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Crossroads:Rereading the Works of Hunter S. Thompson As Picaresque

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Crossroads:Rereading the Works of Hunter S. Thompson As Picaresque Crossroads: Rereading the Works of Hunter S. Thompson as Picaresque Narratives Sean Wilkinson 24 April 2014 Wilkinson 2 Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………… 3 Chapter One……………………………………………………………………… 7 Chapter Two………………………………………………………………………24 Chapter Three……………………………………………………………………..39 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...60 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………….63 Wilkinson 3 INTRODUCTION: APPROACHING THE WORK OF HUNTER S. THOMPSON This thesis will argue that the work of Hunter S. Thompson can be read as American Picaresque due to Thompson's utilization of episodic narrative structure, Picaresque archetypes, and various Picaresque themes such as the criticism of “civilized” society and the picaro’s fear of aging. Thompson gained notoriety after the success of his 1971 novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. In the book, Thompson showcases his unique genre of writing, which he affectionately referred to as Gonzo Journalism, a style that is a unique adaptation of the traditional Picaresque narrative. Both Picaresque and Gonzo narratives are centered on a kind of character often identified as a picaro, a rogue who critiques, and often mocks, the society in which he refuses to participate. Such tales are also episodic; there is no continuous plot, and the picaro lacks character development. Although Gonzo Journalism shares numerous devices with the traditional picaresque narrative, it is also different in many ways: as opposed to the picaros of classic Spanish literature, Thompson's picaro-like characters firmly believe that there is no saving their society, and facilitate the episodic structure of the picaresque through drug abuse—blackouts are a recurring motif in Thompson’s work. So far, most of the scholarly articles written on Thompson's texts focus on how the literary community classifies his work in the spectrum of journalism. In essence, these articles only debate where Thompson's work can be placed in relevance to other schools of journalism; the struggle to place Gonzo Journalism in the realm of journalism has taken precedent over specific textual analysis. Removing Thompson's Wilkinson 4 work from the realm of journalism and approaching the texts as fictional allows the work to be analyzed in a wider spectrum that affords Thompson's texts multiple ways to be discussed. This is the approach I have taken, one that will make clear the connection between picaresque narrative and Thompson's Gonzo Journalism. Thompson scoffed at the so-called “objective” approach to journalistic writing in which the journalist would remove him/herself from the piece, and he eventually threw out the standards in favor of his own creation. For young readers, like myself, Thompson was always an author discussed in private, never in an academic environment. I always wondered why Thompson received so little praise for the massive amount of work he had contributed to the literary field. I first became aware of Thompson's work when I saw Terry Gilliam's film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I was too young to realize what exactly what was happening in the film, but I did understand that drugs were involved. When I read Thompson's book in high school, I developed a love for his unique style. His biting, sarcastic tone and harsh, cocaine-driven criticisms of American culture washed in Wild Turkey were refreshing to my high school self, who had thought the epitome of good writing was Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. I also loved the taboo of Thompson; when I would wander into a used bookstore and ask for any books by Thompson, the employees would make snide comments to my mother about “appropriate” readings. One owner even commented on Thompson's homosexual propaganda—something I have never seen in his work. Wilkinson 5 Now, as a graduate student, I have the honor of approaching Thompson's work from a critical literary standpoint as I analyze his novels as representations of Modern-American Picaresque. In my research I have found individuals who have approached this task before, but none of these scholars left the relatively safe zone of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That novel will play a role in my thesis, as it was Thompson's crowning success and most famous work, but Thompson's utilization of the picaresque style was present in his works prior to 1971. From Thompson's earliest novel, The Rum Diary, to one of his last works, The Curse of Lono, Thompson's concise, new journalistic approach worked well with the conventions of the picaresque novel. One of the most difficult parts for this thesis has been finding research on Thompson; a majority of the articles that are on Thompson or Gonzo Journalism critique the genre for various reasons and do not approach