‘A Mad, Headlong Poverty-Stricken Rush’ Across South America

“The Brazil Chronicles” (forthcoming from University of Missouri Press on Nov. 18, 2024) is a mix of memoir and reportage by Stephen G. Bloom, which recounts Rio de Janeiro’s vibrant history as a base for American expat reporters. Fed up with the political and economic turbulence of the 1970s, Bloom, like hundreds of contemporaries, relocated to Brazil, which “held the promise of a new beginning, a place to live out [his] dreams of becoming a newspaper reporter.” What Bloom discovered was a landscape filled with “fellow journalists … who would make their marks on history; others were deadbeats, ne’er-do-wells, grifters, drug runners, CIA agents, and pornographers (and that’s just for starters.)”

This excerpt is about one of America’s most notorious journalists who had a similar sojourn in Brazil: Hunter S. Thompson. Before Thompson refined his gonzo journalism — the first-person, unobjective reporting style that garnered him fame — he was a fledgling journalist struggling to pay the bills while writing his novel, “The Rum Diary,” which would not be published until 1998. Thompson decided to travel to Brazil, which he wrote to a friend, was his last “chance to do something big and bad.” This excerpt has been edited for length.