Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

by Hunter S. Thompson

  Despite the unholy chaos of the moment, I sense a leveling out in the near future. I am near the action, or at least near enough. A comeback looms. My only advice at this time is, never marry your mistress; it causes damage to the brain tissues, and puts a crick in the hump.

  As for future work, I believe it is up in the air. No sense telling you what I’m going to send, because I don’t know. It depends on the humours. But I will send something. And let’s get something made of that Denver business. I’d rather not have it hanging over my head, because there’s too much fresh stuff out here. Send word.

  In all sincerity, from the crude

  new desk of

  Hunter S. Thompson

  TO KAY BOYLE:

  Boyle, a renowned Bay Area writer and activist, had struck up a friendship with Thompson at a Native American rally in Tacoma, Washington. They would correspond regularly for a number of years.

  March 7, 1964

  Owl House

  9400 Bennett Valley Rd.

  Glen Ellen, California

  Dear Mrs. Boyle:

  Thanks for sending the Styron Report14; I read it and actually considered, for the first time, that perhaps I might drop the habit. Which really shouldn’t be too hard, with a pipe and cigars in reserve. Odd, how language can convince a man, where reason fails entirely. I am not sure what Styron is up to these days—a lecture on smoking seems a far cry from Lie Down in Darkness—and I’d definitely appreciate a chance to talk to him if he comes out this way. Has he turned against drink, too? I am trying to recall that quote from the bible at the front of LD [Lie Down in Darkness]; my copy is in Louisville, but I have another on order at the Aspen Book Store. The question would seem to be: Is life so valuable that we should give up flirting with death in order to hang around? I’m not sure.

  At any rate, I hope we can sit down with a bit of the Tulamore Dew sometime soon, and ponder these things. I didn’t mean to be flip up there in Tacoma,15 but you had a sporting look about you and I couldn’t resist a little buggery. It was, after all, a real bad show & needed a spot of something. A man never stoops so low as when he rises to the challenge of internal politics. Selah.

  OK, and thanks again for the report (commentary). Right after I started this letter my neighbor came down and asked us to visit with him for the purpose of celebrating his recent acquisition of $12,000 from television.16 It gives a man paws. I am still unnerved by the thing. It begins to look like the plumbers shall inherit the earth.

  If you find yourself in the midtown area on some afternoon, give me a ring at The Wall St. Journal. It’s not as bad as it sounds; I am there about 3 days a week, only in the afternoons.17 The rest of the time I work for The Reporter, which gives at least the appearance of a balance.

  Sincerely—

  Hunter S. Thompson

  TO PAUL SEMONIN:

  March 11, 1964

  Owl House

  9400 Bennett Valley Rd.

  Glen Ellen, California

  Dear Doctor Strangelove:

  Your mail is increasingly incoherent. The only spark in your last concerned the possible choice between Henry Luce and Kwame Nkrumah. I agree with you, but then I always did. Have we pissed off five years of our lives for that?

  Your fear of Cassius X18 puzzles me. You never explained it. Granted, he is a creature of the syndicate, but so was Sonny Liston. Where do you see the choice?

  And for shit’s sake stop calling me a “liberal.” I gave up calling you a Communist a long time ago, and the least you can do is return the favor. I might remind you that I now maintain an office at The Wall Street Journal—I gave the West Coast editor a terrible four-hour shock the other night by telling him about Fanon—so when the time comes to seek the high ground I guess I have a head start. But I am still writing for the white Negro press, alias The Reporter, and am considering a spot with the Saturday Evening Post.

