High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism

by David S. Wills

High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism aims to provide the first in-depth analysis of the writings of Hunter S. Thompson, one of the most misunderstood authors of the 20th century. His Gonzo journalism was an odd fusion of fact and fiction that garnered widespread adoration but for all the wrong reasons.

In this book, David S. Wills (author of books on William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg) traces the author’s life from birth to death, exploring how Thompson developed an entirely unique literary voice and why he used such odd techniques to craft a form of prose that defied categorisation. This book not only explores Thompson’s meteoric rise to literary superstardom, but also charts the startling decline in the quality of his work that came after his 1972 foray into political reporting.

High White Notes will be released in November 2021 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the publication of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” in Rolling Stone.

Genres: Journalism

555 pages, Paperback

First published November 11, 2021

About the author

David S. Wills is the editor of Beatdom literary journal and the author of books on William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Hunter S. Thompson, and Haruki Murakami. He lives in rural Cambodia and is currently working on a book about the 6 Gallery reading of 1955.

Reviews

[Sylvia Spruck Wrigley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hunter S. Thompson's best writing advice is to grab the reader by the short hairs and then offer them something they won’t read anywhere else. In High White Notes, David S. Wills has taken this advice to heart and delivers 100%.

He is not the first to attempt to tell the story of Hunter S Thompson but this is by far the most thorough analysis of Thompson as a writer. By taking an unflinching look at Thompson's writing and lifestyle, Wills offers us a window of insight into a complex man who was much more than the sum of his words.

I first read Thompson' work when I was twelve: my mother taught a summer class on American Literature at the university and I pleaded to be allowed to read long with them. One of those books was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

I had never read anything like it and I know now that no one had read anything like it. Much of it must have gone over my head but I remember being blown away that a journalist could be given an assignment and turn in something completely unrelated to the assignment and still get an A. I understood that this twisting of fact and fiction was something amazing. I would like to think that I understood that I was in the hands of a master. I already knew I wanted to be a writer but I didn't aspire to such heights -- it would be like trying to ride my bike to the moon -- but I remember being amazed that storytelling could look like this.

In High White Notes, Wills invites us on a journey through the phases of Thompson's work, starting with the early experimentation as he tried to find his voice. The descriptions of Thompson's most well known articles tread that tightrope of quoting enough to keep the new reader along without asking us to wade through Thompson's entire opus.

As a reader and a writer, I was particularly fascinated by the way that Wills pulls apart Thompson's words to highlight the component parts of Thompson's instantly recognizable prose before putting it all together again into what we now know as Gonzo journalism. Wills shows us the beauty of the words and sentence structures as well as the dismissive descriptions, throw-away racism and outright lies that were part and parcel of Thompson's best writing.

Wills slices through the myths that Thompson surrounded himself with and proves just how much effort Thompson put into learning to write and writing better. Wills uses Thompson's literary history to show us how Thompson built up his box of writing tools until he was able to do exactly what he'd set out to do in the beginning: mix fact and fiction, using narrative techniques to share the truth with people didn't expect to hear it from someone like him.

"It was not coincidence that my father was a great writer" said his son Juan; this is the tragedy of the myth that Thompson built around himself, that it was supposed to be easy and it never, ever was.

Wills shares Thompson's growth and success but also the professional issues and conflicts. Thompson wasn't just a difficult man politically but also exceedingly hard to work with: when asked to submit a 3,000 word article, he took four weeks and wrote 80,000 words, a book which remains unpublished. And yet, when asked to write a book in response, he spent years failing to ever get it off the ground.

High White Notes is the opposite of a binge read: dense and full of critical detail, ranging from the news of the time and cultural context, building up layer after layer of Thompson's life while peeling back the onion skins of myth and legend and hearsay, even if at the end we might not find anything more than a man that ended up broken, no longer able to achieve the great writing that he strived for from his first years.

I found myself highlighting phrase after phrase, key points jumping out on me on every page, until it started to feel like I was highlighting the whole damn book, just to make sure I get the chance to read it all again.

