Totally Gonzo - Rory Feehan [12] My own writing

In terms of my own writing I’d love to write a book about Hunter, I could easily do that, taking my thesis as the basis for it. I really want to expand the discourse of academic research relating to Hunter S. Thompson & Gonzo Journalism, the potential there is huge and it is an area that has been criminally neglected to date. Aside from that I also have plans to write some fiction, I actually have two books already in mind, possibly more, but certainly two very concrete ideas that I want to work on. The first is based on my experiences living in America and the second relates to my life in Ireland. I am actually very excited about tackling those two subjects; I have a lot of material€ already down on paper - some unbelievable stuff in there. In particular I want to write a book about Ireland that will make Angela’s Ashes read like a fairytale. We haven’t had a really vicious book out of here in a while now, you know, one that really upsets everybody. There was an ancient Chinese saying that Hunter was fond of quoting – “May you live in interesting times” which would certainly apply to the material. There is a reason why that quote is also known as a curse, yeah you certainly don’t want that one hanging over your head, mark my words.       

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Totally Gonzo - Rory Feehan [11] Abroad

I’m seriously thinking of heading to Asia to find work. I have a few contacts out there, in South Korea and China and that is where I see the action right now. I’d quite like to find a position out there as an Assistant Lecturer in 20thC American Literature, but I also have experience teaching Romantic and Gothic Literature. Ideally I’d love the opportunity to design my own course, something along the lines of The Sixties from the Outlaw Perspective – Music, Film, Politics & Literature. I had a similar class in Regis University in Denver, Colorado, when I studied abroad on an exchange program – A Study of Spectacle in the 20th Century through History, Politics and Philosophy. That was one hell of a class, three professors all discussing a given topic, together, in the same sitting. Brilliant. In fact I wouldn’t mind a return to Denver or San Francisco to work at some stage, hell I’d love it but the economy there is heading only one way right now and that isn’t up. Despite the waffle you hear in the press.  

Totally Gonzo - Rory Feehan [10] What Next?

So anyway, the whole what is next question – well I am almost certainly going to be emigrating from Ireland in order to find work. Ireland is a disaster right now, we are not just in a recession, we are in a full blown depression. It is a subject that I have very strong feelings about, of which I couldn’t possibly do justice to here. That is a story for another day. In short though, it is a very scary situation for a lot of people in this country right now, people’s lives have been ruined by the actions of a despicably corrupt political and banking cabal that raped this country for their own benefit, leaving behind an empty wreck, battered and bruised. It is a national emergency, the nation is going through a collective nervous breakdown and it is hard to see what kind of a country is going to emerge from all of this. I think in terms of leadership we are a failed state. Every pillar of society has collapsed from its own corruption. From my own point of view I have absolutely no future here. Ireland - No country for young men. 

Totally Gonzo - Rory Feehan [9] Current work

TGL: What are you currently working on, and how do you see the future unfolding?
RF: Well my main priority as of now is to finish my PhD thesis on Hunter. I’m nearly there but I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that it has been one tough road along the way. I had a major set-back halfway through when I tore the cornea in my right eye. I couldn’t do any writing for almost a year because of that. It was a bloody nightmare. I remember it was a pretty dark day when that happened, I thought I was finished regarding the PhD. Then I took some time to calm down and think about my options and the one thing that kept me going was a little advice from the man himself, kind of a “what would Hunter do?” moment if you like. The line that kept coming to me was – “it is the recovery that matters” – so I looked upon the whole thing as a test of my will and decided to just pick myself up and plough on in sheer determination. It was tough at first, I was working as a tutor for the Department of English Language & Literature at Mary Immaculate College, where I’m doing my PhD, and had I bailed out on that I’d have given up a major opportunity to get some good experience teaching at university level, not to mention the scholarship fund I was receiving. Plus I felt that I had a duty to finish what I had started, not just to myself but also to the students whom I was a tutor to, I couldn’t just walk out on them in the middle of the semester. Thankfully my supervisor and colleagues were very understanding and supportive, as were the students in my classes. At first it felt a bit daunting to stand in front of a class of 20-30 students with a right eye that was blood red and a field of vision was all over the place, but after a few jokes at my expense (something about resembling the Terminator) everything was fine. I think a lot of that is also down to the friendly atmosphere in a small college where everyone knows your name. You just don’t get that same feeling in a huge university, it can be a very isolating experience.

