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In “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell claims that political orthodoxy almost inevitably leads to bad writing, arguing that “Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line.’ Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style” {{sfn|Orwell|1981|p=165-166}}. Mailer was particularly sensitively attuned to the styles of political discourse. He dismissed Nixon’s style, both as a speaker and as a campaign choreographer, as “pedestrian” {{sfn|Mailer|1968|p=137}}, and he longed for McGovern to adopt some of the eloquence of Gene McCarthy, for “Whenever it could create a mood, language gave life to the human condition Totalitarianism was the need to inject non-words into the language, slivers of verbal plastic to smash the mood”{{sfn|Mailer|1968|p=57}}. It was Orwell, again, who stated in “Why I Write” that the primary motive for all of his literary work was “to make political writing into an art {{sfn|Orwell|1981|p=314}}, and both Mailer and Thompson employed their finely-crafted literary styles as a counterpoint to the objectifying effect of conventional journalism and mind-numbing propaganda of political discourse. While Mailer adopted different styles for different purposes throughout his career, his literary journalistic style is often syntactically complex, figurative, digressive, descriptive, allusive, and heuristic in that the reader gets the sense that the writer is writing not just to communicate but to discover his meaning spontaneously in the act of composing. Thompson’s Gonzo style employs a verb-driven syntax (influenced by his early training as a sportswriter) displaying digressions, metaphors, fragments, ellipses, abrupt transitions, and gaps, as well as confusion and emotional outbursts that record a dark reality, sometimes fictionalized, spontaneously and heuristically. Kenneth Burke in ''A Rhetoric of Motives'' observes that “the more urgent the oratory, the greater the profusion of stylistic devices"{{sfn|Burke|1969|p=57}}, and in both ''St. George'' and ''Campaign Trail'' we find that, when the degree of the writer’s involvement with his subject is at its most intense, his style becomes most densely-packed with stylistic intensity. Sentence by sentence, however, ''Miami and the Siege of Chicago'' is a more artistically rendered and aesthetically compelling narrative than ''St. George'' precisely because in 1968 Mailer was more emotionally engaged with events than he was in 1972, and the Gonzo passages in ''Campaign Trail'' tend to be the purest expressions of his Gonzo aesthetic as defined in my article, “What’s Gonzo about Gonzo Journalism?” | In “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell claims that political orthodoxy almost inevitably leads to bad writing, arguing that “Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line.’ Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style” {{sfn|Orwell|1981|p=165-166}}. Mailer was particularly sensitively attuned to the styles of political discourse. He dismissed Nixon’s style, both as a speaker and as a campaign choreographer, as “pedestrian” {{sfn|Mailer|1968|p=137}}, and he longed for McGovern to adopt some of the eloquence of Gene McCarthy, for “Whenever it could create a mood, language gave life to the human condition Totalitarianism was the need to inject non-words into the language, slivers of verbal plastic to smash the mood”{{sfn|Mailer|1968|p=57}}. It was Orwell, again, who stated in “Why I Write” that the primary motive for all of his literary work was “to make political writing into an art {{sfn|Orwell|1981|p=314}}, and both Mailer and Thompson employed their finely-crafted literary styles as a counterpoint to the objectifying effect of conventional journalism and mind-numbing propaganda of political discourse. While Mailer adopted different styles for different purposes throughout his career, his literary journalistic style is often syntactically complex, figurative, digressive, descriptive, allusive, and heuristic in that the reader gets the sense that the writer is writing not just to communicate but to discover his meaning spontaneously in the act of composing. Thompson’s Gonzo style employs a verb-driven syntax (influenced by his early training as a sportswriter) displaying digressions, metaphors, fragments, ellipses, abrupt transitions, and gaps, as well as confusion and emotional outbursts that record a dark reality, sometimes fictionalized, spontaneously and heuristically. Kenneth Burke in ''A Rhetoric of Motives'' observes that “the more urgent the oratory, the greater the profusion of stylistic devices"{{sfn|Burke|1969|p=57}}, and in both ''St. George'' and ''Campaign Trail'' we find that, when the degree of the writer’s involvement with his subject is at its most intense, his style becomes most densely-packed with stylistic intensity. Sentence by sentence, however, ''Miami and the Siege of Chicago'' is a more artistically rendered and aesthetically compelling narrative than ''St. George'' precisely because in 1968 Mailer was more emotionally engaged with events than he was in 1972, and the Gonzo passages in ''Campaign Trail'' tend to be the purest expressions of his Gonzo aesthetic as defined in my article, “What’s Gonzo about Gonzo Journalism?” | ||
