OK for now. Let me know about the Oil Shale thing. At the moment I’m working on a fast obituary for Terry the Tramp13—who committed suicide in the wake of Altamont, according to a note I just got from Jann Wenner. Very shitty … for a lot of reasons.
Ciao,
Hunter
TO VIRGINIA THOMPSON:
Thompson updated his mother about his Aspen Wallposters and difficulties at home.
March 7, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Mom …
Here’s a quick note in the midst of chaos, to bring you up to date. I’m enclosing a copy of Issue #1 of my first publishing effort; it’s an entirely new journalistic form, and it may work. We’re already into #2. It’s a left-handed effort, but fun—and the only publication that will print my stuff without cutting it.
Speaking of that, I assume you noticed the Press Section (p. 42) of this week’s Time (March 9). Their story about the birth of Scanlan’s Monthly quotes a somewhat unlikely line from my article (in Scanlan’s) on Jean-Claude Killy, the french skier. It’s the same piece I did for Playboy—the one they refused to print. Probably Scanlan’s is available in Louisville. Also, for the files, I got a fairly old booklet (1968, I think) from the USIA [United States Information Agency], called “Americans & the Arts,” which for some reason has a photo of me in the Aspen section. I can’t send a copy—or copy the photo, because it’s in color. My copy came from U.S.I.A., 1776 Pa. Ave, Wash. D.C. 20547—Wesley Pederson, editor.
That’s about it for the good news. On other fronts, Sandy is even now (at this moment) suffering through another miscarriage. Only 2 months along, this time. Very depressing. And, as always, there’s the money crunch—compounded by my problems with this goddamn book that won’t work. I’d like to quit it, but I can’t because I owe them so much money. At the same time, it keeps me from working seriously on anything else. So sooner or later I’ll stumble through it and get on to better things.
I got a good letter from Davison the other day, the first in a long while. But no reply to my letter to Jim. I asked him out for a visit in the spring. We’ll see what happens. Davison didn’t seem to know any more about his 4-F thing than you do.
OK for now. I have to get some work done before dawn.
Love,
H
TO OSCAR ACOSTA:
Thompson’s fine eye for graphic design showed in his Freak Power campaign’s innovative two-sided Aspen Wallposters, which presented smart political writing as art suitable for hanging.
March 9, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Oscar:
Your last letter was wonderful; I agree with everything you said—even the racist swill. As for M-1 firing pins, I think I have a heavy gun dealer in Denver, but I’ve put off any action with him until I can come up with some cash … and right now I’m still stone broke. I’ll let you know when I find out anything … but in the meantime I wouldn’t worry about buying them anywhere; M-1’s are totally legal & you can surely get a better price in Calif. (see enc. ad for a start).
I’m enclosing Issue #1 of a thing that—as far as I know—is a completely new concept in journalism. We sell the poster for a buck & the edit stuff is free … and we sold 500 of the fuckers in the first three days; gave away about 200 & we’re now rolling Issue #2, with an arty-erotic cover-poster and a strange bag of insult/wisdom on the back. We’ll hump the thing as long as it works, or until it stops being fun. We may add pages & sell subscriptions & ads … but maybe not. Anyway, it has a lot of possibilities—here & elsewhere—because it requires no real overhead, office, salaries, & that bullshit. One of the main hangups is the dingbat printer, a useless fucker who can barely spell his own name. But we can solve that. Lawsuits are another problem, but I’ve spread the rumor that we have heavy financial backing (from the east) & welcome lawsuits as a form of advertising. This County Atty. mentioned in #1 is known to be the heaviest & meanest lawyer between Denver and Salt Lake … which ain’t much, but his firm handles big oil and water rights cases, for people like LBJ’s brother & various oil companies. He was the biggest target I could find … and meanwhile [Joe] Edwards is preparing a lawsuit against him on conflict of interest grounds, which if nothing else will force him to quit as Cty. Atty., in order to defend his ore interests. Summer here is going to be weird & active. I plan to run a strong race for Sheriff & drive the fuckers wild. The Edwards campaign left us with virtual veto-power over any liberal/Demo candidates in the coming County elections. Freak Power is now an accepted reality; we can’t win on our own, but the lib/Demos can’t win if we run a third candidate—which we will. At the moment we’re holding out for Edwards to run for the main County Comm. spot, which—if we can win—will snap the spine of the local political establishment, take out their biggest wheel (J. Baxter—Bugsy’s med. partner).