Totally Gonzo - Rory Feehan [8] - Outlaws of the counterculture

Hunter wasn’t the only writer, or indeed creative artist, to do this and he recognised that same quality in a host of his contemporaries – people like Ken Kesey, Kurt Vonnegut, Allen Ginsberg, Keith Richards, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady – they all had that same outlaw ethic, they were the Outlaws of the Counterculture, the doomed romantic outsiders living outside of the law on their own terms. Which was much more potent quality than any association he had with the New Journalism movement, Hunter was bigger than that, and he went beyond being just a journalist and a writer. I think he explained it best himself when he said – ‘Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men’s reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of “the rat race” is not yet final.’ Hunter’s own life exemplified the meaning in that very quote. This is why in the long run I believe that Hunter S. Thompson will be recognised as the most unique writer amongst those of the New Journalism movement. I think his contribution will stand as far greater than the likes of Wolfe, Talese, Didion and even Capote.

So to get back to the question, I think that Gonzo, when taken in terms of Hunter’s life and work, is very much relevant as a present day philosophy. Look at how Hunter lived his life, there is a myriad of lessons there, articulated through his actions and through his writing that would serve anyone well should they choose to pay attention. The latter is of course crucial, which is why so many miss the point of what Hunter S. Thompson stood for. Too many people just choose to see it as an excuse to run amok in a drug induced frenzy. Those that actually read the words and pay attention to what Hunter was actually saying are ultimately rewarded with a treasure trove of wisdom on what it means to be an individual in a society doing its best to strip you of any semblance of our inherent uniqueness. We are living in a 24/7 orgy of consumer culture blandness and groupthink mediocrity, what Hunter asks us is to not only reject this, but to challenge it at every available opportunity. The status quo is a terminal disease that traps you before you know it. The Gonzo way recognises this and can help you avoid that trap, that awful white picket fence 2.5 children world that is sold to us from every magazine stand and daytime soap opera, no wonder so many people end up drugged to their gills on the latest pharmaceutical candy, they think that if they haven’t achieved this packaged vision by their early thirties that they are a failure at life. Horrible, horrible…

Ok that was a morbid kind of tangent I went off on there so let’s get to the next question.

Totally Gonzo - Rory Feehan [7] - Gonzo Philosophy

TGL: Can you summarise how you see "gonzo" as a present-day philosophy?

RF: There are people who claim that Gonzo died with Hunter S. Thompson but I would have to disagree wholeheartedly with that assertion. In fact the term Gonzo has become something of an obstacle to understanding both the man and what exactly it is that he achieved as a writer. It is just a catchword to describe his work, give it that extra flavour of distinction from the New Journalism movement. Hunter knew this of course and in terms of the New Journalism movement Hunter actually preferred the term Impressionistic Journalism. He understood that there was actually nothing new about the New Journalism; it has a long history that goes back to the likes of Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce. 

So in that sense you could say that Gonzo, or at least a form of it, was alive before Hunter and certainly survives his passing. It all really boils down to a certain distinction and perception of what it is he actually achieved as a writer. Most people will say that his greatest achievement is the creation of Gonzo Journalism. I would say that to make that assertion is to miss the point entirely. I would be more of the opinion put forward by historian Douglas Brinkley, who is of course also the literary executor of Hunter’s estate, that Hunter’s great art isn’t a single book; it is the collective work and the fact that he created the Hunter Figure as a literary persona. That is where the genius lies and of course Gonzo Journalism is merely a vehicle to allow that persona take shape and develop. Hunter himself knew the power of this creation, he recognized that the persona had become a myth in his own lifetime, as he acknowledged in the foreword to The Great Shark Hunt. It was all very deliberate of course, Hunter worked tirelessly to develop that mythology surrounding his name, the seeds go right back to his childhood when he was obsessed with the heroes of the Wild West, larger than life figures like Billy the Kid and Jesse James. Even back then he saw himself as Billy the Kid of Louisville. His identification with the Outlaw Myth carried straight through to his writing and given his ingrained narcissism it was inevitable that he would use his creative powers to fashion and promote his own self-image, as that of a radically self-reliant individual, standing alone outside of any system of control, always ready to thwart the powers that threaten freedom and liberty. Which really goes back to the West and the birth of America itself, Hunter wrapped himself with the very tenets of what it means to be American, Jeffersonian concepts really but not to be confused with what Hunter would call the “flag suckers”. He was a patriot but he was also very aware of the dangers of blind faith in anything, institutional or otherwise. The scourge of unruly power of any kind was a danger that he always warned of, in particular when it involved being brought “within the system”. Hunter was all too aware that politicians and figures of authority could, and would, abuse their position given half the chance. To Hunter this was a grave threat to freedom and the principles upon which America was founded. To that end he always used his writing to highlight such abuses and to challenge the status quo, so often used as a means to legitimise wrongdoing. 

