Fear and Loathing in America

by Hunter S. Thompson

  Mom called the other night & talked to Sandy. I wasn’t here, but apparently they had a good talk. Sandy said she seemed depressed, but not weird or difficult. There was something about a depressing letter from Jim, but it didn’t sound like anything unusual. I’ve been meaning to send her $150 for my share of that tuition, and I’ll get it done tomorrow. I think I have some funds left over from the tax panic. Life continues to become more complicated … although Sandy’s pregnancy is coming along without problems. The thing is due sometime in July; and then I plan to have myself castrated. (christ, it’s 25 of six here and I think the morning radio stations just cut into my night reception from LA and San Francisco, which come in like local stations at night … but now it’s all static and whistling.) I got up around ten last night, so I suppose I’ll be up all day. It was snowing the last time I looked outside; this filthy, muddy spring. … Snow, rain, & melting snow drive most people off to Mexico until June, but not me. Maybe next year, after a film sale of some kind. Or something. OK for now. I think Juan’s about to get up, which means a taste of Captain Kangaroo & maybe the morning news. I guess I’ll be around here until at least June, trying to put a book together. Ciao …

  TO VIRGINIA THOMPSON:

  Thompson wanted to make sure his draft-age brother had the option of staying in college.

  April 27, 1969

  Owl Farm

  Dear Mom …

  Here’s my share of Jim’s tuition ($150)—or at least my share, according to Davison. The last I recall, he was going to send half of the necessary $300 … so I guess this is the other half. I talked to Jim from Chicago about a month ago and couldn’t make heads or tails of what he intended to do about school. … But, frankly, I can’t see how any honest appraisal of his choice adds up to anything but a potluck of greater or lesser evils. I remember thinking I had a tough way to go at 19, but in fact I had a hell of a lot of options that Jim doesn’t have in this goddamn war-maddened world. I’m not sure what I’d do today if my only choice was between staying at UK or getting drafted or going to jail or leaving the country. In all honesty, I think I’d leave the country … although I wouldn’t want to and I’d feel I was being driven out. But I’d feel like a ghoulish hypocrite if I told anybody these days to grit his teeth and obey orders. Nobody kids themselves anymore about the military building character or anything else worth building. So, if a check now and then can help buy options, I figure it’s nothing lost and a chance of something gained. Tell Jim to let me know how his prospects look. As I’ve said, I rarely have money, but I can usually get my hands on some when it’s absolutely necessary.

  On other fronts, Sandy said she and Juan had a good talk with you last week. I just finished a huge, impossible piece on guns and gun control. And now I have another due yesterday—and that’s my rent and spending money, so I have to get on it. Let me know more about how things are going there. I’ll be here until July, then probably another burst of traveling—after the baby arrives. Knock-knock. OK for now …

  Love,

  H

  TO WILLIAM MURRAY:

  Thompson’s old friend William Murray, a Princeton graduate now working at The Saturday Evening Post, had written about the Hell’s Angels for his magazine.

  May 7, 1969

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear Willie …

  The Owl Farm is, as everyone knows, my place of residence since 1960. This one happens to be 25 acres and a large house finely situated in a pasture on a dirt road within long mortar’s range of Aspen. I am always just a hair ahead of the action. There were those, you’ll recall, who scorned my choice of dwelling areas in SF … little realizing, etc. So hang tough and wait till you hear about the Kingdom of Endor’s scene out here… but if you show up out here with a big grin & a legal pad I’ll blow your head off.

  As for Tom Wolfe, yes, I gave him that scene. He called to ask if I had any tapes & of course I sent him the bundle. I learn slowly … but I can still smile affectionately at the mirror. Wolfe knows. And he knows that I know. And now, you, too … and in time maybe others, as it were. Or maybe not, but why worry? Given the strange and terrible nature of my contract haggling, I’ll never be able to write again, anyway. I have now hired a NY literary lawyer, in addition to a new agent … and I’ve blown enough fat assignments to make nine men rich, but sometime soon I might publish something worthwhile. The novel remains in limbo while I spend numerous advances for other books I have no interest in writing. But I sense a crunch coming on. … So I may have to perform, if only briefly. I feel entirely on top of things, but the fucking world demands proof, if only to have something to bungle and misinterpret …but they pay for that privilege, so …

  Anyway, regarding your [blues guitarist] BB King piece …I assume you understand that I’d never consider paying you a compliment in anything but the most oblique and devious manner. We all have our styles, and that’s mine. Just for the record, however, the BB thing was done with a rare, painfully-honest kind of eye … not an ounce of fat or bullshit on it.

