Well … no real point pursuing this. And whatever Rolling Stone might or might not publish is equally beside the point. Because it’s hardly the sort of major, national journalistic voice that you seemed to be talking about. RS could do everything right, and still be useless. Its readership is not only relatively small, but also relatively bent….
The real horror, to me, lies in the fact that there is absolutely no vehicle in American journalism for the kind of “sensitive” and “intellectual” and essentially moral/merciless reporting that we all understand is necessary—not only for the survival of good journalism in this country, but also for the dying idea that you can walk up to a newsstand (or a mag-rack in Missoula) and find something that will tell you what’s really happening … or at least what a certain group of editors honestly believe is happening, based on whatever mix of truth & facts & madness they’ve managed to rip out of the mire.
What is happening all around us (or at least around me—and I travel a lot) is a sort of tandem nightmare in which there are fewer and fewer examples of the kind of journalism you say is necessary … and meanwhile more and more people are using that scarcity as an excuse or maybe even a good reason to turn their backs (or heads) on journalism entirely. The people I deal with most often—for good or ill—simply don’t relate to newspapers & magazines. They might scan a daily paper for something specific—something they’re looking for—but the idea of reading the daily paper for “news” or general information, as I do, simply doesn’t occur to them. A lot of them read the paper, but it’s more for amusement than wisdom.
***
Tom Wicker/NY Times
Dear Mr. Wicker …
This thing has been lying around on my desk for a while & chances are pretty good, right now, that I’ll never finish it—not as a letter, an essay or whatever sort of rambling screed it was turning into.
There is also the fact of the Times’ recent dealings with the boys in Fat City. My reaction to that is pure admiration & even envy. That’s one of those things I would like to have been a part of.
Which is neither here nor there, in terms of the point I was leaning into, with this half-finished (enc) letter. The Times, for all its space & valor, will never be enough of a market—by itself—for the kind of journalism you talked about in the CJR piece (see attached). The point I set out to make was that while we all see the desperate need for that kind of journalism, the market realities are shrinking drastically. Realistically, the overall trend is away from the kind of journalism you argue for.
My reason for enclosing this lengthy clip of mine from Rolling Stone is somewhat hazy to me now—except that it seems to illustrate, for good or ill, the kind of article that there is virtually no market for today. It doesn’t even fit comfortably in RS. Which is all the more reason for saluting whatever misguided, bad-budget instinct caused me to publish the thing.
Which changes nothing. The problem of a shrinking market for good journalism is still with us, and it appears to be getting worse. (If you know something that would lead you to argue with this idea, for christ’s sake let me know at once. Not that I’m looking for work, myself; I have plenty for now—but if I’m wrong about what strikes me as an almost terminally critical trend I’d like to know about it.)
OK for now. This thing got out of hand. It began as a letter—not to argue with you, but to agree and then point out that all your speeches on the need for Better Journalism are useless gibberish in the face of a diminishing demand for Better Journalism. This was my point & my question.
Ciao …
Hunter S. Thompson
TO SIDNEY ZION:
Sometimes Raoul Duke had to step in where Hunter S. Thompson knew better than to tread.
June 18, 1971
Woody Creek, CO
Sidney Zion
c/o Sardi’s
234 W. 44th St.
New York City 10036
Dear Sidney:
It would sure be wonderful to see you right now, Sidney. You rotten Quisling pigfucker.
But I get to New York now & then, and of course we’ll run into each other one of these days … we’ll have a real scumbag of fun when that happens, eh?
Keep me in mind, Sid. I wouldn’t want to go so far as to say “The Arabs were right.” But I was. You cheap pig bastard.
In closing, I remain: Yours for ole times’ sake …
… your buddy,
Raoul Duke
TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:
Thompson offered Wenner some etiquette tips in anticipation of his upcoming visit to Woody Creek.
June 19, 1971
Woody Creek, CO
Jann …
Inre: Housing & our talk this afternoon:
First, my guestroom has been a standing offer for quite a while; no question about that. If I seem at all hesitant or vaguely reluctant about it, the reason is that other good friend visitors in the past—mainly left-radical types—have reacted unnaturally to its “cell-like” nature. And I’ve become a bit sensitive about this. I don’t like having to defend my hospitality after the first night.
I like that room, myself—but maybe that’s because it’s a bit like the War Room. The trouble, I think, is that I failed to seal off the 18″ × 10″ window near the ceiling—leaving this one ray of morning light to remind occupants that something is drastically wrong with their quarters. But the place is fine at night, which is the only time I tend to use it, myself.
In the meantime, however, I’ll take care of that window. No point ruining an otherwise comfortable tomb.
And for that matter, I have plenty of room on the porch or in the yard for anybody who’s heavy into midnight winds and harsh sunlight. And porch beds, too….
***
I just wanted to get that one thing straight. It’s a fine room, with the best bed in the house, but it lacks one thing … and I’d rather not hear any more about it. I’ve taken a lot of demented bullshit about my guest room, so I thought I’d warn you….