Totally Gonzo - Rory Feehan [6] - Football Season's Over

Then of course came that fateful night of February 20th 2005 when Hunter decided to check out for good. A weird thing happened the night before in the same bar where I had watched the election results. I was drinking there with a friend who was also a big fan of Thompson and we ended up talking about him. The two of us and another friend had actually tried to visit Aspen in October 2004 but we never made it up there. We turned back about half-ways there after nearly freezing to death at the side of a mountain in a blizzard. We were planning on dropping by Owl Farm and leaving a bottle of absinthe at the gates for Hunter as a gift. We had no intention of setting foot on the property though. We had heard the stories about what happened to uninvited guests and none of us had an appetite for that craziness. Anyway we never made it that far but we had plans to return there when the weather was a bit more hospitable. As far as I am concerned I have an undelivered bottle of absinthe for one Hunter S. Thompson, to be delivered in due course. Before that night in February though, when we were talking about Hunter, my friend made a throwaway remark, I think in relation to four more years of the Bush regime, something along the lines of him being surprised that Hunter hadn’t shot himself already in disgust. You can imagine our reaction the next day when we heard the news. I was immensely saddened and I have no doubt that Bush winning a second term had proven to be the catalyst for Hunter’s decision. He was in ill-health but I think a Kerry victory would have reinvigorated the old bastard. Plus the prospect of kicking Bush while he was down would have been an endless source of entertainment, for us all. Instead we got what Hunter called The Big Darkness. 

When I returned from America I finished my degree and my final dissertation could have been on nobody else but Hunter S. Thompson. A little later I began a PhD focused on his creation of The Hunterfigure and Gonzo Journalism. I think, and I hope I illustrated it here, that you can draw a line of connection between that day 20 odd years ago when I first heard Jimi Hendrix to where I am today, with a few deviations along the way. It has been an interesting trip to say the least. 

Totally Gonzo - Rory Feehan [5] - Denver

Hilltop Bar - scene of Bush Victory

It was shortly after this that I was presented with the opportunity to study abroad as part of my degree. Naturally my one and only choice was to study in America. I went to the placement office to see what my options were and was handed a map with the various participating universities on it. I looked straight to California and to my disappointment there wasn’t a single option there, so I traced my hand across the map to the nearest university, which turned out to be in Thompson’s backyard, in Denver, Colorado. I told them that I wanted to go there. They were kind of taken aback that I didn’t enquire about all the options before making my decision. I had no interest. I’d made up my mind, it was Denver or nowhere. I still don’t know what the other options were, nor do I care for that matter. 

