Well, to hell with all that; I just came back downstairs after watching your show. Your coverage of the Conspiracy trial is a cheap cop-out. Why don’t you run one of those [Studs] Terkel-style interviews with Mike Royko?45 Never in hell, eh?
In closing, I suppose that common decency compels me to offer my condolences. You are sitting there with an incredible magic journalism tool in your hands, but you can’t even gear it up to compete with Time magazine.
And fuck this action; I have better things to do.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO BERNARD SHIR-CLIFF, BALLANTINE BOOKS:
Shir-Cliff had sent Thompson the premiere issue of counterculture cartoonist R. Crumb’s Comix magazine.
October 5, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Bernard …
Thanks for the Comix. I’ve seen [R.] Crumb’s stuff before and always (or usually) get a boot out of it—but it’s hard to believe many people are going to pay $2.95 for it. Maybe a buck. …
Which is your business, and possibly you’re right. The book is too large for easy shop-lifting, but—like the sex magazines—it’s a natural for stand-up reading at the magazine rack; particularly if the alternative is paying 3 bucks to take it home.
So …I hope you’re right, but I can’t see the thing as a big seller. A lot of it is very sharp satire—sharper than most book-writing these dreary days, and it wouldn’t surprise me a hell of a lot if we all looked back in 10 years to say, Yes—R. Crumb was the [Henry] Ford of a new art form. Good luck.
Meanwhile, I am flipping around like a shark out of water, organizing a freak-uprising in the wake of that article I sent you. Given the current polarization, we have no choice but to go for a takeover bid—motorcycle racer for mayor, freaks for the council, etc. The election is less than a month off and right now we’re down about 2–1, but with massive possibilities in the unregistered freak vote. I have spent the past three days posing as either Ken O’Donnell or Larry O’Brien, or both—with a touch of Lenny Bruce on the side.46 One of our new posters says: “Register Freaks, Not Guns.” Another: “Vote the Straight Nazi Ticket; Profit Über Alles.”
Silberman’s book (christ, the very mention of it fills me with an urge to go immediately to bed and sleep for 15 hours) … anyway, I’ve developed such an inordinate fear and loathing for the whole subject (the American Dream) that I no longer have any sense of doing anything meaningful. All work on the book seems like a mockery of myself & reality, a dutiful charade that can’t be avoided, due to contracts, but which in truth is pure bullshit. I have written Silberman to say that I no longer understand what I’m supposed to be writing, and in fact I never have. I’ve told Lynn the same thing … but I keep getting beautifully-typed letters saying “Dear Hunter, keep up the good work on the book, your progress is wonderful and we all await the final wisdom.” It’s like calling the FCC to complain about TV programming; no hope of communication.
Frankly, I’m not sure what I’m doing. I may have a book in all this irrelevant bullshit I’ve written, but even if I do I’m not sure it’s worth publishing. My problem—once again—is that I’ve forgotten what it’s all about. I have no title, no subject, no focus … all I really have is a sense of despair so massive that my nerves are rotting out with the weight of it. I have a feeling of having been sent up on the mountain to write something I never understood—and that I can’t come down to reality again until I write the fucker. And bring it with me. For perusal and strange comment by people who live in some kind of rotten, pressurized bee-hive on the East Coast.
Money is the only new factor in my thinking these days. For the first time in maybe two years I can see the total final end of my income … as a matter of fact I saw it about a month ago. Which reminds me: Did I accumulate any HA funds through August ’69? I’m in dire need of money; keep that in mind.
And my long-smoldering concern about Silberman’s book has finally transmogrified into a far more serious worry about my own gig as a writer. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever see my stuff in print again; I guess that’s why I was so pleased with the Aspen article, which netted me $50—the first real writing-money I’ve earned in two years, not counting royalties.
