Anyway, I figured you might like to know you aren’t the only person floundering around. Kennedy’s last letter was unspeakably depressing; Semonin is so weird that he won’t even talk to me; Oscar is going mad because nobody will crucify him; [John] Clancy calls at awful hours and howls about failed dreams; [Jo] Hudson is doing the best metal sculpture in the country & he can’t make a dime; Dennis Murphy had to be taken to a health farm …and I’m sitting out here in the goddamn snow, trying to explain it all and not too far, on some nights, from thinking seriously about suicide.
Living in LA is probably a lot worse than living here. I don’t expect any real human contact in Aspen or WC, so I’m not haunted by the lack of it. Living down there would drive me wild, I think: The smell of money and action is all around—particularly for you. NY was that way for me for 10 years. I walked past the Random House building, knowing I could write all kinds of wonderful profitable shit for them, and also knowing I couldn’t get past the dimwit old receptionist in the lobby, no matter what I said. Then, for a year or so, I roamed around the building like I owned it—bringing in snakes and drugs, drinking heavily while using the long-distance phones, disrupting people who had all sorts of work to do … well, why go on? I blundered into a scene that no amount of plotting would ever have got me into.
But fuck all that. I may still put it out, and in the meantime there’s no sense hassling you with it. Shit, you’ve done the same kind of act … and now you’re brooding around your house in Topanga Canyon … and confused. You didn’t say why, but that’s not hard to figure either. I wish to fuck I could lay off some kind of healing wisdom—for either one of us. We have come a long way from those Sunday nights at Time Inc. when everything seemed possible—probably inevitable. There was plenty of time then. Maybe the nut of the problem now is a new sense of Time. To me, anyway, it is suddenly conceivable that I might start falling apart at any moment, and blow the whole thing … for the first time in my life I can see over the hump. Time is suddenly a terrible factor. Like I said, it wasn’t any accident that you got that 10 year old Time clip in the mail. After I located it and read it about 18 times I thought, Now who should I send this to?
Actually, I don’t feel corrupted—but more like a fool. Maybe you should ponder that. I don’t know. But I don’t get the feeling that you’ve spent much time in the past few years doing things you really want to do—or even any one thing you can really get high on. Maybe you should try that. Make a film you can really get into, instead of somebody else’s commercial. I recall how I felt after two years of writing for The National Observer—they gave me just enough leeway to keep me from going mad, but after I finally quit (or got fired) I realized I’d been going mad all along. And all I had to do for money was write a $100 article about some gang of shitheads called Hell’s Angels. I did it for a month’s rent and nothing else … but then I got into it and the situation began developing, and I got more into it … and eventually I paid about three years’ rent & was given an opportunity to make an ass of myself on national TV.
So even the answers make no sense. By writing a money-making book & even digging it for a while, I managed to get myself into serious debt to the IRS, the Diners Club and a rich landlord from Michigan. And also to two publishers. At the moment I need about $37,000 to get even, and I see no hope at all. And no time either. Fuck them.
Anyway, try to shake your paranoia long enough to realize that I’m still human enough to want to spend some time pondering things with you. I might seem a bit rusty, because I don’t spend much time on that level … but, shit, I’ll give it a whirl. Let me know if you have any good ideas about how to work it.
Ciao,
Hunter
TO MITCH GREENHILL:
Thompson, a lifelong fan of American folk music, had known songwriter Mitch Greenhill—whose father was Joan Baez’s agent—since 1960 in Big Sur.
January 30, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Mitch …
God only knows where you are, so I’ll send one copy of this to the old MiWuk village address, and another c/o the record Co. … Anyway, I got the Eric Von Schmidt10 album & liked it. He seems like one of the few originals still floating around. The other day a friend of mine in Aspen who writes children’s books told me Eric V.S. was going to illustrate it, and I said it couldn’t be the same person, but it is. Very weird … Particularly that Florida gig. Next time I go down there I’d like to stop by and see him. Florida is one of my favorite places to drive, particularly at night—on the beach or in the outback, very fast. Sandy’s mother is in Deland, near Daytona. Is V.S. anywhere around there?