  Jesus, I seem to be slipping.

  Anyway, I expect to be out here through the summer, which looks entirely weird and active. I’ve been traveling all winter, blowing one assignment after another & running up huge bills on my new credit cards. Something will have to come of it very soon—by July 1, in fact, according to my contract. And after that I think I’d like to make a movie. We can ponder this drift on my next visit to your area, which I suspect will be about mid-summer. Sandy is ready to give birth in July, so I’ll be here until then. Come on out if you get a chance. I have plenty of room.

  Ciao,

  Hunter

  TO HUGHES RUDD, CBS NEWS:

  Angling to get a story about Aspen’s overdevelopment on the CBS News, Thompson lay out for Rudd what he saw as an impending showdown between the Freaks and the Cowboys in the rapidly changing resort town.

  May 11, 1969

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear Hughes …

  It grieves me to have to inform you that the Kingdom of Endor has been at least temporarily shot down. … The Great Aspen Freak Festival is no more, due to heavy local pressure put on the two or three landowners willing to lease land for it. According to the promoters, the thing was derailed at the last possible moment by a flurry of phone calls to record companies by the Aspen Chamber of Commerce, warning of serious physical danger to the musicians. The Chamber people deny this, saying they only called to ask questions … and my peripheral interest doesn’t allow for running up huge phone bills to establish a minor truth.

  Either way, the War is already building (see enc. clip on “Hippie Harassment Suit”). What’s lacking now is the focus that the Festival would have provided. The forecast now is for a series of clashes, building to a climax in early August. There is already talk of Vigilante action, to clean out hippie forest camps that have already formed. This happened around Boulder last year: Armed locals on horseback, scouring the canyons and destroying hippie camps (see xerox clip). Anyway, I’ll let you know if it builds to anything compact enough for film. The story itself will be around all summer, but it’s hard to predict the date of an actual clash. The festival would have been ideal film stuff, but now it’s hard to say what to look for—in terms of specific dates. Both Boulder and Aspen have become ritual stopover points on coast-to-coast runs, and the underground word is already out on the freak festival here, so the outlook now is for a vast influx of hairy wildmen, shouting for music and action … and gangs of outraged cowboys roaming around with hair-shears. The difference this summer might be a replay of a recent scene at Sun Valley, where a gang of hippies beat a bunch of cowboys very severely. As I’ve noted on other occasions, non-violence is a dead ethic … and god only knows what’s going to happen when Nixon brings 100,000 pot-smokers back from Vietnam. I can understand your outrage at the “collegiate gun-toting,” but I wonder why it surprises you. We are reaping the whirlwind, and Cornell was only the beginning—like Berkeley in ’64. [Mayor Richar
d] Daley set the style in Chicago; until then, SDS16 was a peaceful debating society. Hell, even I’m getting harassed by these freaks. Old friends who once condemned my gun collection now call to ask my advice on buying guns. It’s getting weird. …

  Well, so much for all that. Hello to Ann, and tell Kuralt he’d better do his happy stories while he can, because pretty soon there won’t be any. We are heading for a firestorm.

  Ciao,

  Hunter

  TO JOHN WILCOCK, LOS ANGELES FREE PRESS:

  Self-styled “hippie guru” John Wilcock was an editor and columnist at the anti-establishment Los Angeles Free Press, which reached a weekly circulation of 95,000 in July 1969. Wilcock also published his own counterculture newsletter, to which Thompson subscribed.

