Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
Page 61
But there was an element of that in my thinking all the way from beginning to end. I recall standing on the floor of the convention when GW made his acceptance speech and actually feeling afraid because I was the only person not clapping and shouting. And I was thinking, God damn you nazi bastards I really hope you win it, because letting your kind of human garbage flood the system is about the only way to really clean it out. Another four years of Ike would have brought on a national collapse, but one year of Goldwater would have produced a revolution.
That’s my anarchist talking. But as a good, god-fearing, one hundred percent liberal American with nice common sense and a normal share of cowardice I would have voted for Johnson if I’d been eligible to vote. Which I wasn’t and that makes me happy. But I honestly think now that I wish GW had won. Maybe if we ever talk on this thing I can give you some ideas on your “violence in America” piece. Or maybe I already have. But I see your boys in the Congo are learning quick. And I had to laugh at your idea that the Algerians are shocked by “brutality photos” out of Vietnam. Just like I’d be shocked by a photo of a dead dog. What kind of stuff are you smoking, boy? Do you know what fucking country you’re in? Did you see any photos out of Algeria in those eight years? What in hell are you talking about? You seem to imply they are all gentle children with no eye for reality at all. I wonder how many people you deal with over there know Mr. Ford is giving you $6,000 a year to study them and write about their problems.
I suppose I should explain here that none of what I say implies a loss of faith in your brain or balls, but I can’t help but get excited when you throw that kind of hash at me. And when I talk with an ugly tongue I am talking to your political ear, hoping you can differentiate between a personal attack and a rhetorical judo match.
And that, I guess, is the problem. You seem at times to have lost that split-level vision you used to have, that thing that Hemingway called a “built-in, fool-proof shit detector,” which he claimed was the most important thing any artist could have. But what is art, really, but a good instinct for staying alive in your own alley? And maybe that’s not important. Maybe I’d be better off writing tracts for some Marxist-oriented union, or free-booze movement. At least I’d have drifted off to some kind of frustrated sell-out like a university cubicle, to pass their useless bitterness on to younger, less frightened souls.
Right now I suppose I am as pessimistic about your future as you seem to be about mine. I think we both know they are beating the bush for us in this country—subtly right now, but soon there won’t be any need for subtlety. “The System,” “They,” “The Establishment,” “The Power Structure,” call it what you will. It is all these fucks who smile on the TV screen, and when you talk about “the enemy” and say you’re going to get them, jesus, I wonder. Who’s going to get whom?
Well, I’ve got to get off this thing or I won’t be able to afford the postage to mail it. I appreciate more of what you say than I let on here, but you seem more interested in an argument than anything else and I just can’t see much sense in wracking my mind all this time just to knock you off balance for the next round. We are talking about different worlds. I envy your situation in that you seem to be comfortably lock-stepped with a consistent viewpoint, and for that very same reason I can’t take your talk as seriously as I could if I knew you were forging it yourself. You keep saying you have “found” something, and maybe you have, but if you’re really that hip I wonder why it doesn’t come across in what you say and write. Frankly, I take a lot of what you say on a faith that comes from knowing you, and not because of what actually comes across. I’m sure you’re honest, and god knows, your facts are right most of the time (or maybe it’s just your negative opinions that I agree with), but I wish you could tell me something more than to subscribe to the Liberator and get across the Bay and join the Free Speech Movement. I am snatching around for tools and you offer me cookies. This is a tougher world than that, and the biggest enemy of all is the face on the clock.
Yeah, I guess that’s more rhetoric. But I’ll have to wrap up now if I want to get this to you before December 15. I felt a hell of a lot better when I started this than I do now. We are not accomplishing much in this correspondence because our current frames of reference are so different. Yet I hope you keep sending your bullshit, if only because it smacks my brain. I just wish to hell you could convince me you are on to something real, instead of just another theoretical escape hatch from the Big Business, which is all too mean and private for your kind of public panaceas.
