Shoot and write sharply
Notable: Journalistic originals who truly deserve that title cannot be copied. Hunter S. Thompson was one of them. Farewell to Gonzo!
Column Journalistic originals worthy of the name cannot be copied. Hunter S. Thompson was one of them. Farewell to Gonzo! He wrote such beautiful and vivid sentences as: "Going on the campaign trail with Hubert Humphrey was like being locked in a rumbling truck with a hungry, red-eyed 500-pound rat." And he invented the motto of serious journalism: "Free Food. Free Drinks. Free Press." He wrote as he lived: with cocaine and a 44 Magnum. Now, at the age of 67, Hunter S. Thompson has shot himself.There are few famous deaths in journalism, Mbwana. Most of them die during their lifetime: Week after week in the waste paper. Thompson, however, was difficult to overlook. He invented a completely new genre, gonzo journalism, of which he himself was the hero: a drugged-up, frightened, angry reporter on a shark hunt, with the Hells Angels or Nixon on the campaign trail.
Hundreds of anecdotes appeared after his death: For example, how he surprised his friend Jack Nicholson for his birthday at three in the morning - with a 2000-watt spotlight and a grenade launcher. (The surprised Nicholson hid in the cellar with a poker.) But that's just the icing on the cake. What would remain of him after all the harmlessness of shootings and drug binges, Thompson wrote, was "the monster I always was - the writer".
What made Thompson unique was that he broke with the central dogma of American journalism: the strict objectivity of the American "he said she said" routine. Objectivity sounds wonderful in theory, but it is not the same as truth, nor does it automatically capture reality. In the 1950s, for example, Senator McCarthy prevailed with his crusade against un-American activities not least because McCarthy's suspicions and the protests of the other side were given equal weight in the press.
Thompson's expressive first-person reports as an unreliable reporter were the sharpest possible attack on one-side-versus-the-other journalism. Gonzo brought to the press the same irritation that Heisenberg brought to physics: the observer changes what is observed. Often only distortion brings recognizability: for example, when Thompson wrote of Nixon as a "fraud", a "pig of a man" and "he should be buried in a dustbin". An unforgettable portrait in which Thompson calmly remarked: "Some say that words like scum or rotten don't fit with serious journalism - but that's not the point. It was precisely the built-in blind spots of serious journalism that allowed Nixon to slime his way into the White House."
No wonder, generations of young journalists loved and copied him - most of them, however, by going on reportage with chemistry-filled heads and insulting people. They overlooked the fact that Thompson had been perfectly prepared: he had spent years typing up the best of the classics - the Bible, Hemingway and Fitzgerald - for practice, had written two novels, in other words had learned the trade. His weapons were not whisky and cocaine, not the curses, not the .44 Magnum. What made him dangerous was his style, which only suited one man: himself. The only thing that can be copied by the rest is the central point: the decision to trust no one but your own eyes.
After 15 years of great reportage, he was hit by the tragedy of almost all successful people: He began to embody his own image. His insults became formulaic, his style bombast, he himself an eccentric. Thompson concluded: "Writing is a hateful job. Writing is a bit like sex: only funny for amateurs. Old whores no longer laugh at it."
Success poisons, failure poisons and routine will kill us all. But that, Mbwana, is a problem for later.
Constantin Seibt says goodbye to his (un)secret role model.
Hundreds of anecdotes appeared after his death: For example, how he surprised his friend Jack Nicholson for his birthday at three in the morning - with a 2000-watt spotlight and a grenade launcher. (The surprised Nicholson hid in the cellar with a poker.) But that's just the icing on the cake. What would remain of him after all the harmlessness of shootings and drug binges, Thompson wrote, was "the monster I always was - the writer".
What made Thompson unique was that he broke with the central dogma of American journalism: the strict objectivity of the American "he said she said" routine. Objectivity sounds wonderful in theory, but it is not the same as truth, nor does it automatically capture reality. In the 1950s, for example, Senator McCarthy prevailed with his crusade against un-American activities not least because McCarthy's suspicions and the protests of the other side were given equal weight in the press.
Thompson's expressive first-person reports as an unreliable reporter were the sharpest possible attack on one-side-versus-the-other journalism. Gonzo brought to the press the same irritation that Heisenberg brought to physics: the observer changes what is observed. Often only distortion brings recognizability: for example, when Thompson wrote of Nixon as a "fraud", a "pig of a man" and "he should be buried in a dustbin". An unforgettable portrait in which Thompson calmly remarked: "Some say that words like scum or rotten don't fit with serious journalism - but that's not the point. It was precisely the built-in blind spots of serious journalism that allowed Nixon to slime his way into the White House."
No wonder, generations of young journalists loved and copied him - most of them, however, by going on reportage with chemistry-filled heads and insulting people. They overlooked the fact that Thompson had been perfectly prepared: he had spent years typing up the best of the classics - the Bible, Hemingway and Fitzgerald - for practice, had written two novels, in other words had learned the trade. His weapons were not whisky and cocaine, not the curses, not the .44 Magnum. What made him dangerous was his style, which only suited one man: himself. The only thing that can be copied by the rest is the central point: the decision to trust no one but your own eyes.
After 15 years of great reportage, he was hit by the tragedy of almost all successful people: He began to embody his own image. His insults became formulaic, his style bombast, he himself an eccentric. Thompson concluded: "Writing is a hateful job. Writing is a bit like sex: only funny for amateurs. Old whores no longer laugh at it."
Success poisons, failure poisons and routine will kill us all. But that, Mbwana, is a problem for later.
Constantin Seibt says goodbye to his (un)secret role model.
> Constantin Seibt is an editor at the weekly newspaper.
