The Ultimate Storyteller

It is becoming more and more clear how outdated the old media is: CNN and Fox News are prime examples, followed closely by the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and even relatively new establishments like "The Huffington Post". Why are they outdated? In an era where any schmo can whip out his cell phone to document events such as the hanging of Saddam Hussein, there is no need for such monolithic sources of news. Today, we can tailor our news feeds, whether on Facebook, Tumblr or Google+, as we see fit.

Because we can customize the news, the types of ‘credentials’ we accept from reporters has now changed. We read blogs and joke-sites like Cracked.com and Reddit that, rather than giving us sober accounts of Occupy Wall Street and the Economic Crisis, use forms of Gonzo Journalism to spread information. What's Gonzo Journalism? According to the coiner of the phrase, Hunter S. Thompson, "It is a style of "reporting" based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of Journalism (53). Using this style, the writer shapes his story in the first-person perspective so that the audience doesn't see the "mask" of the journalist. the reader listens to your message as if you were his own father or grandfather. 

That doesn't mean you should stretch the truth - your memory already did - it means you should pay less attention to "factual accuracy" and more to how you experience an event. It also means that training yourself to pay attention to your experiences is the best journalism school possible. The world's getting smaller all the time, and if you want anyone to listen to your story, you'd better give the audience your personal account PLUS your press badge. That’s why any author, myself included, has to write, blog or vlog for a long time before getting any recognition for their work; his or her body of work IS the press badge.

What can a writer do with that kind of freedom? Say you wanted to memorialize a friend who just died; you can either write an obituary OR you can relate your memories of them like Thompson does in "The Ultimate Freelancer". The essay was published in a tiny 'zine called "The Distant Drummer" in 1967, and the liberties taken allowed Thompson articulate the exact message one should take from the death of his friend, Lionel Olay: "More than anything else, it came as a harsh confirmation of the ethic that Lionel had always lived but never talked about... The dead end loneliness of a man who makes his own rules." (75)

Lionel was one of the few freelancers of his era who never "sold out." By refusing to sell out, he never made money from his writing, and he ended up dying alone. Thompson WAS an admitted sellout, since he wrote for Rolling Stone in its formative years, including his most well-known work; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. 

His message in this essay was that all artists must either choose their audience as everyone, as some one or as no one; Lionel chose the latter. This message was delivered solely because it was written Gonzo-style for a select audience; the hipsters of the sixties. Thompson was very careful in choosing who he sold out to, allowing him to write some of the best essays of the 20th century. But reflecting on the lesson itself, there is a clear yin and yang to choosing the rule system one abides by. If you obey no authority but yourself, you can end up just as powerless as Lionel Olay, but if you ignore your own authority you will meet the same fate.

    This is a very powerful form of storytelling because it lets you tell the truth without getting punched in the face for doing so. Thompson’s dead friend may not have been able to retaliate, but the scummier readers of “The Distant Drummer” could have. They ultimately weren’t aggressive because they understood the point of the article; that profiteering, especially from symbols of “rebellion” such as those of the beat-nik generation, helps no one. That money spent on a Warhol painting or an original Velvet Underground record is a waste unless you have sentimental value for it.
 

The Ultimate Free Lancer was a calling-out of record labels and producers such as Tom Wilson who were ruining fringe art. (contrasting these two ideas) Hunter S. Thompson recognized authorities that practice what they preach. While he had many choice words to say about advertising agencies, the NFL and his fellow sportswriters, he respected men like Al Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders and Coach John Madden, who were personally invested in their work. It wasn’t because of the man’s status or wealth; it was because he took it upon himself to train his players. 

“This is my last real memory of Al Davis: It was getting dark in Oakland, the rest of the team had already gone into the showers, the coach was inside speaking sagely with a gaggle of local sports writers, somewhere beyond the field-fence a big jet was cranking up its afterburners on the airport runway... and here was the owner of the flakiest team in pro football, running around on a half-dark practice field like a king-hell speed freak with his quarterback and two other key players, insisting that they run the same goddamn play over and over again until they had it right.” 