This is not a romanticization of Thompson's life; Wills shows us Thompson's bad writing along with the good, the high white notes alongside the burned bridges and egotistical posturing that regularly led him to be his own worst enemy. The financial and emotional support that Thompson's ex-wife offered for decades is not swept away but shown to have been crucial to Thompson's success.

High White Notes tracks the tragedy as Thompson became a parody of himself, trying to live up to the vision he created of a drug-fueled gun nut who simply dashed out pages before ripping them out of his notebook to be published in the national press.

The result is a sympathetic biography of a complicated man, a biography which does not flinch when it comes to Thompson's faults and self-obsession, while breaking down the writing so clearly that it is possible to see when Wills himself uses them to great effect. As Thompson's biographer, Wills holds himself to the standard that Thompson wished for himself: that a story told well should offer a greater truth than any list of facts.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I consider myself a big fan of Hunter S. Thompson…even though I have only read 3 of his books (Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Rum Diaries) and only started reading him after he had died, this biography has shown me I have have only touched the surface with Thompson’s writing. There have been many books written about Thompson so what makes this book special? Thompson was the master of blending fact and fiction and it is nigh on impossible to unravel the truth from Thompson’s books, his letters, interviews and audio recordings, Wills has done an incredible job of trawling through all that work to separate fact from fiction and has created this biography that is one of the most interesting I’ve read. Sure he might have had to make assumptions here and there but that has to be expected, there is no real way to get to the truth, especially as in the end it’s not obvious as to whether Thompson himself was sure of the facts.

One thing that is obvious from this book is just how tragic Thompson’s life was, trapped inside a persona that he had created and unable to find a way out. The guy was most definitely a genius, some of his insults (especially those towards Nixon) are some of the funniest you’ll ever read and it’s amazing that you imagine Gonzo journalism as a huge movement but it was just the one guy, it was such a crazy concept that nobody was able to imitate and ultimately Thompson was unable to find his way out. Wills shares with the reader quotes from those closest to him and it’s very moving to see just what they did for him to help him focus on his writing, the quote at the beginning of the last chapter by Sandy Thompson was shocking, it really puts things into perspective about what Thompson was going through. Reading of his decline in these pages was quite depressing but Wills has handled it sensitively.

What makes a good biography? In my opinion it needs to be of somebody of interest, not some recent “celebrity”, the number of quotes from other sources needs to be kept down, the biographer needs to write things as if the object of the book is a character, any statements they make need to be backed up with understandable reasoning and finally it needs to leave you in awe and wanting to explore the person more. For me this book has ticked all the boxes, I have learnt a huge amount, the research has been fantastic, so well written that now and then I found myself all caught up in the events in Thompson’s life and finally it has made me want to re-read the three books I’ve read and to also read the poor quality work that Thompson wrote. If you want to know more about the myth that is Hunter S. Thompson then this is a great place to start, it ain’t just for the fanboys.

Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2022...

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thank to NetGalley and the publisher Beatdom Books for an advanced copy of this literary study and memoir.

Hunter S. Thompson cast a huge shadow over the cultural and journalistic world, where the word Gonzo meant not just a writing style but a way of life, a religion for the strong and those willing to fight for it, whatever it was. From the outside women wanted him, and men wanted to be him, an outlaw with a savage typewriter and personality. Until editors, journalists, lovers and friends got closer to the good Doctor of Journalism and saw what Gonzo really had done to its creator, a hopeless addict watching his talent drain away, with occasional flashes, but spiraling down to almost parody.

High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism,named for by the feeling and hum that Thompson would feel when the writing was kicking on all cylinders, by David S. Wills is a biography of not just the man Thompson was, but the words he used and how he put them together to create his classic works. Thompson's life was big, brash, and full of edits and rewriting. Tweeking a story to make it better, make Thompson come out better, to beat the man at his own game was a very common thing, something that make biographers have reported as fact in many books on him. An untrustworthy narrator of his own life is a very large part of Thompson's legacy.

