Proud Highway
Page 21
Look at the help-wanted ads in the Times—trade papers, house organs. Look at your own ads in E & P—one-horse gossip sheets and country weeklies. Ask for a job with a big daily that obviously needs new blood—“sorry, we don’t need anyone. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” Then pick up E & P and read your own column again. You people don’t need to offer better salaries, all you have to do is raise your damned standards a bit! And as long as 90% of the papers in this country are staffed by complacent hacks those standards are going to stay right where they are. You people have your backs to the wall and you’d better open your eyes in one hell of a hurry. A free press is not indispensable unless it makes itself indispensable. So how about cleaning up your house and then bellowing about no one wanting to come in?
Cordially,
Hunter S. Thompson
PS: If you know anyone who needs a firebrand critic of sorts, just drop me a line.
TO ANN FRICK:
During his stint at Time, Thompson polished his writing skills by typing The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms in their entirety, closely studying their sentence structures. Fascinated to learn that Thompson was studying American literature so carefully, Frick wrote him a long letter seeking recommendations for her reading list.
December 19, 1958
Time & Life Building
Rockefeller Center
New York
Dear Ann,
This is a borrowed typewriter and I’ll probably make four million mistakes so bear with me and keep your head.
To continue with your questions:
… from last week: Brave New World (Huxley), The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald), A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway), The Organization Man (Whyte), The Best of Everything (Jaffe)—this one hardly belongs in the abovementioned company but it’s one which would interest any girl who intends to come to New York and look for a job. Actually, there’s very little sense in my going on with this list; the ones I’ve mentioned are books that nobody should miss reading, as far as I’m concerned, but I could list at least a hundred more and that would be a little senseless. It’s excellent, however, that your mind is beginning to stir a bit and I’ll keep that in mind in future letters. We may yet succeed in pulling your mind out of the fog!
My aptitude on dancing—as you put it—has not changed in several years, primarily because I’ve had no occasion to even think about it, much less consider changing it. My four years at dancing school served me about as well as my two years of piano lessons and I can’t understand how such a wasted childhood could have been so enjoyable. If, however, you feel that I should change on either count, I invite—and look forward to—your efforts. I can assure you that I harbor no antipathy toward either the piano or the dance floor. I am indifferent, but not opposed: an excellent attitude for a man in my position, I think.
Things on my “worry list”:
1) money
2) money
3) money after the first three they tend to level out.…
4) Worry that I may not be as strong as I think I am and thereby compromise with dull reality and convince myself that my weakness is a sign of “maturity.”
5) Worry that I may never run across anyone whom I think is “right” enough to fall in love with, or perhaps I should say “be happy with.”
6) Worry that I live in a land of semi-educated flagellants (look that one up, it will do you good) who have created and insist on maintaining a “free, equal, standardized, complacent and decaying society” which frustrates and denies the idea that I should live as I want to live and maintain my self-respect at the same time.
7) The rest of my worries are small and come and go from day to day. What are your “worries”?
Yes, Davison seems to like Vandy. He was co-captain of the Freshman football team and pledged Phi Delt. I shall see him next week when I hustle homeward. I’ll be home for a week or two and I’ll let you know if there’s any chance of my getting to Tallahassee before I return to New York City.
This is about it for now and let me warn you in closing that you are not “as usual” and certainly not “plain.”
Love, Hunter
Thompson at his Catskills cabin. (PHOTO BY HUNTER S. THOMPSON; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
Thompson with Judy Booth in the Catskills. (PHOTO BY ROBERT W. BONE; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
The black Jaguar. (PHOTO BY ROBERT W. BONE; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
1. Thompson tells this Jersey Shore story in Songs of the Doomed (1990).
2. Lieutenant Colonel Frank Campbell and Wayne Bell (civilian editor and publisher of the Playground News), both still at Eglin, wrote letters recommending Thompson for the Grantland Rice sports-journalism scholarship at Vanderbilt University.
3. While in New York Thompson wrote three unpublished short stories under this pseudonym, after three of his literary heroes: Aldous Huxley, Henry Miller, and H. L. Mencken.
4. Ted Wasil was a staff writer at the Command Courier.
5. Pauline Star was the receptionist at the Command Courier.
6. Where Rosan’s parents lived.
7. Maxwell Bodenheim was a well-known Greenwich Village poet who lived hand-to-mouth in bohemian poverty.
8. Sam Stallings was the Louisville friend who was arrested with Thompson for robbery.
9. Harold Tague taught English at Louisville Male High School; Fred Holtzman taught French.
10. Mardou Fox is the African-American heroine of Kerouac’s The Subterraneans, which deals with interracial romance.
11. Metronome was a popular jazz-blues magazine.
12. Walter A. Kaufmann, ed., Existentialism: From Dostoyevsky to Sartre (New York, 1956).
13. Author of the Voice article in question.
14. Thompson’s name for Iceland.
15. The couple ran the boardinghouse where Thompson stayed while in Tallahassee.
16. Thompson considered historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther to be “far left” and conservative columnist William Buckley and populist demagogue Gerald L.K. Smith “far right.”