***
As for Bill Noonan, he plans to leave for Alberta on July 5 or so—for 2 weeks. His house will be open—kitchen, bedroom, living room, etc.—and when I asked him about you staying there today he said, “fine,” but in the interest of generally human reasons I think it would be better if you sent him a note, yourself, and asked him about it personally. He would feel a lot better about it, that way. This would only be a formality; he’s already said Okay to you staying there…he’s such an exceptionally decent fucker that if you showed up & needed a place to stay he’d insist on giving you his bedroom while he slept in the car … and it’s exactly for this reason that I think it would be better if you sent him a note and just asked if you could use his place while he was away. This would also spare me the onus of seeming to use his place as a guest-house—which I do, now and then, but only with mutual friends—and he’d appreciate a note or a phone call to accent that mutuality. The point, of course, is that he’d rather offer you his house than have me offer it.
I know it’s a simple thing, but us folks out here in Vortex are simple people—and we don’t like to step on each other until it’s necessary. Selah.
***
So on the general front, you should just plan on coming anytime it feels right. Aim here & plan on socking in for as long as it feels comfortable. The cell is yours as long as you want it. And if you want to move across the yard to Billy’s place, that’s fine too. Whatever’s right. I know that when I get out on the road with Sandy I like to get weird and fuck a lot, which occasionally causes problems in close quarters.
But that’s up to you. For all I care you can fuck all night on the living room couch. Rafelson will be here the whole month with his videotape, which he claims to use only for unspeakable sex scenes. He’s rented a house in town; that was mandatory—I can’t have a lunatic hanging around, waiting for me to act lewd. The fucker is seriously crazy; he may be a problem.
Anyway, the housing thing is fixed. You’ll have the run of
the Owl Farm—both the Owl House & the Iguana House. And who could ask for more? (Rafelson, for instance, couldn’t get Iguana House for less than $1000 a week.)
***
Another thing: Yes, I want those two AR 3x speakers (or if they have a newer, improved model of the 3a, get that). And the way to pay for it, I think, is to take like one speaker ($167) out of the next retainer, then the second speaker out of the retainer after that. I’d also like to get two Bose speakers, in addition to the ARs. They should cost about the same.
And of course I’ll need a first-class amplifier to drive these fuckers. The Dyna is probably adequate, but since we’re dealing on this level I think I’d prefer the Heathkit ARW-15. This is the factory-wired top-of-the-line Heathkit—including both the Amp & the FM Tuner: Why not? After I talked to you today I played Sticky Fingers31 a few times, and there were instants when both the high & low ends blew out on me. I think the combination of two AR-3s, two Bose and a Heathkit ARW-15 would just about clear the decks of any technical problems on the listening end. My Dual 1019 remains adequate for a turntable, so if you can handle this other stuff—and take it out of my retainer at something like or less than $175 a month—I think that’s exactly the way to go.
What makes this arrangement feasible is that Random House will owe me $5000 when I give them “the first third” of the AD book—that third, at least, is inevitable. In terms of sheer volume, it will have to be there with the submission of either Vegas II or the Aspen/Sheriff gig. Either way … I foresee a $5000 windfall in the next month or so.
On other fronts, I recall some suggestion that I “didn’t like” the past few issues. We got side-tracked on this, and I never got back around to saying that it wasn’t that I “didn’t like” them. (I chalk that off to Felton’s penchant for inflammatory, Hearst-style journalism….) No … what I said to David was that the past few issues seemed to be singularly lacking in anything savage (i.e. Heavy, Weird, Mean, etc.). But then I recalled that guy Esterhaus (?) [Joe Eszterhas’s] thing on Kent State, which was absolutely first-rate. That final thing about the phone call (anonymous) saying his daughter was a whore & got what she deserved was so foul & insane that it could only be understood by somebody who has dealt personally with the kind of people you have to deal with in order to run for Sheriff of Aspen on the Mescaline ticket & still get 1000 votes. This is what I told Max [Palevsky] & he refused to believe—that you have to personally confront these rotten bastards, on their own turf, before you can understand how genuinely & terminally sick this country is.
We are fucked—or Doomed, as it were—and when I asked you about that financial-analysis thing today, it was only a natural adjunct to all the other evidence. And this is all the more reason, I think, to seriously consider this Vortex thing—as a hedge against total disaster, if nothing else.
What may be coming is the worst 5 (or 10) years since the Reconstruction—a National Nervous Breakdown, with nothing sacred, no holds barred & god’s mercy on all those left out in the open.
There’s no particular reason why I should lay this on you—and certainly no reason why you should take it seriously—but these are the basic vibes & information I’m getting, and despite your wretched performance on my Carte Blanche crisis I feel obliged to pass them on. It probably gets back to that old thing about hanging Together or Separately … or maybe, in some looser & less articulate context, a word like “karma” will do….
What the fuck? We’ll have plenty of time to talk about this. You should blow off for Aspen with total confidence that your reservations are the best that any human in the Western World could hope for. You have the whole Owl Farm & all its weird facets at your disposal … and this is a very rare thing (ask Lucian Truscott—he just spent 3 nights sleeping in his VW with his girlfriend because he failed to make reservations).
OK for now. Keep that Vortex gig in mind—any precedents, ideas, prior-type experiments, etc.—like Canyon. I suspect this thing might be a bit more important, in the long run, than seems to be at the moment.
