I’m telling you all this just to warn you about my current state of mind—which has been badly bent, of late, by a goddamn torrent of people who not only want to come out here and move into my house, but also into my head & my crotch. On a recent Saturday we had twelve (12) applicants for my Senate campaign appear in the driveway between the hours of nine and six. Fortunately, Steadman was here to speak with them—because I have a firm rule now about never answering either the phone or the door, which has put an ever-increasing burden on Sandy’s nerves. Every time the phone rings we just stare at each other for a while, then her eyes get narrow and her shoulders curl down and she jerks the bastard off the hook and says Dr. Thompson will not be available, for any foreseeable reason, at any time in the near or distant future.
Our only hope now is that Juan can soon take over. He seems to enjoy talking at length with these strangers, even the kinkiest, and he’s developing a real talent for it.
But, again, this has only a peripheral bearing on the Eszterhas book problem—which, due to your last letter, has now become a major psychic burden for me. I have no real idea what you want or need from me, or how you plan to use it—but the only thing I’m absolutely certain of, right now, is that my failure to produce this thing is going to haunt me for years to come and probably scar me for life.
And I will fail. There’s no doubt at all about that. Just as I’ve failed in every other attempt to write blurbs for other friends’ books. Not one has ever been used, Jim. Not one fucking word, by anybody—and I’ve invariably put more work into the goddamn things than I normally put into 5 or 6 pages of a complex political article. A particularly galling example occurred about 3 months ago when a set of bound galleys arrived, with a note from some editor I’d never heard of … and for some strange reason I took the thing to bed with me one night and read it straight through. The next day I sent the editor a note full of king-hell quotes, saying it was one of the meanest & fastest-moving stories I’d ever read; I recalled several scenes that I described as “crazed and fantastic violence,” and I closed the letter with a brief graph saying that all I missed in the book was a certain sense of dimension, complexity, reality, etc. in the protagonist. It was the kind of complaint a “creative writing” professor would toss into an otherwise high-bouncing gold-hatted critique. Because all books are flawed, of course—either horizontally or vertically—and since they’d sent me this book to read and comment on, I felt that classic sort of reviewer’s compulsion to whack it at least once, if only to lend a suggestion of balance & perspective to all the good things I’d said about it.
Well, Jim … it didn’t work. About 3 weeks later I got a letter from the editor who’d sent me the galleys in the first place—a total stranger to me, just like the author—and he spent a whole single-spaced page moaning about how sad it was that I couldn’t find it in my heart to acknowledge real talent when it was laid out right in front of my eyes, and how he’d perhaps made a mistake in sending me the book in the first place, along with random dollops of gibberish here & there about “success” and “failure” and god only knows what else … and the net result of the whole thing was, if that mush-minded cocksucker ever sends me another book, by anybody, I’m going to soak it in two quarts of epoxy glue and send it back to him, COD, in a box made of oak logs….
As I told you in an earlier letter, you can sign my name to almost anything short of disgraceful madness. (A recent review of both Fear & Loathing books, for instance, said the Vegas epic was “possibly the best book since The Bible.”) I would not be willing to go quite that far with Joe’s book, but I would say, for instance, that it’s “one of the best and most brutally truthful pieces of American journalism since Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.”25 Or that “Eszterhas explodes the myth of the ‘new journalism’ by showing what ‘old journalism’ could have been, all along, in the hands of a fine writer.”
But none of that shit will sell books, will it? No more than Wolfe’s fine words sold any copies of Vegas—or at least not enough to matter—and it occurs to me now that there is something not quite right or reasonable that Random House writers should be burdened with the obligation to sell each other’s books. What the fuck do you pay all those salesmen for? How about the Publicity dept? The promotion people? All those wizards in the editors’ offices who’ll make twice as much this year as either me or Eszterhas? My gross salary last year was $12,000 and I paid every goddamn dime of my campaign coverage expenses out of my book advance—approximately $32,000, or slightly more than my half of the paperback sale … and now, with both of my RH books out of print in hardcover and my royalty statements a series of foul testaments to some kind of baffling stagnation that nobody including me seems able to understand … now, in the shadow of all this, you’re leaning on me for some kind of instant wisdom to help you sell Joe’s book! …
None of this matters at the moment, however. The first three points should be easy enough for you to deal with, but #4 is a real bastard. I can write the flap copy and ads for my own books, but my experience with trying to do it for other people has been extremely grim. Maybe we could lash something together real quick on the telephone. If you want to try it, I’m game—and we could probably come up with something right in less than 10 minutes. Give me a ring some afternoon if you feel up to it. Cazart …
Hunter
TO GARRY WILLS:
Respected magazine writer Garry Wills raised Thompson’s hackles with his lukewarm review of Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.
