Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

  This, of course, raises some questions as to that $90 that I owe you. Well, I think I can get it paid before I go. This is no idle talk, for I certainly wouldn’t bring up such an ugly subject unless I thought there was hope of killing it off. My fortune at the moment consists of whatever amount of my grandmother’s money I can coax out of my mother. She is naturally reluctant to invest in my hare-brained schemes and I am at the critical juncture now of telling her about the Mato Grosso. She thought Europe was a good idea and agreed tentatively to part with 8 or 9 hundred—2 of which I owe her—but I don’t know how she will react to this South America business. At any rate, I will let you know. In the meantime, send word on your doings. Your last letter was decent and nearly informative. Things are looking up for you, McGarr. Perhaps you can get a job here as a spellbinder. I sense openings in that line, but I am not up to it myself. Oh yes—enjoyed Eleanor’s letter to Sandy. I read all mail here and distribute it accordingly.

  H

  TO PAUL SEMONIN:

  Excited by his imminent departure for South America, Thompson wrote Semonin of his plans. Photographs, along with guns, had become Thompson’s newest obsession.

  February 7, 1962

  531 E. 81 Street

  New York City

  Paul—

  “In Brazil a gun or a knife is considered a fair weapon, and there is no dishonor in being wounded or even killed. But to hit a man with your fists is to insult him beyond remedy. He can only avenge the humiliation by killing you.”

  This comes from a reliable book called Tigrero, and upon reading it I immediately wrote Cooke3 to bring my big pistol when he comes to New York. Upon contacting the man who wrote the book—a tiger hunter in the Mato Grosso—I was advised to bring the gun into the country in a shoulder-holster because Brazil customs men do not search bodies, only luggage. And if they find a gun in your bag you are clamped. This man seemed to think it was very important that I get my gun in with me and I tend to agree.

  The above should give you an idea of my plans and their meaning. Push-off date is still about a month, but uncertain due to the fate of the novel, which will see another agent on Monday—the first half again, 60 percent rewritten.

  The pace here is accelerated almost beyond my ken. Hundreds of projects and possibilities, all needing talk and investigation. Sandy informs me that yesterday morning I rolled over in bed and shouted: “All this jabber-wocky and shameless talk—I just don’t know if I can get up.” This last refers to my growing inability to get out of bed before noon and often later. Something huge is pressing on my soul. One morning last week I shouted: “Get these dogs off me! These fucking ugly dogs!” I keep having these dreams, not unlike the DTs in their substance and urgency. Even now, sitting here at the typewriter, I have a feeling that my gut is a great engine racing at top rpm, unable to shift out of neutral. Constant nerves and dealing, calling, shouting, clawing at the mailbox, forever writing letters to unknown people, tense moments during every phone call as we come on the big money yes or no, the crucial hesitation, and more often than not the ugly let-down when the phone is back on its crotch.

  But I am making headway and am now teetering on the brink of closing a deal with one of the airlines—a series of 13 articles, one from each capital in South America, in exchange for transportation to 13 capitals. The only catch is that I have to sign a contract and somehow guarantee publication of said articles. There is hope for this in the form of Laschever,4 running interference for me with the airline publicity hounds. But even he won’t guarantee publication. Nonetheless, I sense a 50–50 chance in the deal and will press savagely for a win.

