‘Gonzo Girl’ a Ticket Worth Buying
“I don’t know. I don’t know…I DON’T KNOW!”
That was going through my head after typing up “gonzo” on Ebay looking for a collectible or book I don’t already have in my mass collection of Hunter S. Thompson memorabilia. I have everything from a black “Thompson For Sheriff” coffee mug and wall poster, 12 first edition copies of his major works, including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, gonzo lapel pins and pendants, clothing, DVDs, and a whole shelf dedicated to biographies and memoirs written by friends and scholars and historians.
So, naturally, I was a little reluctant to purchase and read a fictional account of what it was like to be a writer’s assistant to the good Dr. Thompson.
Then, after discovering the author, Cheryl Della Pietra, was Dr. Thompson’s assistant for several months in 1992, my mind opened a little. Some factual things had to be incorporated into the text.
And I’m glad I did.
In all the coke-smeared, Chivas-soaked pages of a delightfully fun novel, there is the story of a tortured Icon. One that is pushing every day to be what the myths and the realities have mixed together like a too-strong-yet-lovely cocktail.
The first-person narrative of Alley Russo (Pietra) with legendary novelist Walker Reade (Thompson) is something of the divine, frustrating, and toxic relations of what a man is going through to live up to a legend, and how that affects the people around him…people trying to get him to finish his current novel – one page at a time.
And Ms. Alley Russo is lucky if she gets that.
All the ingredients are here in this fictionalized account of the author’s time spent with Thompson: LSD, waking up to multiple explosions and firearm retorts, sycophants hanging around the Colorado compound hoping for some time to snort lines with the master and creator of Gonzo journalism, and, ultimately, it’s a book not written as a love letter. At the core of this piece is the portrait of an individual who went ALL the way. The price for going ALL the way, like a brush stroke, colors the often funny and tragic tale of one of America’s most notorious writers.
Gonzo Girl is a must-read for Thompson fans and fans of literary works alike. Anyone looking for a first-person experience on the daily life of this icon, and a late Coming of Age Story for a fledgling writer, you could do worse. Definitely four out of five stars, in my book.
