Gonzo Bros

For those too young to have experienced it firsthand, the wide streak of unapologetic masculinity that runs through American letters in the last half of the 20th century must seem like something left over from the Bronze Age. In those far-off days, Ernest Hemingway and his pantheon of bestselling macho disciples loomed over literary and popular tastes like apex predators. The backlash to that era is now so complete that it might be hard to believe that, well into the 1990s, legions of sensitive, bookish young men seized their pens and dreamed ardently of reinventing themselves as stoic tough guys, worldly adventurers, bar room brawlers, big-game hunters, volcanic lovers, reckless drinkers, and/or visionary drug takers. They then cast those experiences into “lean, muscular” prose destined to conquer the world.