  But for what you say—and what I hear of your clan—I don’t figure on taking to the hills anytime soon. You seem to be drifting further and further from mean reality. I sympathize with your general aims, but I think you have hooked up with the wrong crowd for the action. Your eagerness to pick a fight no longer interests me. I think you are talking to yourself for the sake of an echo. It has taken me a while to get a grip after my fat-headed success in Latin America, but now I figure I am much closer to the front than you are. I have, in fact, infiltrated the Dow-Jones Company, which none of us would ever have dreamed of doing, and have in the space of two weeks delivered a series of telling shocks. There is no sense trying to describe it—you would have to tag along and see. But you are over there trading back-slaps with people who never considered disagreeing with you. What you should do is get out and have a run or two against the Packers when you are out of shape. I go from Indians to Negroes to Defense money to Cubans to the population pox—and by jesus those bastards have a hand in everywhere. I have come to the point where I see no difference between functioning Fascism and functioning Capitalism, or, for that matter, functioning Communism.

  Your whole theory has only one flaw—you seem to have lost faith in the maverick, the man who can be convinced and thereby throw the switch on those both above and below him. He is a creation of this culture, the wise peasant, a man with a salary and enough leisure to ponder the alternatives, an enemy or an ally depending on what reaches him. But an essentially decent person. They beat hell out of Nixon here in California two years ago, and they are about to stomp Goldwater. The only thing they lack is something to vote for, instead of against. But Kennedy was killed, so now we sit in a limbo where the decent man has a variety of things to vote against, but nothing to vote for. As for me, I see no hope of taking any position in the coming campaign. Johnson is a punk, but look at the others. Punks to the last man. I’d vote for Bobby Kennedy out of spite, but not much else.

  Anyway, your position as I see it is nada. Your concepts have lost their fangs—for me, anyway—and I think you need a long shot on this side of the water to know just what the score is. Sartre might eventually be recognized as a prophet, but he will never get much done. He reminds me of Mailer, a good head gone obese. People like that abound in every age, but they never have much of an appetite for the ugly details of getting things implemented. They are heroes first, and punks later, and then heroes again when people have forgotten what real punks they were.

  As for Nkrumah, your comments seem to dodge the issues. I was never real worried about Time’s correspondent, but I was given some pause when The Redeemer nixed the Supreme Court and called a Trujillo-type election. As far as I’m concerned, they could give Time’s man the garrote, and I wouldn’t give a hair of a damn—but I wonder why you focus on such a minor issue in a weak attempt to make a major point.

  Since our last exchange I have heard from Cooke, Smith and Harvey Sloane. They all wonder about you—not out of malice, as you seem to think, but from an honest puzzlement. Maybe I’m wrong, but if you really have any quick message, I think you’d fare better trying to pass it to people who are willing to listen, and who would be real allies if you convinced them. I can hear you ranting now. But I guess you know how it always is with converts, and I wonder if you feel up to making any forays outside your friendly camp, and into the dirty reality of the world we all have to live in once our scholarships run out. Give it a try. And when you push out this way, I mean to have a better bed than I showed you in Big Sur—no meat hanging over it, and no blood dripping on the face. Right now I am living in an Okie shack, but there are several possibilities, and by the time you get back we should be settled.

  I’ll send a Dylan record within a week or so. When are you coming back? And what for? Joan Baez is so far ahead of you that you’ll be 40 before you catch up, and even then you’ll have to learn to sing like a nightingale. And I think poor ignorant Hudson has better sense than both of us together—but then that’s conjectural prejudice, eh? And I’ve made a real effort to be reasonable. In all, your belated comments are so far removed
from what is happening that I can’t find a context for them, and have no choice but to lay them aside as flotsam. You seem to know as much about what is happening here as I know about what is happening there.

  Why don’t you subscribe to Time?

  Yours for a focus—HST

  TO ELEANOR RAWSON:

  After reading Thompson’s article about the Aspen Mountain Strike in the National Observer, Rawson, a New York book editor, wrote to him, wondering whether he would be interested in authoring or co-authoring a book on Colorado ski bums.

  March 17, 1964

  Gen. Delivery

  Glen Ellen

  California

  Eleanor Rawson

  David McKay Co.

