
situation, to which a whole range of varied responses and creative
innovations is then possible, but always within the situations structural
limits. (178)
After this justification of periodization, Jameson starts paying heed to its flaws as
well by mentioning a critique of the academic custom, namely that “the possibilities of
diachrony” may be questioned (179). By this, he means that one may have reservations
about the academic value of dividing time into segments. Jameson adds another point
of criticism when he says that “synchrony and in particular … the relationship to be
established between the various ‘levels’ of historical change singled out for attention”
neither is unproblematic (idem). In short, periodization brings with it profound issues that
arise from the conflict between various time conceptions, whether successive or
simultaneous.
69
4.2.3. New beginnings and ends
In spite of the difficulties that may arise when one attempts to periodize the
sixties, or any other decade for that matter, many scholars resort to the technique. This
does not entail that periodization is treated naively in academic discourse. Although
scholars occasionally forget to mention it explicitly in their methodology, possible
problems are as a rule considered. A practice that demonstrates both the problematic
nature of periodizing and a way to approach it is the use of a timeline. As periodizations
on display, timelines or chronologies, which form popular additions to many a reference
work on the sixties, allow us to study how the decade is variously demarcated. A
comparison of the events included and excluded illustrates the potential for equivocation
inherent in attempts to define an era and the necessity of motivating one’s choices.
The first reference work to be examined is The 60s Without Apology, the
collection of essays that contains Fredric Jameson’s aforementioned article, edited by
him, Sohnya Sayres, Anders Stephanson and Stanley Aronowitz. Jameson,
Stephanson and Cornel West compiled the chronology favored in this anthology. Their
timeline effectively tackles the problem of synchronous and diachronous inclusion. The
title “Very Partial Chronology” acknowledges the subjectivity of periodization and a
quote from Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan emphasizes the relativity of all historical
claims:
The million-year period to which the burned junk from the museums and
archives related would be summed up in the history books in one
sentence: … Following the death of Jesus Christ there was a period of
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readjustment that lasted for approximately one million years. (“Very Partial
Chronology” 210)
The editors of The 60s Without Apology further emphasize the idiosyncrasy of
periodizations by not adhering to a restrictive ten-year conception of a decade. They
commence their timeline in 1957, with the Battle of Algiers, a guerrilla campaign against
the French colonizers; the independence of Ghana, which had been known as Gold
Coast under British rule and was the first sub-Saharan African nation to achieve
sovereignty; and the launching of the Sputnik, the first human-made object to orbit the
Earth. The remainder of the chronology lists political events alongside countercultural
manifestations and influential music, films and literature. In 1976, finally, the sixties are
said to end as the world is witness to the Soweto Rebellion, a series of uprisings against
the South African apartheid regime; the first victory of the Partie Quebecois in the
Canadian provincial elections; and the death of Chinese communist leader Mao
Zedong. The periodization expressed here is similar to the one bolstered in Jameson’s
article. In both cases, the scope of the sixties is seen as wide. In “Periodizing the 60s,” a
discussion of politics includes Third World revolutions and Maoism, and contemporary
thought is framed in an extensive history of philosophy. The timeline referred to above
likewise widens the range of the sixties temporally and geographically.
Alexander Bloom presents a rather different timeline in Long Time Gone: Sixties
America Then and Now. This anthology of essays was published in 2001 as part of the
“Viewpoints on American Culture” series and discusses the legacy of the sixties. The
appended chronology starts rather predictably in 1960 and registers events most of
which are indicated in The 60s Without Apology as well. For the opening year, the
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election of Kennedy is included together with the first sit-ins and the foundation of the
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the SDS. The era’s outer
limit is drawn in 1975, one year before the sixties would end according to the previously
discussed anthology. Bloom’s periodization, however, arguably makes more sense
since ’75 was marked by the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam after the
defeat of the South Vietnamese government. The year thus bore witness to the
disbandment of one of the counterculture’s primary concerns and unifying forces.
The difference between Bloom’s chronology and the time sequence presented by
Jameson and his fellow compilers does not only lie in its temporal limits, though. Its
scope is different as well. Bloom mostly addresses North American issues whereas
Jameson, Stephanson and West also examine what happened in the rest of the world
during the sixties. Since we have adopted Jameson’s definition of periodization,
expressed in “Periodizing the 60s” as the demarcation of a definite period in time and
the discussion of the respective historical situation, it is fair to say that our two
temporally and spatially distinct timelines are the expression of two different
periodizations. This means that the two chronologies communicate a varied conception
of what constitutes the decade. To Jameson and his colleagues, the sixties were a
global phenomenon with far-reaching and long-lasting consequences. Bloom, on the
contrary, locates the core changes that took place in this period on the American
continent and curbs the reach of their influence in time and space.
Although the anthologies that incorporate a chronology and that I could thus
discuss in order to test the reliability of periodizations are numerous, I will only examine
one more. The Portable Sixties Reader is a collection of essays, poetry and fiction
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edited by Ann Charters, who also edited The Portable Beat Reader and The Portable
Jack Kerouac for the “Penguin Classics” series and has published various other works
on the Beat Generation and the counterculture that succeeded it. Her beliefs
considering periodization can be compared to Jameson’s since she regards the sixties
as “a self-contained period” within which various forces were active (Arthur Marwick qtd.
in Charters, Reader xiii). Charters’s timeline spans the traditional ten-year period of the
sixties, plus some later developments under the heading “1970 and beyond.” Although
the number of years she discusses is thus smaller than that treated in The 60s Without
Apology or Long Time Gone, her chronology is perhaps more extensive as each time,
she provides a comprehensive general section on the annual historical evolutions, but
also two or three smaller paragraphs on deaths of famous and influential figures, art and
optionally new technology.
For the opening year, 1960, Civil Rights actions, sit-ins and student protests are
included, events which are incorporated in both aforementioned chronologies as well.
