“The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is, are the ones who have gone over.” When the pages of the first volume (fourth edition) of the obscure sports magazine Scanlan’s Monthly hit the shelves in June 1970, no journalist got closer to the edge than Hunter S. Thompson.
Hunter Thompson’s unique brand of participatory journalism displayed in ‘The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved’ (1970) insidiously worked to undermine the very ideals of journalistic integrity. Sitting in one of downtown California’s ubiquitous Starbucks (sipping a grande-sized caramel frappe with extra whipped cream and a hazelnut shot), a copy of Thompson’s article sits unassumingly on the table in front of me, belying the sordid scenes which Thompson is about to reveal. But hesitance is no way to approach Hunter S. Thompson. And so in I jump – head first; no safety rope.
From the opening words of ‘The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved,’ the character of Hunter S. leaps out immediately, yelling Wolfe’s directive in my ear – Hey! Stick around! It’s clear that Thompson got the memo on rejecting the ‘Five-W’s. He’s not asking questions of who, what, or when. Rather, he writes a narrative; telling how this weekend begins with a young reporter’s assignment to observe the race of the Kentucky Derby, and ends with his descent into critique of (and even eager participation in) a squalid culture of obnoxious punters, repugnant enthusiasts and fanatical depravity.
I’m never left alone in this crazy world of redneck Kentuckians; I’m there with Thompson, pillion passenger on this wild ride. There’s no hushed or anonymous reporter retelling an uninspired story. Rather, Thompson’s right here; “fit[ting] a Marlboro into [his] cigarette holder” and “twirling the ice in [his] drink.” To Talese’s fly-on-the-wall, Thompson is the fly-in-the-ointment. We don’t get the unbiased, detached ideal of the journalist. But then again, modern readers “don’t want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what’s important.” Instead we get Thompson – who he is, what he sees, and what he believes. Impartial? Hardly. He’s placed himself right there in the story; discerning the truth is now up to us. It’s not a sports article that’s being written here, it’s something much more insightful, much more sinister. In a single stroke, he shines the piercing light of social commentary across all of America whilst rejecting the voice of traditional journalism. Thompson-as-social-commentator has such a judgemental tone that he clearly wants me to learn something; but not about the Kentucky Derby, about the spectators themselves – about the “doomed atavistic culture” of 1970s Western America.
Thompson’s self-styled break-away form of “Gonzo journalism” has no qualms about using coarse, foul-mouthed slang in his writing (“faggot,” “goddam,” “shit,” and worse!); maybe this disregard for social niceties was what gave his work the definite edge. Misspellings of “nite” are followed by contracted, fragmented sentences (“Drinking heavily, into the Haig & Haig” ). It’s all stream of consciousness here; all very new, all very different – and so very immediate. The reporter’s debaucherous depravity is matched in kind with scathing criticisms of “too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture.” In a drunken stupor, Thompson’s first-person dialogue gives us his real social commentary of stereotypes – of “kids,” “teenyboppers,” “black dudes in white felt hats,” and even a “scumsucking foreign geek.”
Looking out of the clear full-length window, I imagine Thompson, back in 1970, sitting in my position. Not in a sterile Starbucks but camped in the corner of a dingy Kentucky diner, scribbling away in his whiskey-stained notepad, a dishevelled cigarette hanging from his mouth. As I crumple my empty cup into the waiting bin, drop a few coins on the glass counter and prepare to head home, I can’t help but think that Thompson’s depravity would just not have been stomached in this disinfected modern world.
No comments:
Post a Comment