  750 Third Ave.

  NYC 17

  Dear Mrs. Rawson:

  I received your letter on the ski bum book and forwarded it to Ralph Jackson, “the king of the ski bums,” in Aspen. If he comes through with a bulky text, and if it shows real promise, I will attempt to whip it into presentable shape in no more than three weeks’ time. Otherwise, I have no interest in that business. But I will advise you if anything pops.

  As for other subjects, I’m afraid I’ve been a rotten correspondent. That ski bum thing was a sidelight, at best, and hardly worth a letter except that I told Jackson to do it. At the moment I am whirling in the black eye of chaos. I have been evicted for the third time in six months, my wife is ready to have god knows how many children (at any moment), and I have no home. At the same time I am supposed to be doing “political profiles of politically significant U.S. cities” for The Reporter, and I am also the West Coast correspondent for the National Observer. I am also trying to rewrite my world-beating novel, The Rum Diary. I maintain an office at The Wall Street Journal and my neighbors call me a Communist. A woman is writing from Bolivia, threatening to finish me off,19 and Marlon Brando has hired thugs to teach me a lesson. My brother is getting married and wants me to be the best man; my other brother is getting ready to quit me because I haven’t sent his Christmas present. Shall I go on …? I think not.

  Anyway, you asked at one time about “book-length projects.” Well it happens that I am a seasoned Latin America hand, formerly the Observer’s LatAm correspondent, and for the past year I have been under severe pressure to resume my previous duties. Which I may indeed resume, in light of the fact that my mother-in-law is scheduled to arrive at any moment. The moment of birth, as it were. I have told the Observer I will go to Mexico and do a handful of articles for them—probably some for The Reporter as well—and it dawned on me that perhaps a swing further south might be beneficial all around. Charley Kuralt, formerly CBS correspondent in South America, tells me I should write a book on the plane, basing it on my articles, which he likes. He says publishers are hungry for such efforts and will pay at once. To that end, I enclose some of my stuff from the last swing, and toss up the idea that we will need another swing to get it all up to date. Considering the glut of Latin America books now on the market—the Observer sends them to me for reviews—I can’t see any future in doing another heavy-handed, “sound-the-alarms” sort of thing like the ones I’ve been reading. Most of them are swill, badly written swill at that, and closer to fiction than fact.

  My idea when I was working down there was to keep as far from what other people were doing as possible. Or as far as possible from what other people were doing. So maybe a 200-pg. book of the same sort might be worth thinking about. Not so much an analytical tome, but a series of word photographs that will take Latin America out of the realm of economic graphs and political countries, populated by real people who defy the clichés that are constantly wrapped around them by visiting “journalists.”

  I enclose a bundle of old clips to illustrate my aim. The bundle represents about ten percent of what I have on hand, although most of it needs updating. If it grabs you at all, let me know ASAP. I plan to move out for Mexico the minute my mother-in-law arrives, and that would be a logical first step in the long haul around SA. In looking back on this letter, I see that I haven’t been real clear. What I have in mind is a small book, a series of vignettes—perhaps with explanatory material to bridge the gaps—on life and politics in various Latin countries. The idea would be to focus on a dimension that most politically-oriented writers never get to. It’s a hard thing to explain, but maybe this will help: Most LatAm journalists will leave from New York or Miami and arrive in Rio, Lima, or Buenos Aires within a handful of hours. But it took me six months, on horses, boats, jeeps and bush planes, to get from New York to Rio. And believe me, there is a difference. (See my Letters piece.)20

  Don’t confuse this idea with the ski bum thing. That was in essence a favor to a friend, who may or may not come through with something, now that the onus is on him. At any rate, I appreciate your long letter on that score. But what I am pondering here is a serious effort, which may or may not make money, but that is your end and I see no sense in worrying about it. I absolutely believe I can write the best book any American has done yet on Latin America, if only because I can drink with the worst of the drinkers and intimidate the sleaziest of the whores. This is not quite what the Alliance for Progress had in mind, but it is reality in South America, and somebody may as well face it.