Furthermore, Charters, in line with the international interests of Jameson, Stephanson
and West, devotes attention to American-Cuban relations and the independence of the
Republic of the Congo under Patrice Lumumba. There are, however, a number of
supplemental issues she addresses that are not mentioned by the other editors, for
example, the establishment of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries, and the development of new weaponry. Among the phenomena listed under
“1970 and beyond” are the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison of
drug overdoses, the clearing of Vietnam and the first celebration of Earth Day. By
looking at these instances and the distinction Charters makes between a general
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overview of each year and a summary of deaths, publications and technologies, one
notices that she chooses to widen the range of topics important to a history of the
sixties. More specifically, she adds economic, artistic, ecological and technological
matters to a program otherwise dominated by the political and socio-cultural. Thus it
becomes clear that the decade known as the sixties can be filled out in varying ways
according to the author’s own interests, but that certain domains are always included.
Fields on which all scholars agree that they are crucial to an understanding of the sixties
are politics and the history of the counterculture, the topics that I have focused on in the
chapter “The Sixties: A Time of Revolution.”
4.2.4. Fear and loathing in periodization
Politics and the counterculture are also crucial to Thompson’s understanding of
the sixties. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he provides a very subjective
periodization of the decade. Thompson’s biography has taught us that he started to
believe in the possibility of political change in the United States as early as 1960, when
Kennedy declared his intent to run for president. Of even more significance proved the
year in which he moved to San Francisco and became aware of the Free Speech
Movement at Berkeley University. To Thompson, the rise of the student movement was
like the onset of a great storm that would uproot American society: “I saw it coming.
There was a great rumbling – you could feel it everywhere. It was wild.” (Thompson qtd.
in McKeen 92). However, he would only be able to grasp the full extent of the power of
activism by engaging in local politics himself. When he did so, the sixties were already
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over. It was 1970 and the failure of Freak Power had proven a testament to the missed
opportunities of the previous decade.
If an understanding of the era’s radical potential occurred after the decade had
ended, then the essence of the sixties must have lain outside the sphere of politics to
Thompson. An excerpt from Fear and Loathing may provide the missing piece of the
puzzle. After a description of his encounter with drug authority Timothy Leary,
Thompson takes us to the Fillmore Auditorium in the mid-sixties where he ingested LSD
for the first time. The scene is followed by commentary from the narrator:
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later?
Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era – the kind of peak that
never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special
time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in
the long run … but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories
can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that
corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant … (66-67)
Thompson traces the core of the sixties back to that other topic discussed in
chapter two, the counterculture. The middle sixties in San Francisco were the glory days
of the hippie movement and it is precisely this golden era that Thompson singles out as
“a very special time and place.” His ambivalent attitude towards the sixties is already
apparent in the doubt about the decade’s significance. The periodization implicit in the
retrospective fragment, and noticeable throughout Fear and Loathing, is more restrictive
than those discussed above and also much more personal as Thompson focuses on his
own experiences in a short timeframe and specific locality. This does not mean that the
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writer avoids assessments about the rest of the decade and country, but when he
ventures into these domains, he mainly generalizes on the basis of his own past. The
insistence on participation included in the Gonzo manifesto thus seems to be reflected
in Thompson’s periodization.
The limited scope differentiates the periodization in Fear and Loathing from those
devised by Jameson, Stephanson and West; Bloom; and Charters. To Thompson, the
sixties did not begin in 1960, or even in 1957, but in 1964, when he moved to California
and became involved in the emerging counterculture. The Gonzo journalist accordingly
associates the end of the decade with the decline of anti-mainstream forces. In the
passage that is cited in the introduction to this dissertation (Fear and Loathing 22-23),
he lists the countercultural icons that bit the dust of the seventies. Thompson’s sixties
ended when his heroes were imprisoned, living reclusively, murdered or defeated. Leary
fled to Algeria after his escape from prison in 1970, but was subsequently held hostage
there by Black Panther Party member Eldridge Cleaver, who objected to Leary’s
promotion of drug use. Bob Dylan was touring less and the quality of his recordings
varied greatly. LSD cook and Grateful Dead soundman Owsley Stanley lived an ascetic
life on the artificial island before the coast of Los Angeles. Robert Kennedy had been
assassinated in 1968, in succession of his brother, and finally, Muhammad Ali went
down in “The Fight of the Century,” his first fight after losing his boxing license over
refusal to enlist in the Vietnam War, to Joe Frazier, in 1971. All of these people
represented change, hope or rebellion and all of them had been subdued by the closing
of the decade. Their subjugation is a source of regret for Thompson, who remembers
their glory, but the thought of their weakness and failure also incites contempt. The
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duality is duly distilled in the title of the book: Fear and Loathing. Thompson is able to
express such a layered opinion because he creates distance by adopting a semihistorical approach. He writes about the sixties in retrospect, as if they are a remote
past:
That was some other era, burned out and long gone from the brutish
realities of this foul year of Our Lord, 1971. (Fear and Loathing 23)
The attempt at periodization is thus straightforward. The sixties are characterized
as a particular “corner of time and the world” (Fear and Loathing 67), distant from the
present, with a more or less set beginning and end, lasting approximately from 1964 to
1971. Synchronously, the period includes the rise of student protest and the civil rights
movement, the San Francisco Acid Wave, anti-war action, the Summer of Love,
Woodstock and a general belief in political reform that was gradually stifled when
Johnson began to favor Vietnam over his Great Society. Like Jameson, Thompson
seemingly believes in the existence of a determinate historical situation within which
heterogeneity can be expressed. His periodization is more restricted than Bloom’s and
more personal than Charters’s. The focus on the counterculture is idiosyncratic and yet
highly informative. Although Thompson says himself that “no mix of words” can equal
the experience of having been there in San Francisco in the mid-sixties, Fear and
Loathing nonetheless comes close to capturing the spirit of the time, in all its splendor
and shortcomings.