  May 13, 1969

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear John …

  I’m sorry to say the Kingdom of Endor has apparently blown its gig inre: The Great Aspen Freak Festival. The available land was withdrawn last week and massive local pressure has scared off the few remaining possibilities. Threats of vigilante action by local rednecks were apparently conveyed to record companies by Aspen merchants who feared a crowd of non-buying hippies would scare off their normal summer trade … and under the circumstances, no record company would firmly commit the musicians. The sheriff helped by calling for an emergency appropriation for riot-control weapons.

  Actually, the Kingdom of Endor blew it right at the start, by announcing that 100,000 people would come … and that scared even the local heads, who feared it would bring an influx of heat, feds, narks, etc. Unfortunately, the word is already out, so god only knows what kind of a scene we’ll have here by the end of July—probably all violence and no music, 50 busts a week and gangs of cowboys shooting at everybody with long hair. I may have to flee.

  As it turns out, I was ready to send the piece a few days ago, but decided to hold off when the main promoter told me the Beatles were coming. That seemed a little heavy, so I checked around on the land situation and the thing began falling apart on all fronts. You may want to carry a note of some kind, warning the unwary. From what I hear, the festival rumor is already making the rounds on both coasts and the Denver papers have run a few scare stories—enough to panic the legislature into passing a bill aimed specifically at transient hippies (see enc. xerox clip).

  The above is a good example of the bullshit hypocrisy that says “Dissent is fine, as long as it’s within the law.” Meanwhile, the bastards are busy changing the laws. In this case, last year’s legal squatting is this year’s $300 fine and 90 days in jail. Fuck them.

  Anyway, sorry I couldn’t write something on it … but I wouldn’t want to be responsible for getting a bunch of people out here for a non-existent festival and a summer in jail instead of lying around on a mountaintop full of music. My only suggestion to anybody who still wants to come is Bring a few cans of Mace.

  As for me, I think I’ll get over to San Francisco and Big Sur, probably around the end of July. Sandy is due to drop a child in mid-July, so I’ll be here until then. And of course there’s always that goddamn book, due July 1. Jesus! Let me know if you plan to get out this way, or the coast. Ciao …

  TO BERNARD SHIR-CLIFF, BALLANTINE BOOKS:

  May 14, 1969

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear Bernard …

  How in the name of christ can I get a few copies of my book? I’ve ordered them through bookstores, I’ve ordered them directly from Ballantine and I have people on both coasts who’ve promised to send me the first copies they find. This is the third or fourth personal request to you, direct pleas. Christ, I’ll pay for them. Send me fifty (50) copies and take it out of my royalties. I was right on the verge of apologizing to you for all the slander I’ve heaped on your sales techniques … then I noticed that way more than half of that check you sent was from hardcover royalties. Where in the name of creeping jesus have you buried those 550,000 copies you told me you had printed? If I ran that company I’d see your ass on welfare within 24 hours.

  Meanwhile, I’m sitting here staring at about 400 pages of disconnected bull-shit that may or may not boil into a book … and a letter from Silberman saying he’s willing to relinquish The Rum Diary if the rewrite is as embarrassingly bad as the original. You publishing freaks are as evil as the pro football owners—and that gang of cynical swine should be fed into whirling blades.

  Jesus! What a stinking day! I feel like whipping on a cop. Please send me those 50 books.

  Hunter

  TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:

  Grappling with how to get The Rum Diary published, Thompson reflected on the beauty of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, his investment in Yellowknife Bear Mines Ltd., and the difficulties of writing for Playboy and Esquire.

