Voici: (1) a discourse on the adverse effect an enthusiastic but ignorant public can have on the creative artist, giving, as a parallel case in point, the commercial oblivion lying in wait for American literature and American jazz. Since this is an article I’ve already developed to some degree, I could go further; but since I dislike the idea of tipping my hand to an unknown audience, I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
(2) an analysis of the term “beat generation,” the whys and wherefores of a generation without a sense of values, given from a viewpoint which holds that the whole movement is a manifestation of an essentially bourgeois culture, a rebellion of the ignorant, and a serious indication of things to come (as Dadaism was in the twenties).
(3) a subjective study of the reasons for the alarming decline—in both quality and quantity—of young journalists.
I could go on and on, of course, but I think you should have a pretty good idea by now of the type of thing I’d like to do. As I said before, if it’s what you’re looking for, I am at your service.
Cordially,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO SUSAN HASELDEN:
Just back from an ebullient nighttime tour of New York, Thompson wrote Haselden hoping to lure her to Gotham in the near future.
May 1, 1958
57 Perry Street
New York City
Dear Susan,
After thinking over my letter of this afternoon, I feel compelled to write again to explain what must have seemed like a sudden burst of paternalism. It’s just that you sounded so discouraged and so alone that I simply couldn’t control the long-dormant “protector-advisor” feelings lying peacefully at the bottom of my breast. I’m sure, though, that by the time you get my letter, your despondency will have fled with the first warm breeze and my stern advice will seem like so much balderdash.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that you should discount what I said. When you’re let into somebody else’s game, you don’t make up your own rules. Unless you like the pseudo-individualist tag, you have to make a clean break. No two ideals were ever more incompatible than the security of conformity and the freedom of individuality. After the choice is made, the rest is easy—unless you don’t have the guts to stick by your choice.
There’s so damn much I want you to understand and words are such a poor medium when you really want someone to feel something. I’ve been wandering around New York since eight o’clock—it’s now one-thirty—having one of the finest evenings I can remember. I spent about an hour wandering along Riverside Drive above the Hudson, then went over to Morningside Drive where you can stand right on top of Harlem and see a whole world bubbling at your feet. God, what fantastic contrasts! You have to cross the Columbia campus on the way from the river to Morningside Drive. It just doesn’t seem right to try to describe it, so you’ll have to come up and wander with me.
It’s an unbelievably brilliant night outside. I rode down Fifth Avenue with the bus window wide open and a blasting wind in my face. I can’t remember when I’ve felt more alive. With the searchlights from the Empire State Building sweeping the black night over Central Park, a full moon glimmering on the lake and the towers of Central Park West rising over the trees, I felt like I was gliding through a dream. I wandered around on Forty-second Street for a while and then got another bus and rode down to the Village—another fantastic contrast. After a cup of coffee with the colored pervert who lives up the hall, I came in here and seriously considered calling you on the phone. Another cup of coffee, though, and I calmed down a bit—thus saving my phone. I certainly couldn’t have paid the bill.
But it’s been a fantastic night and I might as well break down and admit that I missed you like hell. I’m trying to think where we could have gone swimming.
Your imminent arrival has set me to plotting feverishly, but I’m none too optimistic about it. For one thing, a mere week is far from enough time to really understand New York: and for another, a terribly ironic complication has arisen for the first week of June. Why don’t you just come and live with me this summer? Things would be so much simpler. Write me about this. Love,
Hunter
TO THE VILLAGE VOICE:
The Village Voice had run an article saying that the New York police were no longer busting drug dealers in Greenwich Village and on Madison Avenue. Thompson seized the opportunity to twit the Voice—and ask for a job.
May 19, 1958
57 Perry Street
New York City
Editor
Village Voice
Say man, I’m bein’ bugged by the police and your damn paper’s the cause of it all. You’ve got to watch what you print around here, especially when not everybody reads your paper. I still have a huge knot on my back where that cop hit me.
What I’m talkin’ about, you see, is that damn article I read in your paper about a week ago, where you talked about Madison Avenue and oppressed butlers and all that sort of thing. Well you see now, I’m a dope peddler and that article made good sense to me. As a matter of fact, it was just what I been trying to tell the cops all along. I been sayin’ to myself “hell yes, if the people want my pod, why should the blasted bulls bug me about sellin’ it on the street?” But I been gettin’ nowhere, you see, because I couldn’t get any intellectual backing. I mean it’s been pure hell at times—cops chasm’ me in the street and everything else!
But then, man, I read that article last week in your paper and I thought the sun had decided to shine on me at last. Man, when I saw that these boys over on Madison Avenue had been usin’ my theory all along, well I felt all warm inside, you know? Man, I grabbed a bag of my stuff and hustled out into the street, figurin’ that I was safe, you know—now that people had finally come to their senses. I figured Madison Avenue had led us into a new age of enlightenment, or some such thing.
So like I said, I hustled over to the Square and began hawkin’ my wares—just like in the good old days. Man, I was wailin’: times were good!