The Brains/Sky album is a hell of a lot better, I think, than his first one, which I’ve had for a while. That “Wood Man” is a boomer—the best thing on the record. If I get a chance I’ll try to plug it somewhere. Meanwhile, thanks for sending it along. I dig it & I’ll get it played locally, anyway …which won’t help much, but it won’t hurt either. Right now I’m having a sort of weird go-round with Bruce Innes. Remember the little Canadian who had his guitar up at the house in Big Sur that night? He’s playing in Aspen with a new group (The Original Caste—a god-awful name) at the Red Onion for something like 3 grand a week. That’s a possibility for you; a terrible fucking audience, but good money. Maybe you could put something together with Rosalie.11 Right now there’s a Bluegrass group called the Joplin Forte alternating with Bruce. If you’re onto a booking agent, you might have him call Werner Kuster, one of the owners. Let me know if you’re interested; I can’t do you much good with Kuster—he’s a nazi & he hates me—but I can get stuff played on the radio station & that might convince him you’re real … or at least saleable.
Bruce is into a strange gig. Have you heard a single called “One Tin Soldier”? That’s his. And now they have an album coming out, but it’s fucked by horrible arrangements—all kinds of horns and strings and organs in the background. TA (Talent Assoc.) is doing it—mainly as a vehicle, I think, for a gaggle of second-rate songs by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, the producers. Bruce has two really first-class songs on it—“Country Song” and “Sweet Chicago Blues”—but they’re screwed by the hyped-up Fifth Dimension style arrangements. They wanted me to write some bullshit for the liner notes, but I said I couldn’t tolerate all that background noise. Even so, those 2 songs I mentioned are two of the best I’ve heard in a long time. “Sweet Chicago” is a sure hit, but the producer hates it because it’s too heavy. It’s a Lightfoot12 style thing about Mayor Daley. CBS did a thing on Aspen’s hippie war last year and picked up that song for a sort of theme—but the news moguls killed the whole bit. If I can manage it, I’ll send you a tape—good chance for a single right now—with the Chicago trial going on.
Meanwhile, life in the snowbelt humps along. We had a savage election and almost won control of the town … lost by six votes. The next step, they say, is that I’m going to run for sheriff this fall … and I might, if only to scare the living shit out of the fatbacks. We could win, maybe, by importing about 500 heads during the summer and keeping them around until election day—or even qualifying them for absentee ballots. I’m going to check with the SDS whips in Denver & Boulder about putting something really vicious together—a flat-out takeover bid, beating the sheriff and the county commissioner all at once. The combined vote for the mayor’s race was less than 1500, so it wouldn’t take many new voters to seize control of the whole county. If we get something going I’ll let you know; we’d probably need a music festival or two, for morale purposes.
OK for all that. Oddly enough, I was trying to get control of my desk last night & I found an old letter from you—talking mainly about the Detroit Lions. I guess I was two years early; next year they’ll mop up in the Central. Take my word for it. Probably you’ve been around the bay long enough, by now, to fall into the hideous shadow of the 49ers. Those fuckers …but I see hope for them next year. One of their problems seems to be that the coach hates niggers. What kind of asshol
e would keep Clifton McNeil on the bench all year?
Anyway, I may see you before then. I have one more chunk of research to do on this stinking book for Random House, and it involves a trip to SF. Where are you living? Send word. Rosalie Sorrels was here briefly in the fall & seemed in good shape—not rich, but still excessively human. [Michael] Solheim has gone over to the cocktail set—hopelessly pussy-whipped; he drinks Alexanders now, and wears pink bellbottom shirts … constantly hustling business among local Republicans. An awful spectacle.