There is, in all, too much talk about this sort of thing. We are not going to solve the mad riddle by mounting long attacks on each other. Your comments on my pose have about as much effect as if I talked about your pose, and neither of them matters a rat’s ass. The main effect your attacks have on me is a quick, verbal anger that is obviously dead end. If you could just mix in a few specifics—that photo of you with the Ghana geisha was worth five pages of your political foam—we could handle this thing a lot better. I see no hope but to deal with you in person. I believe that’s what you’re hiding over there. My wisdom is too mean for you. Come back and pop a kid or two, then tell the world what it needs. Or wants. You are living right now in real luxury—and consequently, not with it. You are no more in tune with realities in America than in Algeria. You are a privileged specimen. Which is not at all bad while it lasts, but don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re a representative creature.
Nor am I, certainly, but then I know it. And when you tell me to get off to Berkeley for the sit-ins I say no thanks I think I’ll go out to the beach and run in the fog and try to stay human in the smell of my own sweat. In a world like this I want to stay as tough as possible and I’ve never derived much strength from sitting in a mob and chanting in unison. Which is not to say the Berkeley mobs aren’t right. They are. Joan Baez is over there telling them so. And if I thought they were as serious as they are noisy, I might even pitch in. And so much for that. Send word and your new address. I am on the verge of a boom-out. Dakar sounds good. Maybe Rio too.
As usual—HST
TO CAREY MCWILLIAMS, THE NATION:
McWilliams, editor of The Nation, had written to Thompson praising his articles in the National Observer. Thompson’s response marked the beginning of a fruitful relationship.
December 18, 1964
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dear Mr. McWilliams:
Thanks for your note; I think you are the only person in New York who reads the Observer—or maybe just the only one who admits it.
At any rate, I’ve been meaning to write you for several weeks, ever since Gene McGarr at NETV [National Educational Television] made the suggestion. Ever since the GOP convention the Observer has taken great pains to keep me doing harmless, nonpolitical stories and I am now casting around for other founts of cash. So your note was timely, as well as encouraging.
It is also a fact that I am leaving for the East on Monday. One of the stories I’ll do en route is a sort of “Saturday night in the Kentucky mountains” thing, which might also be a chance to get an Appalachia piece for you. By the time I’ve spent 65 hours on the train to Louisville I should be full of wild ideas, so if a Kentucky mountain piece of any kind interests you, send word at once: 2437 Ransdell Ave., Louisville. I’ll be there until just before January 1, then on to New York to stay with McGarr at 245 W. 104th. If I don’t hear from you in Kentucky I’ll give a ring in New York; maybe you’ll have time for a beer and some talk. Whatever comes of it, I like the idea of doing a thing or two for you. San Francisco is my base at the moment, but I’m not sure how long that’s going to be the case. New York always puts the itch in me and I’m just as likely to keep on going towards Dakar as I am to come back here and stagnate in this goddamn fog.
The Berkeley Free Speech Movement is another good possibility, but not until after the holidays. Then I think we’ll get more action. The New Republic’s piece this week was pretty thin.
Anyway, we’ll come up with something.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
Thompson took this photo when he spent a day with Marlon Brando in Oregon discussing Native American rights.
(PHOTO BY HUNTER S. THOMPSON; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
Spider magazine was the newsletter of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
(COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
Carey McWilliams of The Nation.
(COURTESY OF MST COLLECTION)
1. Julius Kambarage Nyerere, elected first president of the Republic of Tanganyika in November 1962.
2. Kwame Nkrumah, prime minister and president of Ghana from 1957–1966.
3. Jean-Paul Sartre’s introduction to Frantz Fanon’s The Damned of the Earth, which dealt with the uneven distribution of wealth. Fanon was a strong advocate of Pan-Africanism, refused to take sides in the Cold War, and wrote many important books denouncing imperialism.