Ciao …
Hunter
TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
Thompson proposed a solution to the impasse he felt he had reached on his American Dream book.
June 27, 1971
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Jim …
Here’s a notion that’s occurred to me off & on for a while, inre: the AD book. But under the current time/circumstances, I think we should get these ideas out front & deal with them, to wit:
After several hours of shuffling (and/or “organizing”) two years of AD material, it occurs to me that the shit is so hopelessly inconsistent—in the context of time, tone & focus—that perhaps our only serious hope of getting it all together in book form by Sept 1, ’71, might be the (Mailer) Advertisements for Myself format, i.e. lacing all this bullshit together chronologically, as best we can, then having me write transition intro(s) to each section. This would get around the grim possibility of having to rewrite the whole trip …but it also raises the notion of trying to lump a bunch of articles together & turning the lump into “a book” by means of some fast/heavy update transitions. Under the circumstances, I suspect I could live with this idea. How about you?
The alternative is a brutally-serious, time-sucking re-write of all these articles—which might or might not turn out to be worth the time and effort. My personal analysis, for now, is that the further opportunities of the moment (the Saigon book, the definite possibility of a film based on The Rum Diary, and also the Vegas “book”) make me wonder how long it’s going to make sense—financially or any other way, for either one of us—to keep me tied up with this goddamn American Dream bullshit. We might consider the massive possibilities of getting it out of the way and moving on to better things. It is a millstone; it prevents me from focusing seriously on anything else—while at the same time tying me to a project that I’ve never understood or had any real faith in.
So why not just lash this fucker together—using Aspen as a focal point & proper climax—and set me free to deal with the world of the 1970s? The ’60s are over; and I think I can lay that era to rest with a long, rambling (final third of the book) article on the Aspen/Sheriff gig. With this format, we could begin, more or less, with the “Battle of Aspen” piece that I did for Rolling Stone last October, then flash back to things like New Hampshire ’68, Chicago, Election Day in Hollywood & the Nixon Inaugural … and use all these as a sort of kaleidoscope background for the Aspen/Sheriff finale.
That would leave me with only one-third of the book to write (in first draft)—and not even that much, really, because I have about 15,000 words on the Aspen/Sheriff thing already done.
This would also leave us free to do Vegas One & Two as a book, instead of forcing it into the AD book.
So ponder this & let me know what you think at once. Our time is running out. Thanx …
Hunter
* St. Arrow bought Oscar’s memoirs.
TO MARK PENZER, TRUE:
Gonzo journalism was a hard sell at first.
June 30, 1971
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Mr. Penzer:
Lucian Truscott suggested I send you a note inre: writing something for True, but at the time—a few weeks ago—I had nothing even halfway for sale. Then I suddenly got a piece back from Sports Illustrated (a freakish thing of about 3500 words), with a note saying that since they’d only asked for a 250 word caption, they felt no obligation to pay me that same dollar-a-word rate for an article that might make 99% of their readership stupid with rage and sick social feelings.
The piece has to do with the 3 or 4 days I spent “covering” the “Fabulous Mint 400” (bike & buggy) desert races in Las Vegas. A friend of mine at SI sent me out there as a sort of lark, with no real assignment except to come back with a caption to justify expenses … but for reasons of my own I wrote a much longer & dirtier thing than they wanted. (I write excellent captions, but it struck me that a scene like that deserved a bit m
ore….)
SI disagreed. Maybe because they didn’t like references to people being “beaten stupid” and “sucking ether to get twisted.” They stuck by their original concept, insisting that what I’d sent them was an over-written caption instead of an article … and now they want to buy the whole piece & chop it up for captions.
Which is okay, I guess, but after talking with Lucian when he was out here doing his trout-fishing gig, I thought I might send the thing along to you—on the off/odd chance that the piece, as written, might fit more in the True format than into SI’s caption-mold. Beyond that, and beyond the simple money factor, I hate to give those doomed corporate castratos a good, first-place piece & watch them cut it up for captions. I understand perfectly why they can’t use it as an article: It’s too rude & weird—but I hate to just shrug it off like a pound of used meat-writing that didn’t fit SI’s bridge-club format & so had to be butchered down like offal.
Anyway, my agent—Lynn Nesbit—has a copy of the thing at IFA in the Time-Life bldg. Or I can send you one from here. Except that would take longer, and you’d wind up having to deal with Lynn anyway, if the thing interests you … and if it does, we should keep in mind that I’d just as soon add a few heavier & nastier grafs (to the version Lynn has), in order to burn off the smog that came down on me when I tried to write something “suitable” for SI.
The only real problem, right now, is that I have to know something quick. SI just sent me a bunch of forms to fill out, in order to satisfy the Taxman before they can send me any money—and unless I have something better to do with the piece, I might as well just let them have it for captions.
I would, however, prefer to sell it as an article. And at this stage of the hassle, I don’t really give a fuck what kind of money I get for it—within reason, of course, and Lynn would have to be the final judge of that. If you want to take a look at the thing, however, you should call her & say you got a note from me that said money was/is secondary to getting the thing published as an article.