post #8

Alex Fugini-Laws
English
B Block

Thesis Proposal

For my American author I chose to read books written by Hunter S. Thompson. Upon reading I started to think of the origin of Gonzo Journalism. Thompson, who is supposedly the creator of Gonzo, had many influences himself. My rough thesis idea is: Hunter S. Thompson was not the creator of Gonzo Journalism; he just carried it out and put a name to it. I came to this idea from looking at his Wikipedia page and scrolling through his influencers and reading about them. I think Thompson’s influences like William Faulkner gave him the inspiration and ideas to take new journalism to another level.
I would argue that Thompson’s got Gonzo to a famous level through his crazy story telling novels like Fear and loathing in Las Vegas, which captured people’s attention to the writing style. Thompson’s specific style is easy to get hooked on. One approach could be to compare the Gonzo like similarities between Thompson and other authors. Another is to see how Thompson could have taken a style and interpreted it into his own Gonzo. This paper might go into the definition of Gonzo and what does it really mean to see if there is a broader sense to describe his previous writers.
I need to do more reading and research about the writers that influenced Thompson before I start writing, to better argue my point. This would be essential to comparing writing style and how one affects the other. This is going to be challenging because it means a lot more reading and analyzing style. My outside sources may be writing from other authors so I can compare them to Thompson’ s writing.