At the beginning of this course, I had a vague idea that the way to ‘do’ ethnography was to show up with a notebook, a recorder, a video camera, observe, come home, edit everything down and end up with something similar to one of those National Geographic shows about the West Indies. I was never comfortable with that mode and was not looking forward to replicating it. I was much more interested in the sort of gonzo journalism I had read in college, like Electric Kool-aide Acid Test, or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. This, however, had a sort of pulp fiction quality that I was sure would not be appropriate for academic analysis and ‘good,’ ‘objective’ research.

I have come to disagree with my early assessment of gonzo journalism as pulp, however. Having read a number of ethnographers over the semester and gotten their perspective on what it is to tell other peoples’ stories, I have to agree with Brueggemann that it is wrong to write about other people as though you are telling their story for them. However, I believe that what ethnographers ought to be doing is not to tell others’ stories for them, but rather tell your story about your experiences with them. This is where my assessment of gonzo journalism changes from pulp to professional. The struggle between objective science and subjective experience was something that came up for several of the ethnographers we read, including Brueggemann, but acknowledging that you are subjective and that there is no way around that subjectivity is the first step in understanding your place as ethnographer, in my opinion. Gonzo journalists have no such qualms about objectivity because it never occurs to them to be objective. There are some things wrong with this from an ethnographic perspective, and I will address this later. What gonzo journalists do is write narrative from their own perspective about the place/culture/stuation that they find themselves in. Sunstein argues for the power of narrative in her piece, and Stoller argues for the power of stories in his piece. Both have made an excellent point. Sunstein says,”like a vivid and satisfying poem, a well-written ethnography needs artful design to allow the reader in” (189). Stoller’s argument is that to tell a story about another person, you inevitably tell your own as well (182). In other words, you cannot accurately tell the story of another unless you relate to your reader how that person has interacted with you. Memoir allows for the feeling of places and events to be understood through both logic and feeling in a way that ‘objective fact’ (field notes without interpretation) cannot. In order to have the reader understand fully what the author experienced, a story must be told. Both Sunstein and Stoller allow the story to outweigh the ‘facts.’ This does not mean that what is written and read is not ‘true.’

The argument for narrative over ‘objective’ field notes is twofold; first, we cannot be entirely objective, so to portray objectivity is itself a sham; second, as a subjective observer of another person or group of people, the only way to represent these others as truthfully as possible is through your own experience. You must tell their story through your own.

This returns me to gonzo journalism. while the stereotype for gonzo journalism is that the entertainment value of the work is more important than the ‘facts’ (and I am sure for the most part this is true), this does not mean that we as ethnographers have nothing to learn from this type of journalism. Gonzo journalism is fun, entertaining, catching. Narrative is much more easy to read than field notes, definitely. As such, good ethnographers can find a happy medium between good storytelling and representing fact. Thus, Sunstein’s point bears repeating: “a well-written ethnography needs artful design to allow the reader in” (189). Narrative does this job.