Word: thompson
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Such high-toned criticism ignores the value of an observer (and often participant) like Thompson, who, instead of couching his accounts in detached and restrained tones and carefully excising any references to personal experiences, writes spontaneously and subjectively, with a minimum of pretense, refinement and distillation...
Gonzo journalism takes the oxymoron "objective journalism" and laughs in its face. When Thompson "covers" an event, he writes through his own eyes and experiences, because it is the best--if not the only--way to convey what he has seen...
...THOMPSON'S NEWEST BOOK, over 600 pages, includes 49 articles that span his career from a relatively straight South American reporter for the National Observer in the early 60's through the protogonzoid transition stage of the late 60's to Rolling Stone national affairs correspondent in the disgustingly un-freaked-out 70's, where Thompson's semi-paranoid, disoriented, "vulgar," terminal brilliance reminds the stultified that there is an unpleasant side of life, whether they like...
...August 1968, Thompson attended the Democratic National Convention and its concurrent "police riot." He never published an account of what happened to him there, but occasionally refers to it in darkly veiled hints about viciousness at the corner of Michigan and Balboa. The sixties died there--or were killed--Thompson has written, and it was a turning point in his writing as well. After a couple of transitional pieces, including a bitter account of Nixon's first inauguration, he plunged full-fledged into gonzo with "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Deparaved," a hilarious and brutal tale with Thompson...
...Thompson is at his best when he's writing about politics, not everyday debauchery. Alongside his rise to gonzo superstardom was the rise and fall of Richard Nixon. Thompson's visceral loathing for Nixon comes through repeatedly, from '68 to '72 to Watergate. They are, as both would gladly admit, opposites. Yet, when it's all over, and Nixon is leaving Washington, even Thompson regrets it a bit; the excitement and intensity of the chase is over...