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4.2.5. The 60s periodized
A study of chronologies of the sixties has proven a practical approach to
comparing periodizations of the era. By contrasting three anthologies and their
respective timelines with one another and with Thompson’s periodization, two of the
claims touched upon by Jameson in “Periodizing the 60s” are corroborated. First of all,
the problematic nature of periodizations appears to have been verified. The compiler of
a chronology, and by extension any writer who attempts to periodize, has to make
choices regarding the diachronous demarcation of the time frame and the synchronous
inclusion of events. A periodization is thus always subjective and dependent on the aim
of the larger work in which it is integrated. Thompson’s turns this problem into his
strength by adopting the extremely personal stance the participatory Gonzo genre
requires.
Secondly, the usefulness of periodizing has been confirmed. Periodizations
ostensibly stimulate debate because they offer conflicting perspectives on an era.
However, they also demonstrate that it is possible to agree on the historical relevance
and impact of certain events and thus help establish a shared view of history, which
incorporates the incidence of singular disagreements as a constitutive feature.
Thompson’s appraisal of the sixties can be framed in larger cultural criticism as well, but
even so the personal nature of his account and the uniqueness of his voice stand out.
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4.3. The Sixties in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: The Wave
In this subchapter, I will study the ambivalence in Thompson’s view of the sixties,
as expressed in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. As a journalist, Thompson employed
various techniques to shape his prose. Typical for Gonzo journalism are a subjective
approach, inclusion of the author in the events described, stream-of-consciousness,
narrative digressions, “suspended coherence,” hyperbole, and “the juxtaposition of
disparate levels of diction” (Bruce-Novoa 41-42). These stylistic practices stem from the
conception that Gonzo should be “a camera-eye technique of reporting in which the
writer's notes are published supposedly without editing” (Bruce-Novoa 41). Thompson
wishes to offer his perspective on the world, rather than trying to convey an objective
reality. As a reader, one has to accept that this perspective may be distorted. In fact, the
distortion is the core of Thompson’s writing. His credo, derived from William Faulkner, is
that “the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism” (Thompson, Great
Shark Hunt qtd. in Bruce-Novoa 41).
Subjectivity is key to Thompson’s appraisal of the sixties, as has already been
argued while discussing his concept of periodization. To sculpt his personal view,
however, Thompson also resorts to classic American rhetoric. In this way, he inscribes
himself in a longstanding tradition of historical evaluation, but at the same time alters its
conventions. I will investigate two instances of transformed rhetoric, the theme of the
American Dream and the genre of the American Jeremiad. Both are crucial elements in
Thompson’s depiction of the sixties, constitutive of the ambivalent attitude he espouses.
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4.3.1. The corruption of the American Dream
As has been mentioned before, a central theme in Fear and Loathing is the
American Dream. This Dream can be regarded as the national philosophy of the United
States, although many Americans have expressed a loss of faith in it in recent years.
The fundamental idea, originating from the equality of all mankind formulated in the
Declaration of Independence, is that each person may rise to his or her full potential,
without being hindered on the basis of class, race, ethnicity, religion of sex. In The Epic
of America, published in 1931, James Truslow Adams writes about “that American
dream (sic) of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank” (qtd. in
Cullen 4). Although we cannot ascertain that Adams coined the term, he was the first to
write about it extensively. In the course of the twentieth century, the concept has been
largely reformulated in capitalist terms. Jim Cullen stresses the contemporary
connection to affluence, but points out other examples as well:
Sometimes [the American Dream] is defined in terms of money – in the
contemporary United States, one could almost believe this is the only
definition – but there are others. Religious transformation, political reform,
educational attainment, sexual expression: the list is endless. (7)
A definition of the Dream as the ability to rise “from rags to riches” was already
prevalent in nineteenth-century America. The stories of novelist Horatio Alger, the first of
which, Ragged Dick, was published in 1867, depicted poor boys who managed to
overcome all adversity and rise to wealth and prominence through hard work. Alger’s
popularity hailed from a general belief in the possibility of upward mobility. Another
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nineteenth-century writer, Henry David Thoreau, also connected the Dream with mobility
as he identified it as one’s capacity to “advance confidently in the direction of one’s
dreams to live out an imagined life” (paraphrased in Cullen 10).
Of the varieties of the American Dream included in Cullen’s book, only the dream
of rising from rags to riches seems explicitly present in Fear and Loathing at first.
Thompson fashions Raoul Duke as a “Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas”
(Fear and Loathing 12). Together with his attorney Dr. Gonzo, Duke will attempt to find
the American Dream while covering the Mint 400 race or visiting the numerous bars and
casinos. His attitude is deliriously positive:
Our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and
true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to
the fantastic possibilities of life in this country. (Fear and Loathing 18)
Soon, however, Duke’s confidence in the existence of the American Dream
begins to waver and he begins to feel contempt for those who attempt to attain it. The
term has changed into an empty sound. Vegas is filled with high rollers and big winners,
but somehow these people appear to represent the corruption of the Dream rather than
personifications of it. He describes the gamblers as people “still humping the American
Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last-minute pre-dawn
chaos of a stale Vegas casino” (Thompson, Fear and Loathing 57). Thompson’s
modern-day interpretation of the Horatio Alger myth results in a cynical reflection on
early-seventies America. His protagonist finds that the Dream has been corrupted since
it is solely connected to greedy possession and depraved egotism.
During his stay Vegas, Duke gloats in the depravity and tests the limits of Sin
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City’s hospitality. He amasses a huge debt in his hotel, flees, and checks into another
hotel, after trading in his hired red convertible for a white one. He attends the National
District Attorneys’ Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, thinking: “if the Pigs
[are] gathering in Vegas for a top-level Drug Conference, … the drug culture should be
represented” (Thompson, Fear and Loathing 110). When Duke is ready to leave, he has
“abused every rule Vegas lived by – burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying
the help” (173). The Dream he has ultimately found is an exaggerated corruption of the
one he was looking for: the manager of the Circus-Circus casino always dreamed of
joining the circus a little boy; “now the bastard has his own circus, and a license to steal,
too” (191). The new American Dream is individual and arbitrary. While looking for it,
Duke has become a “monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger,” generally pessimistic
about the state of his country, only hopeful when he is on drugs (204).
