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Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

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Re: Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

#41

Post by gregory80 »

dmix wrote: post #11

Hunter seemed to be heavily inspired by Hemingway at this point in his career. When Hemingway started out, he worked for the Toronto Star (another Canadian newspaper). He wrote his first novel during this time: The Sun Also Rises, about expatriates living in Paris. Hunter decided to apply to a Canadian newspaper after admittingly not being familiar with it. Then not long after he wrote his first novel - The Rum Diary…

hmm, I'm not really sure he was inspired by Hemingway in any meaningful way. Perhaps purely by coincidence is that true, with Hemingway winning the nobel prize a few years before this letter was mailed, and thompson actively copied heminway's work, as well as several other novels, in order to learn more about writing style, though he never published any plagiarized work.

Hemingway was a traditional, fiction, novelist and focused on his characters. Thompson defied (edit: was defined, oops) 100s of years of traditional writing (both novel and newspaper) by inventing so called 'gonzo' journalism. The man openly included his own personal life directly into all of this work, including this letter. He also, never worked in canada.

While I hold both men in high regard, the only parallels between these two men are the facts they both were journalists and authors (and drunks), since that's true for almost every published journalist, it's a thin comparison at best.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

#42

Post by rbxbx »

gregory80 wrote: post #41
dmix wrote: post #11

Hunter seemed to be heavily inspired by Hemingway at this point in his career. When Hemingway started out, he worked for the Toronto Star (another Canadian newspaper). He wrote his first novel during this time: The Sun Also Rises, about expatriates living in Paris. Hunter decided to apply to a Canadian newspaper after admittingly not being familiar with it. Then not long after he wrote his first novel - The Rum Diary…

hmm, I'm not really sure he was inspired by Hemingway in any meaningful way. Perhaps purely by coincidence is that true, with Hemingway winning the nobel prize a few years before this letter was mailed, and thompson actively copied heminway's work, as well as several other novels, in order to learn more about writing style, though he never published any plagiarized work. Hemingway was a traditional, fiction, novelist…

Don't forget the fact that they both took their own lives with a shotgun to the head.

Also, if you consult HST's wikipedia entry, you'll notice Hemingway come up several times (and in fairly significant ways).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson

Re: Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

#43

Post by ursablanco »

niyazpk wrote: post #12
jacquesm wrote: post #4

Hilarious, now, the one thing I can't get out of my head is the question if he got the job or not?

There is no sign in his Wikipedia page that he worked for the Sun. So probably not.

The Sun has a long history of establishment suck-holing and sucking-in-general that continues into the foreseeable future. There's not a chance that Thompson worked there.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

#44

Post by thaumaturgy »

cubicle67 wrote: post #29
thaumaturgy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's possible -- people just don't do it, and I don't know why. I recently needed to bring someone on to take over the basics on a bunch of my web projects, because I'm overcommitted, as usual, and trying not to be. I tried a local resource first, and then I went to Craigslist, which has worked out well for me in the past. My ad was simple and direct; it spelled out what we were about, what we were looking…

Did you get many applications from people who hadn't read your instructions?

We did, and since one of the unwritten job requirements was "able to follow clear instructions", it worked well as a filter.

Also, we posted the ad using one particular email address (a working, but incorrect one), but to apply to the correct address they had to solve an easy puzzle which consisted of looking at the page source for the ad, seeing that our logo image was being loaded from ourdomain.com/job/logo.jpg, and going to ourdomain.com/job for the correct email address to apply to.

I didn't want anything too difficult or annoying, but on the other hand, I knew anyone that could figure that out and follow the directions would work out fine for us.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

#45

Post by etal »

pacemkr wrote: post #19

I don't know anything about Thompson as a person, so I'll refrain from judging. I'm only glad that I'm finally able to put a term to what I despise most about journalism in our country (U.S.), evidently the term is "Gonzo journalism." "Gonzo journalism tends to favor style over accuracy and often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for the topic or event being covered." --Wikipedia I don't care…

The word you probably want is "truthiness".

If there's a fundamental difference between the weaselly narratives constructed by Fox News and the psychedelic screeds Thompson put out, it's that most reporters aren't making it explicit that their stories are fully personal, opinionated interpretations of true events -- they record some isolated facts, sample a few quotes and make vague references to public sentiment to back up any narrative they need. But they present all of this as objective information. This was happening well before H.S.T. (see "yellow journalism") and happens outside the U.S. too (see Daily Mail).