But then, by god, all hell broke loose. I heard this wild scream behind me (man, it froze my blood) and I looked around just in time to see this crazy bull come racin’ over the grass yellin’ like all hell! Well man, I couldn’t figure it out. I sez to myself: “what in the hell’s goin’ on here? Hasn’t this man been readin’ the paper? Hasn’t he been keepin’ up with the news?”
But man, the way he was waving that damn club around, I knew I was goin’ to have to tell him the news myself—he was one of these guys that’s nowhere—you know?
So I evaded his first charge and tried to cool him off. I yelled, “Wait, man! Don’t flog the pusher! If the people want pod, where is the justice in floggin’ the pusher?” (I thought I could talk to him reasonable like, you know?)
But man, that was the stupidest bull I ever saw in my life! He couldn’t even see that I had him dead to rights. All he did was scream and come at me again.
Well, right then I saw the futility of tryin’ to explain these things to the illiterate bourgeois—so I took off at a dead run. But even then I barely escaped with my life: why, that fool brought that club down on my back and almost snapped my spine. If I’d been a little slower, I’d have been a sure goner!
Well, I got away, but I haven’t been able to straighten up for four days because of this damn knot on my back. This pain is hell, of course, but it wouldn’t bug me so much if I thought I deserved it. Now I don’t blame that [Jack] Schliefer13 guy for my trouble, you know, because he was only tryin’ to spread the word. Like I said, his article made fine sense.
The whole trouble is that you people don’t see to it that the cops read your paper. If that stupid bull had read Schliefer’s article, you see, I wouldn’t be bugged by this damn knot in my back. You dig? So let’s get your circulation boy on the ball and get your paper into the police stations. It’s goin’ to be hell on the poor pusher until you do. And man, if you can’t make the streets safe for an honest salesman, I might have to sell out and go into the advertisin
g game. I might find it a little dull over on Madison Avenue, but at least I’d be among friends. Why don’t you ask this Schliefer guy if he’ll get me a job until this thing blows over?
Hopefully,
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
TO ANN FRICK:
Though there were a number of women Thompson was partially in love with—Sally Williams, Susan Haselden, Carol Overdorf, Kay Menyers, and Kraig Juenger—it was Ann Frick of Tallahassee whom he hoped one day to marry.
June 4, 1958
57 Perry Street
New York City
Dear Ann,
I’ve read your letter about fifteen times now, and it would take at least fifteen pages to explain exactly why I appreciate it as much as I do. It certainly wasn’t because of anything in the letter itself (I’m sure you’ll agree that it was a pretty limpid effort) but probably because you took the trouble to write and remind me that you’re still alive and kicking, still as warm and genuine as ever, and still the same Ann Frick I remember from what now seems like a million hazy dreams ago.
God, it seems incredible that it’s been almost two years since I first saw you: but, strangely enough, I think I remember almost every minute of that day—from the time I first saw you at your house, to the spider crabs and the black bathing suit and the murky water at Alligator Point, and all the way through the last minute of the night at Lake Hall.
But the memory doesn’t stop there: I remember the day I first heard My Fair Lady at your house, the astonished embarrassment of being refused a drink at George’s, sitting on a bench in front of the City Cafe in Chattahoochee with an exploded car parked many miles down the road, and the final fantasy of standing on the balcony of that unfinished building later that night and drifting off into a short-lived dream world. Ah, life is short and yesterday and tomorrow are always dreams, but I think I prefer those moments which make up the “Tallahassee dream” to most of my others. They were so lazy and warm, and yet so full of the rare tension of being almost in love. I was never quite sure what I was thinking then, but now that I look back, I think that’s what it was: being “almost in love” and not understanding any of it, least of all what it meant to be in love. And I’m not even sure that I do now, especially after realizing that sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.
But that is neither here nor there: I’m sure this isn’t the kind of response you expected when you wrote your letter, so let us steer once again into the realm of the reasonable, leaving questions of sex, love, and recurring dreams to a later date.
As for your questions as to what I’m doing, I can only say that I’m not quite sure myself. Living in New York is like discovering life all over again. In all seriousness, living here has been like waking up in an endlessly fascinating and completely different world from everything I’ve ever known. Having my own apartment in Greenwich Village, working in Rockefeller Plaza, riding up and down Fifth Avenue every day, standing on an East River dock at dawn and seeing the Empire State Building towering above this incredible skyline, meeting the thousands of people from every corner of America: the whole thing still seems a little unreal. And, brash as it may seem, I know I’m not going to be able to end this letter without giving you a standing invitation to come up and see me. If there’s anything that could make living here any better, I think it would be having you here with me—if only to show you that the dreams you dream on boring nights in Tallahassee can be a reality if you only look hard enough. And I shouldn’t have said “boring,” because that’s the last term I’d apply to Tallahassee. I might possibly have been restless there, but never bored. And I think I’d be restless anywhere, at least until my blood cools down a bit. But I’m not even looking forward to that for a while. Life just seems too huge and too fascinating for me to begin thinking about curing my restlessness at this stage of the game. Maybe later.