The American Dream of individual upward mobility, whether the semi-admirable
original described by Alger or its corrupted counterpart, was not the one Duke wanted to
find. A second interpretation of the Dream that stimulated his trip means more to him.
According to Bruce-Novoa, this other variety is linked to the sixties:
Between 1962, when [Thompson] began to publish, and the first Gonzo
pieces in 1970, came the rise and collapse of the sixties coalitions. For a time
there was the slim hope that somehow the old liberals and the young rebels
might work out an answer for America. The coalitions of individualism and
communal spirit, of Third-world solidarity and the survival of particular ethnic
groups, of "lower/working class biker/dropout types and the upper/middle,
Berkeley student activists," (F&LLV, p. 179), these were the American
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Dreams of the sixties that had been dashed by 1970. (39-40)
This second American Dream is connected to Thompson’s belief in sixties ideals.
It is the desire that society will reach a utopian condition through social and political
change, by the combined efforts of the counterculture and the government, earlier
described by Sally Banes as “the American Dream of freedom, equality, and
abundance” or the “Pax Americana” (3). The hope of achieving such a state had been
shattered by the end of the sixties39, but with Fear and Loathing, Thompson wants to
investigate whether there is any seed of optimism left among the ruins. Secretly
yearning to find some remnants of the Dream, his alter ego Duke is quickly
disappointed. The book abounds in proof of the dissolution of the counterculture and the
power of the Conservative Right, often in the form of news fragments, for example
about severe anti-drug measures and the ensuing war in Vietnam.
Thompson’s investigation into the American Dream causes loathing for the
present, in which the Dream is no longer attainable. However, the distance the journalist
creates between himself and the sixties (supra) allows him to assess this past decade
critically as well. The cause for the corruption of the American Dream is not just found in
the rise of Nixon’s silent majority, but also in the inadequacies of the counterculture
itself. In a passage referred to in the quote from Bruce-Novoa, Thompson crudely lists
the shortcomings of the hippie movement. Timothy Leary’s appeal for consciousness
expansion through LSD use is said to have disconnected him and his followers from a
reality with which they could no longer cope – Leary’s commune is slanderously
depicted as a group of “pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy
Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit” (178); belief in some higher principle,
39
Banes speaks of the erosion of the ‘Pax Americana.’
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whether God, Buddha or LSD, crippled a generation of activists, who moved their
struggle to the spiritual realm and left the real world to wither away; and the Hell’s
Angels caused “an historic schism in the then Rising Tide of the Youth Movement of the
Sixties” by charging the front ranks of an anti-war demonstration (179). This final
incident was a sign for the imminent demise of the counterculture:
It was the first open break between the Greasers and the Longhairs, and the
importance of the break can be read in the history of SDS, which eventually
destroyed itself … Nobody involved in that scene, at the time, could possibly
have foreseen the Implications of the Ginsberg/Kesey failure to persuade the
Hell’s Angels to join forces with the radical Left from Berkeley. The final split
came at Altamont … [but] the orgy of violence at Altamont merely dramatized
the problem. (179-180)
Thompson’s search for the American Dream in Fear and Loathing leads him first to
an expression of contempt for Nixon’s America, but then to a critical examination of the
past. His initial aloofness makes way for the fear and loathing he feels when he realizes
that the sixties are over and that the wonderful counterculture is to blame for its own
demise. Others have expressed a similar view regarding the failure of the
counterculture. Barry Melton saw “what began as unbridled idealism being swallowed
up by an uncontrolled hedonism in just a few short years” (156) and M.J. Heale talks
about radicalization leading to fragmentation among the New Left. Thompson’s
originality lies in his use of the symbol of the American Dream and its corruption to
express both the possibilities of the sixties and the decade’s missed opportunities. The
image, borrowed from traditional rhetoric and transformed into a symbol suiting
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Thompson’s aims, is thus crucial in his ambivalent retrospect. Moreover, it forms an
indispensible aspect of Gonzo journalism. In Bruce-Novoa’s phrasing: “When
Thompson is forced to the extreme of Gonzo, it is a desperate effort to achieve the
American Dream on his own ground, since it has failed everywhere else” (43).
4.3.2. A transformation of the American Jeremiad
A second example of conventional American rhetoric converted in Fear and
Loathing to mirror Thompson’s ambivalent attitude is the genre of the American
Jeremiad. According to Sacvan Bercovitch, the Jeremiad, a specific sort of religious
lamentation, became ‘American’ when the first generation of colonizers in New England
changed its purpose. In Europe, the genre was used predominantly to stress the
superior morality of the past and demand increased piousness in the present. In the
phrasing of Frank Shuffelton, who reviews Bercovitch’s The American Jeremiad, the
New England Puritans “turned threat into celebration” (233). They referred to the glory
of the past as a moral example, not to intimidate people into stricter abidance of
religious rule. The intent was “to discover a source of strength in crisis” (Shuffelton 233).
While the American Jeremiad thus seems more positive about the present than its
European counterpart, Bercovitch nevertheless emphasizes that there is an underlying
sense of anxiety and even despair (xiv). Besides being a reflection of theological
concerns, the Jeremiad also functioned as a mode to express political criticism. In a
way that would become typical for the United States, it linked “social criticism to spiritual
renewal, public to private identity” and like the American Dream, it has thus “played a
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major role in fashioning the myth of America” (Bercovitch xi).
When Thompson bewails the demise of the sixties and spits bile at the newly
emerged society, he seems to adhere to a conventional usage of the American
Jeremiad. The only difference is that he does not see any silver lining. Cynicism
dominates his worldview. His former hopefulness only returns when he is inebriated.