So, despite your drug-gibberish, my various power trips are going well here. How about you? I didn’t get a lot of confident vibrations off that issue of La Raza you sent. Once again—and fuck your objections—I think you should get off that “How Long O Lord?” binge & narrow down to some kind of specific issue where you can take the offensive. One of these days you’ll realize that the fuckers you’re up against don’t care if you live or die; they’d just as soon deport you, or—failing that—kill you. So the only way to deal with them is to scare them; find a weak link & focus on that, instead of fighting the whole chain.
Well … I’ll get off that. No point in sending you up the walls again. How was that mescaline? You didn’t say. And what about that $1 a cap stuff you were going to pick up in SF? What is McGarr into? Another sex trip? I couldn’t tell from your letter, but it didn’t sound like you got your heads together. From the tone of his last letter to me, he’s got to get into something heavy pretty fast. Why don’t you try applying his talents to something like arms-buying? He’d do well at that kind of dealing; give him a percentage of whatever’s available, & turn him loose. One of the main things I’ve learned out here is that there are all kinds of very able people wandering around with no place to use their energy. They want to get into something. On this Wallposter thing I needed somebody to sell the fucker, to actually hustle it in the stores & on the streets …so I turned the whole sales/circulation gig over to a dropout painting contractor from Laguna Beach, a head I barely knew & who seemed so fucked up that [Sheriff] Whitmire was threatening to bust him as a dangerous public nuisance. He offered to help distribute the posters, but we needed more than just help, so I offered him a third of whatever we made, above costs, and the bastard has been on the streets ever since, selling about 100 a day. He’s organized a hellishly effective gang of street vendors, lined up the airport & the car rental agencies—even the gift shop at the fucking Holiday Inn, which I savagely raped in my article. Tomorrow I’m going to walk into the Aspen Times & pay the printing fee with 285 one dollar bills. And we’ll have about $200 clear. Mainly because of this bastard’s energy.
The same thing happened during the Edwards campaign. People I’d never seen or heard of appeared & insisted on getting into it … while more than half the people we’d counted on blew their roles completely. The only trouble is that I’m not sure how to duplicate that trick; I’m not sure what really drew those people. Looking back, it’s easy to say we obviously had a wave building for us—but, shit, the wave wasn’t even visible to me until less than a week before the election. So, in honest retrospect, I have to think that all we did was create a very loose structure for a lot of un-focused energy trips. Very weird … and I’m still pondering it. All I know is that anybody who can figure out a way to put other people’s un-used energy to work has a hell of a tool in his hands. No doubt you have a huge energy reserve down there—far more than here, even per capita—so you might consider this notice.
Which is only a suggestion, and I mention it only because I’m just learning about it. Politics, I think, is far more than Politics. It may be the ultimate high … and maybe adrenaline is the real su
per-drug. I read Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception and saw his comment about mescaline and adrenaline having essentially the same chemical base … which makes perfect sense.
And so much for all that. I have to go upstairs and call the hospital. Sandy is in there again with another miscarriage—a real nightmare version, this time, since it puts me head on with the abortion laws. She’s only two months pregnant, but the pain is so bad she can’t stand up … and the pigs say they can’t do a therapeutic abortion. All they do is keep her drugged up on codeine and wait for God to work His Will. The D&C operation is as simple as pulling a tooth, but they won’t do it … and this is Colorado, which recently passed a “liberalized” abortion law. Man, I’m coming to really hate that word “liberal.”
