Playboy
12/2/68
8.00
Columbia Journalism Review
12/2/68
6.00
I. F. Stone’s Weekly
12/25/68
11.95
Chicago Journalism Review
12/16/68
5.00
Atlantic Monthly
1/8/69
4.25
Evergreen Review
1/18/69
9.00
Rolling Stone Book
3/12/69
9.00
San Francisco Chronicle
3/25/69
12.00
SDS Literature
3/27/69
10.00
TO THOMAS H. O’CONNOR, IRVING LUNDBORG & CO.:
Only a few months after buying stocks, Thompson was ready to get out of the bearish market.
June 8, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Tom O’Connor
Irving Lundborg & Co.
San Francisco
Dear Tom …
I’m returning this goddamn thing you sent me the other day; it doesn’t tell me anything except that my losses are confirmed by computer. I saw [Robert] Craig yesterday and cursed him savagely for advising me to fuck around with the stock market in the first place. I should have known better than to buy into anything that goddamn bonehead Nixon was running.
Tell me—is there any likelihood that this stinking downhill slide will reverse itself anytime soon? By “soon,” I mean within the next six months. If not, I think I’ll quit while I’m still solvent … and by quit I mean SELL, boom, fuck it. If the health of the market depends in any way on Nixon ending the war, then the market is going to be a sinkhole for the next two years and I want no part of it. As for particulars, all I know for sure is that Bangor Punta has lost one point in three weeks, while ATT and Brit. Pet [British Petroleum] have lost about three points each. And I’d rather not know about Yellowknife right now; I suspect the quotation would drive me up the wall.
Unless you know something I don’t, let’s quit. I have to assume, of course, that you do know something I don’t—since you’re a stockbroker and I’m not. But my problem—as I noted earlier—is that I can’t afford to wait for Nixon and his 19th century money-wizards to come to grips with reality. He apparently wants to beat all his opponents to death, and in that case I think things like Bangor Punta are the only kind of stocks to own. …
Well, to hell with all this. I see no point in haggling about it. Frankly, I see no light at the end of the tunnel … and unless you do, let’s sell or switch, or at least do something. I have the feeling right now that I’m on a long downhill run, and I don’t like it. Let me know soonest. …
Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO CHARLES KURALT, CBS NEWS:
Kuralt’s “On the Road” segments for CBS were a bit too upbeat and down-home for Thompson’s taste.
June 9, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Charley …
I think it’s about time you got off your Nero act and get down in the mire with the rest of us. Primarily, I think you should launch a personal vendetta against Justice William O. Douglas; that evil old bugger is so crooked that he has to screw his pants on every morning. I’m counting on you to bury him.
Where are you? You should get through Aspen for the summer freak festival. I wrote Hughes [Rudd] about it, but the news angle faded when the moment of confrontation faded into infinity.
Maybe you should come out here for Jack Benny’s concert.21 Yeah … I’m serious. He’s doing a straight classical concert for the Aspen Music Associates … the old, respectable folks. Jack Benny. Can anyone doubt that Nixon is running things?
Fear and loathing. You should get that bastard Douglas before he can do any further harm. The dirty old geek is worse than B. Baker and Walter Jenkins combined.22 Forswear those ancient clocks and nickelodeons. … Dig the mud! And send word. …
Ciao …
Hunter
TO OSCAR ACOSTA:
Thompson shares his first bad LSD experience with Acosta.
June 9, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
O…
Well, I finally came down to it—a really ugly acid trip. I took one of those blue buggers of yours on top of a full mescaline pill after about 30 sleepless hours at Phil Clark’s annual Daisy Duck party with 6 hours of beer and straight vodka in cups … and I finished the day in a paranoid frenzy, driving Tim Thibeau off the property with a loaded .44 Mag. My main horror, all afternoon, was a firm conviction that I was locked in a clutch of junkies, real needle freaks … and even now I suspect maybe I was right. That’s the trouble with acid: you can never be sure you’re hallucinating. Anyway … I’m giving it up for the duration. Either way, it’s too heavy.
