The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Capote, and the New Journalism Revolution
Page 39
“writing copy for [Ford Motor Company] pamphlets”: Thompson to Jim Silberman, in Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America, 261.
“I wish I could explain the delay”: Thompson to Jim Silberman, in Thompson, Fear and Loating in America, 258.
“a very contemporary novel”: Letter from Hunter Thompson to Jim Silberman, January 13, 1970, Ibid., 267.
“semi-fictional”: Letter from Hunter Thompson to Jim Silberman, January 13, 1970, Ibid., 268.
Biographical material for Jann Wenner taken from Robert Sam Anson, Gone Crazy and Back Again: The Rise and Fall of the Rolling Stone Generation (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981).
“I think psychedelic drugs”: Ilan Stavans, Bandido: The Death and Resurrection of Oscar“Zeta” Acosta (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2003), 47.
“I recognized in Oscar”: Yvette C. Doss, “The Lost Legend of the Real Dr. Gonzo,”Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1998.
“Your call was the key to a massive freak-out”: Thompson to Tom Vanderschmidt, in Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America, 376.
“Kerouac taught me”: Douglas Brinkley, “The Art of Journalism I: Hunter S. Thompson,”Paris Review, Fall 2000, 55.
One morning: Lucian K. Truscott IV:“Fear and Earning,”New York Times, February 25, 2005.
“We were somewhere around Barstow”: Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (New York: Modern Library, 1996), 3.
“a classic affirmation”: Ibid., 18.
“cluster of grey rectangles”: Ibid., 22.
“burned out and long gone”: Ibid., 23.
“Their sound system”: Ibid., 138.
“All those pathetically eager acid freaks”: Ibid., 178.
“What I was trying to get at”: Thompson to Tom Wolfe, April 20, 1971, Fear and Loathing in America, 375.
“I think the thing to do is for you”: Thompson to Wenner, in Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America, 392.
“I’ve been mistaken for American Indian”: Stavans, Bandido, 103.
12. FUN WITH DICK AND GEORGE
“In twenty-eight papers”: Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1973), 92.
“It was as if the changing”: Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1960 (New York: Atheneum, 1961), 65.
“I went in with the same attitude”: Craig Vetter, “The Playboy Interview: Hunter S. Thompson,”Playboy, November 1974.
Page 257 “Say … ah … I hate to mention this”: Ibid., 73.
“When Big Ed [Muskie] arrived”: Ibid., 122-23.
“Not much has been written about”: Ibid., 151.
“Even some of the reporters”: Vetter, “The Playboy Interview.”
“kissing [White House press secretary] Ron Zeigler’s ass”: Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, 403-4.
“I am growing extremely weary”: Ibid., 219.
“a shallow, contemptible”: Ibid., 209.
“that same void of charisma”: Norman Mailer, St. George and the Godfather (New York: Arbor House, 1983), 23.
“complacent innocence”: Ibid., 33.
“Phi Beta Kappas”: Ibid., 66.
“a bland drone”: Ibid., 177.
“shameless dingbats”: Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, 319.
“smiling freak … was giving”: Ibid., 319.
“Recognize that a man”: Mailer, St. George and the Godfather, 75.
“had connotations of”: Ibid., 76.
“With the exception of the Vietnam”;“They were hopelessly disorganized”: Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, 382.
“I looked up and shuddered”: Ibid., 355.
“This may be the year”: Ibid., 413-14.
“massive campaign”: Timothy Crouse, The Boys on the Bus (New York: Ballantine, 1973), 306.
“‘Ominous’ is not quite the right word”: Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, 417-18.
“Richard Nixon is one …”: Mailer, “A Conversation Between Norman Mailer and John Ehrlichmann,”Chic, December 1976.
13. VULGARIAN AT THE GATE
Background of the takeover of New York by Rupert Murdoch: Sheehy, “A Fistful of Dollars”; David Gelman (with Betsy Carter, Ann Ray Martin, Nancy Stadtman, Tony Clifton, Nicholas Proffitt, and Ronald Kaye), “Press Lord Captures Gotham,”Newsweek, January 17, 1977; interviews with Clay Felker, Milton Glaser, Shelly Zalaznick, Pete Hamill, Ken Auletta, Jack Nessel, and Byron Dobell.