Speaking of hospitals, how did that cell-hanging case come out? You might try writing something about that; your description was vicious (the autopsy). A new writing market is Scanlan’s Monthly—editor, Warren Hinckle, 451 Pacific, SF 94133. The first issue is out; see the March 9 issue of Time (press section). Scanlan’s bought my piece on JC Killy, the one I did for Playboy, but which they wouldn’t print. Hinckle is the ex-Ramparts editor. You might stop by and see him the next time you’re in SF; tell him what you’re into & see what interests him. He’s a fiendish boozer, but not much on dope.
As for your Christ complex, I’ll leave it alone for now. But convey my condolences to Socorro. Sandy still feels bad about your accusation that she didn’t insist on bringing Socorro along on that wretched SF trip—even though I keep telling her that she had nothing to do with it. That was our decision, as I recall—based entirely & quite reasonably on our experience with eating acid in the company of people (or even one person) who hates acid. The only flaw in our formula was that rotten goddamn acid you had. If we’d had good drugs, Socorro would have hated every minute of the trip—and maybe she would have anyway. (The Diners Club, incidentally, is about to seize my card; I owe them something like $1200 from that trip, & I have no hope of paying—which doesn’t bother me much, because the day I got back here I applied for a Carte Blanche card—using Diners as a reference—and it came about a month ago, just about the time Diners started getting ugly. Fuck them.)
And that’s about it for now. Say hello to Socorro—and particularly from Sandy—and lay some heinous racial insult on Benny, from me. You might also keep in mind that my Sheriff’s campaign will make the “new politics” look like something out of [President Warren G.] Harding’s high school notebooks. It might be worth your while to come out and watch. Hell … come anytime.
Ciao, Hunter
TO D. PORTER BIBB:
David Porter Bibb III had been a friend of Thompson’s since high school, when both were members of the Athenaeum Literary Association.
March 14, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
D. Porter, etc. …
For the past few months I’ve been picking up weird vibrations indicating your return to the land of the living—or maybe just the land of the visible, which isn’t necessarily the same thing. I refer, specifically, to Altamont—strange quotes from one “Porter Bibb, spokesman for the Maysles Bros. …”; the mysterious voice.
That’s a strange place for you to turn up. I thought you’d gone totally down the tube—into corporate fuckarounds with that silly hat of yours, the one you wore when I last saw you. At that point you were looking for “18 thou & low visibility. …” Selah.
What now? Send a line between deals. I am, of course, in contact with people who would like to twist your head off. And mine, too, for that matter. It gives me a wild rare boot to know that after all this time—and all that I wrote—that people are actually shocked to find the Angels whacking hippies at a rock festival. The sharks finally came home to roost; and the only wonder is that it didn’t happen sooner. But fuck that. …
Send a line & affirm your gig, whatever it is. Or come out and hang around Aspen. It’s weird here; I’m running for Sheriff.
Hunter
TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:
In November 1967, twenty-one-year-old New Yorker Jann Wenner launched Rolling Stone, a hip rock-music tabloid that quickly developed into a glossy, ad-fat pop-culture magazine. When Thompson met the shrewd young publisher in San Francisco in late 1969, Wenner immediately commissioned him to write an article on the Freak Power movement in the Rockies.
April, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Jann …
Here’s a bundle of artifacts that I thought I’d send ahead, so you’ll have something to use for fillers if the photos don’t measure up …which is likely, considering the batch I collected today. Your friend Jackie is sick—or maybe she’s just avoiding me—but so far I’ve drawn a vague blank on that end. I’ll run her down today & see what happens.
My own (local) photographer came up with a pile of shit, by my lights … but I’m enclosing his whole bundle in another package later today, & I think he has three or four useable shots in the batch.
Working with photographers always drives me fucking crazy—mainly because I always end up feeling responsible for whatever they can’t or won’t do. In this case I ran into a bog of lethargy. Maybe somebody’s spreading the word that you only pay $1 a hit for fotos …I don’t know, & I hate to hassle with those non-linear bastards.