  Still no money in my pockets, of course, and the pressure and humiliation of that is reaching the intolerable level. I am feeling like a gigolo and a hired stud. A bad feeling when it lasts. No sales in 3 months. Nothing. No work on much of anything but the novel. If I can’t get it off my head it will bury me and itself at the same time. Am also wound up viciously with photography, dealing each day in camera stores, cramming facts and numbers into my head, leading decent salesmen down penniless alleys, coaxing information out of them. In the course of it all I have been convinced that I am going to buy a $200 camera, plus several extra lenses, when my money comes, if it ever comes. Yesterday’s figures on necessary camera expenditures was $351. A man with $800 on his hands, plus $600 in debts, is worse off than a penniless wretch with the same debts. I feel they sense my money and are closing in on me, hell bent on keeping me off the South America thing by gobbling my funds before I can flee. At last count I figured to arrive in Rio with $120, not knowing a soul and not speaking the language—with god knows how many miles and desperate dollars between me and a berth. Peggy Clifford wrote last week saying your house was available, offering it to me, and the pressure here was so bad that I floundered horribly at the sight of the letter. The temptation to retreat was huge and fat like a devil, making an offer for my soul. I wrote, saying I couldn’t trust myself to say yes or no at the moment and to contact me again in 2 weeks. She wrote yesterday that a stringbean had replaced the fink and your income was safe again. It is good to have an agent like that—your base is in capable hands.

  I am becoming more and more certain that this South America venture is my last chance to do something big and bad, come to grips with the basic wildness. Everything here is larded over with lunacy; I can no longer even read the Times without trembling. Gov. Rocky5 says someone is putting vinegar in New York milk and there is no mention of why. WHY? Why in the fuck? What motive? No explanation. The speaker of the New York assembly pushed a home-shelter bill through the house while he was a director of a firm building home-shelters. Now they are crucifying the man who broke the story, saying he is a dupe of the Communists. The papers go right along, dutifully recording the madness. The speaker raves and pounds the desk and winks at photographers. All this is recorded and sold on the streets. The new director of the CIA goes on record as an advocate of more and better nuclear testing. For the past 3 years this same man has been one of our chief negotiators at international disarmament conferences. No wonder we have made no progress. I tell you it is pressing me down and keeping me off balance 24 hours a day—a friend of Sandy’s is living with two men and they are constantly calling and showing up here, looking for the mail.… What mail? Whose mail? I dare not say anything for fear of bursting the bag. They ask questions and I feel my gears slipping. Out! You bastards! Take all the mail except mine! Whorehoppers! I can no longer see through the fog! My name is on the mailbox, yet letters to me are “returned to sender.” I have lost faith in the system. People say they have written me and they haven’t. What can I say? How can I answer? Is the mailman a Communist? How can I pin him down? Should I kill him when I get a grip or let him go free to plague others with his tricks?

  It’s this money hanging over me that does it. That and the novel. I must get rid of this novel and I must get that money. Then I can flee to the warm water, the relative peace of Caracas and the unplumbed jungle of the Mato Grosso. Two cameras and a pistol and a great thirst—and this goddam typewriter. I want to walk on a morning road in Brazil and stop at a good place for a cold beer. I don’t even want to understand what they say. Just grin at them and drink, then walk on.

  As you see, I am finally on the hump and all Craziness is spread out before me. Way in the distance I see a clear spot, a splash of sunlit green and a sign saying “cerveza.” No hope but to get there and rest. Put the madness behind me. Ah, jesus, the pressure of this place, the screams of the drowners and the jackal laughter of those in the rafts.

  Now, maybe I have got that screaming out of my system. Anyway, I feel better. Still, I cannot face your letter without writing 40 pages of answer. I feel that I should tell you at least that much about something, but I dare not start. Each time I start thinking of one thing, two more loom up to destroy my focus. God knows what you are doing over there but it sounds bad. I will put you in touch with Hudson. Write him. He looks at June 1 as the deadl
ine, but still doesn’t know what they will do with the boat once it gets in the water.

  You will always get a lot of shit from me, no matter what you say, until you become so right that I feel intimidated or so wrong that I feel repelled.

  I am going to write massive tomes from South America. I can hardly wait to get my teeth in it. And thousands of pictures. It is almost too big to deal with. Speaking of pictures, I may try to sell that one of the nigger child on the beach that you claim to have taken. I don’t believe you, but you sounded so righteous when I mentioned it before that I know you would never admit it was not yours. Anyway, it dawned on me the other day that PRNS [Puerto Rican News Service] might buy it. Probably not, but god knows it is worth a try. I must have a check from somebody. With luck it will bring $15, more likely $10. If I sell it and if you sound righteous and convinced enough in your reply to this, I will send you half. I have asked Sandy about it, but she is blank. I have so many shots that I don’t remember taking that I tend to feel that anything I have is bound to be “mine.”