(Jesus, I just rushed upstairs to answer the phone, thinking it was somebody with a crisis about the Aspen election … and found Joe Benti from CBS on the wire (and a news producer named Lewis), insisting on giving me all the details to refute my claim that CBS censored a recent Aspen feature, after backstairs pressure from such as McNamara, Reuther and that evil crowd. Eric Sevareid is a good buddy of some of the people who were slurred; ditto Stanton and R. Salant. So I’ve been arguing with Benti for the past hour, and now I have to get out a two-page mind-bender on local politics—threatening the freaks with mass nut-cutting if they fail to register and vote to protect their own interests—indeed, their very balls. So …)
Yes, I’ll quit while I still have time. I have to carry off a demagogic outburst in about two hours, and I’m tired …but not for the right reasons. I much prefer the kind of fatigue that comes after a burst of good writing—good published writing. Maybe we can work something out; I’m getting scared. Ciao …
Hunter
TO HUGHES RUDD, CBS NEWS:
Rudd had been robbed and beaten near New York’s Central Park and had written Thompson a graphic account.
November 15, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Hughes …
Jesus, what next? Heart attacks, muggings … maybe you should consider buying a chinchilla ranch in northern New Mexico. I got a note from [Bill] Stout47 today, saying he’d missed me in L.A., and giving the news of your street-fighting action. If it’s any condolence, I nearly got killed in NY one summer night down on St. Luke’s place in the Village … and a month later I was back on the streets with a big hunting knife, looking for the rogues. Broken ribs hurt like hell for a while, and a broken nose makes for difficult breathing, but they pass. I just saw an old friend in L.A. who has a bleeding ulcer and can’t drink … now there’s real trouble. So if I were you I wouldn’t worry about a few cracked bones.
Rather than carry on here, let me say that I’ll be in NY for lunch on Dec 6 (shuttling up from Washington) and will probably stay the weekend. I have to get straight with Random House. What are the chances of getting together with Charles [Kuralt] for a peaceful nonviolent drink Dec 6 or 7? I’ll call from Washington earlier that week. Meanwhile, for christ’s sake, lie low.
Ciao …
Hunter
TO OSCAR ACOSTA:
The Thompsons seem to have misbehaved during their October 1969 visit to California.
November 15, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear O …
Thanx for the call. I was out at the time, dealing heavily—and arriving at a nut of $150 for 100. I have samples, but haven’t tried them yet. All references and indications are good. I’ll be sure in a few days. Your deal of 50 for $125 doesn’t make it. The (big) dealer price in Aspen is 50 cents a hit. That’s 50 cents each. I just missed a deal of 100 for $75. So somebody down there is screwing you pretty badly—since cost is about 25 cents each, or less. Anything over $2 each is like selling joints on the street for a buck apiece. And even at $2, it’s like buying a used car off a lot in Pasadena for the advertised price.
Anyway, let me know quick if you want some of this lot I’m about to go for. I can’t afford the full 100 unless I have help with the nut. I realize that I owe you some dope, but right now I’m truthfully broke—and the stock market has destroyed my cushion. All I can make on my own is 50, and I’ll send you a few of those por nada—but if you want 10 or 20 you’ll have to let me know quick, and send cash. Murphy says he’s coming out this weekend, so I figure to spin off 10 or 20 there…so if both of you want in, I’ll go for the full 100—at $150. If I don’t hear from you by Sunday I’ll figure you’re not interested.
On other fronts, I think I owe you a general
apology for my sub-human behavior during my visit. I feel, in retrospect, a bad echo of McGarr on a humping trip. Even Sandy admits that we both went a bit beyond the pale on all fronts—from running up bills to drugs, to laying bad trips on other people. Particularly you. I’m sorry about the times that I seemed crazed, impatient or inhospitable … but for reasons of the flesh I have to say that I’d probably do it again, so be warned. You got caught in the tides of a sort of honeymoon, 10 years delayed.
On balance, however, it was an excellent visit. Maybe the SF trip was ill-advised—or maybe it was only bad acid. If I had to do it over again I think I’d stay in L.A. But thanks again—mightily—for the use of the car. I think Sandy wrote Socorro,48 but since most of the action was my fault, I’ll add a word or so for me. Particularly about the acid … although as a partial excuse, I hope she understands that it’s impossible to enjoy acid in the company of somebody who visibly disapproves of it. That’s a bad trip both ways.
