At the moment I’m trying to finish a long article on the Nat. Rifle Assoc., allegedly for Esquire … but I have to leave in a few days for Fort Lauderdale, to check out a book chapter. I hope to avoid this, but if I can’t, it might be an article of some kind. Let me know if any of this interests you. Ciao …
Hunter
TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
Japan’s Sony Corporation introduced the Beta videocassette in 1969—a development that prompted a Nostradamus-like burst of prescience from Thompson.
March 25, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Jim …
Are you ready for the death of print, books, and magazines? The whole weird future was laid on me tonight by a professor from UCLA Journalism school. The only missing link, he says, is a process for editing video-tape without computers … and after that it’s a whole new ballgame: No more Hollywood, no more book publishers, no more magazines. …I never paid much attention to Marshall McLuhan,8 if only because he’s basically incoherent & needs about five editors. But the forecast I heard tonight is ominously clear, the underground backstairs line from UCLA—and from a man whose checks are signed, as it were, by Max Rafferty and Ronnie Reagan.9
The real new journalism. He offered to turn me loose with a sound-sync video-tape machine the next time I get to L.A. No bigger than a typewriter, combining the roles of script-writer, director, editor, producer, and … yes, even publisher. Tape-cassettes instead of book covers, video-tape receivers instead of magazines or newspapers. Jesus, it boggles the mind. The next time I get to NY I’d like to talk about it; this is a wild new gig. Are you into it? Why not ponder a tape/book experiment? To hell with the undiscovered editing process; that’s inevitable, anyway. Why not learn to use the tools before they’re perfected? Do you have any screening rooms designed into that new building? Send word. …
Hunter
TO THE CHEROKEE INSTITUTE:
Thompson was scrupulous in researching his exposé of the NRA.
April 12, 1969
Box 37
Woody Creek, CO
81656
Cherokee Institute
Box 7243 Dept RM-25
Country Club Station
Kansas City, Mo. 64113
Gentlemen:
Please send at once the following items, as per your ad in the Rocky Mountain News:
… One (1) Brevettata Tear Gas Pistol, complete with six shells and six blanks … one Gun-Unit
…Two extra boxes of ten tear gas shells, each box, twenty extra shells in all
… One holster
I am enclosing my check for $21 to cover the above items.
Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO OSCAR ACOSTA:
April 13, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Oscar …
As much as I hate to say this, I’m afraid it’s become perfectly clear to me and a lot of other people that you’re wasting your time trying to communicate in a language you’ve never mastered and probably never will … especially now, in light of the new information we have on the Mexican I.Q. Factor. Most of the people who know you agree that your best chance lies in moving at once to some border town like Nogales and getting into a small divorce practice or maybe the buying and selling of children … anything that won’t require you to grapple with the subtleties of composition, which is not your bright suit, as you must know by now.
There is no longer any point in ducking this issue. Sandy cried when she got your last letter; she said it reminded her of the gibberish she used to get from her father, just prior to his fatal brain transplant. That woman in Riverbank should be whipped for the damage she did. I had her checked out and discovered that she’s had a serious drug problem for many years & recently caused trouble on a Mohawk Airlines flight between Albany and NYC. It seems she had a large satchel full of transistor radios, all tuned to different stations at top volume and refused to give them up when other passengers became alarmed at the din.
Or was that Thibeau?10 He sounds in good shape. I knew he’d sooner or later get around to blaming me for his troubles. Moving to NY is pretty drastic and it’s never cured anyone else, but what the hell …?