October 17, 1973
Woody Creek, CO
Garry …
Jesus, it came as a bit of a shock to get beaten so savagely for two typos … but I guess you have all those notes & other bullshit by now, so there’s no point working it over again. As a final note, however, I think your total misunderstanding of my argument about “what McGovern should have done …” might be worth arguing about over a beer or nine someday. I never equated “new politics” with “moving left.” That connection was made, quite predictably, by establishment columnists.
This is one of the subjects I like to bash around with Pat Buchanan. He’s one of the few hit-men in that crowd (or any other, for that matter) that I can really enjoy getting it on with. We disagree so violently on almost everything that it’s a real pleasure to drink with him. If nothing else, he’s absolutely honest in his lunacy—and I’ve found, during my admittedly limited experience in political reporting, that power & honesty very rarely coincide. I never tried to absolve Pat of Nixon’s crimes & cruelties; all I said was that he didn’t mind talking with me about them … and considering the things I’ve said about “The Boss,” I have to respect Pat’s willingness to invite me over to his apartment and deal with me as a friend … even when I’m sitting there, half-drunk in the sun, telling him that somebody could do the world a big favor by dragging [former Nixon White House aide Charles] Tex Colson down Pa. Ave, at the end of a 40-ft. rope.
Can you imagine sitting down for beers with Ehrlichman and telling him a thing like that? (In the winter of ’71?) Give that one some thought & then see if you still think it’s so rotten for me to sit down and spend an afternoon of flatout verbal arm-wrestling with Pat Buchanan.
In any case, and just for the record, I disagree savagely with at least 92% of Pat’s political views—but I like the bastard and I intend to keep on drinking with him, from time to time, and anybody who doesn’t like it can suck wind.
On other fronts, I can understand how you might have gone a bit off the edge when you saw [George F.] Will’s theory attributed to you26—but I guarantee your reaction was mild, compared to mine. Ever since I began writing politics for RS, my main problem has been that most of the editorial staff—who’ve never even seen me—tend to take my image absolutely seriously; which apparently makes it hard for them to believe I can even spell my own name, much less anybody else’s. (At last count—as the 4th or maybe 5th edition of my Campaign book went to press—I was still fighting to corr
ect 422 serious errors in the text—but at $3 a character (in the line-count), that’s a hard argument to win on the phone, 1500 miles away from the printer.)
But fuck all that. The bad rap you laid on me regarding the typos will die easy—but if you want to push that thing about “what McGovern should have done,” the least you can do is get straight on what I said. And if I didn’t make myself clear in the book, I think it’s important enough to talk about before we do any more arguing in print. Sincerely …
Hunter
TO GEORGE STRANAHAN:
Thompson’s neighbor George Stranahan still owned much of the land around Woody Creek.
October 19, 1973
Woody Creek, CO
George …
I’ve been thinking for the past few months that we should get together for a long rambling talk about what’s happening and going to happen in this valley … but I never seem to get myself focused enough or to find you loose & alone, at the right time, and meanwhile things seem to be happening very fast all around us. I went (almost by accident) to the last meeting of the Woody Creek Caucus and got involved in a nasty crunch about the future of Gravel Pits in WC … I meant to go as a pure Observer but with C. Vagneur and D. Barry running one side of the gig, I yielded to my weakness and got involved.
In any case, the geeks in Lower Woody are getting their plans together & I think it’s unhealthy for you not to be involved in some way—if only because I want to know what the fuck you’re thinking about doing with your land.
Right. My interest is totally selfish. I remember a Bobby Kennedy press conference in Rio that I went to about 10 years ago (it was ’62 & JFK was still president) … and I remember Robert’s words pretty well, if not with exact precision: In answer to some question that no longer matters, he said … “The United States, as always, will look primarily to its own interests.”
This has stuck in my head for a decade, and that memory has served me fairly well, I think, in terms of journalism and various other areas … and the reason I mention it now is that I assume our interests still mesh, with regard to what’s happening in W.C. If so, I think we’d be doing ourselves a favor by getting together and articulating them, some evening … and, if not, I’ve spoken with [Joe] Edwards about arranging some kind of “buy-out” addendum to our land contract, which—in return for a sum of money—would leave me free to sell out to the highest bidder, if circumstances dictated.
Another alternative (which just occurred to me about 96 seconds ago) is that you could sell me the pasture in front of my house (under the most restrictive of all possible circumstances) and we could then use my “land-bridge” over the county right-of-way to effectively seal off the valley from here to Lenado. That would have three immediate & obvious benefits: 1) The pasture in front of me would remain in its natural state, 2) The county road would have to run through one land-holding (instead of between two different ones, as it is now), and 3) … well, shit, now that I give it some thought I see various loose ends; not many, but enough to spend at least another hour or so thinking about it.
The nut, however, has to do with the long-term future of Woody Creek … and I get the feeling that those people down on the river are sort of teetering on the brink, right now—between selling out & hanging tough—and one of the main factors in their confusion seems to be whatever plans (or lack of them) you and Stanley might have for “Upper Woody.”