As for me, I plan to take whatever small profits I get off this new book and set up a mescaline factory in Woody Creek. Hopefully I can make enough on sales to pay the rent and keep myself in a blazing stupor for the rest of my days. I bought a set of $100 earphones with red lights that flash at 95 decibels. I’ve worn out two copies of [Herbie Mann’s] Memphis Underground & burned 2 cords of pinion wood this winter … get naked & gobble mescaline by a huge fire & the whole house vibrating with sound. Try it sometime; it’s fun.
Ciao—
Hunter
& Hello to Louise
TO PAUL KRASSNER, THE REALIST:
Yippie cofounder Paul Krassner didn’t bite on the “10-pg. screed” Thompson mentions he wrote in an L.A. hotel room after trying mescaline. The lyrical tale would be published as “First Visit with Mescalito” in Thompson’s 1990 collection Songs of the Doomed.
February 10, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Krassner …
You treacherous cocksucker; where is my copy of the 10th Anniversary Issue? I’ve been waiting for it for two years … or almost … maybe 17 months, but why haggle? Is it out? Was I excluded? If so, I’ll have my lawyer rip your lungs out with his bare hands. You owe me that issue; I paid for it, and I consider it a sacred obligation. Somebody told me the other day that you were dead, that you were riding down Sixth ave (down? Maybe it was Seventh?) in a cab when your head swelled up like a penny balloon and exploded …too much acid, they said … no blood at all in the brain-remnants. You should have taken my advice and abandoned all drugs while there was still time. …
It’s too late now; you might as well double up and go hard all the way to the end. But meanwhile, I want that 10th Aniv. Issue. If copy is the problem I can probably send you something; the selection on my desk ranges from Painfully Straight to Intolerably Weird. At a glance I see a 10-pg. screed that I wrote on a stolen IBM Selectric in a room at the Continental Hotel in LA while in the grip of a heavy dose of mescaline that I ate without realizing what it was …a very strange morning, which included a plane trip to Denver. Anyway, let me know what’s happening about that issue. …
Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson
FROM OSCAR ACOSTA:
February 10, 1970
Los Angeles, CA
Hunter:
In the first place, I doubt that I sent the play for your criticism of my lifestyle; in the second instance, you did not in any way criticize the play—character, plot, suspense, story, did-it-work—but rather rapped on what I’m doing … which was the reason for my response. We’ve hardly talked about the play.
I hadn’t written until now cause I wanted to wait until it no longer mattered, and also I was catering to your whim of “let’s not haggle” which is your usual cop-out to any serious dispute with me. Having got down to it, I find I must continue the response to your last letter where you, again, indulged yourself.
I don’t “go around asking for criticism” as you suggest; many moons ago I decided that I, me, and only me, knew more about myself and my writing than any one else. The novel I wrote convinced me of that. After several good writers—Mark Harris, Van Tilburg Clark—and editors of the five largest publishing houses in the USA told me I was good, etc., and yet not one seriously thought of getting the thing published, I then decided never to be a “professional” writer … which means a guy that has to print in order to eat. I never showed anyone my junk until I met you, and since then—except for [Margaret] Harrell—I’ve not shown it to anyone for “criticism” except for you and a poet friend of mine in S.F.
The fact of the matter is that I like what I write, generally, and I know that very few persons whom I respect will be as wild about the shit as I am. …You are the perfect example. You think you know about the issue of race in this country, which has led you to conclude that it is not really an issue at all, and so when you read a play that deals with the issue of race as seen in the context of survival of the human race, you consider the theme irrelevant and simplistically brand it racist. Quite a neat trick if you can pull it off.
For a campaign manager who couldn’t get several hundred votes for his candidate, you really presume too much when you object to the “use” of the media, couching the criticism in old Alpha, Beta, Gamma, rah-rah, bull-shit.
You assume that the publicity around the fast—etc.—was for the purpose of spreading the good news to the Anglo public! Coming on the heels of the St. Basil’s Bust scene, you felt it too cheap, trite, p.r.-ish.
