Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Hunter+Thompson+brutally+honest+Canadian+request/3606508/story.html

by rbxbx • 16 years ago

138 37 16 years ago

ottawacitizen.com

jacquesm• 16 years ago

Hilarious, now, the one thing I can't get out of my head is the question if he got the job or not?

niyazpk• 16 years ago

There is no sign in his Wikipedia page that he worked for the Sun. So probably not.

ursablanco• 16 years ago

The Sun has a long history of establishment suck-holing and sucking-in-general that continues into the foreseeable future. There's not a chance that Thompson worked there.

jmspring• 16 years ago

I think the letter is a great example of how I would like to see resume submissions / job requests written. It gets to the point pretty directly in "this is how I think I can help" and "here is the type of environment I am/am not interested in".

Instead, a lot of time these days is wasted in "here is my resume", phone back and forth with some HR person, phone with the hiring person, if in person, then you may or may not get a good feel for the work environment.

If only it were possible for both sides to be frank about "this is what we do" and "this is what we want".

thaumaturgy2• 16 years ago

Of course it's possible -- people just don't do it, and I don't know why.

I recently needed to bring someone on to take over the basics on a bunch of my web projects, because I'm overcommitted, as usual, and trying not to be. I tried a local resource first, and then I went to Craigslist, which has worked out well for me in the past.

My ad was simple and direct; it spelled out what we were about, what we were looking for, and what we could offer, and then it had instructions: if someone wanted the job, they needed to solve an easy puzzle, not send a resume, and instead send about a paragraph talking about their skills and experience.

It worked out great.

As far as I'm concerned, resumes are next-to-worthless. I don't really care who you've worked for or what you've done for them. I'm not going to call them and see if they say good things about you. I just want to know if you can figure things out and communicate well. During the interview, I'll sort out whether or not you actually know what you're doing.

cubicle672• 16 years ago

Did you get many applications from people who hadn't read your instructions?

pmichaud• 16 years ago

I think it's fear. It's easier to "be normal" because it doesn't feel as risky. But then, not every employer responds well to that sort of thing either. I've tried this same approach more than once, and it's never worked yet. Not a valid statistical sample, but people seem to be afraid to hire someone who is forthright.

Although, I don't think it's a question of whether I'm forthright or not, that's too simple. The whole interview process, starting with the initial letter/application is actually a kind of mating ritual. If you get the sequence right back and forth, then you get a chance to get hired. If you don't get the sequence right then you make people feel uncomfortable, and they won't hire you probably.

Basically, by being brash during this process, you make people wonder if you're capable of the mating ritual, and if you aren't, then why not? Are you socially inept? Professionally incompetent?

The off chance that you're perfectly ept and competent, but have just chosen to apply for a job in an unconventional way is too great a risk for most people, so they pass, and look for the next guy who follows the rules of the ritual.

dmix• 16 years ago

Hunter seemed to be heavily inspired by Hemingway at this point in his career.

When Hemingway started out, he worked for the Toronto Star (another Canadian newspaper). He wrote his first novel during this time: The Sun Also Rises, about expatriates living in Paris.

Hunter decided to apply to a Canadian newspaper after admittingly not being familiar with it. Then not long after he wrote his first novel - The Rum Diary - which was heavily inspired by Hemingway's first, about expatriates living in Puerto Rico.

gregory80• 16 years ago

hmm, I'm not really sure he was inspired by Hemingway in any meaningful way. Perhaps purely by coincidence is that true, with Hemingway winning the nobel prize a few years before this letter was mailed, and thompson actively copied heminway's work, as well as several other novels, in order to learn more about writing style, though he never published any plagiarized work.

Hemingway was a traditional, fiction, novelist and focused on his characters. Thompson defied (edit: was defined, oops) 100s of years of traditional writing (both novel and newspaper) by inventing so called 'gonzo' journalism. The man openly included his own personal life directly into all of this work, including this letter. He also, never worked in canada.

