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{{Byline|last=Mosser|first=Jason|url=|abstract=|note=}}
{{Byline|last=Mosser|first=Jason|url=|abstract=|note=}}
BOTH NORMAN MAILER’S ''ST. GEORGE AND THE GODFATHER'' (1972) and Hunter S.
Thompson’s ''Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail, ’72'' (1973) deal with
the 1972 Nixon-McGovern presidential race. As a way of situating ''St. George''
and ''Campaign Trail'' in their aesthetic, cultural, and historical contexts, I want
to appropriate Kenneth Burke’s history-as-drama metaphor. To Burke, the
terms dramatic and dialectic are closely related, for history, as he explains in
''The Philosophy of Literary Form'', “is a ‘dramatic’ process, involving dialectical oppositions” (109). In 1972, rival political interests, Democrats and Republicans, as well as their presidential nominees, Richard Nixon and George
McGovern assumed that the roles of antagonists and protagonists engaged
in an ideological conflict between the dominant, pro-war establishment culture and an emergent, anti-war counterculture. Burke argues that “human
affairs being dramatic, the discussion of human affairs [as in campaign journalism] becomes dramatic criticism,” a rhetorical act (''Philosophy 116''). Sometimes, however, what promises at first to be a dramatically charged event,
like a political campaign, can fail to live up to the participants’ expectations,
and such was the case with the major parties’ conventions in 1972. As literary journalists, then, each the central character and shaping the consciousness
of his own narrative, Mailer and Thompson adopted their own characteristic strategies to meet the challenge of creating compelling narratives in the
relative absence of real-life drama.


Works Cited
Works Cited

Revision as of 23:09, 16 February 2021

Written by
Jason Mosser

BOTH NORMAN MAILER’S ST. GEORGE AND THE GODFATHER (1972) and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail, ’72 (1973) deal with the 1972 Nixon-McGovern presidential race. As a way of situating St. George and Campaign Trail in their aesthetic, cultural, and historical contexts, I want to appropriate Kenneth Burke’s history-as-drama metaphor. To Burke, the terms dramatic and dialectic are closely related, for history, as he explains in The Philosophy of Literary Form, “is a ‘dramatic’ process, involving dialectical oppositions” (109). In 1972, rival political interests, Democrats and Republicans, as well as their presidential nominees, Richard Nixon and George McGovern assumed that the roles of antagonists and protagonists engaged in an ideological conflict between the dominant, pro-war establishment culture and an emergent, anti-war counterculture. Burke argues that “human affairs being dramatic, the discussion of human affairs [as in campaign journalism] becomes dramatic criticism,” a rhetorical act (Philosophy 116). Sometimes, however, what promises at first to be a dramatically charged event, like a political campaign, can fail to live up to the participants’ expectations, and such was the case with the major parties’ conventions in 1972. As literary journalists, then, each the central character and shaping the consciousness of his own narrative, Mailer and Thompson adopted their own characteristic strategies to meet the challenge of creating compelling narratives in the relative absence of real-life drama.


Works Cited

  • Booth, Wayne C. (1973). "Loathing and Ignorance on the Campaign Trail". Columbia Journalism Review. 12 (4): 7–12. access-date= 2/9/21
  • Burke, Kenneth (1969). A Rhetoric of Motives. U of California, 1969. p. 340.
  • Burke, Kenneth (1973). The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action, 3rd edition. U of California: U of California, 1973. p. 496.
  • Anderson, Chris (1973). Literary Nonfiction: Theory, Criticism, Pedagogy. Southern Illinois: Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1989. p. 337.
  • Hartsock, John C. (2000). A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Modern Narrative Form. University of Massachusetts, 2000. p. 294.
  • Lennon, Michael J. (2013). Norman Mailer: A Double Life. Simon and Schuster, 2013. p. 960.
  • Mailer, Norman. The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History. New American Library, 1968. p. 288.
  • Mailer, Norman. Mind of an Outlaw: Selected Essays of Norman Mailer. Penguin Books Limited, 2014. p. 656.
  • Mailer, Norman (November 1964). "In the Red Light: A History of the Republican Convention in 1964". “Esquire”. p. 50. |access-date= 2/9/21
  • Mailer, Norman. Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the American Political Conventions of 1968. New American Library, 1968. p. 183.
  • Mailer, Norman. St. George and the Godfather. New American Library, 1972. p. 229.
  • Mailer, Norman (November 1960). "Superman Comes to the Supermarket". “Esquire”. p. 46. Check date values in: |access-date=2/9/21
  • McKeen, William (July 2008). Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson. W.W. Norton Company, 1991. p. 448.
  • Mosser, Jason (July 2008). The Participatory Journalism of Michael Herr, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, and Joan Didion: Creating New Reporting Styles. Edwin Mellen Publishing, July 2012. p. 246.
  • Mosser, Jason (Spring, 2012). "What's Gonzo about Gonzo Journalism". “Literary Journalism Studies”. Vol. 4 (No. 1): 6. |access-date: 2/9/21
  • Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1952. p. 232.
  • Orwell, George. Politics and the English Language. A Collection of Essays. Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1981. pp. 156–171.
  • Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958. p. 264.
  • Orwell, George. Why I Write. A Collection of Essays. Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1981. pp. 309–316.
  • Thompson, Hunter S. Chicago 1968: Death to the Weird, Songs of the Doomed. Touchstone, 1990. pp. 122–126.
  • Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey into the Heart of the American Dream. Vintage Books, 1971. p. 224.
  • Thompson, Hunter S. Warner Books, 1973. p. 512.|title= Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72
  • Thompson, Hunter S. Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga. Ballantine, 1966. p. 278.
  • Thompson, Hunter S. (1979). Jimmy Carter and the Great Leap of Faith, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time. Summit Books. pp. 452–486.
  • Thompson, Hunter S. (1979). The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time. Summit Books. pp. 24–38.
  • Thompson, Hunter S. (1979). Presenting: The Richard Nixon Doll (Overhauled 1968 Model), The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time. Summit Books. pp. 185–192.
  • Wolfe, Johnson, Tom, E.W. (1973). The New Journalism, Harper & Row, p. 394.
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