Otherwise, not much action here. The Killy piece is still not finished, a terrible mess on my desk. Thibeau is here for the summer with a carpenter’s license from Chicago; John Pond just arrived with a woman from Brazil. …No optimism in either camp.
Esquire sent a conditional acceptance on the Gun-piece, but it still has to pass the final test with Harold Hayes.23 I’d put the chances at 50–50. Don Erickson, the Managing Editor, spent about a week cutting it down to 50 pages … the trouble is I don’t know which 50. We’ll see. How are you faring with The Nation? On balance, I see a mean heavy summer coming up—and pure hell in the fall. Send word. Ciao …
HST
TO WILLIAM J. KENNEDY:
Thompson sent a quick catch-up note to novelist William Kennedy in Albany.
June 9, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Fatback …
I just found a letter from Lee Berry that I thought I’d answered months ago … and it says he’ll be moving on “by March.” In other words, I have no idea where he is. Do you know, via the paper? Is he still sending the stuff? Any word? Addresses? If so, tell me.
No word from you since the last drug-aborted visit. I assume you’re too embarrassed to face it. But what the hell? You’re getting old and crazy …why not face up to it? Send a line. I gave that ski sweater I was wearing to my brother in suburban Cleveland … and I think the pants went into the padding for my new Doberman box, with eight new tenants. My price is $250, but for you I might go $199.
I just got word from Esquire that, instead of hurling my 3-month-late 140 page gun article out the window, Don Erickson fought it down to 50 pages that he now intends to submit to Hayes, the final eye. I’m amazed; chances are up to 50–50 on that news, and I guess I’ll know in a week or so. It seems like a bad, stupid joke to go through all that for $1000 … but I’m getting a little tired of writing articles that everybody praises and nobody prints. “Tired” ain’t really the word. I think “dead” is more like it. Now all I have to do is finish that stupid fucking thing for Playboy—that ski piece. Yeah, that too—hung up …
What word on the novel? What date? Be sure to send a copy to Selma Shapiro at Random House; I told her you would. Have you read A Fan’s Notes by Exley? Try it.
I have a plot for August—involving travel on your part—but I don’t dare mention it now. We’ll see how things work in the meantime. And also in the meantime, send a word. …
HST
—and Berry’s new address
FROM WILLIAM J. KENNEDY:
Kennedy’s novel Legs had just been purchased by Dial Press.
June 21, 1969
Averill Park, NY
Hunter:
Berry’s address for a very, very few days is c/o US Consulate, Visitors Mail, 2 Avenue Gabriel, Paris, France, and then he will be coming home. I don’t know whether a letter you write after reading this will reach him. I’m writing him today and I’ll tell him you were interested and maybe he’ll send you a new address. He covered the Cannes film festival, then came back to Paris, then planned to go to London for a week, then to Paris again and home; so he told the editor here. I have had
no recent word.
My news is that I sold another novel, in April. Dial bought it for 4½ Gs, payable in 4 installments. Book is a fictionalized version of the life of Legs Diamond, the gangster. He was killed in Albany. A most unconventional approach to the material, however, which you’ll see in due time. Definitely not another gangster story. Meantime this week I got the galleys on The Ink Truck, which as far as I know is still scheduled for September publication. Esquire dicked around with a fragment of The Ink Truck for a month or so and almost bought it. Your friend Erikson (sp?) went ape for it, so said my agent. Rust Hills dug it and pushed for it, but Hayes ultimately said it was too much (40 manuscript pages) for the value (an unknown writer). So it moved along elsewhere. I got an apologetic note from Hills, hoping I won’t hold it against Esquire when I’ve got more fiction to peddle. Robie McCauley at Playboy couldn’t spot anything to excerpt in it, but he thinks I’m a most original cat. All this praise gets me nothing without a publication. I’m pessimistic about marketing any fragments before publication, but we keep trying.
