I've been getting many letters of condolence -- emails of condolence, actually -- regarding the death of Hunter S. Thompson. Now, you may fairly ask: why's that? Good question. The answer, I guess, is that I once tried mightily to convey the crucial importance of Thompson's core "theory" of writing, which came to be called gonzo journalism. However, as I did this in a "marketing" book, I was concerned -- fearful, you could say -- as to what his reaction might be. Unless he told one of you, and you tell me, I'll never know. I never met the man, never even spoke with him.

The reason for the quotation marks, above, is that gonzo wasn't a theory  for the good Doctor. He lived it. And Gonzo Marketing wasn't so much about marketing  as about voice -- that indefinable quality of communication that unmistakably signals it's coming from a human being. But not just any old garden-variety human. This is where the indefinable part comes in. And the risk of a perversely inverted elitism. It's simply not possible to weigh or measure voice, but chances are good (if you're not dead from the neck up and the waist down) you'll know it when you hear it. Thompson had voice.

In December, 2001, USA Today wrote:

[Locke's] solution is Gonzo, borrowing a term associated with over-the-top journalist Hunter S. Thompson. (If your pop-culture references are hazy, think back to the early 1970s Rolling Stone and such books as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Putting Thompson's spirit behind Web marketing isn't that far-fetched, given that Thompson is now writing a weekly column, "Hey, Rube," for ESPN online.)

Gonzo involves passionate engagement, not detachment. It means getting to know the people to whom you are marketing -- literally talking to them (or at least exchanging e-mail).

from: Get personal to market on Web by Bruce Rosenstein
source: USA Today, 10 December 2001
via: HighBeam Research

His ESPN column wasn't the point. The second paragraph, however, was -- especially if you change "marketing" to writing, and "e-mail" to fax. I was never a big fan of Thompson's "mojo wire" (the fax machine he so loved) but neither have I been as big a fan of marketing as some seem to believe. Gonzo Marketing was in fact an anti-marketing book. Here's a clip from the inside front flap...

I was searching the web for a copy of the passage where Thompson comes down from Woody Creek, CO -- just a couple hours from where I live in Boulder -- and shoots me, kills me -- with a shotgun, of course -- for writing about him in a business book. I didn't find the exact bit I was looking for (though you can [barely] read it in this atrocious scan), but I did come across this review of Gonzo Marketing on Tom Matrullo's old  blog...

On one level, Gonzo is a mythic tale of the reallocation of voice. The power to speak that the giants of mass marketing and mass media tore from us -- the rape of voice -- is envisioned restored to the multifarious intelligences of the Net. In turn, the corporate Frankensteins are stripped of speech: Gonzo's autopsy fails to find any sign of the heart where voice resides.

It is a cautionary and arresting tale. At its edge, the author gets blown away for stealing voice -- the same crime corporations are charged with. Of course, the author is authoring the scene of his execution. As he lies mangled and bloody, his Sony XBR TV tries to mate with him. It's a hoot, right? The pulverizing violence is just pulp. Just fiction. Not to worry...

Mitch Ratcliffe writes earlier today of Thompson: "If you'd tried to claim him as your own in his lifetime without draining your life force into your writing first, well, Thompson would have done you violence."

I was actually quite concerned about that last bit, yes. But I guess there's no need, as Tom says, too worry now. Too late. Ah, too too late. And I think if there's a reason HST killed himself, I mean, if he really meant to do that, it was some manner of long-delayed reaction to what he describes in this -- to me, the most arresting -- passage of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.