WHY? (The reasons listed below are not necessarily in order of relative importance … but maybe)
1) The title, main concept, is so broad and pretentious that I no longer feel able to cope with it. Actually I never did. What I said that night in the Four Seasons was that “Anything I write is going to be about the death of the American Dream”—in the same sense that the H.A. book was “about” the death of the AD. But that’s not the same as going out and writing a book with that as the working title. I wouldn’t read a book with a title like that & I see no reason why anybody should read one from me. It sounds like something from Publish or Perish league. I’ve been saying this in letters—to you, Lynn, Bernie, etc.—for more than a year, but nobody has ever answered them. (See specifically my letter to you dated 8/30/69.) But, once again, let me hark back to Faulkner’s concept of “seeing the world in a grain of sand.” The job of a writer, it seems to me, is to focus very finely on a thing, a place, a person, act, phenomenon … and then, when the focus is right, to understand, and then render the subject of that focus in such a way that it suddenly appears in context—the reader’s context, regardless of who the reader happens to be, or where. Thus, you focus on some scurvy freak in Oakland who calls himself a “Hell’s Angel” & write about him in such a way that any dingbat stockbroker in Cleveland can see himself somehow in the image of that scurvy freak. Some people have to be forced to relate; others only need an excuse … (shit, that last line sounds like it came from somebody who might write a book called “The Death of the American Dream.” Strike it …). The point is that a good book is about people, not theories … and my problem is that I don’t have any real people in these situations I’m writing about, nothing to hook a reader and drag him into the scenes. (Except possibly myself, in the sense of my own involvement—but let’s save that possibility for later.)
2)—and this may really be #1—but it’s hard for me to say or even know, for certain, just how worried I really am about producing a “bomb”—a bad “second book”—and by “bad” I mean rotten reviews (or none), wretched sales and a general all-round bummer. I’d be kidding myself if I said this wasn’t a serious factor—although probably I’d be far less concerned about it if I were convinced that I had (have) a really good book in the works. This never bothered me in terms of the HA book, because when I began the thing it never occurred to me that I was getting into a “serious book.” I saw it as a quick & easy way to get $6000—by rapping off a hairy commercial shocker on a subject that didn’t particularly interest me, but which seemed very saleable. It was only after several months of research that I began to take the book seriously—and then, as I recall, I went into a deep funk and couldn’t write a word for many months. And I never would have got the bastard written at all if I hadn’t been deathly afraid of seeing the contract cancelled the day after the deadline. Now, looking back on what eventually came of it, I find myself brooding over the fact that only a bare handful of all those favorable reviews seemed to recognize the book I thought I’d written. So there is no rational reason for my concern with reviews. I know what kind of people write book reviews—I used to do it myself—but … well, fuck that. … The nut of the problem is that even though I dismiss nearly everything written about the HA book as silly, unctuous bullshit, I know that it all made a difference—in the sales figures, if nowhere else. And the sales figures, I know, determined what kind of advance I got for the AD book … so I have to consider the notion that a Bomb this time around might make the third book even more of a problem. I wouldn’t mind a Bomb if I thought I could get out from under it without screwing myself for the next five years … but it scares the hell out of me to think that this unholy pressure to produce a second book might destroy whatever small leverage I have. At the moment I see four possibilities: a) I could write a good book (one that I like) that won’t sell; b) or a bad book that sells … and I could live with either one of these, but the real nightmare is c), that I might write a bad book that won’t sell. I intend to do everything possible to avoid that. The fourth option d), is the odd wild chance that I might write a good book that sells. This is what I’d like to do, and the only thing I’m dead sure of right now is that—to make it both ways—I’m going to figure out some way to avoid coming down to this typewriter every night with the stinking idea that I’m going to tell the world about the Death of the American Dream. If I can’t shake that, we may as well call the whole thing off. It’s a terrible bummer & it won’t work. I knew it—and said it—all along, but everybody seemed to think I was kidding. But now, after two years of being hung up on that nightmare, I have to assume that it’s obvious on all fronts that I’ve screwed myself to the floor and I’m losing my fucking mind. It’s jangled me to the point where I can’t even write articles, because every time I try one I tell myself “This will of course be part of The Book”—so I end up writing 100 page screeds that nobody will print, and the horrible fact is that I never even knew what book they were supposed to be a part of. The whole thing is a disastrous myth & I have to get out from under it before I get so twisted that I have to go back to daily sports writing. Shit, anything would be better than this awful scene.