Re: August. Our kids are going to Puerto Rico to spend some time with their grandmother. Probably leaving second last week in July. We’re tentatively thinking about going down in August to retrieve them and have some Fun In Sun, also get Num in Rum. I’ve assumed that you were still interested in this trek. If you are, then it is time we began coordinating travel schedules, itineraries and length of stay, etc. I’m flexible on the dates, but August is definitely the best month. Send your plans soon.
2nd novel, by the way, was sold on basis of 150 preliminary pages which are already dead. I’ve done nothing but read and do research ever since the sale. By August I may be started on the writing again.
Haven’t read Fan’s Notes by Allen [sic] Exley but will try to find it. Am locked in on the prohibition era, Borges24 and mysticism. Which reminds me that I wrote Allen Ginsberg25 and told him you were by and that we almost made the scene at his place. He regretted we didn’t; said he wondered where your head was at these days.
Any sounds from McGarrsville? Best to Sandy.
Mr. Kennedy
TO DAVE ALLEN, KREX-TV:
As a dedicated night owl and news junkie, Thompson relied on his sole TV channel’s 6 A.M. Mountain Time broadcast of the CBS Morning News from New York to catch up on the rest of the world before going to bed. Besides, his friend Hughes Rudd had just become a regular contributor to the program.
July 3, 1969
Owl Farm
Woody Creek, CO
Dave Allen
Program Director
KREX-TV
Grand Junction, CO
Dear Mr. Allen …
I was shocked and outraged yesterday morning to find that KREX-TV had dropped the CBS Morning News—and replaced it with nothing, absolutely nothing. I find this hard to believe. What could possibly possess a man to drop the best news show on television and replace it with NOTHING? Beyond that, I’m sure you realize that cutting a one-hour news show in the morning amounts to cutting the station’s news coverage almost in half … and to people like me who can’t take time in mid-afternoon to watch the [6 P.M. Eastern] Cronkite news (and who live beyond the reach of any TV cable service), it eliminates national news altogether. And I say this with full knowledge that KREX does indeed have a 10:00 p.m. “news” show … which is sort of like a record company offering “The Songs of Joan Baez, by Winnie Ruth Judd.”
Speaking of Judd, for the Defense, I notice you’ve finally put him back on the schedule—along with Johnny Cash26—and for those two reasons I’ll spare you the kind of letter I might otherwise have written. You may recall my comments when you dropped Judd—which has since won an Emmy27 and also been cancelled. But what the hell? Last year’s Judd is better than anything on your current schedule, and I’m grateful. The Cash show is a merciful balance to that monstrous waterhead-zoo called Hee-Haw. Christ, that should embarrass even KREX, and I say that with my head still reeling from that hour-long commercial you ran the other night: The “Miss Wool” contest—an obvious fraud on the viewer.
In any case, I strongly urge you to re-fill the 6–7 a.m. slot with Joe Benti’s CBS news. It can’t be that expensive, and I know I’m not the only person who misses it. Sooner or later the KREX management will have to learn that a station becomes competitive by running good programs, not cheap ones. Meanwhile, I will of course file a formal complaint with the FCC, as I have twice before in the past—if the CBS Morning News fails to re-appear within a week or so. It seems to me that chopping the station’s news content by half amounts to cynical mockery of the whole “public interest” concept. I hope you’ll consider this aspect.
Thanks …
Hunter S. Thompson
TO JOE BENTI, CBS NEWS:
Joseph Benti anchored the CBS Morning News from early 1966 through August 1970.
July 4, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Mr. Benti …
I’m enclosing a letter (copy of) that I just sent to the geek who controls the only TV station I can get on my set. If there’s any way CBS can influence the fucker to pick up your morning news show again, I assure you that I won’t be alone on this end of the tube. TV is a goddamn nightmare out here anyway (see copy of 9/68 letter for context; [former station manager Bud] Palmer has since quit & fled the area), and the loss of the only first-class news show on the air is a serious, hurtful thing. If there’s any way you might help to revive the show on KREX, working from your end, I’d certainly appreciate it … although I can’t imagine how you could lean on some yahoo dingbat who figures all the news is a Red plot anyhow.
