What Gonzo Means to Me
What does GONZO mean to me?
The definition, according to Merriam-Webster and the Free Dictionary:
gon·zo
ADJECTIVE
informal
NORTH AMERICAN of or associated with journalistic writing of an exaggerated, subjective, and fictionalized style.
bizarre or crazy: “the woman was either gonzo or stoned”synonyms: mad · insane · out of one’s mind · deranged · demented · not in one’s right mind · crazed · lunatic · non-compos mentis · unbalanced · unhinged
2. Extreme, unconventional, or bizarre: gonzo artwork; a gonzo snowboarding style.
3. Crazy, excited, or unrestrained: Fans went gonzo when the band came out.
The definition, according to the dictionary, is simple, specific and not hard to comprehend. It’s not like, say, Nietzsche’s essays on the German population’s effects on culture.
However, for me, the word represents a complex philosophy of life. Not just “demented” or “unhinged.” It is a lifestyle. Controversial? Sure. It really is. And as weird and unconventional as it is, it is something with which I identify.
Gonzo is a surrealistic, accurate, blown-out-of-proportion perception on life and environment, politics, writing and reportage…a little bit of fictional spice in a recipe of what is around you.
1971 was the year GONZO appeared in a dictionary. Of course, things have been GONZO for a lot longer than that. Mark Twain, Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote – all of them were using the technique.
Hell, even Theodore Dreiser experimented with concepts of breeding fiction with reality in his 1925 novel An American Tragedy – that famous, long work based on the murder of Grace Brown (1886-1906). A depressing story with the elements of human horrors which, not surprisingly, was turned into a literary masterpiece.
Years later, Truman Capote produced his most accomplished work, In Cold Blood (published January 17, 1966) on the 1959 murder of Holcomb, Kansas farmer, Herbert Clutter, & his family.
Capote called it the “non-fiction novel.”
Norman Mailer continued this new and exciting avenue into literature with his mega, 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning true-crime work, The Executioner’s Song. Once again, fiction mingles with fact. Gonzo and a Gonzo lifestyle throws all the extraordinary “possibilities” and “assumptions” in with hardcore facts. On more than one occasion I have been told stories about myself that are nothing more than exaggerations. And, for a long time, I perpetuated it, entertained it, wrote about it. It was controlled chaos, bred from ONE simple fact.
But that is not what Gonzo means to me. For me, Gonzo means family – a gathering of diverse people, some of them acting a little more outrageous than others – some of them not outrageous at all. And all of it was fine-tuned and defined by one Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
Because of Dr. Thompson and his powerful writing, activism, political insight and contribution to controversy, I’m honored to have people in my life I never would have had the pleasure to communicate with. There is also the courage he inspired in me to not be perfect…to embrace what it is I long desired to do ever since I read Hemingway: to write. To get the music down with the words.
“Tis strange – but truth is always strange; stranger than fiction, if it could be told…”
That Romantic, limey bastard George Gordon Byron wrote that in 1823. I wonder, though, did he ever consider what hybrid-livestock would emerge breeding the two?
Well, I guess that question has been answered. Some pretty good writing has been born from it. A lifestyle philosophy has been born from it. And I am happy and proud to be a part of it, no matter how small my part in it may be. It’s true to who and what I want to be and what I want to accomplish and dedicate myself to.
