Download or read book Gonzo Republic written by William Stephenson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-11-17 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gonzo Republic looks at Hunter S. Thompson's complex relationship with America. Thompson was a patriot but also a stubborn individualist. Stephenson examines the whole range of Thompson's work, from his early reporting from the South American client states of the USA in the 1960s to his twenty-first-century internet columns on sport, politics and 9/11. Stephenson argues that Thompson inhabited, but was to some extent reacting against, the tradition of American individualism begun by the Founding Fathers and continued by Emerson and Thoreau. Thompson sought out the edge-the threshold of chaos and insanity-in order to define himself. His characters enact the same quest, travelling through the surreal landscape of his literary America: the Gonzo Republic.