Anyway, I’ve tossed in a few fotos from my Wallposter futures file, along with this rude collection of Wallposters & campaign art. The little felt pocket-poster was our “button” last year. And one of the main differences between the ’69 and ’70 campaigns is that we have dropped the peace/victory sign, in favor of the fist. (See Krueger foto showing “Aspen Racing Assn.” T-shirts at local track). Mama Ned Vare’s logo will be a red fist with a small “6” inside—to remind the laggards that last year we lost by only 6 votes. Vare is running the big race for County Commissioner and there are several decent shots of him coming in Krueger’s box.
My own logo will be the rotten Owl (see above), and I’m enclosing a sketch of my campaign poster that you can easily create for reproduction if you need some art to break up the text—and if the photos don’t grab you any heavier than they do me. You might also use that “Today’s Pig Is Tomorrow’s Bacon” thing out of WP at the end of the sheriff article. And maybe some other bullshit from various Wallposters. (That word “Anon” on the front of #1, by the way, means “Soon … Again … Forthwith.” We meant it as a warning to the fatbacks, meaning we were getting ready to fuck with them again, using [Joe] Edwards or any other name.)
Anyway, call me if any of this shit puzzles you. I’m sending it mainly as back-up material. OK for now …
Hunter
TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:
Thompson and Wenner were striking the first of many deals to come: an agreement that Rolling Stone would run mail-order forms offering Aspen Wall-posters at discount rates to the magazine’s readers.
April 23, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Jann …
OK … but first let me explain the X-factors in both the Sheriff’s campaign and the 25 cent Wallposters.
First: I saw that photo/caption in the last issue about the lad who was running for sheriff of Virginia City—and although it sounds fine, that scene is a long way from ours. This one is getting very grim (already into dynamite—see enc.) and our real opposition goes by names like 1st National City Bank of NY, “First Boston,” and the Aspen Ski Corp.—with directors like Rbt. McNamara, Paul Nitze & other Washington heavies. What we’ve been trying to do—since we lost last November’s mayoral race by six (6) votes—is seize control of what the opposition regards as a working gold mine. And it is. The idea that a 29-year-old bike-racer head almost became the Mayor of Aspen last fall has put the fatbacks in a state of wild fear; at the moment they’re trying to pass a new City Charter that would disenfranchise most of “our” voters & also bar most of “our” candidates from running for office. So—to destroy this New Charter—we have to mount a serious campaign a
lmost instantly. The charter election (Yes, or No) is in June. And if we can beat them on that, I think we can generate a fucking landslide in November—not only in the Sheriff’s race, but also in the crucial County Commissioner’s contest—and also for the ballot proposition to change the name of Aspen, officially, to Fat City. This would wreck the bastards, and give us working control of the whole county.
Anyway, I trust you see the problem—both in timing and magnitude. My sheriff’s gig is just a small part of the overall plot, which amounts to a sort of Freak Power takeover bid. It began last Nov. and won’t end until Nov. ’70. So maybe you should ponder the timing of any article; for my own purposes, I’d rather do it sometime this summer, like August, when we’re well underway. Or I can wait until after it’s over … although chances are that I’ll be somewhere in Chuck Alverson’s territory by that time, if I lose.14 If I make a serious run at the sheriff’s thing, I’ll either win or have to move out. That’s the tradition here—and it’ll be especially true in my case. Last summer was heavy with violence, and this one looks nine times worse. Last year the dynamite action didn’t even start until mid-July, but this year it’s already heavy in April … and last fall’s near-miss election has given the local freaks a huge shot of confidence for whatever lies ahead.
So … on the “Sheriff’s Campaign” article, I’m inclined to look at it as part of a far larger thing. If Freak Power can win in Aspen, it can win in a lot of other places … and in that context I’d just as soon do the article fairly soon, maybe in time for August publication, so that what we’ve learned here might be put to use somewhere else, before November. The important thing here is not whether I win or not—and I hope to hell I don’t—but the mechanics of seizing political power in an area with a potentially-powerful freak population. (As a passing note, there, I suppose I should say that if I do win, I’ll serve out the term—although not without the help of a carefully-selected posse and a very special crew of deputies, most of whom are already chosen and working to register my constituents.) We found, last fall, that registration is the key to freak power.