On that score, I’m enclosing (on the navel of the beast) one of your very excellent blues. I did one the other night and ran amok for about 6 hours … and, now, on second thought, I think I won’t send it unless you ask for it. I don’t want to jangle Socorro any worse than I have already. But take my word for it: Good acid still works. One tiny tab of that blue shit put me right around the bend. And also be warned that much of the street acid these days contains Strychnine (sp?), which gives you a nice buzz along the spinal column before it sends you vomiting to the emergency ward. Be careful what you buy—particularly from the kind of dealer who doesn’t mind charging “a friend” top street-corner prices for mes.
OK for now. I have to get back to ugly work for an hour or so before dawn. With Murphy en route, I can’t count on much work or sleep this weekend.
That Cuba trip sounds interesting, but I think I’d feel obligated, if I went, to cut cane like all the others. You’re probably right in saying I could avoid it, but avoiding it would put me in a position I’d just as soon avoid. You know—the gringo journalist thinks he’s better than we are, etc. … And right now I really have to sock in here and finish a book, for good or ill.
Send word when anything breaks. I’ll be here.
Ciao …
H
TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
At last, Thompson began to hone in on a peg for his book on “The Death of the American Dream”: anti-establishment grassroots politics as modern democracy in action.
November 19, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Jim …
I may have finally found that Grain of Sand I mentioned in earlier letters. For the first time in nearly two years, I see a gimmick for tying all my wasted bullshit together in a book—titled “Joe Edwards for Mayor.”
This harks back to that clipping I sent you (my screed from the Aspen Illustrated News) … and the fact that it caused massive upheavals and polarization in the town. It also caused me to run my own candidate for mayor—and after a crazed and unnatural campaign that kept me awake for three weeks straight, we lost the election by one vote. Out of 1200 or so. We scared the living shit out of the Aspen Power Structure (the Ski Corp, Atlantic-Richfield and the Institute, with a board of directors including Paul Nitze, Robert McNamara, Walter Reuther, Justice Brennan and more fat Washington names than would fit on this page) … beginning in mid-Oct. with a 29-year-old candidate, a local head and bike-racer known as the “hippy lawyer,” we mounted a campaign that made the Old Uglies seem like Norman Rockwell cartoons. The aging liberals refused to support us; they went with a silly old Republican shop-keeper lady who was compared, in Time, to Lindsay49 … so we had to fall back on whatever clout we could muster in the name of Freak Power.
Incredibly, we won the actual vote by 6—then lost the absentee-ballot count by 7 … and even now our tying vote is wandering around somewhere in Guatemala, unreachable by phone or cable. We got one vote from Nepal, two from Mexico, and numerous others from both coasts. On balance, it was the goddamnedest political scene I’ve ever heard about, much less been involved in. When we began this thing I said it would be my last effort in terms of the existing political context. For my own satisfaction, I wanted to give “the system” one more chance—so I could honestly say, when the time of the fire-bombs came, that I’d gone as far as I could in that other game, and found it wanting.
So it came as a bit of a shock to find that a handful of bearded freaks—with no political experience and only three weeks to do everything from scratch—could come within one vote of taking over a town like Aspen. One more week would have made us easy victors. And now, in the general euphoria that still lingers, we are already forming a sort of government in exile—preparing, next year, to seize one of the three County Commissioners’ posts and …yes … even the Sheriff’s office. One of our gimmicks to get the freaks registered was a promise that, if Joe Edwards won the Mayor’s race, then I would run for Sheriff. Edwards’ loss leaves me technically free of any obligation to make that race, but the success of the Edwards campaign has politicized hundreds of dropouts who are hungry, now, for another head-on clash with the Fatbacks. There is not much question in my mind that, two years from now, we will totally control this town … and by that time, too, we will have the formula ready for export. Any comparison between Lindsay and Joe Edwards makes Lindsay seem to the Right of Spiro Agnew. We had one or two Lindsay-type candidates available here, but we settled on Edwards because our gossip said he was the only one who could muster the Freak Vote—the under-30 heads and erstwhile apolitical hippie types who, like me, wouldn’t cross the street to vote for Lindsay. The NY vote was a triumph of a New Coalition, but the Aspen vote signaled the appearance of a whole new electorate.