  May 15, 1969

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear Jim …

  I sent your 5/6 letter on to Lynn & told her I wouldn’t write any deal-shattering letters until I heard from her … but in looking at your letter again I see a thing out of focus, and in the interest of general honesty and keeping things straight I thought I’d try to correct it. I refer, of course, to the inference that I’m going to correct a few typos in the Rum Diary manuscript and then ship it off to market. I wish I could do that, but I know it’s impossible. I can sit here and say I’m going to change a few lines, drop a few graphs and then fire it off … but I know better. So if you’re basing whatever you’re doing on the assumption that I’m not going to put any work into the rewrite, it seems only fair to warn you. …

  The idea of giving it to Bernie was mine—inspired by the need to get the book out of limbo and early burial, for good or ill. My intention, for now, is to rewrite it mainly as a tight, visual narrative, with a minimum of philosophical bullshit—and hope to sell it as a film script. Actually, I see it as a way of loosening up a lot of old muscles, in order to get back into fiction-writing—or narrative-writing. The fact that a ms. exists is good enough excuse for using it for experimental purposes: having a cheap fling at blatantly visual writing, in line with that future-theory I sent you a month or so back—the concept of using the writer’s eye as a camera lens, instead of Henry James’ infamous window.

  Speaking of that, I was reading The Great Gatsby again the other night, looking for a quote …and it struck me, in light of all this heavy [Ernest] Hemingway publicity going around, that Gatsby is better than any three of Hemingway’s books lumped together … and I wonder what that means, except that re-reading Gatsby makes me wonder why I bother with nonfiction … but now I think of George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris & London … well, fuck … it’s late and I’ve spent the day on the phone, hopefully settling my long-knotted efforts to buy this land-fort. It seems to be set now—a great breakthrough today, freeing my head for concentration on other things. It is no small trick out here in this land-grab, price-spiral frenzy to seize a $90,000 nut for $10,000. The ability to write a $10,000 personal check seems to be worth at least $100,000 in these weird times. In the grip of euphoria after settling the land deal, I finished the day by buying into the Arctic Circle oil strike—200 shares of Yellowknife Bear Mines Ltd. I think it’s about time I participated in the economy, if only for educational purposes. If things keep breaking right I expect to set up the first Videotape Publishing House—coiled plastic books with miniature, battery-pack viewers—selling for $3.49 each. Maybe I’ll hire you on, if things get lean on your end. Let me know.

  As for writing—yeah, that antique bullshit—I’ve been trying to find time to edit my 2nd carbon of the 140 page monster I just sent off to Esquire—that NRA/Gun Lobby thing. Lynn suggested I send you a copy, and I will, but not until I finish this garbage piece for Playboy on Jean-Claude Killy. It has degenerated from quick money-job into a surly, back-handed commentary on the role of Public Relations in American Life. I think I have finally figured out what is knotting up everything I try to write these days—somewhere a lot longer ago than I like to admit, I suspect I
began taking myself seriously. I think that accounts for the treacherous compulsion to lace everything I write with heavy, Greco-Roman wisdom … and that’s the humor I want to burn out by means of this Rum Diary rewrite. With all the unbearably serious action almost everywhere these days, it seems like the nadir of twisted gall for a stockholder in the Yellowknife Bear Mines Ltd.—or even a writer—to take himself seriously, except in terms of survival.

  OK for now. I hope you can handle all this wisdom—or at least the instinct that prompted it. All I meant to say, when I started, was that I wouldn’t want you to be painfully surprised if The Rum Diary turns out to be one of the great weird-narratives of our time—the first of a trilogy, including “Bullfight” and “Burial at Sea.” Yours for the gilding of all our lilies …

  HST

  TO DAVE FOGEL:

  Dave Fogel had invited Thompson to speak at a gun control symposium in Maryland.

  May 19, 1969

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dave …

  Thank christ I won’t be able to make your conference in Maryland …although frankly I’d like to do it, and in fact I’ll try to at least stop in if I’m anywhere nearby. You might, in the meantime, try to interest that guy I mention in my last jangled letter from Washington—Carl Perian, chief investigator for the Senate JuvDelinq. Subcommittee (c/o Tom Dodd). He’s a weird bugger—arrogant and narrow-minded in the classic Liberal tradition—but he could probably do you some good in terms of future publicity. Personally, I have to wonder about anybody who can get money from the current administration—particularly for anything except bombs and guns. How did you manage it? The whole notion of “good works” strikes me, for now, as a waste of energy. I am gearing down, mentally, physically and all other ways, for a very serious gig—maybe terminal.