Jerry Stahl Unearths 50 Years Of Lost Writing With ‘Gonzo Neurotic: The Best (And Not So Best) Of Jerry Stahl’ Out Today On ZE Books

Career-Spanning Collection Resurrects Decades Of Stahl's Outsider Reporting And Profiles - From Marlon Brando, Samuel L. Jackson, And David Bowie - To Miss America & The Strangest Corners Of American Life

In Conversation With Eric Bogosian In NYC Tomorrow At Housing Works Bookstore

"Hunter S. Thompson Meets Anthony Bourdain…Stahl Is His Own Vivid Comic Invention."

- The New York Times

September 29, 2026: Dubbed "a better-than-Burroughs virtuoso" by The New Yorker, Jerry Stahl returns today with Gonzo Neurotic: The Best (and Not So Best) of Jerry Stahl , published by ZE Books. The career-spanning collection resurrects more than fifty years of long-lost writing from one of America's great cult literary voices, much of it buried in alt-weeklies and pre-internet magazines that have all but disappeared. In a new review for The New York Times , Dwight Garner writes that Stahl "revels in life's margins and recaptures auras past," describing his writing as "Hunter S. Thompson meets Anthony Bourdain…funny, self-aware…Stahl is his own vivid comic invention."

Long before Stahl's best-selling memoir Permanent Midnight (later adapted into the iconic film starring Ben Stiller) introduced him to a wider audience, he made a career out of going where polite society would rather not look - reporting from America's cultural fringes, covering everything from televangelists and recovery culture to Hollywood oddballs. Gonzo Neurotic brings those pieces back into print for the first time, paired with Stahl's new commentary that revisits the writing and era that shaped them.

Spanning the 1970s to the 2020s, Stahl takes readers from the "wet heart of Pageantland" at Miss America to the set of ALF (Alien Life Form), through unforgettable encounters with figures like Marlon Brando, David Bowie, Mickey Rourke, Samuel L. Jackson, and Benicio del Toro, while also descending into his struggles with addiction, fatherhood, Jewish identity and survival. The result is a sharp, darkly comedic, and ultimately cathartic reckoning with a half-century of cultural and personal upheaval.

Order Gonzo Neurotic here: https://www.zebooks.com/books/gonzo-neurotic

Listen to Stahl discuss Gonzo Neurotic on the How Long Gone podcast here: https://howlonggone.com/985-jerry-stahl

Book details: paperback with French flaps · 456 pp. · $24.00 · ISBN 9798988670186 · UK Nov 5

To celebrate publication, Stahl will be joined by Eric Bogosian at Housing Works Bookstore (126 Crosby Street) in NYC tomorrow, Wednesday, September 30 at5:30PM. To RSVP please email: [email protected] .

Award-winning novelist, journalist, and screenwriter, Stahl is the author of eleven books, including the best-selling novel I, Fatty and, most recently, Nein, Nein, Nein!, named one of Kirkus' 100 Best Books of 2022. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, and VICE, and his screenwriting credits include Emmy-nominated Escape at Dannemora, Maron,the most-watched episode of CSI: Las Vegas, Twin Peaks, Bad Boys II, and Hemingway & Gellhorn. His acting credits include Severance and David Lynch'sInland Empire. A former heroin addict, over the years Stahl has worked a number of jobs, including dishwasher and bartender, in London, messenger in New York City, and, at 38 (not to brag), proud employee of a Phoenix, Arizona McDonalds.

Praise for Jerry Stahl:

"Hunter S. Thompson meets Anthony Bourdain…funny, self-aware…Stahl is his own vivid comic invention."

- New York Times

"Jerry Stahl should either get the Pulitzer prize or be shot down in the street like a dog."

- Anthony Bourdain

"No one can make me laugh while kicking me down the dark tunnel of self like Jerry Stahl."

- Marc Maron

"Gonzo Neurotic is hilarious, brutal and outrageously self-revelatory. Stahl writes with a kind of wildass genius that renders the mundane deranged and the deranged relatable. He is a complete original, and one of my favorite living writers."

- Lydia Lunch

"An acid wit as deadly serious as it is hilarious."

- Eric Bogosian

"A better-than-Burroughs virtuoso."

- The New Yorker

"Stahl is celebrated for his masochistic honesty that is never less than brutal and almost always on the other side of hope."

- The Brooklyn Rail

About ZE Books:

Founded in 2019 by ZE Records co-founder and entrepreneur Michael Zilkha, ZE Books publishes extraordinary literary and visual works by groundbreaking writers, journalists, artists, musicians, and thinkers from around the world. Titles span art, experimental writing, poetry, fiction, memoir, with an increasing focus on music.

FOR PRESS INQUIRIES:

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