Drug use is Duke and Gonzo’s strategy to return to the sixties, or even better, to extend
the decade’s positivism into the new era. Furthermore, in a world where hallucinogens
are no longer stylish, tripping on LSD is an act of faith, a feat of rebellion against a
society in which Duke no longer feels at home:
Most volume dealers no longer even handle quality acid or mescaline
except as a favor to special customers: Mainly jaded, over-thirty drug
dilettantes – like me, and my attorney … “Consciousness expansion”
went out with LBJ … and it is worth noting, historically, that downers came
in with Nixon. (201-202)
When the effects of drugs begin to wane, Duke’s cynicism returns and prompts
these contemplations. His jeremiads are often aimed at the contemporary government
and authorities. Nixon and his vice-president Spiro Agnew appear as atavistic crooks
while the police are undiplomatically portrayed as belligerent and retarded. Such
political criticism combined with a secularized veneration of the past illustrates that the
Jeremiad is still a vital genre in the twentieth century.
The seemingly increased pessimism may, however, not be the only change the
American Jeremiad has undergone. Thompson’s gradual progression in his
investigation of the American Dream leads to a critique of the past as well as of the
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present, as has already been explained in the previous section. Finding fault with the
sixties may even be the source of Duke’s desperation, since nothing is worse than
realizing that you helped destroy the thing you loved most. In one of the fragments
about Leary’s hail-seeking in LSD, the protagonist notes that “their loss and failure [of
Leary and co.] is ours, too” (178). The most famous passage from Fear and Loathing
looks back on the sixties with a pensiveness that can only have been inspired by such
disenchantment:
You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense
that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning …
And that, I think, was the handle – that sense of inevitable victory over the
forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need
that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting – on
our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a
high and beautiful wave …
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las
Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eye you can almost see
the high-water mark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled
back. (68)
In Fear and Loathing, the genre of the Jeremiad is transformed to reflect a critical
view of present and past. Its encouragement of a dual appraisal of the sixties links it to
the symbol of the American Dream, which inspired contempt for the present as well as a
reexamination of times gone by. By employing this technique and imagery, Thompson
joins in a tradition of historical evaluation. The innovations he adds, however, allow him
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to question the myth of America on which a large part of that tradition is based. He was
among the first journalists to stress the importance of reassessing the sixties and does
so in inimitable fashion. His retrospect filled with fear and loathing on the one hand
results in controversially bold statements, but on the other generates some of the most
engaging insights into the sixties and its counterculture the early seventies have
produced.
4.4. The Sixties in Gonzo Journalism
The sixties are not only an important part of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Thompson wrote about the significance of the decade long before and after he fathered
the drug epic for which he is best known. In the mid-sixties, he charted the Free Speech
Movement, the hippie invasion in the Haight-Ashbury40 and the unstable alliance
between the Hell’s Angels and hippies. As years went by, he registered the growing
tensions that would lead to the collapse of the New Left and suspiciously kept an eye on
the rising power of Richard Nixon. The American Dream had been on his mind since the
agreement with Silberman to produce a book about it, but what the death of this ideal
entailed was only gradually revealed.
Thompson’s engagement with this theme and the decade for which it stands did
not culminate in Fear and Loathing. The book rather provided the inception of an
ongoing concern with the sixties and, although there would be ups and downs, the
onset of a fruitful career. During the seventies, the journalist seemed to slacken, but the
40
In “The ‘Hashbury’ is the Capital of the Hippies.”
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few articles he did turn out abound with retrospection. Whether on the campaign trail, in
Saigon or in a tribute to Acosta or Ali41, the sixties are an inseparable part of
Thompson’s present. Later articles for the San Francisco Examiner likewise turn to the
past to explore, or often deplore, contemporary society. In what follows, I will scrutinize
Thompson’s appraisal of the sixties in three Gonzo articles to discover whether
ambivalent views are present throughout the journalist’s oeuvre. I will once again do so
by discussing the theme of the American Dream and the genre of the Jeremiad. The
articles are “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” (1970), “Fear and
Loathing in the Bunker” (1974), and “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and
Roll” (1989). “The Kentucky Derby” is the earliest Gonzo piece, the second article
exemplifies the sharp political observation Thompson still occasionally produced during
the seventies and the third is a column for the Examiner illustrative of his later writing.
All relate to the end of the sixties and the death of the American Dream and together
they evoke a sense of development in Thompson’s ambivalence.
4.4.1. “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved”
In 1970, Thompson visited the Kentucky Derby with Ralph Steadman, wrote an
article about it that disregards every rule ever devised in the field of journalism and
became founder of his own literary genre. Stylistically, “The Kentucky Derby is
Decadent and Depraved” thus marked a new era in Thompson’s career. Since form and
41
In “Last Tango in Vegas: Fear and Loathing in the Near Room” and “Last Tango in Vegas: Fear and
Loathing in the Far Room,” Thompson interviews Ali and discusses his career.
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content are inextricably linked in Gonzo42, themes that would come to constitute the
genre may be present as well. According to Bruce-Novoa, “Thompson developed the
Gonzo style at the beginning of the 1970s as a response to the fear and loathing he felt
for what was happening to the American Dream” (39). If the corruption of the Dream is
indeed the starting point for Thompson’s new style, then this symbol must already be
present in the earliest Gonzo article, along with the ambivalence it generates.
Oddly, the American Dream is not mentioned once in the entire piece. BruceNovoa’s point about the pervasiveness of the symbolism is, however, easily understood.
First of all, the financial interpretation of the Dream, which incited Duke’s scorn in Fear
and Loathing, can be observed here too. As a major betting event, the race inspires
hope of Horatio Algerian twists of fate. Of course, the betting only makes the rich richer
and the poor poorer. Furthermore, the winner of the Derby is a ridiculously wealthy man
“who said he had just flown into Louisville that morning from Nepal, where he’d ‘bagged
a record tiger’” (Thompson, “Derby” 209). Secondly, the societal version of the
American Dream is present as well, but it remains implicit. Unlike in Fear and Loathing,
there is no attempt at periodization In “The Kentucky Derby.” Rather, a sense of
immediacy characterizes the story. Instead of looking back at wonderful times and
missed opportunities, Thompson reveals what is happening around him. This lack of
historical distance engenders urgency for the author to express his outrage:
As an image, the Derby is a metaphor for the country … Society is at war.