Thompson's writing is the real subject of the book. Thompson had skill, and he wrote and rewrote and rewrote to make it perfect, to make it sing, and carry the narrative along. Gonzo was what ruined that gift, being the light at the end of the party, the all eyes on him, destroyed that gift, drove that editorial instinct away, and made it easier for him to hand a bunch of notes to some editor and let the swine make of it what they will.

I have been a fan since I first read Thompson's article about the Kentucky Derby. What the???... I was amazed, confused and envious all at once. The pictures, even without the Steadman drawings were so clear, gross disgusting rich people up to their knees in refuse, I wanted more. Mr. Wills goes deep into how Thompson would create these kind of images, his tricks, his writing. Even a nonfan can learn alot about writing, from reading this book, maybe also how not to lose it.

Mr. Wills seems to have read everything written, written about or written on Hunter Thompson. Not just a interesting biography, the book's approach to the reading is what a reader will remember most. A very revealing and very sad book. All the reader can think about is all the great writing that was never to be. A great gift for a Thompson fan, or a burgeoning writer.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like so many who have aspired to write—especially those of us of the caucasian penised variety—I have long placed the late Hunter S. Thompson in the pantheon of my personal literary gods. After all, throughout his work he managed to infuse our language with a crackling electricity, verve, and raw hilarity that often made me think, Why can’t I write like that? And like any genius, he made it look effortless.

So I will freely admit to being one of legions of wannabes who have, from time to time, tried to capture his lightning in a bottle and harness it for my own artistic benefit. I’ve been very guilty of aping his style, and while at times this has helped energize my own words, I fear, like most attempts to channel that thing that he had, it has largely been a naked failure. Only one guy could ever really do what he did. Still, that hasn’t stopped me from trying, again and again.

I bring this up because I came to David S. Wills’ new book on HST, High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism (Beatdom Books, 2021, 557 pages), as a bonafide fanboy. While I was aware that Thompson’s literary prowess had significantly waned in the later years of his life, I had long chosen to look away from the dross and concentrate on his output produced at the height of his powers: books such as Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, and The Proud Highway, his first volume of letters that just may be the best stuff he did. These are works that helped form me and their words still live in my bones, so I wasn’t sure if I was totally ready to take in Wills’ unflinching examination of Thompson’s lifelong output. After all, it can be hard to witness the autopsy of your hero.

Wills’ certainly isn’t the first to write about HST, but most of the other books have concentrated on the man, rather than his words. After all, Thompson’s larger than life “Raoul Duke” persona came to overshadow his work, so examining the human behind the act has been the more tempting prospect. And while High White Notes does trace the major plot points of Thompson’s life, the book avoids getting too wrapped up in mythology, focusing instead on the words. It’s a serious piece of literary criticism, and a stunning one at that.


David S. Wills is the founder of Beatdom, a print journal dedicated to examining the works of the Beat writers, and has penned books on subjects such as Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. While Hunter S. Thompson wasn’t technically a Beat (he was a bit late to the party), the influence of that particular movement on his work was monumental; there would be no Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas without Naked Lunch. The literary trajectory the Beats launched freed up a lot of space for writers such as HST to experiment, so it makes sense that Wills chose to focus on him for his latest work. HST is a one man, fully-fledged branch on that family tree.

The book’s title is attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald, who used the phrase “high white notes” to describe those sublime moments when a writer’s rhythm, words, and feel come together to achieve a kind of verisimilitude. These are those rare yet sublime moments when the writer is truly in “the zone,” and, according to Wills, Hunter S. Thompson lived for this particular high. At several points he stresses how Thompson was willing to live with pages of so-so prose just as long as he hit those vaunted heights. HST knew that high white notes could never be sustained through the whole piece, but if he managed to nail that sweet spot even once, his job was done. Anyone who has toiled at the lonely craft of writing will surely identify with this, and if you’re ever fortunate enough to achieve a high white note or two, you’ll know and savor it.

