Gringo Star

Ron Verzuh is the Canadian Union of Public Employees’ senior
communications officer.

In Gringo Star, poet Stan Fogel titillates us with his exploits and
sexploits in places as varied as Cuba, Rhodes, Israel, Languedoc, and
the Marshall Islands. But in the end, we have little to show for all our
vicarious globe-trotting. Fogel is misleadingly dubbed “Canada’s
leading gonzo journalist,” True, his writing recalls the
self-indulgent style that Hunter S. Thompson, the 1960s gonzo
journalist, made famous in the pages of Rolling Stone. But Fogel is an
academic, not a journalist. He obviously has fun with language, but his
book is too obscure and meandering to qualify as gonzo journalism.

Jan Morris, Paul Theroux, Bruce Chatwin, and Norman Lewis are all
examples of travel writers who take us on spiritually uplifting journeys
into other cultures; in Gringo Star, other cultures serve as nothing
more than a backdrop for the author’s esoteric ramblings.