This is America at its myopic worst, and Thompson will not stand for it.
He is outraged; but more importantly, he wants to outrage his readers and
42
Bruce-Novoa argues throughout his article that Thompson rebels against a society in which the
American Dram of the sixties has failed by means of defiant style and content.
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commit mayhem on the event. (Bruce-Novoa 40)
The American Dream is not referred to explicitly, but the concept underlies
Thompson’s depiction of contemporary society. Like in Fear and Loathing, Thompson
conveys bitterness regarding the collapse of the counterculture. He refers to student
unrest, police violence and the war in Vietnam. The radicalization of the Left is a cause
of growing concern for the journalist. The Derby seems completely at odds with and
ignorant of this political reality:
New Haven is under siege. Yale is swarming with Black Panthers … I tell
you, Colonel, the world has gone mad, stone mad. Why they tell me a
goddam (sic) woman jockey might ride in the Derby today? (207)
By criticizing and parodying true Derby aficionados and prejudiced Southerners,
who seek refuge in the traditional and nonpolitical sports event to ignore contemporary
issues, Thompson makes clear that the American Dream of the sixties is dying. In 1970,
the hippies were becoming irrelevant, the leftist radicals divided, and the great bulk of
American society just buried their heads in the sand.
Such a critical portrait of the events surrounding the Derby hints at influence of the
American Jeremiad on top of that of the American Dream. The difference with Fear and
Loathing is that the dichotomy between a glorious past and contemptuous present is not
fully realized. Thompson expresses loathing for the failing sixties and for the society
succeeding it, but does not yet contrast either situation to a more blissful state of affairs.
The focus lies fully on the dismal contemporary climate, for which an untrustworthy liar
like Nixon is perfectly suited:
Money is a good thing to have in these twisted times. Even Richard Nixon is
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hungry for it. Only a few days before the Derby he said, “If I had any money
I’d invest it in the stock market.” And the stock market, meanwhile, continued
its grim slide. (198)
When compared to Fear and Loathing, “The Kentucky Derby” thus seems to
represent an earlier stage in the development of Thompson’s ambiguous sixties
appraisal. Criticism presides over nostalgia since the collapse of the counterculture and
the demise of the decade had only begun to materialize. At the moment of writing,
Thompson seemed to hope his anger might turn things around. One year later, he
would begin to feel wistful at the thought of the past as well. Although clearly written in
an earlier phase of his career, the seeds of his later combination of nostalgia and
criticism already started ripening in the hot and riotous Southern climate Thompson
described in 1970.
4.4.2. “Fear and Loathing in the Bunker”
In “Fear and Loathing in the Bunker,” Thompson describes the last stage of
Nixon’s presidency. The piece was published on the first of January 1974 in the New
York Times as a recap of the previous year and a look ahead at things to come. After
the revelation of the Watergate scandal, impeachment loomed large and the journalist
wonders what the president will do next. Nixon’s failure brings Thompson vengeful
satisfaction, but instead of just exulting over the imminent doom of Tricky Dick’s reign,
the author also worries about the country’s bleak prospects. In doing so, he refers to the
American Dream:
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One of the strangest things about these five downhill years of the Nixon
presidency is that despite all the savage excesses committed by the
people he chose to run the country, no real opposition or realistic
alternative to Richard Nixon’s cheap and mean-hearted view of the
American Dream has even developed. (22)
Thompson does not expound what the new American Dream entails, but it is
clear that he regards it as an irrevocable corruption of former ideals. The 1968 elections
put an end to the Left’s ascendancy and ever since, no valid substitute to counter the
Right has been devised. The traditional American Dream of sixties coalitions and its
individualistic contemporary contrary are contrasted, but the opposition is not as clearcut. Thompson’s investigation of the American Dream once again leads to criticism of
present and past. In the passage immediately preceding the fragment cited above,
Nixon’s presidency is seen as an inevitable result of the counterculture’s failure:
Looking back on the sixties, and even back to the fifties, the facts of
President Nixon and everything that has happened to him – and to us –
seems so queerly fated and inevitable that it is hard to reflect on those
years and see them unfolding in any other way. (21)
Whereas Thompson adopted a close perspective in “The Kentucky Derby,” he
historicizes here like he did in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The sixties are
presented as a remote past that incites nostalgia, but the detachment from this decade
also facilitates a critique. Moreover, the increased temporal distance to the sixties, in
combination with a lack of alternatives to Nixon’s government, seems to heighten
Thompson’s cynicism. The sixties do not earn special treatment anymore. Both the
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previous decade and the early seventies are seen as limited periods with set endings,
almost predestined to self-destruct. The sixties ended because the American Dream of
utopian change was no longer tenable in a fragmented political landscape; Nixon’s
“cheap and mean-hearted” Dream backfired on him when the corruption of his
government was exposed43. The only nostalgic retrospection is provided by the
acknowledgement that the original American Dream once existed.
A discussion of the American Jeremiad in “Fear and Loathing in the Bunker”
uncovers the same evolution towards pessimism. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,
the Jeremiad was transformed in that the past was only occasionally referred to as a
shining beacon for the future. Duke deliberately holds on to the sixties in his personal
beliefs and lifestyle, but also emphasizes the decade’s weaknesses. In this 1974 article,
Thompson’s love for the sixties is further subdued. No “wave speech” points to the
feeling of triumph and unity that used to characterize the counterculture. The sixties
were morally superior, as they are connected to the American Dream for Thompson, but
the reader is seldom reminded of this. Thompson’s jeremiad normally consists of three
elements: a condemnation of the present, a nostalgic view of the past, and a critical
analysis of this earlier time. In “Fear and Loathing in the Bunker,” however, balance
between the three parts is missing and disapproval dominates over glorification44. The
general mood can be described as glum, but in his last words Thompson nonetheless
offers one hopeful possibility, which restores the ambivalence regarding the sixties:
Is this really a new year? Are we bottoming out? Or are we into the Age of
43
Apart from the Watergate scandal, “the fact of a millionaire President paying less income tax than most
construction workers while gasoline costs a dollar in Brooklyn and the threat of mass unemployment”
contributed to Nixon’s downfall (Thompson, “Bunker” 20).