“Whatever the Third Great Awakening”: Tom Wolfe, “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening,”Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine (New York: Bantam, 1977), 144.
over seventy imitators: Gail Sheehy, “A Fistful of Dollars,”Rolling Stone, July 14, 1977.
Felker came to her aid: Carolyn G. Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem (New York: Dial Press, 1995), 217-19.
Occasionally she would be accompanied:“The Hooker’s Boswell,”Newsweek, December 4, 1972.
“voluptuous figure of a man”: Gail Sheehy, “Wide Open City, Part II: Redpants and Sugarman,”New York, July 26, 1971.
“That’s $7.75, pal”: Ibid.
Page 275 “gives you such a rich”: Gail Sheehy, Hustling: Prostitution in Our Wide-Open Society (New York: Dell, 1973), 31.
“the original Redpants made an appointment”:“The Hooker’s Boswell.”
“New Journalism is rising”: Ibid.
“Amy reached out and took hold”: Aaron Latham, “An Evening in the Nude with Gay Talese,”New York, July 9, 1973.
But one passage: Aaron Latham, “Waking Up with Sally Quinn,”New York, July 1, 1973.
“I’ve never read anything like this”: Mary Breasted, “Two Interviews and Their Aftermath,”New York Times, July 23, 1973.
Biographical background of Rupert Murdoch: Gelman et al., “Press Lord Captures Gotham”; Jerome Tuccille, Rupert Murdoch (New York: Donald J. Fine, 1989).
“I was brought up in a publishing home”: Tuccille, Rupert Murdoch, 11.
“They’re passionate about some things”:“The Odd Couple,”Time, June 17, 1974.
six hundred thousand shares: Ibid.
“The Favorite Recipes”: Ibid.
First-quarter earnings for 1975:“The Voice of Felker,”Newsweek, June 23, 1975.
“pinpricks on all her Ungaro’s”: Julie Baumgold, “Carterandamanda: Learning the New York Lesson,”New York, January 19, 1970.
tooling around L.A. in leased Alfa Romeos: Gelman et al., “Press Lord Captures Gotham.”
an attendance bill: Sheehy, “A Fistful of Dollars.”
“What you ought to do”: Ibid.
“Despite recent developments”: Ibid.
“Clay has been very good to me”: Ibid.
“Bob,” Felker barked: Ibid.
“He [Murdoch] knows what you are”: Ibid.
“Clay, I think you’re an editorial genius”: Ibid.
“I haven’t been thinking about”: Ibid.
EPILOGUE: AFTER THE BALL
losing roughly $5 million: N. R. Kleinfield, “Owners Still Gamble on Esquire,” New York Times, April 9, 1981.
Bibliography
Acosta, Oscar Zeta. The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (Vintage, New York 1989).
Anson, Robert Sam. Gone Crazy and Back Again: The Rise and Fall of the Rolling Stone Generation (Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y. 1981).
Barger, Ralph “Sonny.” Hell’s Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club (William Morrow, New York 2000).
Baron, Herman. Author Index to Esquire, 1933–1973 (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, N.J. 1976).
Bates, Milton J., Lawrence, Lichty, Paul, L. Miles, Ronald, H. Spector, and Marilyn, Young, advisors. Reporting Vietnam, Part One: American Journalism 1959–1969 and Part Two: American Journalism 1969–1975 (Library of America New York, 1998).
Bellows, Jim. The Last Editor (Andrews Mc
Meel Kansas City, Mo., 2002).
Bernstein, Walter, et. al., contributors. The New Yorker Book of War Pieces (Schocken Books, New York 1988), p. 147.
Boyce, George, James Curran, and Pauline Wingate. Newspaper History from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day (Constable London, 1978).
Boynton, Robert S. The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft (Vintage New York, 2005).
Breslin, Jimmy. The World of Jimmy Breslin (Viking, New York 1967).
_____. The World According to Breslin (Ticknor and Fields New York, 1984).
_____. I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me (Little, Brown Boston, 1996).
Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood (Random House, New York 1965).
Carroll, E. Jean. Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson (Dutton, New York 1993).
Chwast, Seymour. Push Pin Graphic: A Quarter Century of Innovative Design and Illustration (Chronicle Books, San Francisco 2004).