In other words, there’s no point in them spending time & money fighting the Slag Heap, only to have another nightmare develop above them. (T. Garth, for instance, mentioned the possibility of a copper mine above his place …and nobody has the vaguest fucking idea what you’re up to, including me….)
So I think we should talk about this—and preferably in some human atmosphere free of savage accusations, etc. I’m essentially concerned with what you have in mind, and how it might affect me, in the long run … and very soon, I think, a lot of other people (whose interests at the moment are hovering between the short-term & the long) will be coming to that same conclusion. There is not much doubt in anybody’s mind that you have it in your power to alter or not alter the whole complexion and reality of Woody Creek.
This is something that goes far beyond my own personal interest, financially or any other way, in the land I currently occupy here. If I controlled enough acres to be able, by a personal decision, to turn the tide in terms of land-use, I’d be in the kind of situation I think you’re in right now … which is a kind of cat-bird seat, whereby you can de facto guarantee the sanctity of other people’s land by the way you decide to use yours … and from what I’ve seen & heard from the others, there’s not much doubt about this. The real horror of land use in Woody Creek, up to now, has been the example, in a vacuum, of Wink Jaffe. He has set a very aggressive tone—not just selling his land, but grinding it up into gravel & piecing it off by the truckload.
On the generally-accepted spectrum, Jaffe’s blind greed has made your own dealings seem philanthropic and far-sighted … but there’s no point kidding ourselves about that, is there? How many more mesas will you have to sell to those corporate butt-fuckers at The Institute? But do you really want to sell the whole valley to absentee-owners and New York–based landlords? Addled-brained shitheads like Slater & Nielsen?27
Shit, I have other things to write—for money, to pay off the mortgage—so I’ll chop this off here & hope I’ve made at least a bit of a point. Call ASAP & let’s get together for a talk….
OK,
Hunter
TO VIRGINIA THOMPSON:
After two years of nearly nonstop work, Thompson found that his bank account had not grown at the same rate as his reputation.
October 20, 1973
Woody Creek, CO
Dear V …
I never liked “Mom,” and “Virginia” seems too formal … and since I sign “H” on letters to my friends, maybe V will serve with you … I feel more comfortable with it, at least in writing….
A quick answer to your letter of today is that there is no news from me, Sandy & Juan. Nothing except the dullest & most mundane activity has afflicted this place since the long-suffering end of the Campaign ’72 book and my half-involved summer in Washington at the Watergate scene. I seem to be in the grip of a deep/dark letdown after spending two years at top speed on the Fear & Loathing books. At the moment I feel physically and mentally & emotionally drained. … I can’t even get excited about what I think is the imminent demise of Nixon. I tried to go hunting the other day, but—standing around the campfire about midnight before the hunt—I realized I would never pull a trigger the next day, so I drove a jeep down the mountain & crashed it into a boulder so violently that it destroyed the front end, and I spent the next 2 nites sleeping out in the weeds of a river-bottom on the western slope of the rockies … looking up through the limbs at the jet-trails 33,000 feet up in the sky on the run between New York and LA, and knowing that on any other night I could be up there in one of those planes … but feeling very nice down there in my sleeping bag like a totally anonymous person or maybe even an animal. All alone. Not a human being within ten miles in any direction … I’d forgotten how it feels to be absolutely alone for more than brief moments here & there.
Anyway, I find myself getting “famous,” but no richer than I was before people started recognizing & harassing me almost everywhere I go. The Vegas book, for instance, was a drastic failure on the money front—only 10,000 sales out of a 30,000 first printing. That’s bad for the editor, very bad—which explains why my next book will be published by Straight Arrow instead of Random House.
The Campaign ’72 book is doing better than expected; it looks to be more along the lines, financially, of the Hell’s Angels book, which has so far netted a bit over $25,000—spread out over five years.
But things seem to be working out. The one benefit of “fame” seems to be a big expense account—but that only works when I’m traveling, and the net is always zero. I’m beginning to feel like Joe
Louis28 when he was wallowing in all those dollars for so many years, but none of them stuck to his fingers & when the deal went down he couldn’t even pay for his taxes. But no—it’s not that bad. I have all manner of geeks from TV shows and lecture agencies calling me at Rolling Stone, and I suppose I could make a wad of money if I returned the calls—but I tried the lecture circuit for a week last spring and it came close to destroying me. I made a drunken fool of myself at places like Yale, Harvard & the University of Chicago, and when we added up the bills I was somehow about $600 in the red, due to unexplained expenses on the road.
The only TV thing I’ve agreed to do this time around is a one-hour argument of sorts with Dick Tuck on NBC next week in Los Angeles. It’s a new show called Tomorrow, which comes on around one in the morning, following Tonight.29 We’re scheduled to tape our gig on Oct 24, for the Thursday Oct 25 program. If I can keep a straight head for the taping, the result might be worth watching. Check the listings on Oct 25—Tomorrow, NBC, in the early morning hours.
Fear and Loathing in America Page 75