  Maybe I will deduct the price of developing and printing all those shots I took of you—and then deduct for the skill and wisdom involved—and send you the rest.

  This will give you the gist of my recent thought patterns. I am turning into a jew. And all the time I’ve been writing this fucking letter, the rotten novel has been sitting here accusing me of sloth. I will get to it now, leaving you to stew. Send word on something. Pierce the fog. Seize the high ground and keep a tight trigger. The beast is loose and prowling everywhere.

  Bloodhungrily,

  Hunter

  TO CANDIDA DONADIO:

  Still in pursuit of the right agent, Thompson now retained Donadio in hopes of finding a publisher for “The Rum Diary.” Donadio worked for the Russell & Volkening literary agency. She wrote Thompson saying his characters in “The Rum Diary” were “hard and bitter”; the agency didn’t take Thompson on as a client.

  February 15, 1962

  531 E. 81 Street

  New York City

  Dear Miss Donadio:

  Thanks for your letter. Now I can finish The Rum Diary with a bit of a grin—a mean one, of course—and send it snapping and snarling toward the cubicles. It will not be a “hard and bitter” book in the end, except to those who expect other people to build their houses for them. It has taken me 24 years to lay even the beginnings of a foundation for myself, and when I finish I will not have much time to do anything but run off a few copies of the blueprint for other builders to use as they see fit.

  One of your comments puzzles me, however, and since it seems to be your main point I would like to see it more clearly. You say, “The novel is made of hard and bitter characters, and that’s all right and workable, providing there is enough distinction in the means of telling the bitter and hard story.” Now “distinction” is the word I can’t deal with. I hope you don’t mean “discretion.” That would sadden me, because I appreciated what I thought was the spirit of your letter. Also I hope you don’t mean I should fish for some future comment like, “Mr. Thompson has written a distinguished book.” I sent a story to an agent once and she wrote back that she had sent it on to The New Yorker because she thought it was “absolutely charming.” They bounced it, of course, for it was no less mean and bitter than The Rum Diary. It just goes to … ah … yeah.

  Anyway, I will finish the book and let you see it again, although I am not real optimistic about your feeling for it. But I liked your letter and feel that your quarrel is more with me and my convictions than my way of expressing them. Perhaps not, and maybe that’s what you meant by distinction. But I am not about to erect any housing projects or tickle any desperate wishbones. There is a man named [Herman] Wouk who does that sort of thing, and another called [Eric] Linklater, whose heart, they say, is as big as all outdoors. I have a suspicion that it would drop very cleanly down the barrel of a BB gun, but I guess that makes me sound even meaner than before.

  Further, I could cite a lot of fine books that didn’t build any houses. Lie Down in Darkness comes quickly to mind, and no American has written a better book in 20 years. But when Styron tried to build a house, it didn’t ring true. It sold, of course, and maybe there was form beneath the fuzz, but I couldn’t see it.

  Well, I see I am arguing and I didn’t mean to when I sat down to write this thing. Thanks for reading what I gave you and for writing a good note; you will hear from me again when I finish the blueprint.

  Bittahly,

  Hunter S. Thompson

  TO LIONEL OLAY:

  Thompson first met free-lance journalist Olay in Big Sur when they were both broke and grubbing for rent money. Olay published two novels and wrote for various magazines and contributed a weekly column to the Monterey Herald.

  February 16, 1962

  531 E. 81 Street

  New York City

  Well, Lionel, I’ve been meaning to write you for quite a while, but I thought I’d wait until I had something to say. Now, if nothing else, I can give you a rough outline of the immediate future.

  Well, Ok—first, you better be careful about your boxing syndrome. Mailer has broken his ass and his nose and all his rabbit ears trying to prove how much a better man and boxer he is than Hemingway, and all it has done is make him look silly. He will never be a better man and probably not a better boxer, because Mailer is a punk and it sticks out all over except when he writes his rare good stuff—which he should have been doing all along because it is the only way he’ll ever get within shouting distance of Hemingway’s ghost. So much for boxing. I dig a smooth mauler, but there are other ways to keep in shape for the big business.

  Also, you cast me as a tyro Sugar Ray [Robinson] and match me with your man, Chambrun.6 Oddly enough, I had a letter from him in Louisville, a few days before I got yours, saying he had seen my story in Rogue and wondered if I had an agent. It was written on yellow stationery and I quickly dealt him off as a quack. Then came your letter and a reappraisal of Chambrun, so when I got here I went to see him and ran into the foggiest, most offensive secretary I have ever come across. After four tries at seeing Chambrun—to whom I had replied, and who had written back, asking to see my novel—I finally wrote him a very hardnose letter at his home, saying his secretary was a fucking idiot and had put me in the mood to crack skulls and bend thumbs. First his, then all the others in all the rotten offices in this rotten town. Direct quotes. Needless to say, I got a quick reply from Jacques, saying that “due to previous commitments he was not taking on any more clients at the present time.” Also, needless to say, a man with previous commitments does not scour magazines like Rogue in search of authors. So much for Chambrun. I found a new man named Volkening, who says my book is “mean and bitter,” but if I can resolve it in some decent way he would like to see it when it’s ready to go. Well, my book is not mean and bitter and nor am I, for that matter, but his analysis gave me the pissed-off zip I needed to ram through to the finish. Contrary to your approach, I am “playing fast and loose” with it now, fairly confident that I have a good thing on my hands and giving it all the play it needs to romp and stomp. I figure 3 or 4 more weeks and that’s it. I am tired of the thing and have better books to write. It has been on my ass for 18 months and that’s enough. (I know, Joyce spent 10 years on Portrait of …) And Joyce was a poor sick fucker who probably died with his balls somewhere up around his navel. None of that for me, thanks. If it proves to be that long and tough I will figure that, like Joyce, I do not lack talent, but contacts, and I am not yet sure which is more important. But I have other talents and other contacts, and I can always write, so fuck them. But I will pass a good list on to my biographers. I have recently read two books where some people’s memories took some pretty bad floggings—with reference to Hemingway and [Hart] Crane. But who gives a damn, anyway? Like how many people know or care who the KC A’s have sold or traded to the Yankees in the past five years? So what? Who knows who to blame? Fuck it.

  Anyway, what I
meant to say in all that is that you mis-cast me. Footwork is one thing, and New York manners are another. I prefer to deal head-on, because for one thing I’m big enough in a lot of ways to run over people that way; and for another, it gives me a chance to see who I’m after. This peek-a-boo shit is for midgets.

  As for my last letter, it must have been gloomier than I remember. Or maybe it was that Ohio Valley climate. Anyway, I am very much on the offensive now and will definitely leave for South America before April 1. Hopefully, by March 15. Depends entirely on the book. I have enough papers to give me an illusion of an income and that’s all I need to go anywhere. If it all works out, I will make enough money to keep going. If not, I will settle wherever I have to and do what has to be done. Sandy is not taking the initial plunge. She will stay here for a month, then ship to Trinidad and await developments. I have a lot of deals going now and they will probably all fall through, but I will go anyway. One thing that looks good is free transportation, in exchange for guaranteed published articles. The last time I tried a thing like that the people who sponsored me wound up yelling for my skin to be tacked up on their wall. Probably it will happen again, and so be it. There are possibilities in journalism, and not the least among them is the fact that it’s short and quick and just about as constant as you want to make it. I have enough papers now to afford me a decent income unless they do me in with delays and petty bitching, which they undoubtedly will. On the other hand, I have sold a few photos recently and am now buying a $200 camera from Hong Kong, plus another $200 worth of lenses. So I will have another weapon and if I can make it work it will take a real badass to get me. And if nothing else works, I still have a .357 Magnum.