So … let’s try to finish this; I’ve been working on it for nearly 10 days and that should tell you more about why you don’t have a book ms. than anything I say here. The two main problems (see 1) and 2), above …) are so much a part of each other that they seem like a knot. To wit: It seems crucially important that my second book be either good or successful—not necessarily both, but at least one of those—and, after two years of false starts and generally wasted effort, I still can’t see any way to write a book worth reading unless I can rid myself of the notion that I’m stuck with the task of explaining “the Death of the American Dream.” I just can’t get serious about writing a bad, dull book that I honestly feel is going to be a bummer in every way.
Which brings me to the final category: POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
1) We could settle, very quickly, on a new working title—although I think it’s a little late for this as a real solution. It might have worked a year ago, when I first suggested it, but at this stage of my desperation the mental grooves are too deep—and too obviously dead-ended—to be cured or altered by anything as superficial as a few changed words.
2) Nonetheless, the title has to go … and that raises the question of a new focus. Why am I writing this book? What is it about? People ask me and I can’t say. So if you want to help, as you say, there is the question and the problem all at once. I don’t have a title in my own mind. Yours is unacceptable and I long ago rejected it as an explanation of what I’m supposed to be doing.
Here are some possibilities:
A) I’m writing a series of long articles that may or may not illustrate a theme. Most of these incidents take place in 1968–1969 & center on domestic political situations—which a lot of other people have written about. I can do them with (or, from) a special POV, but is this enough? Thus, your notion of “bookends” begs the question. It could give the book an appearance of a beginning and an end—but what’s really in the middle? Even so, this is a viable option; I don’t like it & I’m not sure anybody else will, but rather than suffer any longer with the notion of writing a “final wisdom book,” I may be better off just whacking out a Thompson version of The Pump House Gang.7
B) I could focus almost entirely on the fictional narrative aspect of the book & downgrade the journalism to the level of background—using scenes like Chicago and Nixon’s Inauguration as a framework for the trials and tribulations of my protagonist, Raoul Duke. This is the approach I like best, but it’s also the one that’s least realized at this point. I haven’t been able, so far, to make Duke a human being; he hasn’t come to life—not even for me. So the narrative still looks like a phoney gimmick to string a bunch of articles together. Another problem with this approach is that the American Dream millstone keeps intruding & it strikes a false note. It addles the dialogue and forces me to keep
backing off and pontificating. (Which recalls for some reason that Fitzgerald wanted to call his book about Gatsby “The Death of the Red White and Blue.” FYI)
C) This one is tricky; it’s the idea of emphasizing my own involvement with these various scenes to the extent that I become the protagonist—somewhat in the style of Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes. The problem here is one of perspective and control: My ego comes through very heavy, even when I try to write the straightest kind of journalism … and I’m not sure what might happen if I deliberately set out to write what amounts to a (limited) autobiography. The Killy/Playboy piece is a good example of this tack—as opposed to the far straighter and less personal approach that I tried to use in the Esquire gun piece. Somewhere between these two, in terms of style and tone, is the Nixon Inaugural article for The Boston Globe—although that one is almost pure impressionistic journalism, larded here and there with a few old cudgels and HST bias points. And—in a far different vein—we have that Los Angeles mescaline trip, which is almost intolerably impressionistic. I like all these chunks for different reasons, but I’m not at all sure they can work as a whole book. Maybe if we put them together the whole will somehow be more than the sum of its parts. But the nightmare is that the parts may seem so wretchedly disjointed as to contradict each other and make no sense at all.
