CALL ME SNAKE

An interloper, going by the moniker of “Jungle Jerk,” called something I wrote “total gonzo” in the comment section of this blog. That was high praise even if I didn’t rightfully earn it (the only substance I regularly abuse is carrot juice), though perhaps I lived up to the credo in an earlier story I wrote about Cub Scout den mothers. Being granted the “gonzo” label–deserved or not–made me think of another gonzo writer who started it all. I’m not talking about Hunter S. Thompson, about whom much has been said since he, literally, went out with a bang. No, I’m talking about Charles Giuliano, a Boston artist and erstwhile journalist, who coined the term about 35 years ago. In a July 3, 1970 article in the Boston Herald Traveler, Giuliano described fans at a Ten Years After concert in Harvard stadium as “gonzo,” arguably the first time the word appeared in print. Thompson, who made the term his own, did not use it in an article until 16-plus months later. Thompson was “given” the word gonzo from Bill Cardoso, a Boston Globe editor and writer who, in turn, had picked it up from Giuliano a short while earlier. Today, of course, everyone associates gonzo with Thompson, which may be even more appropriate now that he’s dead and gone, but no one–save for a precious few (the aforementioned “Jungle Jerk” included)–are aware of Giuliano’s contributions to literary history. I’m proud to have been called gonzo, even if my prose does not always meet that exalted standard, but today I’d take my hat off–that is, if I wore a hat–to Charles G., the man who gave the world of letters total, unadulterated gonzo.