As for your New Lead, I haven’t been able to get at it yet. I’ve been traveling steadily, between bouts with this Esquire article, which is now up to 93 finished pages and totally unsaleable—and unfinishable. On top of that, I have a useless Playboy piece due in a week, but I haven’t begun. I spent 2 wks traveling on it, then hung it up for lost, but due to vicious tax problems I have to at least try to write something for them. After that I plan to quit all articles until the end of summer, concentrating on this stinking book, so I can quit non-fiction altogether and write fantasies. The Playboy thing is due Apr 20, and after that I’ll try to doctor your thing … although you should have told me you’d sent it to [Carey] McWilliams; I had written him a long letter about your whole situation and suddenly you short-circuited the thing. In any case, you’re now on his list for LA/Chicano stories, so the best thing to do is wait until he wants something; he rarely buys things he hasn’t asked for.
If I were you I wouldn’t give McGarr any more acid; he’s likely to have one of those disastrous delayed reactions and go all to pieces on the freeway some afternoon …a racist freak-out, consumed by a sudden overwhelming hatred for all Mexicans and maybe Jews too. His last letter sounded somewhat down; I think he should join the police force and abandon his shameless Irish pretensions. Those potato-grubbing pigs have never been worth a shit for anything. We all know that.
In any case, you’re going to have a hard time selling your thing in its present form—which is hobbled by a POV somewhere between legal objectivity and raging bias. I think it should be one or the other, although perhaps the new Ramparts might go for the present form, once the lead is re-done. You might drop Peter Collier11 a note and ask if it interests him; don’t send the piece, just describe the situation in a graph or two & see what he says. My name won’t do you any good there, since I welshed on a piece for Collier and am in the process now of welshing on a promised book review. Writing has become so difficult for me that it’s all I can do to finish a letter.
Aspen is a mudhole these days, wet snow and cold rain, turning to rumors of eviction in the afternoon and followed in the evening by vicious notes from the Diners Club. If I get kicked out of here I think I’ll do something drastic, like burn the house and flee to Guatemala.
Well, fuck it …I have to get back to work. Good luck in Nogales. …
HST
PS …are you trying to tell me you think a cop shot a kid at point blank range with a .38 special and not one of five shots went through the body? Were there holes in the seat? Did they change seats? Or was the kid just a real tough spic?
TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
Desperate for cash, Thompson proposed that Ballantine Books put out a quickie paperback edition of his unpublished decade-old novel, The Rum Diary.
April 15, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Jim:
Here’s a copy of a thing I sent to Shir-Cliff the other day. I talked to him yesterday and then tried to call you (at 4:55PM, your time) but there was no answer. Anyway, I think I’ve blown an essentially rich and pleasant contract out of the water by firing this notion off in the mails … but since I’ve already done that I figure I might as well bring you into the circle & see what happens.
All this really amounts to is a plot to get rid of The Rum Diary by publishing it secretly and letting the Ballantine distribution system do the rest. Then, if you feel like putting out a new edition or something like that at some later date, you’ll be free to either do so or ignore the thing completely. It just seems to me that we’ve wasted enough time pretending The Rum Diary is a major project, or even that RH intends to publish it. I can see my way clear to put a steady month of work into it, but not the six months it would take to get it up to even the minimum level I’d wan
t for hardcover publication and reviews.
Anyway, read the xerox letter and say what you think. Shir-Cliff said he doesn’t give a hoot in hell either way …I see definite signs of Nixon’s Disease coming over him, a gut despair of some kind … or maybe it’s just me, maybe he thinks I’m never going to write another book. Actually, I’ve been writing like a bastard for the past six months. Tomorrow I’m sending Esquire 101 pages of an article titled “My Gun Problem … and Theirs,” with another 20–30 pages to finish it off. This may be the seed of that evil book you bastards have been trying to lure me into doing for two years … it’s horrifying to think I’ve done 101 finished pages after only a week of actual experience and interviews. Maybe you should look at the crap and see what it means … what it amounts to now, I think—far more than an article—is a heavy chunk of the AD/Hey Rube book. Maybe even a fifth, ho-ho, yes … and if we can send Raoul Duke out to Lansing, Michigan to see the Pres. of the NRA; put him on a plane with a head full of mescaline … well, we might start talking in terms of a third … eh???
