By conceiving his journalism as a form of fiction, Thompson has been able to shape actual events into meaningful works of literary art. (p. 16)

New journalists, such as Thompson, and fabulators, such as [Kurt] Vonnegut, make opposing epistemological contracts with the reader for similar ends. While the one promises fact and the other fantasy, both seek a greater freedom for their fictive imaginations. Because they both assume that artifice is an essential element in all knowledge and communication, they even draw on similar techniques. The results are in formal terms so close that a work like On the Campaign Trail, while certainly journalistic in its subject matter, is fabulist in its methods and purpose. (pp. 16-17)

In discussing On the Campaign Trail, we must constantly make a crucial distinction between its narrator-protagonist and the author of the work. While the perception that the narrator and implied author of...