Our Daily Dead

from the LA Times
On a press bus in New Hampshire during the 1968 presidential campaign, writer Bill Cardoso told Hunter S. Thompson, “Don’t worry, [the other reporters] are all so square they won’t know what you’re doing.”

Cardoso was referring to the marijuana joint he had just given Thompson, a freelance journalist of some notoriety who had earned admiring reviews for a book about the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. But Cardoso could just as well have been talking about something else he shared with Thompson: a vision of journalism that he later summed up in one spectacularly apt word: Gonzo.

He christened Thompson’s brand of writing in 1970, when Thompson was anxious about a piece on the Kentucky Derby he had written for Scanlan’s Monthly magazine. With his mind wasted on drugs and his deadline looming, Thompson desperately yanked the pages out of his notebook and turned those in, fully expecting that he would never be asked to write again. Instead, the editor asked for more.

When “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved” was published, congratulations poured in, including a note from Cardoso exclaiming that his buddy’s work had been “pure gonzo.” The adjective wasn’t in any dictionary, but “gonzo journalism” was born.

To the end, there was no greater fan of Cardoso’s writing than Thompson, who called The Maltese sangweech and other heroes “a fine, elegant little book.” He was particularly impressed by his friend’s Zaire tale, which had been written in a record three days.

Wrote Thompson: “I spent all afternoon weeping over [it].”

It was, in a word, gonzo.

Technorati Tags: writer, Bill Cardoso, Hunter S. Thompson, marijuana, freelance, journalist, Gonzo

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