17. Quemoy and Matsu were islands between mainland China and Taiwan that both governments claimed.
18. Fortune editor William Whyte’s novel The Organization Man had just been published to great acclaim.
1959
PRINCE JELLYFISH GOES TO THE CATSKILLS … FIRED FROM THE MIDDLETOWN DAILY RECORD … SOWING THE SEEDS OF A STRANGE AND FATAL COMPULSION … DON QUIXOTE FLEES TO PUERTO RICO …
I’d been living there for about a year when the basement began to cave in. The combined pressure of spring rains and melting snow was too much for the rock-dirt walls, and they crumbled like rotten river banks in a flood; collapsing, slowly but surely, into a mud bog that grew an inch or two deeper with each passing day. The landlord, too lazy and too blind to make the repairs himself, declined to take action for almost three weeks. It was only when the mud began to bury the hot-water heater that the indolent old bastard agreed to do something about it.
—Hunter S. Thompson, “The Almost Working Artist” (unpublished short story)
TO ANN FRICK:
Thompson spent the holidays in Louisville dating hometown girls, but none of them measured up to Frick. Tired of the ambiguity in their relationship, he became determined that she move to New York.
January 7, 1959
57 Perry Street
New York City
(the first Hunterletter of the new year.…)
Dear Ann,
I pause in the midst of what should be my best story to date—if I don’t sell something soon I may give up the ghost altogether and turn to beachcombing—to inform you that I have lately come to doubt your existence! Something drastic must be done about this, for I find it increasingly difficult to have faith in what might possibly be a figment of my imagination. But perhaps I should explain instead of rambling on in this desperate key.
When I got back to New York this last summer—and later when my mailbo
x began yielding excellent Annletters—I had no difficulty in measuring all the girls I ran across against the time-tested “Tallahassee standard.” They all fell short, of course, and after a while I found that my only problem lay in getting hold of you some way in order to make SURE I was right. This worked well as long as I stayed in New York, for all the world knows that the Yankee species of american womanhood is distinctly second-rate. A problem arose, however, when I got to Louisville.…
Upon returning to the womb for my annual holiday visit I found that, while most of the girls I used to date have literally gone to waste—withered, dulled, dissipated, etc.—a small but choice minority of them were head and shoulders above their northern counterparts and therefore surprisingly acceptable to my somewhat jaded eye. I was fairly happy for a time, feeling that women were worthwhile after all, but then I fell to using my “Tallahassee standard” again and the trouble began. I was dumbfounded to find that, although Bluegrass womanhood far outclassed the Yankee variety, they somehow fell obviously short of the mark you made and then re-made during my short but numerous visits to the land of the orange moon and the spanish moss.
If all this is true and I have not deceived myself, then obviously either I should be in Tallahassee or you should be in New York; anything else would be folly. HOWEVER, I have but ONE DAY and several letters to put flesh and blood in the “Tallahassee standard” over the course of the past year and a half. I have an excellent memory and a prodigious imagination, but memory and imagination can do only so much. IDEA—AFTER MUCH THOUGHT: why don’t you come to New York with your friends in February? Something is going to have to be done because I don’t know how much longer I can carry a vision around in my head which makes a “reject” out of every girl I run across. (Now all I need is to go back to New York and find one of these “so long, it was nice while it lasted but I’ve decided to settle down” letters from you. That would definitely complete the cycle.)
At any rate I plan to be back there by this Sunday. I should add that the Thompson fortunes are once more adrift in treacherous seas: I gave up on Time right before Christmas and decided that I needed nothing more than a rest and someone to cook breakfast for me in the mornings, so I came home and my stay has been excellent. I’m a little restless now, though, and the time has come for me to rush back into battle. Actually, I was seriously planning to come bounding down your way, but with both Laurie1 and [Tom] Sealey gone I’d have had to impose on your hospitality and I didn’t think that would be the best thing. The next month or so should be wild and woolly and I don’t know how much longer I can stand New York so how about sending me the latest news on your pending springtime visit? I’ll be in New York by the time you get this, so drop me a line as soon as you can. The idea of going back to look for a job in that madhouse is enough to give a man the shakes. So until then, I remain, inconsistently.…
Hunter
TO ANN FRICK:
Typing with an injured thumb, the result of a Greenwich Village bar fight, Thompson continued to demand that Ann visit New York.
January 23, 1959
New York City
Dear Ann,
I hate to begin this letter because it seems like such a poor substitute for what I’d really like to do. I’m tired of writing to you and tired of talking to you on the phone. I want to see you and touch you and try to convince myself that you’re real.
I frankly don’t believe it. Your voice comes over the phone and your letters come in the mail, but there’s precious little flesh and blood and warmth in any of it. The pictures help tremendously, but they’re not very warm either.
This prolonged a separation would normally spell doom for any relationship, but somehow you’ve managed to retain a firm grip on the top rung. This is a little vague, of course, but I usually find it difficult to be anything but amusing in letters—and besides, I have a sprained thumb which makes typing very difficult.