Any organizer worth his salt would tell you (1) All efforts of publicity are directed at communicating to the people you’re trying to organize … which in this instance is the Chicano. (2) All demonstrations, etc., are a means of finding some basically non-violent work to get them (the Chicano) involved. (3) When the press has massacred you (as it did on the St. Basil’s Bust) and given you an image you do not want, you must then immediately find some gimmick to counter it. (Which is what I did here… McIntyre had branded us as violent revolutionaries, etc., which he could hardly do after we had a very Christian fast.)
… And you’re right about this stuff not doing my head any good. I know of no other way to get the things I want for myself and for others. If it was only me, and you’ll never believe this, I’d go drop out again, only this time in a warm climate, tropics preferably. I’d drink my ass off and maybe write a line or two. But here I am and likely to remain so because there simply ain’t no other place for me to go. I’ve made a plunge into a world of ideas and feelings that are simply unescapable. Words like ego-trip and Christ-complex are not only meaningless in this context, but infuriatingly trite. I would hope that the one thing the acid did for me was to make me realize that EGO is a wonderful thing, so long as you don’t get carried away with it, laugh at yourself now and again, yet remain constant in your belief that you are Super Spic, Heo Cholo, Zeta, Brown Buffalo and occasionally Oscar Acosta, esq. then having believed that, there is simply no reason for a Christ complex. In fact, I am superior to Christ, and I say that as seriously as you say that you’ve found your sitio … which only leaves the salvation bit.
I am not now, nor have I ever been a missionary. I ain’t here to save nobody. That is Christianwhore piss. The White man’s way of helping people. Live in the barrio because I am of the barrio, and all the fucking propaganda about revolutionaries fighting for the people, the community, etc., happens to be true in my case … in a word, I’m fighting for myself who is totally identified with the community of the poor.
And when I read this stuff and the past letters, listen to my old tapes, listen to myself talking with guys under acid, booze, and all evil forms of dope, I realize just how far down the road I’ve gone on my eternity trip … but don’t you think for one minute I don’t laugh at the written for eternity, as it were, just as much as you did when you wrote it.
Which still raises the ultimate question I’ve been asking for the past three years … Is it still a trip, or have I arrived at my destination?
… God damn it, Thompson get off my back and say something decent for a change! Which, I think, is where I came in.
orale,
Z
TO WARREN HINCKLE, SCANLAN’S MONTHLY:
Thompson’s Jean-Claude Killy piece was finally published in Scanlan’s Monthly.
March 2, 1970
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Warren …
Thanx for the copy of Scanlan’s. I gave out both subscription
cards & I don’t have the magazine now so I can’t subscribe formally … but if you’ll put me on the list and tell your nark to send a bill, I’ll pay it. Probably you have some excellent reason for not trying to sell the fucker via mail promotion, but I’m damned if I can see it. …
Editorially, the first issue looked good and up to par … but Graphically, it was a fucking horror show. It looks like it was put together by a compositor’s apprentice with a head full of Seconal. If I were you I’d put out an all-points bulletin for [Dugald] Stermer; he has his work cut out for him. …
On lesser fronts, I want to impose a condition on anything I may or may not sell you in the future—to wit: That any “cartoon/illustration” by Jim Nutt will not be allowed within 15 pages on either side of my byline. His Killy drawing not only wasted two pages, but it separated (my) letter from the article & rendered the letter useless. And beyond that I found my name at the bottom of Nutt’s cartoon.
None of which is really serious (to me, anyway—because, after all I’m only a writer … but if I were an editor I’d make some heavy serious changes in the graphics for issue #2 …). And thanx for the good editing on the Killy piece; I very much appreciate your indulgence inre: the parts I wanted in.
At the moment I’m all wound up with the first issue of the Aspen Wallposter. Tomorrow is publication day & although it’s on a far smaller scale than Scanlan’s, the tension is still pretty heavy. We decided to let the old paper die & go with a completely new form of experimental graphic/journalism. I’ll send you a copy when it hits the streets. And if the Wallposter name rings a bell … well, I’ll never deny it. The concept is the same, but the design & graphics are (as far as I know) completely new.
Fear and Loathing in America Page 40
