The Genesis of the Hunter Figure: A study of the Dialectic between the Biographical and the Aesthetic in the Early Writings of Hunter S. Thompson Rory Feehan Student Number: 0026492 Ph.D. Thesis Mary Immaculate College University of Limerick Supervisor: Dr Eugene O’Brien Submitted to Mary Immaculate College: ______________________ Declaration of Originality Declaration: I hereby declare that this thesis is the result of my own original research and does not contain the work of any other individual. All sources that have been consulted have been identified and acknowledged in the appropriate way. Signature of Candidate: ___________________________________ Rory Feehan Date: ___________________________________ ii Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to express my sincere respect and appreciation to my supervisor, Dr Eugene O’Brien, for his support of this project from its very inception and for his endless patience and wisdom throughout the journey of completing this work. I would also like to thank Dr John McDonagh, Dr Kathryn Laing and Ms Florence O’Connor, for all that I learned from them during my undergraduate at Mary Immaculate College and also for their sound advice and guidance during my time working alongside them as a tutor in the English Department. I would also like to thank Professor William McKeen for agreeing to serve as external supervisor for this project, his work has been a great source of inspiration to me throughout the process. I would like to thank Dr Stephen Thornton, Dr David Blake and Dr Chris Lawn for their encouragement and support of my research. Special thanks to Dr Matteo Cullen and Dr John Harnett for the confidence they continually expressed in my work and the much needed banter that made the long days and late nights writing that much more bearable. I must also extend my sincere thanks to Professor Daryl Palmer at Regis University in Denver, who first encouraged me to write about Hunter S. Thompson. iii I am also indebted to Dr Patrick Condon, Mr Peter Crisp and Mr Patrick Madden who saved the day on more than one occasion and without whom this project would not have been possible. I would like to extend my thanks to my fellow Gonzo enthusiasts for their support, exchange of ideas, advice and friendship, without which this project would have been very much the lesser - Marty Flynn, Dr Charles Bladen, Margaret Ann Harrell, David Wills, Professor Peter Richardson, Ron Whitehead, Anita Thompson, Peter Bejmuk, Michael Hendrick, Noel Dávila, DJ Watkins, John Bundy, Brian Kevin, Nick Storm, Peter W. Knox, Wayne Ewing and the late Warren Hinckle. Special thanks to Robert Rasmussen, Nigel Kenny, Larry Rooney, Bernard English, Ger Reidy and Tiernan Reddan whose friendship and humour were very much appreciated over the years. My thanks also to the Regis University and Hilltop crew for indulging my early Gonzo adventure – Joe Dimas, Francis McCrory and Matthew Protz. Very special thanks also to Karen and Tony Dimas for their unbelievable generosity and friendship during my time studying in America. I would like to thank my parents, Jacquie and Tony, and my brother Ronan, for their endless support and patience throughout the course of this project, their many sacrifices made all the difference and I owe them an immeasurable debt of gratitude. Finally, I would like to thank Niaz, whose patience, love and support got me over the final hurdle. Nobody else could have done it. iv Dedication For my parents – Jacquie and Tony v Abstract Hunter S. Thompson revolutionised American journalism in the 1970’s with the publication of ‘The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved’, in Scanlan’s Monthly, and ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, in Rolling Stone magazine. Writing in a voice that was sui generis, his heavily subjective prose became known as Gonzo Journalism. For the next four decades he chronicled what he called the ‘Death of the American Dream’, whilst simultaneously building his own legend to mythic proportions. His fictive persona, the Hunter Figure, is central to his entire oeuvre, but to date, the body of critical analysis has largely diminished the role of his persona. This thesis, however, aims to address this critical imbalance by focusing on the origins of the Hunter Figure persona and the ensuing dialectic between the biographical and the aesthetic in the early writings of Hunter S. Thompson. Few other writers in contemporary American Literature have fused their own life and work to such an extent that the lines of differentiation between: author and character; fact and fiction; public image and private self, have become indistinguishable. Unravelling this complex web of interactions is therefore an essential task in order to fully appreciate and understand the primary motivations behind the creation of the Hunter Figure persona and in turn how this persona became the primary driver of the success of Gonzo Journalism. Through a chronological examination of Thompson’s career pre-dating Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971), this thesis credits the persona for not only directly leading to the creation of Gonzo Journalism, but also for helping to establish Thompson as both a vi leading SuperFictionist in contemporary American Literature and a modern-day icon of American Outlaw mythology. vii Table of Contents Declaration of Originality ................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii Dedication ........................................................................................................................... v Abstract .............................................................................................................................. vi Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. viii Epigraph ............................................................................................................................. ix Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 The Focus and Method of the Present Study .................................................................. 4 Review of Literature ...................................................................................................... 11 Chapter 1: Billy the Kid of Louisville .............................................................................. 34 Chapter 2: The Outlaw of Big Sur .................................................................................... 77 Chapter 3: Our Man in South America – The Outlaw in Exile ....................................... 123 Chapter 4: The Enfant Terrible of the Outlaw Press ....................................................... 184 Chapter 5: Dr Hunter S. Thompson – Gonzo Journalist ................................................. 257 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 317 Works Cited ..................................................................................................................... 332 Primary Sources .......................................................................................................... 332 Secondary Sources ...................................................................................................... 333 viii Epigraph From now on, when I appear somewhere with a pencil in my hand and a gleam in my eye, people will quiver in their shoes and sweat freely. This is the finest thing that could have happened. I now have thousands of readers, and the official sanction of the Base Commander. Move over Winchell . HST has emerged from obscurity to jab at the world for awhile. Jesus, what fun! (Thompson 1997, p. 21) ix Introduction ‘To live outside the law, you must be honest.’ Bob Dylan, ‘Absolutely Sweet Marie,’ 1966 Early spring 1971, and the first rays of the rising sun creep into a room at the Ramada Inn just outside Pasadena California, where one Hunter S. Thompson is holed up, crouched over his IBM Selectric, hands flashing back and forth over the keys, as though directing a kind of demented orchestra. The words flow faster and faster, a chaotic hell broth of paranoia and insanity that would culminate in one of the most original, hilarious and celebrated statements on the sixties drug culture and the American Dream – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Thompson’s dissection of the dark side of the American Dream and the death of the idealistic flower-power era would catapult him to rock star status overnight, and cement his legacy as the enfant terrible of the literary world. Through the pages of Rolling Stone magazine, he unleashed upon an unsuspecting American public what is undoubtedly his greatest artistic creation, not Gonzo Journalism as many would claim, but rather his compelling and brilliantly subversive literary persona – the Hunter Figure – as best exemplified through the character of Raoul Duke. Introduction What followed for Thompson was an almost Jekyll and Hyde relationship with his literary alter ego, a continuous symbiotic state of co-existence with the monstrous and unruly Duke, for good or ill. Such was the enduring power of the character, heightened by artist Ralph Steadman’s darkly captivating illustrations, that the public perception of Thompson became truly