According to Wills, despite the fact that Thompson wrote with a photo of Hemingway on his desk, it was Fitzgerald who was his real artistic inspiration. He goes to great lengths to drive this point home, even going as far as to map out the rhythm of HST’s famous “crest of a wave” passage from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and compare it with Fitzgerald’s even more celebrated “green light” passage from The Great Gatsby. Wills seems to suggest that Thompson’s greatest high white note was achieved by directly imitating the cadence of Fitzgerald’s.

This is the key to the success of High White Notes: Wills has not only done his homework, but positively nerds out on the material. He counts syllables, breaks down paragraphs, and documents the appearances of HST’s stock words and phrases (of which there are many). I’m convinced that he’s read every bit of Thompson’s writing available to the public, some multiple times. This is a deep dive into the writing of one of the biggest figures of 20th century American letters, and the whole time the reader can rest assured in the knowledge that they’re in the hands of someone who really knows what the hell they’re doing. If there’s a writer out there more acquainted with the work of HST than David S. Wills, I’d like to meet them.

One of the coolest things about the book is that it shatters the idea that Thompson only wrote from a place of pure talent, that he was just some kind of savant who never had to work to master his craft. Wills shows us how disciplined and committed he was, at least in his early days. Here was a young writer very aware of the potency of his ability, while also dedicated to laying the groundwork necessary to develop it. Thompson would type out pages from The Great Gatsby just to get a feel for Fitzgerald’s rhythm, and he obsessed on the minutiae of language in a way that guaranteed his growth. He surely put Malcom Gladwell’s proverbial 10,000 hours in required for mastery, and soon saw his efforts bear fruit.

It is here where High White Notes is the most compelling. We get to witness a writer of considerable gifts come into his own, from his early days doing raucous sports articles for an Air Force newspaper, to diving deep into the biker scene of Hells Angels, surely one of the greatest works of American journalism of the time. This was a guy who was not only hungry, but also had the deep chops to back it up.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the book that blew the doors off of Thompson’s career. It’s what he’s best known for today, and rightfully so. Published in 1971, Wills maintains that it was an “elegy for the 1960’s,” the decade that HST was perfectly timed to both experience and document. This melange of journalism and fantasy sequences—told from the point-of-view of a narrator placed smack dab in the middle of the action—established the genre of gonzo journalism as a one man show. It was Thompson in his finest form: rabid, irreverent, culturally insightful, and explosively imaginative.

Though Thompson is still classified as a journalist, Wills makes it clear that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was largely a work of fiction. It was actually written from the notes and audio tapes from two separate trips to Las Vegas, and while it’s clear that Thompson and his partner, Oscar Zeta Ocasta, downed champion amounts of booze during their escapades, the descriptions of wild drug use were likely invented, or at least based on experiences outside of the narrative of the book.

This blending of fact and fiction is what Thompson built his career on. This, plus making the story about the writer, is what defines “gonzo.” It flew in the face of all of the ethics and standards taught in journalism school, but Thompson was not a conventionally educated man, and his talent was so mighty that a number of editors and publishers were more than happy to let him get as high as he could and then go ahead and reinvent the wheel.

This, however, proved to be his tragic flaw, and Wills pulls no punches in describing HST’s slow slide into babbling caricature. This is where High White Notes becomes a tough read for the fanboy. From the mid 1970’s on, Thompson became unreliable: On many occasions he accepted huge advances (tens of thousands of dollars or more) for stories he never even bothered to file. He suffered from debilitating writer’s block, and much of the work he did manage to finish was shoddy and lazily slapped together.

There wasn’t a specific day where HST went from brilliant wordsmith to self-parodying hack. This downfall instead occurred over the course of decades. During this time, according to Wills, Thompson still managed to hit the bullseye a few times, but for the most part, the second half of High White Notes is a detailed, no-holds-barred examination of a great talent squandered.