44
Predominance of criticism has been ascertained in “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved”
as well (supra).
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Fear? (24)
In spite of his cynical view of the future, a slight chance remains that Nixon’s
presidency was a six-year slump out of which America may rise. In this scenario, the
American Dream would be scathed, but still alive and a return to the glorious past
possible. This gleam of hope can, however, not eradicate the impression that
Thompson’s reaction to the end of the sixties has evolved from anger in “The Kentucky
Derby” to nostalgia and criticism in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and finally cynicism
in “Fear and Loathing in the Bunker.” What the next phase will be shall become clear as
we examine a fourth text.
4.4.3. “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll”
“I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll” is one of Thompson’s
Examiner columns that was not included in Generation of Swine45, but was
subsequently published in Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the
American Dream. In a way, this column is more suited to be part of the latter anthology,
since it deals explicitly with the end of the sixties. Published in 1989, the piece
discusses the decadence of the eighties as an attempt to reinvigorate the sixties. On the
one hand, Thompson defends the new hedonism by raging against the Purity League
and the “body nazis,” who adopt a “Boy in the Bubble zeal” with regard to drugs (1189).
On the other, he confesses that no amount of drugs or parties can bring the sixties
back. His own lifestyle, like the lifestyles of so many others who indulge in substance
45
The column was written a year after publication of Thompson’s second Gonzo Papers volume.
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abuse and wild adventures, is just another testament to the wrong choices of the past.
Ambivalence towards the sixties clearly pervades this column, which means the
American Dream and Jeremiad may be defined and transformed in the same way as
they were in Fear and Loathing.
The article sets off with an enigmatic passage, in which Thompson conjures the
image of a drowner in the sea who starts to believe he/she can actually breathe in the
salt water. The fragment immediately reminds one of the wave speech in Fear and
Loathing. The wave still symbolizes the high-water mark reached in the mid-sixties, but
now the observer is submerged. The endeavor to extend the sixties in one’s own life is
consuming. The tone for the column has been set and is corroborated by a set of
aphorisms ascribed to the unknown “prophet” Booar, an invention of the author:
“There are many coons in the wilderness,” …
“And coons feed like vultures and cannibals on failure and broken
dreams.” (1189)
Thompson is one of those “vultures and cannibals” that feed on the carcass of
the sixties. The American Dream has died and is starting to decompose. Before the
journalist investigates the flaws of the past, he turns first to the depraved present. The
eighties are portrayed as a hypocritical decade. Excesses in society incite extremely
rigid religious and conservative criticism, but the severest critics are often the greatest
wrongdoers, as “even the preachers in prison for compound sodomy and child rape are
compiling lists of names” (1189). Thompson rebels against such duplicity. He
generously quotes political journalist Ed Quillen who points out that many musicians,
artists, scientists and even politicians have made their greatest contributions to Western
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civilization while using drugs. He mentions Ray Charles; Keith Richards; William
Halsted, who developed sterile operating rooms among other inventions; Thomas
Edison and Franklin Roosevelt. In essence, Quillen and Thompson refuse to throw out
the baby with the bath water when it comes to narcotics.
The corrective pretense of former addicts infuriates Thompson. He viciously
describes them as “vengeful golems from some lost and broken Peter Pan world of sex,
drugs, and rock and roll” (1190). The author sees himself as a descendant of this lost
world, one who still adheres to the old consciousness expansion. However, he must
admit that the overindulgence that reigned among the countercultural ranks in the
sixties was part of a larger naivety that caused blindness to the dangers of drugs. By
aligning himself with “dead monsters” like Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison (idem),
Thompson reveals that he still lives according to the sixties lifestyle, but also
acknowledges that much greatness has been lost because of this way of life. The
dynamic is similar to that in Fear and Loathing, in which Duke expresses his loathing for
contemporary society by means of chemically enhanced nonconformist behavior, but
meanwhile ponders the errors of the bygone decade that inspires him.
Thompson’s defense and critical analysis of adherence to the “failure and broken
dreams” of the sixties is accompanied again by a discussion of past and present in
jeremiad-like form. Most of the column discusses the hypocrisy of the present and
endorses sixties ideals, which suggests traditional use of the genre of the Jeremiad.
Like in Fear and Loathing, however, some passages contradict this conventionality. The
mysterious opening paragraph, for instance, hints at a comment on the past as well. A
full-on critique is realized at the end of the piece:
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Indeed, we were all snapped like matchsticks in that terrible conflagration
[refers to the sixties] – and the unexplainable few who survived, somehow,
are now like the victims of some drunken golfing foursome … Their flesh
and their brains and their precious bodily organs were burned to cinders
and black-chalk skeletons that will never again have real strength. They
will walk in the world forever like some strung-out collection of Ming vases
that might crack any time they are touched. (1190)
The requiem for the American Dream and the Jeremiad for present and past,
they are beginning to sound like clichés in my discussion of Gonzo journalism. In fact,
the rhetoric is transformed differently each time and new emphases are added. In this
column, Thompson returns to the attitude adopted in Fear and Loathing, but the
cynicism we ascertained in “Fear and Loathing in the Bunker” has not vanished. There
is thus clearly a development in Thompson’s appraisal of the sixties: from anger to
ambivalence, cynicism, and finally a combination of the latter two. Perhaps it is thus
more appropriate to speak of multivalence with regard to the sixties in Gonzo
journalism. Although certain instances of rhetoric are invariably present in some form or
other, Thompson constantly redefines his relationship to the decade he loved most. As
such, he can be seen as one of the forerunners in the extremely valuable historical
practice of reassessing the sixties.