Actually, the thing that sustains me these days is stolen moments of work on a piece of nightmare fiction set in SF, LA and Tijuana. I’ll write you a 10-page outline if you promise to sell it to the movies for $250,000. It beats the hell out of anything I’ve heard of or read in a long time. OK for now … back to page 102.
Ciao,
Hunter
TO BERNARD SHIR-CLIFF, BALLANTINE BOOKS:
Thompson had finally received a royalty check for Hell’s Angels.
April 17, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
You have great tactical sense, Bernard …a check for $15,000 tends to scramble a man’s brains when it comes out of nowhere. Needless to say I appreciate it … but what really haunts me now is the vision of all that money we might have made if the book had ever reached the mass-market racks. Ah … nightmares, nightmares …
Anyway, thanx. And, with regard to my recent letter altering various contracts, I urge you to keep in mind that it was only a suggestion, a hazy idea for giving you a book that otherwise won’t be published. Leon Friedman12 called to ask why I was dumping the contract that Lynn had just worked out …and I explained that I hadn’t meant to dump anything except a dim-looking trip to Fort Lauderdale. Anyway again, I told Leon that I was—and am—amenable to whatever seems best all around. If Silberman wants to sit on The Rum Diary for the rest of all our natural lives, well … maybe he knows best. And that anti-travel book still looks good to me, regardless of who brings it out. So … in closing, I remain, as always, in favor of
Whatever’s Right,
Hunter
TO PETER COLLIER, RAMPARTS:
Although he had agreed to review Timothy Leary’s two new books— High Priest and The Politics of Ecstasy—for Ramparts, after reading them Thompson reneged out of distrust of the author and distaste for his work.
April 21, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Peter …
First off (or Early On, as it were), here’s $15 for two more years. I assume you’ll want to pass it on to the money people. I’d send $100 for a “lifetime” gig if I thought I’d be around for 10 years or so, but given the realities of this vicious age I figure a Lifetime subscription to anything right now is a bad investment.
Actually, the reason I’m sending this to you instead of the addresograph gentlemen is my abiding curiosity as to Warren Hinckle’s action these days. The snide backhands laced into your “new-era” statements and fund appeals express the staff position pretty well … but it naturally saddens those of us—or at least me—who remember Warren at his high-rolling best … and who also remain ignorant of whatever heinous action must have transpired in the last hours. Is he serious about putting out a new magazine? If I had a lot of money I’d be tempted to give him some, if only to watch it burn and hear the screams of the afflicted. Maybe Hinckle was the first victim of the Nixon era—the death of humor and a purge of profligate crazies. In any case, his demise—like [former editor Paul] Krassner’s conversion to whatever humorless gig seems to have claimed him—puts another notch in the Great Angst that seems to come on me these days when I wonder if it’s worth the effort to go down and clean out my P.O. box. The simple fact of Hinckle sitting there in his office full of bad debts and strange animals13 lent a sense of possibility to the task of confronting my mail, some slim wild chance that the fiendish daily stack might yield up something with a terrible zang and rattle to it.
Well …I seem to be rambling, so fuck all that. I suspect I’ve said whatever I meant to, anyway. The only other thing on my list at the moment is a note to say something about the goddamn Tim Leary book review I’ve been promising Susan Lydon14 for many months. There’s no point trying to explain why I haven’t sent it in; I’ve been doing that for so long that I no longer believe anything I say, and not much of what I write … and, strange as it may seem, I’m writing a hell of a lot. Probably too much—for the wrong people and the wrong reasons. Everything I start turns into a 100-page screed of some kind. I’ve made two mean and ugly starts on the Leary thing, but in truth I don’t have much stomach for laying another bad shot on the poor bastard. His prose is worse than H. L. Hunt’s.15 Leary is still the same power-freak who tried West Point and the priesthood before he found an opening in the Acid World. He is still hustling the idle rich—at least that’s what he was doing in Aspen a few weeks ago—and I guess his hustle still makes the nut, but it’s a little sad to see him so completely irrelevant to anyone under fifty. I don’t see much point in fucking with Leary except as an excuse to comment on that era he tried to represent. He’s nothing but an aging PR man—for himself, and that’s a pretty lonely gig these days. Knocking his books won’t serve any purpose—unless maybe I’m so far out of touch that I don’t realize that a lot of people still take him seriously. If so, well …I guess he deserves a mean shot or two.