While I hold both men in high regard, the only parallels between these two men are the facts they both were journalists and authors (and drunks), since that's true for almost every published journalist, it's a thin comparison at best.

rbxbx• 16 years ago

Don't forget the fact that they both took their own lives with a shotgun to the head.

Also, if you consult HST's wikipedia entry, you'll notice Hemingway come up several times (and in fairly significant ways).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson

apu• 16 years ago

2 other awesome letters he wrote:

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/07/your-work-was-inadequat...

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/09/okay-you-lazy-bitch.htm...

awt2• 16 years ago

I remember once telling an HR person at M$FT when interviewing for an internship ( 12 years ago ) that "I don't like to be micromanaged." I've since learned to be less forthright in my job interviews.

dasht• 16 years ago

In other words, you do (it turns out) like being micromanaged. :-)

awt2• 16 years ago

Not really. But I don't think that most people interviewing a candidate would be pleased to hear something like that brought up by an interviewee. Perhaps you would, but I think most people would get the impression that someone who brought that up in an interview would be difficult to work with, even if their management style did not include "micro-managing."

pacemkr4• 16 years ago

I don't know anything about Thompson as a person, so I'll refrain from judging. I'm only glad that I'm finally able to put a term to what I despise most about journalism in our country (U.S.), evidently the term is "Gonzo journalism."

"Gonzo journalism tends to favor style over accuracy and often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for the topic or event being covered." --Wikipedia

I don't care about what the journalist thinks or feels. I'm an adult and I can form my own opinion, based on my values. Give me the facts! Just please give me the damn facts, I beg you! I don't need the anchor to "show attitude" and give me "what if" scenarios to wiggle my imagination while bending the facts in the process.

Currently, this technique is king among the major news networks in the U.S. It makes them completely incapable of reporting the news in its natural form: facts. It is unethical and amoral for journalists to swing public opinion with eloquent narrative that favors "style over accuracy."

johnswamps• 16 years ago

You're misunderstanding what gonzo journalism is. I encourage you to read some of Thompson's work.

Psyonic2• 16 years ago

If you're intending to follow this advice, don't start with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It's a great story, but doesn't really capture gonzo journalism. Gonzo, perhaps, but not journalism. Hell's Angels or Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (1972) are much better starting points.

jonasvp• 16 years ago

I've always been a big admirer of Hunter S. Thompson's style. His point was that there is no way you can separate the author from the story so you might as well go in whole-hog.

No author can give all the facts and "just the facts". They can't help but shape and spin a story by selecting what they deem important, leaving out the rest. Their choice of words determines how the reader views the subject.

I'd rather know what the person that wrote an article thought and felt - it's another important fact.

resdirector• 16 years ago

His point was that there is no way you can separate the author from the story so you might as well go in whole-hog.

I couldn't agree more. Every now and then I hear people talking about setting up a truly unbiased media company, and I roll my eyes.

pacemkr4• 16 years ago

This is probably true, the fact that you can't completely separate the author from the story. Where I disagree is going in "whole-hog." I consider it fundamental for a journalist to make her best effort to keep her opinion out of the story. To me, that's the definition of the format. News is not supposed to be about the person telling it.

If I am to believe what people said here (and I have no reason not to), Thompson adhered to a higher standard in his writing. As I said originally, I wasn't trying to say anything about him as a person or a writer. I just don't see high standards amongst our major networks. For issues that are important to me, they simply fail to report the basic facts when they're reporting their opinion.

bapadna• 16 years ago

If you're going to blame something for lots of problems, kindly learn what it is first.

You are king among the problems in the United States today. You hold opinions on things where you are grossly ignorant.

pacemkr4• 16 years ago

"Strong beliefs, weakly held." That hasn't failed me so far. What people have said here (other people) is plenty to make me understand that Gonzo journalism means something else. I'm not particularly stubborn when proved wrong.