The problem with this (C) possibility is that all these seemingly contradictory stances make fine sense to me—for good or ill—but I realize that people like you and Lynn and Don Erickson and the editors of Playboy can’t make any sense of them at all. And that’s not a judgement—just a flat recognition that we live in different worlds … which harks back, I see, to my original notion that my real job is to write a sort of literary common denominator. Which brings us right back around to the main question: THE FRAMEWORK ….. ????? Assuming the basic material is already half-formed & that most of the research is done, the missing link is more a packaging concept than anything else. That sounds simple, but it’s not—at least not to me. Maybe I shouldn’t even be thinking about it; and I probably wouldn’t be if this were my first book … but in this situation I tend to over-write, over-research, over-worry, and, obviously, to under-produce. I suspect the writing would go pretty fast if I could see from “A” to some point around “P” or “Q” … but as it is, I can’t see far beyond “C” or maybe “D.” God knows, it’s too much to ask to be able to see all the way from “A” to “Z,” but …
Well, let me try, once again, to capsule the options:
1) There’s the Pump House Gang approach; the main advantage here is that it looks like the easiest and fastest way to “produce” a book and get on to something better. More than half of this one is already written in more or less final draft. The rest wouldn’t be much of a problem—and the final result wouldn’t be much of a success, either. It would be more of an advertisement (and that recalls Advertisements for Myself8) than a coherent piece of work.
2) There’s the Raoul Duke approach, which is essentially a very contemporary novel with straight, factual journalism as a background. I don’t know any precedents to cite for this one … which is probably why I like it best. If it works it could be a very heavy, major book. But if it fails—like it has so far—the results could be anything from a published bomb and a personal disaster, to—even worse—many more months of crazed and fearful haggling between me and RH, trying to prevent a bomb/disaster by working the ms. to death. And that would drive us both crazy. One of the problems here is that you have no ms. sample of this approach. Maybe I should do a final draft of some chunk & let you see it before we settle on anything definite.
3) The other option is a sort of Fan’s Notes approach—using straight news-reel scenes instead of private traumas for a narrative. This approach would fall somewhere between Pump House and Advertisements for Myself. And in a sense it might possibly be done by simply dropping the fictional protagonist and basing the narrative simply on my own involvement—although not to the extent of a Mailer-style bit. That’s too much even for me. (But more personal involvement than Pump House, for instance, in that the story would be first person instead of third.) Here we have a problem with the fictional aspect, à la Exley, in that my backgrounds involve well-known or at least sensitive people. The Raoul Duke gimmick in #2 (above) gives me far more leeway to improvise on reality, without distorting it, than I’d have without Duke. He can play the lead role in scenes I couldn’t even use otherwise, because in the context of nonfiction I couldn’t “prove” them. Duke is only semi-fictional, but just hazy enough so I can let him say and do things that wouldn’t work in first person. Like smoking a joint on Nixon’s press bus; I can’t say who actually did this because he’s now a ranking editor on a major metro daily. It tells a lot about Nixon and the press corps that when I warned him (the press head) about the odor, he said, “Shit, this crowd is so square they don’t even smell it—I’ve been doing it for weeks.” And he was right. One alternative, of course, is for me to say that I covered Nixon with a joint in my mouth—but since I didn’t, I’d rather not bias my observations that heavily; and besides, the irony of the story is that they expected me to be smoking grass, but it would never have occurred to them to suspect this other lad.
Anyway, that’s a good example of my problem. Duke gives me a lot of options on the journalism front, but he also presents a hell of a problem with the narrative. Once I bring him in, I have to keep him there, even when I don’t need him. And I have to make him real. The original idea was to use Duke, like Gatsby, to illustrate that Death of the American Dream theme—but that’s a horror when you start with the theme and work back to the character. It may work the other way, but I can’t be sure until I see the character … and so far his symbolic value keeps queering his reality. On the other hand, his value as a sort of “cover” & safety valve solves many of the problems I have with the straight journalistic approach. I can insist that everything he says and does is true, but I can also refuse to identify him for obvious legal reasons.