Otherwise, I have to come over to SF pretty soon to look at whatever’s left of Love City; it’s a part of this goddamn book I’ve supposedly been working on for the past year. So maybe the thing to do is use Leary as a touchstone for some comments on that scene. The Haight situation has a particular relevance to me, since that was my last address before coming out here, and the fact of it poses a continuing question in my head—a thing that needs good evidence before I can let it rest. So I’ll be over there anyway, and it may work out that I can make good use of a deadline to force a coherent comment out of myself, as a seed for something bigger. I did that with Nixon’s inauguration, and the system seems to work. Anyway I’ll give you a ring when I get over there, probably in June. Meanwhile, tell Susan L. that, despite all my noble intentions, chances are pretty good that I won’t be sending her a straight review of those Leary books. I’ll be happy to send them back, or send them to somebody else …so tell her to send a line if she thinks that’s the best way to go. Either way, I’ll give a ring when I get to town. Ramparts is the only magazine (except The Realist) [whose staff] I’ve ever enjoyed meeting on a personal basis. Most personal confrontations are disastrous for me. …I just had one with Playboy that is still haunting me, in every way. I think David Pierce (the garbage mayor of Richmond) had the right idea; he is now living on a hashish farm in Nepal, financing his New Life with profits from various hypes and skullduggeries from the old days. …I now understand why he panicked when I put you onto that garbage lobby deal.
OK … it’s getting into dawn here and I have to finish off a 135 page article on the gun lobby—my failed project for this winter. For the summer season I mean to do a thing titled: “Failure,” or, “No More Freaks, Good Riddance, and Fuck You All …” In closing, I remain, in the necessary spirit of fear and loathing …
Hunter S. Thompson
TO DAVISON THOMPSON:
April 25, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Davison …
I assume you have the sweater by now. It’s new & fresh from its first dry-cleaning. I bought it because
I liked it, but without knowing how fucking “stylish” it was. At that ski resort in New Hampshire every geek in the place had one, and I had to keep my down parka on the whole time. If I lived anywhere but Aspen I’d wear the thing and like it, but around here it makes me look like somebody who buys from the Playboy advertisers guide. Let me know if you feel you can wear it without apologies in Cleveland. I placed an order for another blue sweater, but with a sewn-in Vietcong emblem instead of those goddamn Killy racing stripes.
This new typewriter is difficult to cope with; nothing moves except the ball. I picked it up for Juan, for a $50 IOU. He can’t jam it, and I’ve never seen a better teaching toy. He copies words & learns to spell. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could type a simple letter on his own within six months. He handles it better than I do. I’m giving my other machine a rest after just mailing (this morning) that goddamn NRA article I began back in December. It came out to 140 finished pages & I see no hope of getting it published as an article. Maybe a book, but not without a lot more work that I’d rather not get into. But I may have to. As it stands now, I’ve worked four months for either $1000 or nothing at all. I seriously doubt if any editor will take the time to condense 140 pages down to 35 or so. I’ll find out soon enough. Meanwhile the Killy piece was due today, the 25th—and the 5-day extension I got won’t help much. I haven’t even begun to write, and it will take a miracle to do the thing quickly, since there’s not much to write about in the first place. After this, I’m declaring a moratorium on all articles until I can finish a book of some kind. There’s one due July 1 for RH, but I won’t make that either. All in all, there’s not a lot of good news from this end—particularly after borrowing to pay long-overdue taxes, with penalties, charges, interest, etc.
Fear and Loathing in America Page 25
