I’m in the habit now of picking something from the ‘Discovery Zone’ every time I goto the Central Library — which is every Saturday.
Last week I picked up Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson. I probably won’t finish it. I usually don’t finish what I grab. I was bored when I took it — the least-worst thing I could see.
For now though, I’m into it, and in my easily affected way I’m being helplessly compelled to emulate this lunatic writer’s attitude.
I was reading it at work: a terrible decision. My company needs me to be half-comatose and complacent — sorry, “professional” — and I’m reading this book about Hunter Thompson getting into trouble, pissing of bosses, walking out the front door… Here’s what he wrote on one of his job applications:
“Some people find it exceedingly difficult to get along with me and I have to choose my jobs very carefully… I have no patience for phonies, dolts, or obnoxious incompetents and I take some pride in the fact that these people invariably dislike me.”
Not that I idolize that kind of thing. The last thing I want to do is cause trouble, but it rubs off anyways. I tend to be easily rubbed-off upon.
If I stumble on an interesting article about innovation in BusinessWeek, then for the next four to forty-eight hours I’ll feel like posting SlideShare presentations about about “design thinking” or “flat organizations” or something. Other times it might be music or screenwriting or something else.
So bless this almost-long-enough weekend for affording me the time to live in Thompson’s world for a while without losing my job.
There’s more in this book about the history of journalism than I expected — or maybe it’s just the last few pages I’ve been reading. The names like Tom Wolfe aren’t unknown to me, but the general narrative isn’t something I know very well.
Something clicked just now, telling me to do some deliberate research on this. I don’t think there are any definitive books on the “history of journalim” to work from. I suspect it might have something to do with an excess of people qualified to write it: the risk (or absolute certainty) of coming under very intense scrutiny far outweighs any benefit.
If anyone knows of anything, let me know. I seem to be heading towards a half-systematic study of writing, journalism, and criticism (building on stuff like this and even this).