Our author did not mince words for anybody. Previously in this same Rolling Stones essay, he had called Al Davis a “bastard”, describing their relationship as “strange and officially ugly”. While this appears dissonant with my claim that he respected Al Davis, it is not; Thompson gave the man credit where it was due without kissing up to him in any way. This is the fundamental difference between the nature of Gonzo journalism and NBC Nightly News; Walter Cronkite would not be allowed to say such things about Al Davis. His producers wouldn’t let him; if he tried, he’d immediately be censored and blackballed from television reporting for the rest of his life. You see, Wolf Blitzer, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings are inherently part of the old news paradigm. Like politicians, they are faces that must give a coherent, on-topic message that appeals to ninety percent of America every night at 6pm. Gonzo journalists have no such deadlines or standards beyond themselves and the immediate chain of command.

Let’s get a clearer concept of what we’re discussing here: the Encyclopedia Britannica is a great book. It’s thorough, well-sourced and pristinely edited, and is published in both print and online. But who has time to go to the library these days just to look something up? Nobody at NYU, I’m fairly certain. And the contents of Britannica.com are a disorganized mess. Contrast this with Wikipedia; many articles are not thorough, lack adequate sourcing and face spontaneous flame-warring between competing editors. But it’s still a great body of knowledge for us students. Why? Because all of it can be edited in an instant. Any mistake can be revised as soon as it’s found, and this pancake-style chain of command is exactly what makes it viable today.

Time is a precious thing. More and more, we see time slipping through our fingers, and with the passage of every year, of every month, things seem to speed up ever so slightly. Whoa, hang on, why am I getting so philosophical here? Bear with me.

We no longer need ‘faces’ like Walter Cronkite to tell us the truth. We crave the truth so badly now that we’ll look for it wherever it can be found. So instead of waiting for the news at 6pm every evening, we turn to word-of-mouth for our information. We ask our friends, look at blogs and scan Twitter for up-to-the-second data on the world around us. This is not a bad thing. We still have newspapers. We still have television when we want it and have time for it. We have not forgotten everything in pursuit of the future. Keep in mind, also, that the Twitter paradigm isn’t as old as you’d think. If you were around in the sixties and seventies, you could get information that quickly via the associated press. The question is, what kind of information are you looking for?  Do you want sheer data, or do you want to listen to a voice that has digested and processed that data to some extent? This is why today you can get everything from Twitter to the WSJ to everything in between. The question is; how badly do you want the truth? More importantly, are you prepared to handle it?

Fear and Loathing in the Bunker is the first essay in The Great Shark Hunt; the collection of essays that this assignment responds to. It was written on January 1, 1974, as a year-end reflection of 1973; the year that the Watergate scandal broke and Richard Milhous Nixon stood to be impeached by the senate. Given Nixon’s army of fixers, thugs and lackeys, Hunter S. Thompson was forced to ask a rather pressing question: “Is the democracy worth all the risks and problems that go with it? Or, would we all be happier by admitting that the whole thing was a lark from the start and now that it hasn’t worked out, to hell with it.”

The essay doesn’t attempt to answer this question, and neither will I. The point of journalism is not to give definitive answers; it’s to ask the right questions. This concept may be difficult to grasp, but mind you, all works of literature have their own defined boundaries. The boundaries of this essay are similar to those of Fear and Loathing in the Bunker; they are limited to posing the right questions to be pondered by our readers.

    Some parts of this essay are edited; others are not. I leave it to my readers to ponder which is which, but more importantly, to help me - and themselves - think about where they get their news from. I salute your efforts to obtain truth, whatever they be, because that’s exactly what I’m here to do. This class, this university, and this intellectual community shares the unstated goal of obtaining knowledge wherever it can be found. That is why we have chosen to read authors both mainstream and fringe; popular and obscure. My final thought on this subject is a brief explanation of why I find it important to read the news; communication is what gives us knowledge. The more we communicate, the more we know, the more ready we are to act when the time comes. But when it’s time to act, don’t think. Internalize what you can so that you can act in the moment. You’ll be surprised what you can do in a moment of instinctive action. My instincts are to write, to learn, and - more recently - to treat life like a game.

What are your instincts? Are you ready for Gonzo?