4. William Brinkley, The Fun House (New York, 1961).
5. An explosion of a propane tank inside Thompson’s Woody Creek house had burned his face and arms.
6. Thompson had bought a coati-mundi as a pet at a Bolivian village market.
7. Mailer’s Esquire installments became The American Dream (New York, 1965).
8. Thompson wrote an article on a strike by Aspen’s ski patrol titled “And Now a Proletariat on Aspen’s Ski Slopes,” National Observer (February 12, 1964).
9. D.R.C. Brown was the president of the Aspen Ski Corporation and Paul Nitze was a distinguished U.S. financier/diplomat and a major investor in the Aspen Ski Corporation.
10. Dominican Republic president Juan Bosch, put in office in 1962 in the country’s first free elections in thirty-eight years, was overthrown a year later with U.S. approval.
11. Unbeknownst to Thompson, Fanon had died on December 6, 1961.
12. Eugene Burdick was a well-known writer and the co-author of The Ugly American.
13. Philip Burton, a wild San Francisco liberal Democrat Thompson liked.
14. William Styron had written an essay on the damaging effects of tobacco on health.
15. Thompson had gone to Washington State to write “The Catch Is Limited in Indians’ ‘Fish-In’ ” for the National Observer (March 9, 1964).
16. Denne Petitclerc had signed a contract to produce a documentary about the Rocky Mountain states.
17. Thompson maintained an office on San Francisco’s Wall Street Journal floor because he was the National Observer’s western correspondent.
18. Cassius Clay, later Muhammad Ali.
19. Thompson had made the mistake of inviting a Bolivian woman to America, promising her a green card. Once stateside, Thompson reneged on the offer.
20. The National Observer had published Thompson’s correspondence as “Chatty Letters During a Journey from Aruba to Rio” on December 31, 1962.
21. Lee Berry was a free-lance reporter from Albany Thompson had met through William Kennedy.
22. Cruse was an African-American critic and playwright who emerged on the civil rights scene in 1964. In 1967 he would author The Crisis of the Negro, one of the most important black nationalist texts of the era.
23. Max Ascoli was the publisher and owner of The Reporter.
24. Don Cooke had married Judy Booth, Thompson’s old girlfriend.
25. Thompson published his thoughts on Butte’s future as “Whither the Old Copper Capital of the West? To Boom or Bust?” in the National Observer, June 1, 1964.
26. Thompson had written “Living in the Time of Alger, Greeley, Debs” for the National Observer (July 13, 1964) while in Montana and South Dakota.
27. Thompson’s article “What Lured Hemingway to Ketchum?” appeared in the National Observer on May 25, 1964.
28. While in Missoula Thompson wrote two pieces for the National Observer: “The Atmosphere Has Never Been Quite the Same” (June 15), about student unrest at the University of Montana, and “Why Montana’s ‘Shanty Irishman’ Corrals Votes Year After Year” (June 22), about Senator Mike Mansfield’s consistent ability to get reelected.
29. Louis Lomax was a prominent African-American musicologist and activist.
30. Cooke’s wife, née Judy Booth.
31. The Louisville hospital where both Thompson and Semonin were born.
32. Howard Roark was the architect in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.
33. Eduardo Frei Montalva became president of Chile in 1964, instituting social programs and gradually nationalizing foreign-owned mining companies. Salvador Allende Gossens, a Marxist, succeeded Frei in 1970 with a third of the national vote.
34. Semonin had recieved a Ford Foundation grant to study African politics.
35. Nancy Fitzhugh was a close Louisville friend of Judy Booth’s who attended Smith College. Thompson had dated Fitzhugh when he lived in New York. He considered her another one of his “doomed lovers.”