Clarke, Gerald. Capote: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, New York 1988).
Crick, Bernard. George Orwell: A Life (Penguin Books, London 1980).
Crouse, Timothy. The Boys on the Bus (Ballantine Books, New York 1973).
Dearborn, Mary V. Mailer (Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1999).
Dickens, Charles. Sketches by Boz, excerpted from The Oxford Illustrated Dickens (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1957).
Didion, Joan. Slouching Towards Bethlehem Farrar, (Straus and Giroux, New York 1990).
_____. Where I Was From (Random House, New York 2003).
Dundy, Elaine. Life Itself (Virago, London 2001).
Gingrich, Arnold. Nothing but People: The Early Days at Esquire, a Personal History, 1928–1958 (Crown, New York 1971).
Hamilton, Ian. Robert Lowell: A Biography (Random House, New York 1982).
Heilbrun, Carolyn G. The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem (Dial Press, New York 1995).
Herr, Michael. Dispatches (Vintage, New York 1991).
Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. The Encyclopedia of New York City (Conn.: Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995), p. 694.
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road (Penguin, New York 1991).
Kerrane, Kevin, and Ben Yagoda, eds. The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism (Touchstone, New York 1997).
Kluger, Richard. The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune (Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1986).
London, Jack. The People of the Abyss (e-book #1688, transcribed from the Thomas Nelson and Sons edition, 2005), p. 1.
Mailer, Norman. Pontifications (Little, Brown, Boston 1982).
_____. St. George and the Godfather (Arbor House, New York 1983).
_____. The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History (Plume, New York 1995).
_____. The Time of Our Time (Modern Library, New York 1999).
_____. The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing (Random House, New York 2003).
Manso, Peter. Mailer: His Life and Times (Simon & Schuster, New York 1985).
_____., ed Running Against the Machine, A Grass Roots Race for the New York Mayoralty (Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y 1969).
Mellow, James R. Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences (Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1992).
Mills, Hilary. Mailer: A Biography (Empire Books, New York 1982).
Morgan, Thomas B. (Self Creations: 13 Impersonalities Holt, (Rinehart and Winston, New York 1965).
Morris, James McGrath. The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism (Fordham University Press, New York 2003).
Morris, Willie. New York Days (Little, Brown, Boston 1993).
Mott, Franklin Luther. American Journalism: A History, 1690–1960 (Macmillan, New York 1962).
Orwell, George. Down and Out in Paris and London (Secker & Warburg, London 1986).
Perry, Paul. Fear and Loathing: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Hunter S. Thompson (Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York 1992).
Plimpton, George, ed. Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Third Series (Penguin Books, New York 1979).
Polsgrove, Carol. It Wasn’t Pretty, Folks, But Didn’t We Have Fun? Esquire in the Sixties (WW Norton, New York 1995).
Prochnau, William. Once Upon a Distant War: David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett—Young War Correspondents and Their Early Vietnam Battles (Vintage, New York 1996).
Ross, Lillian. Here But Not Here: A Love Story (D.C.: Counterpoint, Washington, 1998).
_____. Picture: 50th Anniversary Edition (Da Capo Press, New York 2002).
_____. Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism (D.C.: Counterpoint, Washington, 2002).
Sack, John. M (Corgi/Avon, London 1986)
Schroeder, Eric James. Vietnam, We’ve All Been There: Interviews with American Writers (Conn.: Praeger, Westport, 1992).
Secrest, Meryle. Leonard Bernstein: A Life (Bloomsbury, London 1995).
Sheehy, Gail. Hustling: Prostitution in Our Wide-Open Society (Dell, New York 1973).
Stavans, Ilan. Bandido: The Death and Resurrection of Oscar “Zeta” Acosta (Ill.: Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 2003)
Steinberg, Sybil, ed. Writing for Your Life: 92 Contemporary Authors Talk About the Art of Writing and the Job of Publishing (Pushcart Press, Wainscott, N.Y. 1992).
Swift, Jonathan. A Modest Proposal London, 1729).
Talese, Gay. Unto the Sons (Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1992).
_____. and Barbara Lounsberry. Writing Creative Nonfiction: The Literature of Reality (HarperCollins, New York 1996).
Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 (Straight Arrow Books, San Francisco 1973).