I arrived in Denver in August of 2004 and studied there for a year, before heading straight to San Francisco for the summer of 2005. On the way home I stopped in New York for a week. It was a fantastic year. In Denver I witnessed first hand the sheer mind numbing insanity of a U.S. Presidential Election, I was reading Fear and Loathing: On The Campaign Trail ’72 and Hunter’s regular dispatches on his ESPN Page 2 column…the whole thing was a real eye opener. Everything Hunter wrote about in ’72 was as relevant as ever, as was his opinion of what a Bush victory would mean for the world. The university in Denver was overwhelmingly pro-Dubya and I got great pleasure out of ridiculing him at every available opportunity. I couldn’t believe the animosity displayed on campus between the rival camps. Students even spitting at other students because they had a John Kerry for President badge on their backpack or coat. I had a Kerry campaign poster on my dorm room door that was ripped down every night of the week. I always put it back up even though it was falling apart. I remember watching the results come in as it became clear that Kerry was in serious trouble. I was sitting in a dive bar near the campus and the mood was very sombre, depressing as hell. I remember they switched off the TV towards the end and the country music started up on the jukebox but there was very little talk in the bar. Of course all the Dubya supporters on campus were whooping it up like Baboons in heat. I couldn’t believe the monstrous stupidity of that election. I knew exactly how Thompson had felt when he wrote in the aftermath of Nixon winning in ’72 about walking down La Cienega Boulevard to the Losers’ Club. 

Totally Gonzo - Rory Feehan [4] - Hunter S Thompson

It was through Morrison that I discovered the Beats and Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and others like Timothy Leary’s Flashbacks, Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan. Also Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. Yeah Jim Morrison led me astray and I’ll be forever thankful to him for that. Changed my life and that is not something I say lightly. Of course I was now also studying all the classic literature in university too so I was in my element. Probably for the first time ever I was actually challenged in an interesting way by the education system and not only that but I was actually using my natural affinity for writing in a constructive manner and reaping the rewards. I sailed through that first year in my new course and it was also here where I first encountered the work of Hunter S. Thompson. I had made friends with a circle of like minded people in these new surrounding, one of whom was also a Doors nut. Well one particular day in the student lounge, we were playing pool before the start of lectures for the day when my friend threw me a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and said something like – “Read this, you’ll love it.” I flicked through the book and of course my first thought concerned the weird drawing scattered throughout. I thought it was weird for a novel. Stretching out on one of the ratty couches in the lounge I started reading…“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold…” For the next few hours the only time I stopped reading was to laugh out loud. I skipped all of my lectures that day and read the book from cover to cover. The next day I went to the bookshop and picked up Hell’s Angels and read it that very night. Unfortunately, living in a one horse town meant that I couldn’t get any of his other books for quite a while. Being a stone broke student ruled out buying anything over the internet too. In fact my next purchase was my own copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which I picked up in a bookstore in Amsterdam.

           

Thompson was just electrifying to me, his writing was that voice that I had always been searching for, like when I first heard The Doors there was that instant shock of recognition. Like long lost friends reuniting unexpectedly. In Thompson’s writing I found everything that interested me and more – America, the music, the counterculture, Vietnam, politics, philosophy, rebellion and the righteous anger of the outlaw, the boy from the wrong side of the tracks who had been screwed over by the system but who had fought back and lived life on his own terms. Yeah I could certainly relate to that, his whole attitude appealed to me greatly. There was just something fantastic about the way he brought it all together in his writing, I couldn’t believe the nerve of him, the daring, the flagrant disregard for the rules. Discovering Hunter S. Thompson marked my graduation from the Jim Morrison school of re-education to a PhD in the same field of study. Like with Morrison, I made a point of reading everything mentioned by Thompson. Interestingly, I was studying The Great Gatsby in college around the same time that I started reading The Proud Highway. I have to say that Gatsby according to Dr. Thompson was a far more interesting course as far as I was concerned.

Totally Gonzo - Rory Feehan [3] - Influences

Anyway of all the movies that I watched about Vietnam the one that really blew me away was Apocalypse Now. Between that and The Godfather movies, Francis Ford Coppola is something of a god in our house. That opening scene where the Vietnam jungle goes up in flames from napalm as The End by The Doors floats over the destruction is just seared into my brain. Of course it is through Apocalypse Now that I also indirectly encountered the world of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the poetry of T.S. Eliot, two favourites of Thompson who would reintroduce me to their work years later. It was The Doors music that really captured my attention in that movie though, along with the infamous Ride of the Valkyries from Wagner. However it wasn’t until I saw Oliver Stone’s take on the story of The Doors and Morrison that I really became obsessed with their music. I went out and bought all their albums and every single book on Jim Morrison that I could find. I was about 16-17 at the time and as far as I am concerned that was when my second education began, the one that I consider to be the most important.