Do you see the irony in your own statement? "If you're going to blame something for lots of problems, kindly learn what it is first." and immediately "You are king among the problems in the United States today."

P.S. I can't believe people are up-voting something that is clearly meant to be personal.

bad_user• 16 years ago

All news is biased and newspapers aren't only about news, so learning about the author that wrote that article or clearly seeing the bias (unmasked) gives you much more context than the simple facts.

Plus, gonzo journalism gives birth to some pretty entertaining articles.

helium• 16 years ago

Yeah, you obviously don't have the slightest clue what Gonzo is. Doing a quick scan on Wikipedia will not help you understand something. Read a few of Thompsons' works and then decide if you really would compare it to the current style of journalism that's prevalent in the west.

etal• 16 years ago

The word you probably want is "truthiness".

If there's a fundamental difference between the weaselly narratives constructed by Fox News and the psychedelic screeds Thompson put out, it's that most reporters aren't making it explicit that their stories are fully personal, opinionated interpretations of true events -- they record some isolated facts, sample a few quotes and make vague references to public sentiment to back up any narrative they need. But they present all of this as objective information. This was happening well before H.S.T. (see "yellow journalism") and happens outside the U.S. too (see Daily Mail).

Thompson's approach was (1) a veil of entertaining literary showmanship over (2) complete, self-accountable interpretations of the events being covered. He was clear that his stories were subjective, and that freed him to explain exactly why he felt the way he did about Nixon, drug laws, Southern culture, etc.

jbooth• 16 years ago

The other fundamental difference is that Thompson was driven by actually trying to express the truth of the situation as he saw it, by piecing together things that by themselves wouldn't add up to "journalistic integrity" as defined at georgetown cocktail parties.

He once wrote a lengthy, 15-page feature piece for Rolling Stone about how the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 72, Muskie I believe, was addicted to an obscure stimulant found in an African root. The whole tale was entirely fabricated, and he never let on that he was joking. I'm pretty sure it would have qualified as libel. But in the process of telling the (deprave) story he managed to pinpoint everything wrong with Muskie's campaign at the time. Muskie sank to those very weaknesses (basically being a weakling/faker who was led around by his staff, in HST's estimation), and lost the sure thing nomination to a nobody named McGovern.

HST also once shaved his head before a debate while running for Sheriff of some county out in Colorado. He then spent the whole debate referring to the Republican in the race, clean-cut guy with a crew cut, as "my long-haired opponent". That one's not as profound, but it's hilarious. And says something about the media as well.

spiffworks• 16 years ago

I have always hated writing bullshit cover letters. Now I just write short, honest introductions. As an aside, should I make a plain text version of my resume and put it in the body of the email itself? Or is a pdf attachment enough? I figure the overhead of having to download and open the pdf could be overcome by putting the resume in the body itself. Thoughts?

cubicle672• 16 years ago

Last resume I wrote was in html (not on a site, I'd just attach a html file). It served two purposes; gave people a chance to see what my html crafting was like, and allowed me to include a number of links to previous sites, projects etc

I've always included a pdf version, and I don't think I've ever submitted a resume in .doc format

semanticist• 16 years ago

90% of CVs are in .doc format, at least the ones going through recruitment agencies in the EU. From what I've seen the numbers for the US should be similar, but I don't think my experience there constitutes a large enough sample.

(Day job is at a company providing CV parsing to recruiters.)

Mrdev4• 16 years ago

My Favorite http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/graffiti/crook....

gambhir• 16 years ago

I did part of my MA on Thompson and even reviewed a collection of letters for Canada's National Post newspaper years ago (http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg57692.h...). I don't know if people will read anything but Vegas in 100 years, but his style and humour made him a standout in his time. He was influenced by Hemingway but he also typed out The Great Gatsby to try pick up on the style. Another strong stylistic influence was Revelations. A great letter that brought it all back.

Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

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