Si Charles Bukowski took charge of portraying himself through his alter ego Chinaski, Hunter S. Thompson He also reinvented himself into fiction through a journalism called gonzo. A journalism that began a path towards the chronicle of events, of any events from the contextualization of the narrator himself and the desire for a leading role to a transformer of the facts.
Of course, in both authors everything is related to their interest in criticism in the first instance and satire later. Especially once it is discovered that little or nothing can be changed. Nihilism, uprooting ... All Hunter S. Thompson takes that tragicomic point of view, acid to its most lysergic extreme. The world that a gonzo journalist has to narrate cannot but be splashed with blood or bile, with all those humors that irrigate social coexistence.
For Hunter, the notion of dirty realism as a literary current transcends to be located in the discomfort of the closest. It is no longer that we are told the experiences of a marginal type that permeates his entire universe with the aroma of defeat assumed as the essence of everything. Hunter warns us that everything revolves around that dirty realism. And so he uncovered the miseries of a twentieth century in the United States rocked in contradictions at all levels. Because there was no American dream without ghosts in the cellar or at least without dust under the carpets.
Top 3 Recommended Books by Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas
The sin city of the great United States. The moral sinkhole of a capitalism that is not a paragon of virtues either in Las Vegas or on Wall Street ... Beware of this book. This book is dangerous. It can change your life. All great books are dangerous. This is a great book. As dangerous as life. This book speaks of life as a futile attempt to escape death. Death as the just punishment for not knowing how to live. Life and death. Nobody really lives. Nobody dies either.
Thats the secret. Fear and disgust. The world is as corrupt as Las Vegas. A capitalist paradise where life is consumed to the limit. In the fluorescent jungle of casinos, neon sculptures and luxury hotels. At the limit of forces and energy. To the limit of the self. Exhaustion is the truth of the game. The fatal ruin, with no money or time to waste. Acid hallucination, as a new form of lucidity, usurping the place of the impossible utopia. A hellish journey to the rotten heart of the American dream. The Extreme Point of Reality. The Show of Reality. Gonzo Journalism.
Life is scary and disgusting. Life is just that. Speed down the desert highway in a red Chevrolet convertible heading to an adults-only theme park called Las Vegas. Touring the drug-laden Death Valley while thinking that the difference between insanity and masochism is a nebula. Do not fool yourself. There's no more. Life sucks and produces fear. That is why it is so wonderful. Like this book. Learn to read. This book tells the truth. This book talks about you. So in life as in literature.
The Curse Of Lono
The hard life of the reporter. Pack your suitcase and take care of covering from the last kangaroo jumping world championship in Canberra to the presentation of a volume of poems of a kind as damned as soporific. But Hunter knows how to make a tasty chronicle of everything. More than anything because he is not willing for a report to carry a trip to the ass of the world without substance.
In 1980 Hunter S. Thompson receives a proposal from the unknown Running magazine, to cover the Honolulu marathon, with a large salary and with all expenses paid. Thinking of a quiet vacation on the beautiful island of Hawaii, he accepts and extends the invitation to his friend, cartoonist Ralph Steadman, who will be accompanied by his family.
What would be a trip of pleasure and rest, mixed with a little work, turns into a delusional adventure from the moment the writer gets on the plane to Hawaii. With his characteristic style that established him as the father of gonzo journalism, the author deals with what surrounds one of the oldest sports jousts. But it goes further, achieving a masterful story that portrays a mysterious and fun delusion.
The Last Dinosaur
As Monterroso would say, "when he woke up, the dinosaur was still there." Hunter S. Thompson also remains there as the toilet of consciousness. Because History writes what is of interest while the writers most freed from "commitments" as chroniclers write what happened in parallel. And so each one decides what was most important when everything continued with its evolution or its involution ...
In 1971, with the publication of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the flamboyant creator of gonzo journalism, Hunter S. Thompson, became the center of attention in the literary world. As early as 1966, with Hell's Angels, Thompson had shown a mysterious instinct to place himself at the epicenter of the great sociopolitical events of his generation. His writings, bold and satirical, collectively represent a harsh critique of American culture.
This volume compiles, for the first time in Spanish, some of the most representative and personal interviews that Hunter S. Thompson gave throughout his life to magazines such as Playboy, Rolling Stone, Esquire or The Paris Review. In them he speaks openly about politics, culture, drugs and weapons, as well as about the genre of which he was the greatest exponent, gonzo journalism. A unique opportunity to enter the mind of one of the most brilliant and unpredictable characters in the North American counterculture.
Other recommended books from Hunter s. Thompson
The great shark hunt
Hunter S. Thompson would never really have gone shark hunting. It would be more of a matter of letting oneself devour to narrate his interiorities in a hallucinogenic dream like Jonas. But he would not even get to tell what he found inside him but the swallowing process and his subsequent return to the world in a nausea of oceanic dimensions...
The compilation in one volume (of which we offer an anthology) of Hunter S. Thompson's most famous reports was a publishing event in the United States. The author put into circulation the concept of “gonzo journalism”: one in which the reporter goes from being a mere spectator to triggering the action. A splendid example is the wild reportage "The Great Shark Hunt," commissioned by Playboy, ostensibly to "cover" a deep-sea fishing tournament off the coast of Yucatan.
In other texts in this volume, the gonzo journalist focuses his wild eye on figures like Hemingway or Marlon Brando, organizes an alternative "power freak" in Aspen, etc. Far be it from me to recommend drugs, alcohol, violence and insanity to the reader. But I must confess that, without all this, I would be nothing» (Hunter S. Thompson).