Literary journalists analyze events on a more symbolic level than conventional, objective journalistic practice typically allows. Mailer and Thompson both saw political campaigns as social rituals which political myths have been invented to explain. Mailer as Aquarius claims that he is “mystical about the presidency” which he believes is a “primitive office” {{sfn|Mailer|1968|p=22-23}}. In an extended metaphor, Mailer reveals his conceit that “In America, the country was the religion . . . the political parties might be the true churches,” and that “the American faith might even say that God was in the people” {{sfn|Mailer|1960|p=87}}. Yet, Mailer also claimed that the Republicans, self-righteously believing themselves the moral majority, were unwittingly in league with Satan, or his emissary, Nixon, the man whom he had famously described as that ”somber undertaker’s assistant” {{sfn|Mailer|1960|p=3}}. Reflecting on the debacle in Vietnam, Mailer observed that Republicans “seemed spiritually incapable of hating a war they could not see . . . nobody could see the flowering intestines of the dead offering the aphrodisiac of their corruption to the flies, so was it a compact with the Devil to believe one was a minister of God . . . and never lift one’s eyes from the nearest field?” {{sfn|Mailer|1960|p=154}}. In ''Campaign Trail'', Thompson similarly imagined the ritual of the myth of the dying king beneath the surface narrative of the campaign. The American people, he said, collectively believe that presidents, like kings, become feeble or corrupt and must abdicate, and a new king steps to the throne. Facing political pressure over the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek reelection, an event which Thompson compared to “driving an evil king off the throne” {{sfn|Thompson|1973|p=140}}. In 1972, Nixon resigned as the evil king, and America had become a political and spiritual wasteland. Disease, both literal and figurative, is a major motif in both writers’ literary journalism. Mailer supported McGovern with the caveat that McGovern’s “revolution was a clerical revolution, an uprising of the suburban, well-educated . . . genetic engineers of the future . . . opposed to any idea of mystery” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|p=26}}. In his 1960 essay “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” Mailer drew a clear dichotomy between John F. Kennedy, the hero of the piece, and Richard Nixon, the villain. He posed a final question about the fate of America and the American myth of freedom and adventure. Americans faced two choices: one, Kennedy, who would resurrect the myth, and another, Nixon, the symbol of stability and monotony, who would leave it buried, and Mailer brooded over which “psychic direction America would now choose for itself" {{sfn|Mailer|1960|p=36}}. In 1972, however, Mailer did not regard McGovern and Nixon as the embodiment of “polarized instincts,” identifying McGovern as “the Democratic Nixon” {{sfn|Mailer|1960|p=22}}. Both men,” he claimed, “project that same void of charisma” {{sfn|Mailer|1960|p=22-23}}. Thompson endorsed McGovern much more enthusiastically, and in a world of ambiguity and uncertainty, where appearances often deceive, he regarded Nixon and McGovern as polar opposites: | |||
There is almost a Yin/Yang clarity in the difference between | |||
the two men, a contrast so stark that it would be hard to find | |||
any two better models in the national political arena for the | |||
legendary duality—the congenital Split Personality and | |||
polarized instincts—that almost everybody except America has | |||
long since taken for granted as the key to our National | |||
Character. {{sfn|Thompson|1972|p=416}} | |||
===Citations=== | ===Citations=== | ||
{{Reflist|15em}} | {{Reflist|15em}} | ||
{{sfn|Lennon|2018|p=25}} | |||
===Works Cited=== | ===Works Cited=== | ||
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