What I mean to say, I suppose, is that I’ve fallen into some kind of “condition” where you’re concerned. Whether it’s that vague something called “love” or not, I really can’t say. Whatever it is, though, I’m afraid it’s something that’s going to have to be resolved one way or another. And for a number of reasons, I’d say it was something that could best be resolved away from Tallahassee. Your calls unnerve me, your letters frustrate me, and the idea of having you around for any length of time excites me to a fever pitch. In short—barring some kind of a tragedy—you’re going to have to get up this way in the spring. I think you can understand that another Hunter-visit to Tallahassee is not going to accomplish much.
I’m finding it increasingly difficult to write to you because there are so many things I’d like to say that I simply can’t say with a typewriter. I’m back in New York for the weekend, but I’ll be back in Middletown on Sunday. I’ll be up there for at least another week and possibly longer. None of this will be definite for a week or so and there’s no sense in my explaining something which may not be worth explaining. I’m sorry I was so useless on the phone the other night, but I’ve never been very good at making passionate sense across sixteen hundred miles of copper wire. But it was more than good to talk to you and I only wish we weren’t so blasted far apart. I think I can make it until spring, but that will be just about the end of my rope as far as waiting is concerned. Plan definitely on coming then.
My thumb is bothering the hell out of me and I’m going to have to give it a rest. Another letter will follow this one when things are more settled. Until then, write as soon as you can and don’t change your hair—I like it the way it is in the latest snapshot.
Love,
Hunter
TO VIRGINIA THOMPSON:
Fired from Time for insubordination, Thompson finally landed a job he wanted, as a reporter for the Middletown Daily Record in upstate New York. Eager for mobility, he wrote his mother to wheedle a loan for a black 1951 Jaguar he had found for $550.
January 31, 1959
Middletown, New York
Dear Mom,
Sorry I haven’t written, but I’ve had a definite reason which I’m sure you’ll understand by the time you’ve finished this letter. I suppose that part of it was explained in my telegram, but here’s the whole story.
I’d been back here for several days, sizing up the job situation and talking to people here and there, when one of the employment agencies called and said they had a good job for me on a paper in Middletown, New York. I was a little hesitant, but so low on money that I decided to look into it.
Frankly, it turned out to be one of the best deals in contemporary journalism for anyone my age—or, perhaps I should say, my age according to the application form. The key to the whole thing—and the terrifying proposals due to come later in the letter—lies in my “methód of operation” in getting the job. I applied on the grounds that I was (1) a college graduate, (2) that I was 23 years old, and (3) that I’ve had a great raft of experience as a reporter. None of these are true, of course, and I’ve been expecting at any moment to be “unmasked” and rushed off the premises as a dangerous undesirable of some sort. This is the reason for my not writing. The idea of writing and telling you all about the great job I had, and then having to write and say I’d been fired, was simply out of the question. I’ve barely mentioned it to anyone. I haven’t even let myself feel the slightest bit elated, for fear of the sudden downfall which might have come at any time. It all boils down to the fact that this whole thing has been a monstrous gamble which has somehow worked. Here it is in a nutshell:
When I came back from my first interview I went down to talk to Lou Miller at the World-Telegram and you have the letter I wrote after that. That letter was the last optimistic word or thought I’ve uttered since I went back to Middletown to start the two-week trial period. Well, they told me on Thursday that my work had been “top-notch” and that they wanted me to stay—provided, of course, that I got a car immediately if not sooner.
Before I get to that, let me explai
n what kind of deal this is. The Middletown Record is a two-and-a-half year-old experimental newspaper. The only cold-type offset paper (daily) in the country, it’s been a booming success and has been written up in Time, Editor & Publisher, and a good many other trade magazines. There’s only one man on the news staff over 35 and most of the boys are between 23 and 30. The circulation area covers three counties and the paper has three bureaus. Most of the reporters average about 75 miles a day on the road and all of them are photographers as well as writers. Naturally, I told them I was an experienced photographer and miraculously came up with a picture the other day which was good enough for page one (see enclosed). I’ll have to buy my own camera later on, but we can’t worry about that now.
At any rate, all the boys I work with are young, smart as hell, from all over the country, and all on the way up. The Record is one of the best little papers in the country and one of the best opportunities there is. I like the whole setup immensely and, although I’m still a little uneasy about my fraudulent application, only an unusual set of circumstances will trip me up now because the Record would not wait until after the trial period to run a routine check on my background.
As it stands now, then, I have a great job at $70 a week and I’m sitting right on the launching pad for a job as a reporter on the World-Telegram. Frankly, I haven’t been in such a good position since I was sports editor of the Command Courier.
And now we come to the stumbling block.
As I said, I have to get a car or this job goes down the drain in about ten days. Ordinarily, this would be no problem. I could go to the bank and get a loan and pick up a good dependable car for $500 or so. But here’s what happens when I go to the bank: (1) I fill out an application—how old do I say I am? If I say 21 I take a chance—and it’s a damned good one in a small town like Middletown—that some comment about “this unusually young reporter” will get back to the Record management. That will be the end of the job. On the other hand, if I’m consistent and say 23 I put myself in the position of “obtaining money under false pretenses,” a charge I’d rather not face. Inevitably, the bank will ask for some identification and if they don’t someone along the line will and I’ve learned the difference by now between a good and a bad risk.