I was absolutely serious, though, when I issued my invitation. I can’t think of anything I’d enjoy more right now than introducing New York to Ann Frick. (And I suppose it would be a little sneaky of me to neglect to say that there are few things I’d enjoy more than seeing Ann Frick again—but I promised not to say things like that, so we’ll just leave it unsaid, but understood.) I am capable of maintaining a platonic relationship—I suppose.
But since you said that you hoped to find work after you finish with your fellowship tours, I thought it would be hardly decent of me to allow you to pass up the idea of looking around New York. Note the ad I clipped out of The Village Voice. What could be easier—for you, anyway?
And, incidentally, I shouldn’t have waited this long to congratulate you on winning this fellowship. I hope you have a great time in St. Louis and in Michigan, and I wish you all the luck in the world in your teaching. I’d tell you a few people to get in touch with in St. Louis, but they’re all degenerates, so I’m afraid I’ll have to let you go it alone. Rest assured that it’s the best way.
I’m expecting a friend of mine from Yale to arrive sometime early tomorrow, so I think I’d best get a little sleep. I’ll close this with something very close to a demand that you write immediately and let me know if you’ll be able to ride the Staten Island Ferry with me sometime before the summer ends. I refuse to even consider any alternatives or excuses, and I trust you realize that I’m absolutely serious. You know how I am about polite banalities.
So until then, I remain, incorrigibly and affectionately (and still remembering exactly what it was like to be “almost in love”)……
Hunto
TO LARRY CALLEN:
Callen was still stationed in Iceland, also hoping to be a writer someday.
June 6, 1958
57 Perry Street
New York City
Dear Larry,
You have been singled out to bear the brunt of a nightmare, something very close to the alcoholic demise of a man who never quite seems to have a grip on things. Bear with me.
My apartment, once the scene of lazy sex and quiet privacy, has erupted during the past two weeks into a virtual cave of howling drunken insanity. There are people sleeping everywhere—on my bed, on the couch, on the cot, and even on sleeping bags on the floor. Everything in the place is covered with stale beer, most of my records are ruined, every piece of linen, towel, or clothing in the place is filthy, the dishes haven’t been washed in weeks, the neighbors have petitioned the landlord to have me evicted, my sex life has been absolutely smashed, I have no money, no food, no privacy, and certainly no peace of mind. And on top of all this, I get on the average of one letter a day informing me that someone else is on his way to New York to “see me.”
The place looks like a goddamn interracial hotel. I have with me now one law student, one rum-soaked philosopher, and one negro painter. Due within two weeks are a zoologist and a professional lease-breaker from New Orleans, a girl from Boston, and a fanatical nihilist from Louisville. And in the next few months I expect not only my brother, but Pete Goodman from Eglin, girls from Baltimore, St. Louis, and Tallahassee, and a tyro dramatist from New Mexico. And god only knows who else. These are only the ones I’ve heard from.
Last Monday and Tuesday, the law student and I consumed twenty-one quarts of beer. In the three days since then, we’ve more than tripled that. The record player goes at top volume both day and night—no one works—and the police have been called on me three times within the past week. There is baggage everywhere, huge paintings are piled in every corner, the floor is an inch deep in scum, there is not a goddamn scrap of food anywhere, no one has any money, and wild jungle music drowns out all thought. I am hounded by creditors, bugged by the police, threatened with eviction, seriously considering murder, and stone broke. Fortunately—and somehow—I’ve managed to hold onto my job at Time. Which goes to show that perfection is still impossible.
A typical day, just for the record. I woke up at six this morning, met a girl from Louisville at the Port Authority Terminal at seven, came back to the apartment for breakfast and a bout
with the drunken law student, nearly became involved in a sex orgy, and finally got to work about eleven. After a hectic and confusing day at work, I arrived back here at seven-thirty to find the philosopher and the painter spewing blood all over the apartment and trading sarcasms with the law student. I had a date at ten, ran into another girl on the way to my dates apartment, and tarried long enough to miss my date. Bought several quarts of beer and broke in on a girl who already had a date. Left feeling like an ass. Arrived back here and spent an abortive hour trying to get hold of my original date. Failed. Am waiting now for the horde to return for another night-long drinking bout. The girl from Louisville left for a weekend in Boston at eleven this morning. She will return Monday. What then?
Frankly, there is nothing to do but drink. There are more quarts of beer in here than there are dead roaches. We don’t kill them anymore—just wound them and let them writhe and die wherever they please. Broken glass is everywhere.
And this used to be MY apartment! It was where I wrote and brought dates when I had no money, where I sat and listened to music and read and ate. It was MINE, my own—and now it’s a sinkhole of noise and drink, a sort of human cesspool with ever-changing ingredients. And god only knows what will happen tomorrow.
And that’s about it. I feel better now that I’ve put it in order and gotten it down on paper. It has changed from nightmare to nightmarish reality.
Write—and give me a ring when you get back in New York. Maybe I’ll be alive.
Cheerio …
HST
TO LARRY CALLEN:
With the literary world abuzz about the so-called Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men, Thompson ponders whether he is a writer of “action” (Hemingway, Kerouac) or of “thought” (Joyce, Faulkner).
July 4, 1958
Time & Life Building
Proud Highway Page 18