So … that’s my new gimmick. I’ve been sitting around here (and also in Los Angeles for the past two weeks) trying to work it into the dull and dated garbage that you still call, I guess, The Death of the American Dream. I think I can use all the Nixon stuff, plus the doomed Esquire Guns article, plus the Playboy JC Killy piece and also the LA stuff and even the Oil Shale research. Maybe not all of it, but enough to show the Aspen campaign in a national context. The joke in all this is that I suddenly see a bedrock validity in the American Dream; the Joe Edwards campaign was a straight exercise in Jeffersonian Democracy. In a sense, it was an echo of the ’68 McCarthy campaign, but the difference lay in our ability to politicalize people who never knew or cared about the difference between Gene and Joe. We organized a mock election at the high school and won with 75% of the vote. The editor of the high school paper is now part of our half-underground Government in Exile.
All of what I say here is necessarily less than the whole truth, but I trust you see what I’m getting at. The possibility of a book titled “Joe Edwards for Mayor” gives me that tight-focused chunk of absolute reality that even the craziest, weirdest kind of journalism needs to hold it together. What The Book has lacked, all along, is a reason for writing it. But now, in the wake of this virgin political experience, I think I have that reason. On Sunday night I have to make a speech of sorts at a private high school (or prep school as it were) about 40 miles from here… and I’m going to tell them that, contrary to recent experience, that we can in fact beat the Fatbacks on their home court. Incredible as it seems, existing law is actually on our side. (We found that out when the Mayor tried to challenge our freaks at the polls; the DA and the city attorney refused to intervene, so we had to give a crash-course in election-laws to a dozen or so bearded poll-watchers … we armed them with tape-recorders and xerox copies of law book pages, which caused chaos at the polls and beat the challengers down to whimpering jelly….)
In a nut, what we proved here is that Freak Power is no joke; this is our country, too, and we can goddamn well control it if we learn to use the tools. And it’s fun; the Edwards campaign was a wilder trip, for me, than any acid I’ve ever eaten. …I stayed awake for three and four days at a time, incredibly high on the notion of taking over the world. And we wer
en’t fucking with sheepherders; the new mayor (by one vote) is either the State GOP secy. of some sort, or a GOP national committeewoman, or maybe both. One of her main supporters was Leon Uris.50 We also had the current administration savagely against us—along with the Aspen Times, a bastion of Humphrey-style liberalism. Beyond that, we had a wholly unknown candidate. I had never spoken to Edwards until I called him one Saturday night and said, “OK, you’re it.” Edwards himself was only a symbol of the power we suspected was there—mainly in the street-freaks and boomers, the night-people and the dope-culture. But when the deal went down, we had some of the heaviest establishment names in town on our side—in print, and making radio spots. Our whole campaign was a death-rattle for local business, the profit ethic and “common sense.” We promised to cut the tourist area in half, bar autos from the downtown streets, terminate the approaching 4-lane highway 10 miles from town, tax developers out of existence (or at least out of Aspen), force the cops to say “sir” to hair-freaks and hippies, and generally croak the Boom that has made Aspen a retail gold-mine for the past 20 years.
And we came within one vote of doing it. Which leads me to believe that we may have a story here—if only because it has changed my whole notion of what’s possible in America. On a purely personal basis, I’m prepared to give the system one more chance—mainly because I honestly believe we can win this war. We can take the machinery of reality away from the Fatbacks; they are too far gone in slow-witted corruption to deal with a serious challenge.
Hunter
TO RON DORFMAN, CHICAGO JOURNALISM REVIEW:
The editor of the new Chicago Journalism Review, launched in the wake of some questionable coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, had asked Thompson to write an essay for the magazine on the symbiotic relationship between the press and publicity-seekers like the Hell’s Angels.