I was always good at school and a voracious reader but I was also completely bored with school. I was 17 when I first started university and for some absurd reason I was advised to take a course in computers. I obviously hadn’t a clue what I wanted to do for the rest of my life at that age so I just went with the flow. I knew after a week that it was the wrong choice. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing though, I could have changed courses but didn’t know that at the time. I was totally lost. Being stubborn though I stuck with the course for a year and it all ended in disaster, which is a whole other story…I ended up hating the place, not because I didn’t like the course but for a whole different reason, lets just say that fate intervened and saved me from that mind numbing course and the awful feeling of being reduced to a 7 figure identification number. Feeling totally miserable was not my idea of what university should be like. You have to remember that Ireland was at this point gearing up for the whole Celtic Tiger frenzy of stupidity and wanton greed. Computers were considered a one way ticket to a secure job and a big fat salary. Thanks to a series of unfortunate events I had something of an epiphany about that whole place and I decided to get the hell out of there as fast as possible. It was a real eye opener but a tale for another day. Anyway before I jumped ship I was doing some serious thinking about my future, some serious drinking too I might add. That is when Jim Morrison really took centre stage, I was hugely interested in his life and work and I just soaked up his whole attitude and philosophy to life. Morrison was also a voracious reader and I made a point of reading every single book that he had read, either mentioned by Morrison himself or in the various books about his life. There was no turning back after that, that was my ticket out of the world of computers and the campus from hell and I never looked back. After a few months of some serious soul searching I transferred to another campus to study English and Philosophy.

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Totally Gonzo - Rory Feehan [2] - Bombers

After that there was no turning back I guess. America, and in particular California, always appealed to me but I guess due to those early experiences it was the music of the 60’s counterculture that always captivated my attention. Given my father's interest in the same kind of thing, the music was ever present in our house as were the films to do with that era, particular the Vietnam war movies. I remember watching them all with my father, Full Metal Jacket, The Deer Hunter, Good Morning Vietnam, Hamburger Hill, Platoon, Born On The Fourth of July…we watched them all, over and over, and I remember vividly when the first Gulf War kicked off, we were all glued to the TV as the footage came in of the American military kicking into gear. I was fascinated by the Stealth Bombers and used to cut out all the photos of the planes from the newspapers and keep them in a scrapbook, I still have that somewhere. The war was also close to home in a literal sense, as I live in the vicinity of Shannon airport, which was used by the American military to refuel on the way to Iraq. In fact they still use it to this day. The huge transport planes fly over my house at night on a regular basis. You have to appreciate the power of these things when they rumble over like thunder in the dead of night, the whole house rattles and you can only imagine what it must be like for the poor bastards that hear the likes of a B-52 bomber coming at them in anger.

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Totally Gonzo - Rory Feehan [1] Student of HST

TGL: What were the main reasons you chose to become a student of Hunter S Thompson?

RF: It was kind of inevitable to be honest, but it was a long road that brought me to the Gonzo World. I’ve always had an interest in America, ever since I was a child. I have two uncles living there, both of whom served in the military, with one having fought in Vietnam and the other deployed to Okinawa. Growing up I heard a lot of stories about that kind of thing, my own father always had an interest in the military aircraft so I guess one of my first associations with America was in terms of the war machine. Of course as child it is just a fascination with the planes, battleships and tanks. The second association was the music. One of my earliest memories is discovering my fathers record collection for the first time. I was at home from school because I was sick, but I was also bored and as curious kids tend to do I was wandering around the house looking for something to entertain myself with…well on this particular day it turned out to be the new record player. The first record I put on was The Mamas & The Papas and the song was California Dreamin’ – and yes it was a winters day, a particularly nasty grey mundane one so typical of Ireland and the song was just magic to my ears, I still love it to this day. Transfixed by the music I started looking through the other records until I came across one with a particularly wild looking guy on the cover. He had a cool looking white guitar. I put the record on and that was when I first heard the opening to Voodoo Child. I must have been only about 5 or 6 years old and here I was listening to Jimi Hendrix, totally mesmerized by this crazy looking and crazier sounding guitar god who might as well have been from another planet to a child from 80’s Ireland.