his oeuvre from the standpoint of literary criticism. In John Crowley's 2005 review of the newest reprint of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he decimates Gonzo Journalism: In effect, Gonzo Journalism was drug-induced, free-associational, personal maundering: masturbatory, wino journalism in a new key. The center of interest because his take on things is assumed to be far more vital and truer than things themselves—is Thompson’s fictive version of himself: the reporter as stone deadbeat and stoned perpetrator of minor felonies. This was sixties New Journalism (Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese) pushed to the egomaniacal max (Crowley 146). Wilkinson 6 Thompson's style was new and subjective; it placed the journalist at the center of his assignment and never relied on facts to present a story, acts that frightened and angered some. Crowley's criticism, like a majority of the other criticisms, prioritizes Thompson's drug-use as a way of stripping Gonzo Journalism of reliability. The only problem with all these critiques is that Thompson never claimed his work to be a reliable, journalistic source in any way, hence why he classified Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as fiction in numerous letters to various editors; this insistence strongly implies that this work should be analyzed in relation to literature as opposed to journalism (Thompson 377). Wilkinson 7 CHAPTER 1: THE PICARESQUE, ITS AMERICAN COUNTERPART, AND GONZO JOURNALISM Defining the Picaresque To compare the relatively modern work of Hunter S. Thompson with a literary genre that first appeared in the mid-16th Century is definitely a curious way to approach his writing, but there are some significant correlations between the work of Thompson and classical Picaresque novels. Some of Thompson's device choices and characters do not fit into the archetypes of the classical Picaresque; however, enough similarities exist to make the claim that Thompson's work can be seen as a part of the Picaresque genre. As with most literature, one of the main goals of the writers participating in a certain genre is to adhere to certain conventions of that style while simultaneously attempting to develop it. Thompson pushes the Picaresque forward by adapting the archetypes to more modern roles as well as making certain classical elements, like the dominant anti-authoritarian tone, relevant to his own time period. The Picaresque, in its broadest definition, represents a genre of literature characterized by the often satirical episodic journeys of the picaro, Spanish for Rogue, as he travels and mocks the society he refuses to take part in. La vida de Lazarillo De Tormes, y de sus fortunas y adversidades, the foundational text for this genre of literature, was anonymously written in 1554 in Spain and set many of the stylistic conventions that influenced modern Picaresque novelists such as Mark Twain, D.H Lawrence, Jack Kerouac, and Saul Bellow. This novel, which is Wilkinson 8 considered the first picaresque novel, tells the story of a young boy sold into servitude by his mother as he progresses throughout his life. The book was written as a sociopolitical critique: “Lazarillo is impregnated with a bitter tone that reflects the social situation of sixteenth-century Spanish society, where legislation regulated the systematic marginalization of ethnic minorities...” (Ardila 5). Lazarillo lambasted every rung of the Spanish hierarchy as the young picaro works his way from being the servant to a blind beggar, to the servant of a poor nobleman, to the servant of a friar. Child abuse is common as most of Lazarillo's masters regularly starve and beat him. There is also the strong implication that Lazarillo is sexually molested at the hands of the friar: “He gave me the first pair of shoes I ever went through in my life. They didn’t even last me a week and I couldn’t take his trotting around anymore. I left him because of that and also because of one or two other things that I shan’t bother to mention” (Lazarillo De Tormes 47). In 1559 the book was placed on the Inquisition’s index of banned books for its satirical messages, but this did nothing to hinder the book’s popularity (Ardila 1). In order to facilitate my analysis of Thompson's work, I will utilize, as my foundation, the eight main characteristics of the Picaresque novel as identified and defined by Picaresque-Scholar Claudio Guillén. While Guillén's theory of the picaresque is not the only one aimed at defining the term “picaresque,” it is the foundational text that all other discussions of the picaresque, post 1961, refer to. Guillén's essay “Toward a Definition of the Picaresque” not only discusses the difficulty in defining the term Picaresque, but provides the reader with a sort of Wilkinson 9 checklist for determining if a text belongs in the Picaresque genre. Guillén narrowed the definition of the picaresque novel down to eight defining characteristics that later theorists would further develop.
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