Author: James J. O'Meara

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

While basing itself on consensus scholarship, the hypothesis of Creating Christ has some interesting local effects on mainstream scholarship. For one thing, the dating of the “later” so-called “pastoral” epistles: the elaborate bureaucratic system of deacons, bishops, orders of consecrated virgins, and so on seems to indicate a later stage of the cult; but if Christianity was a top-top movement imposed by the Romans, the Romanesque bureaucracy could have been nearly original, as with the Mafia. (more…)

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

James S. Valliant & Warren Fahy
Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity
Crossroad Press, 2018

“Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (more…)

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Part 7 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 6 here)

7. Final Wisdom: The Truth Was Not in Him!

“We’d be fools not to ride this strange torpedo to the end!” (more…)

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Part 6 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 5 here, Part 7 here)

6. Gonzo: Paleocon, Neocon, or Just Con?

I had just begun to doubt some of my strongest convictions when I stumbled upon [Colin Wilson’s The Outsider]. But rather than being wrong, I think that I just don’t express my rightness correctly. — Hunter S. Thompson (more…)

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Part 5 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 4 here, Part 6 here)

5. Gonzo is the Secret: The Power of Positive Gonzo

Constant Readers will know that I love to find me some traces of Neville in any iconic figure, and sure enough, it turns out there’s plenty of it here. (more…)

Thompson when he was running for Sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado in 1970.

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Part 4 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here, Part 5 here)

4. Father of Fake News – or OT (Original Troll)? . . . The Myth of the Golfing Douchebag

I have discovered the secret of writing fiction, calling it impressionistic journalism, and selling it to people who want “something fresh.” — Hunter S. Thompson

Any man who still has a residue of honor will be very careful not to become a journalist. — Dr. Josef Goebbels (more…)

Hunter passed out drunk while covering an event as a journalist circa 1960.

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Part 3 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 4 here)

3. Gonzo: What Happened? — Decline and Fall of Gonzo

As Thompson charts Hemingway’s road from literary brilliance to failure and suicide, he maps out his own path for the future. (more…)

Hunter S. Thompson during his time in the Air Force.

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Part 2 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)

2. What is Gonzo? — High White Notes

“It has finally come home to me that I am not going to be either the Fitzgerald or the Hemingway of this generation . . . I am going to be the Thompson of this generation, and that makes me more nervous than anything else I can think of.” (more…)

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Part 1 of 7 (Part 2 here)

David S. Wills
High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism
St. Andrews: Beatdom Books, 2021

“He’s a drunk and he’s a doper who has got a style which is very dangerous for journalism students to pick up on.” — Harlan Ellison, 1979[1]

David Wills comes not to bury Hunter Thompson, but to praise him; ultimately, he does a pretty good job of both. (more…)

Brother Stair

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“Gendron appears to have copy and pasted Tarrant’s manifesto.”[1]

“Noodles, though you’ve been hiding in the asshole of the world [Buffalo], we found you. We know where you are.”[2]

O brother, where art thou? (more…)

Salvador Dalí, Perpignan Train Station

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Part 3 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

With Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by Her Own Chastity, Dalí returned to his paranoiac-critical concerns (i.e., autoeroticism), but now transformed. The paranoiac origin is Dalí’s obsession with Vermeer’s The Lacemaker, which in turn he believed to “consist” in rhinoceroses’ horns. (more…)

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory

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Part 2 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)

This excursus has prematurely broached The Gala Situation, so let’s go back to where we started, with Dalí beginning to apply his method: “For the next few years Dalí’s paranoiac process remained preoccupied with fetishist obsessions, including masturbation and his fear of heterosexual sex.”[1] (more…)