Mailer and Thompson on the Campaign Trail, 1972

Authors

  • Jason Mosser Georgia Gwinnett College Author

Keywords:

Hunter S. Thompson, St. George and the Godfather, 1972 presidential election, New Journalism, campaign journalism, Kenneth Burke

Abstract

In his 1973 manifesto on New Journalism, Tom Wolfe wrote that for the literary journalists of his era, “the basic reporting unit was no longer the datum, the piece of information, but the scene,” the zeitgeist of an event. As early as 1960 when Mailer covered the Democratic convention, he invited readers to think about a presidential convention without getting bogged down in “housing projects of fact and issue.” Mailer was nevertheless scrupulous in the reporting of facts, inviting comparisons between his reporting of political campaigns with the reporting of Hunter Thompson.

Author Biography

  • Jason Mosser, Georgia Gwinnett College

    Jason Mosser is Professor of English at Georgia Gwinnett College, the first new liberal arts college in the 21st century. He earned his BA and MA from West Virginia University and his PhD from the University of Georgia. His book on New Journalism, including a chapter on Mailer’s The Armies of the Night, was published in 2012. He has also published articles on Mailer and on Hunter S. Thompson, and is currently at work on a literary journalistic piece about West Virginia.

Downloads

Published

2019-10-10

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 1 (2019)

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Mosser, Jason. “Mailer and Thompson on the Campaign Trail, 1972”. The Mailer Review, vol. 13, no. 1, Oct. 2019, pp. 151–161, https://mailerreview.org/journal/article/view/692.