  As for my novel, I have not sent it because I have not yet had time to even read it again, to see if it should be sent to a lady editor. Frankly, I see no hope in that area, although I suppose the Book Clubs deal mainly with women. I need more time to ponder it. Meanwhile, give me your thoughts on the South America thing, and if necessary you can reach me by phone at The Wall Street Journal newsroom in San Francisco. It’s on Market Street, but I don’t know the number.

  Sincerely,

  Hunter S. Thompson

  TO WILLIAM J. KENNEDY:

  Thompson couldn’t resist teasing Kennedy about his admiration for the fiction of Eudora Welty.

  March 22, 1964

  Glen Ellen, California

  Dear Eudora:

  I don’t recall getting any letters from you recently, but this is an answer anyway. I mean to tell you about myself; I am fucked up. The lad who agreed to rent me his house backed out when I arrived. Two other people backed out since then. Am I a nigger? What is it? Denne P. has turned out to conform very strictly to the somewhat harsh standards you set when you discussed him at our last meeting. It is another victory for your instincts. He is a good lad, and means well up to a point—but it is about the same point most people in Hollywood mean well up to. I am not so sure about this coast, but I mean to give it a try. It is so damn big and varied that something must grow here. But if I find it barren I mean to move on—probably the next spot is Mexico City.

  Beyond that, I am in the same condition here as I was in Woody Creek, only in less colorful and pleasant surroundings. I have no conversations except on chance meetings in San Francisco. Once a month, at best. My only hope is to make enough money to get to New York at once and run out my mouth to the detriment of the populace. I have just finished another masterpiece for The Reporter. They have treated me gingerly and I have given them the mad dog treatment. I believe it a decent outfit. Maybe. The Observer is decent, but I often wonder about their motives. Or maybe it is just my queries, but I detect a trend in the acceptance of frothy pieces and disinterest in meaty ones. With luck, I will be driven back to fiction.

  It is all a lost cause; the victory is to avoid bitterness. Maybe New York is the answer. Good conversation if nothing else. You know Rust Hills quit Esquire and went to the Saturday Evening Post. You might try Esquire now with some stories. Me too. Given a christian break here, I might find a place to set up my typewriter and level out. There is no question that I have honed my skills to the point of unbelievable sharpness. The thing I just sent The Reporter is razored from beginning to end—18 pages of perfect calumny.

  I understand you met Lee Berry.21 He was overwhelmed by you. I barely know him, but he seemed like a righto when I heard a bit of his talk. Like Brendan Behan
said about Oscar Wilde: “Good man yourself, Oscar, you had it every way.” By the time I cash in I hope I will have hidden enough of my rottenness so that somebody can say that about me.

  Aside from my random comments, I have nothing else to say. I have no home. I have an office at The Wall Street Journal in San Francisco, but it is likely to be taken away at any moment. I have a fat wife and a bad penchant for listening to bullshitters. What about you?

  HST

  TO JOHN MACAULEY SMITH:

  Thompson had become a father on March 24, 1964.

  April 2, 1964

  Glen Ellen, California

  JonMac:

  Your letter is old, but maybe you are still there. I just got back from a week in Big Sur, celebrating the birth of my issue, name of Juan. Healthy, male and noisy.

  We should sit down soon for a talk on areas. This California move was a disaster and I already miss Woody Creek more than I want to admit. This is a shitty place and I mean to move on at once; the ideal house we had went by the boards on the mindless whim of some Okie contractor, a friend of a friend of a friend. You got that?

  Anyway, I believe it is imperative to find out where the decent living might be had. I refuse to have my son grow up with a jukebox on one hand and a status register on the other. If I cannot find a decent place in this country I will go to Mexico. Anyway, I am bending my efforts in the direction of New York at the moment and hope to stop in on you for a talk. More on this when travel plans jell. […]

  Yours for a break, HST

  TO PAUL SEMONIN: