Introduction: The Grotesque Carnival of Gonzo-Formalism

To help students gain a deeper understanding of literature and the creative process itself, Creative Writing teachers must experiment with a variety of pedagogical methods and approaches. Armed only with a well-furnished mind and some bookish wisdom, this literary enabler is no exception to the tradition of instilling artful technique and interpretive understanding into the initiates of creative and literary studies. After many years of pedagogical exploration and discovery in a wide variety of academic settings, regions, countries and demographics, however, this pedagogue has developed an unorthodox workshop methodology best described as ‘gonzo-formalism’.

By borrowing from the less-stale pot-pourri of literary theory, this meta-pedagogical method blends and adulterates a variety of theoretical models, creative and critical, in an attempt to guide students through the precarious corridors of the literary imagination. In a non-traditional and even absurdist fashion, gonzo-formalist pedagogy is a transformative meta-pedagogy; a progressivist model that begs and borrows from Bakhtinian formalism and gonzo-journalism.

Although perhaps more radical than traditional teaching methodologies, gonzo-formalism cannibalizes useful concepts and strategies from pedigreed writers and theorists in an attempt to facilitate a deeper understanding of the literary aesthetic in form, function, and practice. And, just as other Creative Writing pedagogies emphasize both reading and writing as a necessary path to enhancing the creative process gonzo-formalism is in sync with that time-honoured tradition, yet innovative and more egalitarian in its execution.

At its pedagogical core the modus operandi of gonzo-formalism is arguably dualist: its interpretive lens dialogically Bakhtinian, its workshop method absurdly and grotesquely Thompsonian. Though not fanatically bound in any sense to the cult of Bakhtin or Gonzodolatry, this pedagogical hybrid is Rabelaisian and freewheeling in spirit: a method that sustains a productive and carnivalesque environs for students and professor.