So the root problem appears to be how to handle the fact/fiction balance. Maybe there should be no fiction at all … but I can’t get very enthusiastic about coming out with a handful of articles about stale scenes. And—re-thinking #3 (above) I don’t see how I can get away with much fiction & still use the situations I’ve researched. A first-person account, with the author as protagonist, would have to be pretty straight … so the only real difference between #1 and #3 is one of emphasis. Any continuity in #1 would lie in the style & POV—a series of articles with only the claim of a theme to tie them together. And #3, without any fictional aids, would only differ in that the individual sections (articles) would be lashed together in a grid of super-charged rhetoric that would make the book more essay than journalism. The difference between Pump House and Advertisements for Myself.
***
And that’s about it for now. Before I tack on a final graf or so, I want to go back and read over what I’ve said … but even if none of it makes sense I hope there’s no doubt in your mind that I’m almost desperate to untangle this book and get it done. I don’t want you thinking I’m sitting out here with a head full of dope, grinning at the sunsets or spending my time on skis. I skied once last winter, and not at all so far this year. The problem is not lack of time at the typewriter—but this goddamn wild juggling of unworkable solutions to what might be a simple problem if I could back off far enough to get it in focus. That’s where you can help—by considering the options from your end and hopefully coming up with something more specific than How Nice It Would Be if I could tell the world about the Death of the American Dream. I genuinely want to get this book written, and it’s beginning to look like I’m stuck on a problem I don’t understand. If you can see it more clearly than I can, for christ’s sake, say so.
After reading over the first 17 pages of this monster, I don’t see much point in trying to edit or revise it. You asked what the problem is—and I think this letter is a pretty good answer. Not
that I haven’t said it all before—see my letter of Aug 30, 1969—but this time, since you asked, we may be a little closer to coming to grips with it. I hope you can come up with an idea or two for untangling the bastard. If this book can be made to work it could be a real boomer …and maybe that’s the problem; maybe I should get rid of this notion about writing on stone tablets and start thinking in terms of perishable print.
But even if that is the problem, I’m so locked into the stone tablets that I don’t know how to back off without plunging myself into despair. Hell, you’re an editor and you’re paid to solve this kind of nightmare puzzle. I’ll expect a finely-reasoned answer very soon. Meanwhile, I’ll try to finish off a Duke/ fiction section—even a very short one—so you can put that in your comparison shopping bag.
Thanks …
Hunter
TO WARREN HINCKLE, SCANLAN’S MONTHLY:
Feeling vindicated since the start-up Scanlan’s Monthly had offered to pay him well for the Jean-Claude Killy piece Playboy had killed, Thompson objected when Hinckle tried to cut the last ten pages.
January 20, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Warren …
Here’s the galley-package—and a new version of the original ending that I hope you’ll use. To me, the original ending was the nut of the article; it was the only part of the piece where I sat back and took a serious, non-violent look at what I’d seen and been through. There are parts of the piece, as it stands now, that make me sound like a pompous, vindictive freak … and that’s OK; I can live with it … but at the same time it seems a bit rotten to cut the only part of the piece that partially redeems me. When I did the original version there were only two sections I really liked: One was the flashback to the ’68 Demo convention & the other was the ending.
You cut both of them (also the Boston airport lead) … and although I realize we’re dealing with space problems, etc., it seems only fair to restore at least this brutally shortened version of the ending. I’ve cut the original ten doomed pages down to 2½ or around 800 words. That doesn’t seem like a hell of a lot to fit in somewhere. It seems a little on the cheap/mean side to go after people with a meat axe without explaining WHY—or at least trying to. As it stands now, in your edited version, I come off as some kind of vicious, petulant drunk who slinks off at the end, muttering garbled slurs to himself.