Shards of a Life

Shards of a Life continues Gonzo journalism in a book of Gonzo staccato poems by the renowned critic Charles Giuliano. In the July 3,1970 edition of the Boston Herald Traveler, for which he covered jazz and rock, he wrote Some 25,000 gonzo fans jammed the bowl end of Harvard Stadium, Wednesday, July 1 to hear their sex-rock idols, Ten Years After. The Schaefer Festival foams on with top rock. It was the first published use of Gonzo, which he coined while telling a wild tale in the living room of then Boston Globe Sunday Magazine editor William J. Cardoso. In a later letter Cardoso passed the Gonzo to Hunter S. Thompson. Giuliano is the only surviving original Gonzo. The poems include memories of his colorful Italian/Irish heritage growing up as the son of medical doctors. Their subjects range from an interview with the Duke of Windsor, a debutante ball at Versailles, and yacht racing in Annisquam to encounters with jazz and rock musicians including Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Dexter Gordon, The Rolling Stones, James Brown, Moondog, Yoko Ono, and Captain Beefheart.