_____. The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (Rolling Stone Press/Summit Books New York 1979).
_____. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (Warner Books, New York 1982).
_____. (The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955–1967 (’The Fear and Loathing Letters, Volume 1) (Villard, New York 1997).
_____. Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Modern Library, New York 1999).
_____. Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist (The Gonzo Letters, Volume II, 1968–1976) (Simon & Schuster, New York 2000).
_____. Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (Simon & Schuster, New York 2003).
Tregaskis, Richard. Guadalcanal Diary (Popular Library, New York 1962).
Tuccille, Jerome. Rupert Murdoch (Donald J. Fine, New York 1989).
White, Theodore H. The Making of the President, 1960 (Atheneum, New York 1961).
Wills, Garry. Lead Time: A Journalist’s Education (Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y 1983).
Wolfe, Tom. The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1965).
_____. The Pump House Gang (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1965).
_____. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1968).
_____. Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (Bantam Books, New York 1977).
_____. Hooking Up (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2000).
Wolfe, Tom, and E. W. Johnson, eds. The New Journalism (Harper & Row, New York 1973).
Yagoda, Ben. About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made (Scribner, New York 2000).
Zamiatin, Eugene. We (Dutton, New York, 1952).
Zaroulis, Nancy, and Gerald Sullivan. (Who Spoke Up? American Protest Against the War in Vietnam, 1963–1975 (Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y: 1984).
TV AND RADIO DOCUMENTARIES
Copans, Richard, and Stan Neumann. Mailer on Mailer, an American Masters documentary (Thirteen/WNET, Reciprocal Films, Films d’Ici, and France 2,New York 2000).
Kalish, John, producer. Jimmy Breslin: The Art of Climbing Tenement Stairs (KCRW, Santa Monica 2004).
>
Pollak, Amanda and Steven Ives, producers. Ives, Steven, director. Ferrari, Michelle, writer. Reporting America at War (D.C.: Insignia Films and WETA, Washington, 2003).
ARCHIVES
Harold Hayes Collection, Rare Book and Manuscripts Department, Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Esquire and Arnold Gingrich Collections, Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
INTERVIEWS
Marco Acosta Marshall Fishwick George Plimpton
Ken Auletta “Mouldy” Marvin Gilbert Bert Prelutsky
Ken Babbs Ralph Ginzburg Alan Rich
Ralph “Sonny” Barger Milton Glaser Hugh Romney
Julie Baumgold George Goodman Lillian Ross (via email)
Jim Bellows Pete Hamill Ron Rosenbuam
John Berendt Christopher Lehmann- Mort Sahl
Burl Bernard Haupt Lawrence Schiller
Patricia Bosworth George Hirsch Robert Semple
Stewart Brand Clifford Hope Robert Sherrill
Jimmy Breslin David Horowitz Jim Silberman
David Broder William Kennedy Ralph Steadman
Brock Brower Robert Kotlowitz Gloria Steinem
Bill Brown Michael Kramer Gay Talese
Art Buchwald Paul Krassner Hunter S. Thompson
David Burgin Zane Kesey Nicholas von Hoffman
John Burks George Lois Dan Wakefield
Midge Decter Frank Mankiewicz Richard Wald
Ed de Grazia Martin Mayer George Walker
David Dellinger Charles McAtee Bernard Weinraub
Byron Dobell Ed McClanahan Jann Wenner
Elaine Dundy Larry McMurtry Les Whitten
Clay Felker Thomas B. Morgan Jules Witcover
David Felton Lynn Nesbit Tom Wolfe
Tom Ferrell Jack Nessel Sheldon Zalaznick
Timothy Ferris Charles Perry
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the following people for tracking down recalcitrant, elusive, or otherwise indifferent interview subjects: Doug Brinkley, Fritz Clapp, Jim Bellows, and Anita Thompson. Thanks to Carol Polsgrove for the John Sack interview. Sharon Snow at the Harold Hayes archive was a model of decency and patience. Thanks to George Hirsch for all of the wonderful New York magazine effluvia he sent my way. Roger Direct or is a stand-up guy for passing along that amazing commemorative program from the Felker Magazine Center, a piece of gold that fell into my lap.