36. Martí led Cuba’s revolution against Spain in 1895.
37. Hannah Boone Kirby was a Louisville debutante who had dated Butler and Thompson.
1965
SAN FRANCISCO IN THE WEIRD YEARS … PLUNGED INTO POVERTY, RAMMED THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS … FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL TO DRUG RIOTS, HELL’S ANGELS, FREE SPEECH, KEN KESEY, TOTAL VIOLENCE, TOM WOLFE, LSD 25, AND THE ELEGANT MADNESS OF ALLEN GINSBERG …
California, Labor Day weekend … early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Frisco, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur … The Menace is loose again, the Hell’s Angels, the hundred-carat headline, running fast and loud on the early morning freeway, low in the saddle, nobody smiles, jamming crazy through traffic and ninety miles an hour down the center stripe, missing by inches … like Genghis Khan on an iron horse, a monster steed with a fiery anus, flat out through the eye of a beer can and up your daughter’s leg with no quarter asked and none given; show the squares some class, give em a whiff of those kicks they’ll never know … Ah, these righteous dudes, they love to screw it on …
—Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels (written at 318 Parnassus, San Francisco, September 1965)
TO MOON FAY NG:
Just returned to San Francisco from a holiday train trek east, Thompson lodged a polite request with his landlord, who would now also be his new neighbor.
January 11, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dear Mr. Moon Fay Ng—
I understand from Mr. Westbrook in 320 that you are planning to move into 318A. If this is true, could I respectfully urge you to consider the possibility of laying down rugs in that apartment? The simple noise of a person walking comes through the floor like the pounding of a hammer and—by reverse conduction—the noise of my electric typewriter is likely to be extremely unsettling to anyone trying to sleep in the back two rooms at night. We have had this problem before. It is a lack of insulation against noise. Given the construction of the building there is no real cure for it, but rugs between apartments are a big help.
My difficulty at the moment is that I am working desperately to finish a book that was due before Christmas. It will take several more weeks but will be finished before February 1. Due to my schedule I work all night, every night at the typewriter—and I normally sleep during the day. My young son also sleeps each afternoon, but last week when there was activity in 318A neither one of us could sleep. I’m sure you don’t mean to be noisy and I apologize for mentioning this subject, but from past experience I can say for sure that neither I nor anyone else could live in peace in 318 unless something is done about the noise transmission problem. For instance, it is now 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday and I have been up all night, writing the book. This happens to be an unusual day and I won’t try to sleep until later, but if I tried to sleep now—as I normally do—it would be impossible due to the noise
upstairs. There is nothing unusual about the noise. I am sure it is only normal—just as my typewriter is normal—but in this building normal noise seems to travel a long way. It has all the makings of a very nervous situation that I would like to avoid, if possible. Since I moved here there have been two different families in 318A and I assure you the noise from upstairs was very severe in both cases. Just as it is now, in connection with your preparation for moving in. It is not so much a problem for Mr. Westbrook, because he works a normal 8-hour day and goes to bed early at night. But I recall when the Spanish-speaking family was in 318A Mr. Westbrook said he could not get any sleep on weekends.
Again let me say how sorry I am to have to mention this, but I think it is better for you to know. Even if I were to move out of the lower apartment you would have the same problem with the next tenant. The only unusual thing at the moment is my work schedule, which requires me to type all night for the next several weeks and try to sleep during the day. If I can be of any help in working out any solution, please let me know. Sincerely—
Hunter S. Thompson
TO EDITOR, TRANSATLANTIC REVIEW:
January 28, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Editor
Transatlantic Review
33 Ennismore Garden
London SW7, England
Dear Sir:
I have been informed that you are holding a short story contest for writers under thirty. My entry, “Hit Him Again, Jack,” is enclosed. I fully expect to win this contest and receive funds from you in the future. I am 27 years old and have published only one story, although I earn my living as a roving correspondent for the National Observer and am, as it were, a journalist of the first rank. I’m not sure just what you publish, besides stories, but if you think we can get together for any further business, by all means let me know. I am actively seeking new markets for both journalism and fiction. At present my situation is desperate; I urge you to be quick with the funds.