Unfortunately, these same yahoos are going to have to open their own heads pretty quickly, or some of them are going to start shooting at us … certainly me, maybe you; “us” is a risky term these days. Anyway, your show is one of the best things on TV; the difference between your action and Cronkite’s is as obvious as the difference between Studs Terkel and Eric Hoffer28 … and that was a fine series you did with Terkel; he’s one of the best people around.
Actually, the only thing wrong with your show is the vicious, sloppy presence of that pigfucker, Hughes Rudd. Christ, what a bummer! Can’t something be done to get that filthy acid freak off the air? I know the bastard and I can testify, flat-out, to the absolute basic foulness of the man. …I’ve tried to convince his wife to come out here and live with me, but he has some fiendish hold over her. I suspect he has something on Frank Stanton, owner of CBS, too. You owe it to yourself to get the goods on that swinish pervert.
OK for now. Do what you can to reinstate your show out here… and I’ll hassle the pigs from this end.
Thanx,
Hunter S. Thompson
FROM TOM WOLFE:
Wolfe had seen a photograph of Thompson in an unlikely magazine.
July 5, 1969
Dear Hunter,
As you may know, I never DID make it to Aspen—in fact, never got a foot out of New York, as seems to be usual with me in the summertime. A freaking unfinished magazine article (& a weird movie) stymied me. A real mis-cue on my part, I guess—especially since I just picked up a magazine that singled you out, in full color, as one of the major tourist attractions of the Rockies (or was it your chopped BSA?)
Yours,
Tom
TO TOM WOLFE:
July 10, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Tom …
Sorry you missed the “action” out here. It weren’t much—a gang of dilettantes, haggling over details, for an audience of nazis. It’s beyond me to see how you can function on that circuit, unless it pays a hell of a lot … and even then, I wonder.
Anyway, what magazine were you talking about inre: that photo of me and the bike? It puzzles me; the only photographer who’s been out here in a long while came from SOVFOTO and swore he wouldn’t sell anything within the continental limits of the U.S. What magazine? What issue? Could you instruct your secretary to send me the details: I h
ave my own reasons. …
The bike, by the way, is a Bultaco—a lightweight Spanish bugger, built for dirt-riding instead of freeways. My BSA was three times the size of the one I have now; wholly impractical for mountain riding … but more and more, in the shank of these long summer nights, I miss the big one. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve been a long way from the edge for too long; getting flabby and slow. We’ll see, I guess—the book was due July 1.
Ciao …
Hunter
TO DAVE ALLEN, KREX-TV:
Upon receiving Thompson’s complaint about the CBS Morning News being taken off the air, an annoyed Allen wrote back, taking issue with his foul language and rude asides. It was not the type of reply Thompson was expecting.
July 10, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dave Allen
Assistant General Manager
KREX-TV
Grand Junction, CO
Dear Mr. Allen …
Thanks for your letter of July 7. I was particularly struck by the fact that you “take exception to the profanities utilized in (my) letter” …and to that I can only say Fuck Off.
I take exception to 99% of the cheap goddamn garbage you put on the air. Your scheduling is a monument to everything rotten in America … and you have the gall to sit there and call my July 3 letter “profane.” You ignorant freak; from now on I’ll address you on your own level.
You’re a fine example of the kind of waterhead who has crippled the whole television medium. If you think my letter was profane, you should take a look at the Real World sometime—the world you tried to censor when you cut CBS News.
But it’s still out there, old sport, and it’s closing in. Did you really think you could duck out of reality by fleeing Pennsylvania? Why don’t you send Gun-smoke’s Marshal Dillon out to arrest me for my profanity?