5. Conclusion
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The importance of the sixties to contemporary society is demonstrated by the
vigor with which opposing stances on this decade are defended. In the eighties,
“trashing the sixties” was common practice amongst both Left and Right46 and the
nineties have even been called the anti-sixties. Although the celebration of forty years
Woodstock in 2009 seems to have heralded an era in which the sixties are appreciated
in more positive ways, the decade may still spark controversy. In my discussion of
sixties politics and counterculture, it became clear that these aspects are open to
various interpretations. John Kennedy’s Camelot presidency instigated the Vietnam War
and JFK was less of a liberal reformer than is often believed. Lyndon Johnson, however,
did devote himself fully to the formation of a Great Society, but was gradually entangled
in a war he did not start. It is commonly agreed that Richard Nixon brought about the
end of the sixties. Symbolically speaking this may be so, but in reality Nixon only tried to
meet the general demands of the famed silent majority. The counterculture has many
merits, the empowerment of the individual and the defense of diversity to name a few,
but was marked by radicalization on the one hand and by political apathy on the other
as the decade drew to a close. Valid arguments can be found to bolster virtually any
claim. One may wonder what the use is, then, of discussing the sixties in this new
millennium. The answer has already been alluded to in the introduction: a reexamination
of the sixties helps us to understand our twenty-first-century selves and define our
position in the contemporary world.
For Hunter Thompson, there was an additional personal reason for his interest in
the sixties. He had been involved in the counterculture and politics of the time. When he
realized that America was drifting away from the maxims by which it had sworn to abide,
46
A phrase coined in the introduction to The 60s Without Apology.
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he declared that the decade had failed. The journalist suffered greatly from this newly
gained understanding. In his writing, he would begin investigating what went wrong.
Gonzo journalism in essence became a reaction to the end of the sixties. The Gonzo
magnum opus Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the epitome of a zealous retrospect.
By sending his alter ego Raoul Duke on a quest for the American Dream, the author
deals with his ambiguous feelings towards the sixties. The decade’s flaws are
scrutinized, but Thompson’s scrutiny cannot conceal his intense affection. Besides the
American Dream, the new genre incorporated another existing feature of rhetoric. The
Jeremiad proved a suitable form for Thompson’s comparison of past and present. Both
the Dream and the Jeremiad, however, received an interpretation that differed from their
original meaning. Instead of substantiating the myth of America’s endless possibilities,
they are used to challenge this ideal. Protagonist Duke gradually discovers how the
Dream has been corrupted and does not limit himself to the present to find fault for this.
The new Jeremiad devised by Thompson consists of contemporary and historical
criticism, as well as nostalgic retrospection.
This tripartite definition was a first indicator of the complexity of Thompson’s
sixties appraisal. In “The Kentucky Derby,” the criticism is clearly present, although not
in such a dual manner. There was as yet no clear distinction between the sixties and
seventies in 1970. Nostalgia would only follow as the author claimed more distance
from the previous decade. It would accompany a periodization of the past ten years.
Nevertheless, the outrage and drunken despair Thompson displays at the Derby, as he
bears witness to the chaotic state the nation has entered, already hint at a personal
connection to the sixties. In “Fear and Loathing in the Bunker,” the anger has waned
100
and a highly cynical attitude taken its place. The joyful retrospection from Fear and
Loathing is now restrained, as Thompson realizes that reminiscing will not bring the
halcyon days back. The country’s current misery, brought about by the inadequacy of its
government, is a lasting testament to the failure of the sixties. Although Thompson’s
attitude can be described as ambivalent, this column exhibits a penchant for derision.
In the fourth Gonzo exemplar, the dichotomy between nostalgia and criticism is
reestablished in a more modern context. Assaults on personal freedom regarding drug
use by a moralizing majority incite Thompson’s contempt and cause him to radically
align himself with what is left of the sixties counterculture. The choice is resolute, but
bitter since the journalist is reminded of the role narcotics have played in weakening the
political force of the hippie movement, not to mention in the destruction of so many
lives.
Each new decade seems to inspire Thompson to reappraise the sixties and to
redefine his own position. Paradoxically, ‘ambivalence’ is too ‘monovalent’ a term to
describe his ever-changing attitude, which consists of more than just the fear and
loathing he is known for. While nostalgia and criticism are often the main ingredients,
they are usually complemented by anger, despair, disappointment and cynicism.
Furthermore, Thompson adds new concerns to his writing as time passes. A discussion
of the sixties is often part of an analysis of contemporary socio-political affairs. This
mechanism of broadening his scope prevents Thompson, the sixties rebel, from
becoming irrelevant or outdated. The Gonzo journalist also manages not to degrade into
an angry old man with an exclusive liking for how things used to be. Neither past nor
present are spared in his work, and criticism is escorted by humor without being
101
tempered.
Thompson’s appraisal of the 1960s can best be described as multivalent, as he
combines all the attitudes listed above. Alternation between fear, loathing and a myriad
of other emotions is his way of dealing with the personal loss he felt after the decade
had ended; and a way of guaranteeing a readership. Thompson was never afraid to
market himself and often espoused conflicting opinions to construct a hype. The best
example is provided by the creation of his own image, which he encouraged and
reproached. At times, he was not sure himself who he was expected to be, Hunter
Thompson or Raoul Duke. This brings us to what is perhaps the most important cause
for his multivalent view of the sixties. Thompson frequently displays feelings of great
doubt in his work. He could not be certain of the significance of the sixties, nor of the
future. His personal quest for the truth in the larger-than-life genre that is Gonzo
journalism was therefore never-ending, and in its endurance produced some of the most
insightful discussions of the sixties in twentieth-century American literature. In the
famous wave speech in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Duke says that up on a steep
hill in Las Vegas, those with the right kind of eye can look West and almost see the
high-water mark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back47.
Hunter Thompson truly had that right kind of eye.
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