So what happened? Like most observers, Wills reckons it was the combination of booze and cocaine, which Thompson had become helplessly addicted to by the end of the 1970’s. The coke kept the motor running, but something about it also destroyed his ability to write. Over time he became more disjointed, befuddled, and sloppy. Wills maintains that he was unable to concentrate and string more than a few sentences together at a time on the page.

Still, he had his name. He was A-list famous, and this meant that the work kept pouring in, even if he was barely up to the task of actually completing any of it. Moreover, in Wills’ view, HST’s outlaw Raoul Duke persona had come to define him so deeply that he became trapped by it. Wills maintains that Thompson was an early master of what we now call “branding,” but that the brand of a gun-toting, drug-ingesting, ranting and raving badboy eventually overshadowed the actual work, while at the same time imprisoning the human being inside.

Wills’ examination of Hunter S. Thompson’s slow-motion artistic deterioration is depressing at times, especially given the man’s staggering talent. He ended up pissing it all away in a blur of powder, booze, and fevered ego bravado. Wills also makes it clear that no one was more aware of this than Thompson himself, whose later years were often marked by episodes of disappointment and fathomless despair for not only what he had lost, but for who he had become.

This, of course, helps us understand his decision to put a gun to his head in the kitchen of his “compound” at Woody Creek, Colorado, in 2005. However, in High White Notes, we see Hunter S. Thompson fall apart on the page, rather than through the course of biographical snapshots. Wills applies his laser focus to HST’s output, and is unsparing in his criticism of the subpar work, of which there was so much in those final years.

Still, the book ends on a positive note: Wills reminds the reader of HST’s tectonic influence on journalism and beyond, how he reinvented modern literature by creating a whole genre associated with a single man. This, along with several major works peppered with all of those sweet “high white notes,” is his real legacy. He made reading exciting for millions, and moreover, he made many of us want to write.

[Josh Guilar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Not a bad addition to the body of analysis/literary criticism of Thompson's work.

[Brandon Petty]

"A fascinating and tender portrait of Hunter Thompson's earliest years, his trials and tribulations from boyhood to manhood going beyond his addictions to wit with his perfectionist style as a young american journalist turned outlaw countrymen.. the book is a fresh take on Thompson's life and work history with many facts on hunter that you won't find anywhere else, it spends time decyphering between what could be and wasn't myths about his indubious life...so much that still to this day his works send a rivveting shockwave through the nation"

High White Notes leaves me with no ill compassion for this well belovedgentlemen and creative handle ..explaining much.of hunters childhood troubles and early failures with comedic relief and well done fact checking on hunters history.

David Wills facts on hunter from childhood til his latter years are unprecidently remarkable, and at times hilariously mystifying, facts in this collection that you will not have highlighted in any other book on him todate." A truly remarkable read with all's empathy for our tragic dark but never doomed American Horse, to me a truest.of all rebellions, amongst the many, a stand out hero Hunter S. Thompson

Thanks David Will check this book out highly recommended read !!!

Order books here at Goodreads or buy online at amazon.com

Highly Recommended for any HST fan.

Thanks, sincerestly ,

- Brandon Lee Petty

[Richard Schwindt · Rating 5 out of 5]

There remains a striking fascination with the life of Hunter S Thompson; now a few years past his death. We know about the man and his crazy take on life, substance abuse and notable books. But the attention lavished on Thompson has arguably been too tightly focused on the man, and not his work. In High White Notes, David Wills sets out to correct that; writing a careful evolution and analysis of Thompson, the writer, the stylist and creator of unique prose. For those who still get a visceral thrill from his work, it is good to remember that there are many living crazy disjointed lives, but those who expand our vision of language and journalism are vanishingly rare. Highly recommended with a glass of Wild Turkey, late at night.

[Kyle VanderHeyden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part literary review part biography, High White Notes is the ultimate look at Thompson’s work, which offers the most decisive look at the strengths and weaknesses of the man and his writing. The book is also a masterpiece of research, looking into the man myths the man perpetuated about himself, and offers an annotated research into to the truth behind the myth