Thompson's approach was (1) a veil of entertaining literary showmanship over (2) complete, self-accountable interpretations of the events being covered. He was clear that his stories were subjective, and that freed him to explain exactly why he felt the way he did about Nixon, drug laws, Southern culture, etc.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

#46

Post by jbooth »

etal wrote: post #45
pacemkr wrote: post #19

I don't know anything about Thompson as a person, so I'll refrain from judging. I'm only glad that I'm finally able to put a term to what I despise most about journalism in our country (U.S.), evidently the term is "Gonzo journalism." "Gonzo journalism tends to favor style over accuracy and often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for the topic or event being covered." --Wikipedia I don't care…

The word you probably want is "truthiness". If there's a fundamental difference between the weaselly narratives constructed by Fox News and the psychedelic screeds Thompson put out, it's that most reporters aren't making it explicit that their stories are fully personal, opinionated interpretations of true events -- they record some isolated facts, sample a few quotes and make vague references to public sentiment to…

The other fundamental difference is that Thompson was driven by actually trying to express the truth of the situation as he saw it, by piecing together things that by themselves wouldn't add up to "journalistic integrity" as defined at georgetown cocktail parties.

He once wrote a lengthy, 15-page feature piece for Rolling Stone about how the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 72, Muskie I believe, was addicted to an obscure stimulant found in an African root. The whole tale was entirely fabricated, and he never let on that he was joking. I'm pretty sure it would have qualified as libel. But in the process of telling the (deprave) story he managed to pinpoint everything wrong with Muskie's campaign at the time. Muskie sank to those very weaknesses (basically being a weakling/faker who was led around by his staff, in HST's estimation), and lost the sure thing nomination to a nobody named McGovern.

HST also once shaved his head before a debate while running for Sheriff of some county out in Colorado. He then spent the whole debate referring to the Republican in the race, clean-cut guy with a crew cut, as "my long-haired opponent". That one's not as profound, but it's hilarious. And says something about the media as well.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

#47

Post by Psyonic »

kjhgbhjkl wrote: post #27
Psyonic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, I love a good joke! I think the problem is sometimes its difficult to differentiate sarcasm, trolling, and idiocy without knowing the person or vocal cues. The OP wrote the comment on a new account with absolutely no history to guide me. What should be my default take?

sorry - I create a new account each day. Too much traceable info online for the industry I work in.

No worries. I'm not too concerned about my karma, though -4 seems harsh for not catching a joke.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

#48

Post by Psyonic »

rbxbx wrote: post #42
gregory80 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hmm, I'm not really sure he was inspired by Hemingway in any meaningful way. Perhaps purely by coincidence is that true, with Hemingway winning the nobel prize a few years before this letter was mailed, and thompson actively copied heminway's work, as well as several other novels, in order to learn more about writing style, though he never published any plagiarized work. Hemingway was a traditional, fiction, novelist…

Don't forget the fact that they both took their own lives with a shotgun to the head. Also, if you consult HST's wikipedia entry, you'll notice Hemingway come up several times (and in fairly significant ways). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson

Best source I can find say's he used a .45 caliber pistol, you know otherwise? http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/rela...

No disagreement on the similarity between those two, however.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

#49

Post by pacemkr »

jonasvp wrote: post #22
pacemkr wrote: post #19

I don't know anything about Thompson as a person, so I'll refrain from judging. I'm only glad that I'm finally able to put a term to what I despise most about journalism in our country (U.S.), evidently the term is "Gonzo journalism." "Gonzo journalism tends to favor style over accuracy and often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for the topic or event being covered." --Wikipedia I don't care…

I've always been a big admirer of Hunter S. Thompson's style. His point was that there is no way you can separate the author from the story so you might as well go in whole-hog. No author can give all the facts and "just the facts". They can't help but shape and spin a story by selecting what they deem important, leaving out the rest. Their choice of words determines how the reader views the subject. I'd rather know…

This is probably true, the fact that you can't completely separate the author from the story. Where I disagree is going in "whole-hog." I consider it fundamental for a journalist to make her best effort to keep her opinion out of the story. To me, that's the definition of the format. News is not supposed to be about the person telling it.

If I am to believe what people said here (and I have no reason not to), Thompson adhered to a higher standard in his writing. As I said originally, I wasn't trying to say anything about him as a person or a writer. I just don't see high standards amongst our major networks. For issues that are important to me, they simply fail to report the basic facts when they're reporting their opinion.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

#50

Post by pacemkr »

bapadna wrote: post #23
pacemkr wrote: post #19

I don't know anything about Thompson as a person, so I'll refrain from judging. I'm only glad that I'm finally able to put a term to what I despise most about journalism in our country (U.S.), evidently the term is "Gonzo journalism." "Gonzo journalism tends to favor style over accuracy and often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for the topic or event being covered." --Wikipedia I don't care…

If you're going to blame something for lots of problems, kindly learn what it is first. You are king among the problems in the United States today. You hold opinions on things where you are grossly ignorant.

"Strong beliefs, weakly held." That hasn't failed me so far. What people have said here (other people) is plenty to make me understand that Gonzo journalism means something else. I'm not particularly stubborn when proved wrong.

Do you see the irony in your own statement? "If you're going to blame something for lots of problems, kindly learn what it is first." and immediately "You are king among the problems in the United States today."

P.S. I can't believe people are up-voting something that is clearly meant to be personal.

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