Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
Page 66
Ok for all that. Keep in mind that I’m already with this one and will stay with it for the duration. As for the non-student thing,12 I’d like to do it and I think I could do it well, but I can’t guarantee the performance until I see who I get in the way of informants and examples. Unless you have somebody else in mind, why not send the material along. By the time I get it I’ll have found—or not found—the people I need for the story, and a look at your material should give me a good idea what you have in mind. I would only work on a story like this if I were sure we’re both talking about the same thing. Otherwise, it would only be frustrating, and if I’m going to be frustrated I may as well work for Life or Look and get paid for it.
Once again, I’m not haggling over prices. If I thought you could pay $500 for an article I’d damn well demand it, but unless I’m totally misinformed, that’s not the case. On the other hand, when I work a week or two for $100 I think I should have the luxury of being pleased with what appears in print. I liked the galley version of the Hell’s Angels piece and I look forward to seeing it in the book. But until your last letter I had no real idea whether I’d written the sort of thing you wanted, or not. On that front, I think we’re both thinking along the same lines on this non-student thing. Either way, let me know. I’m inclined to do it, so unless you have another writer in mind, let’s give it a whirl.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO DON COOKE:
Covering Kesey for The Nation, Thompson offered his first impression of La Honda and the Merry Pranksters.
May 2, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Cooke—
Whether it’s gratuitous or not I have to insist you read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Reading it gives a man faith that the Combine is still buying madmen’s work, and if so, what do you think?
Along these lines I was down at Kesey’s house in La Honda last night, bearing witness to one of the strangest scenes in all Christendom—a wild clanging on tin instruments on a redwood hillside, loons playing flutes in the darkness, mikes and speakers planted all over, mad flashing films on a giant trampoline screen; in all it was pretty depressing—that a man with such a high white sound should be so hung up in this strange campy kind of showbiz. He MC’d the whole bit, testing mikes and tuning flutes here and there as if one slip in any direction might send us all over the cliff in darkness. Like a kid’s home circus, a Peter Pan kind of thing, but with sad music somewhere up in the trees above the kiddie carols. I drank twenty beers and left sadly sober, remembering Mailer going off that diving board in Las Vegas and all those guys in the press room laughing at the fat boy with the ping-pong snorkel and the fat hips that he tried to roll like Brando, but couldn’t. Then halfway back to the city with Sandy asleep on my lap I suddenly went blind drunk and came twenty miles along cliffs in what they call the Devil’s Slide area not knowing from one minute to the next when we might go off and down like a rock to the surf.
It’s bad on the nerves to see a toughass in quicksand, and if you read the Cuckoo book you’ll know what I mean. Here he was last night, the Kooky King of the Woodsy Beatniks, orange jacket and headphones and bossing it all while I kept waiting for him to grin and look sane for a minute but he never did. It reminded me of me in some of my worst hours, and the only excuse I could make for him is the one I make for myself—why bother to make it right when nobody knows the difference anyway? But there’s always some shithead around who does, like me last night, and you now and then when I get sloppy, and sometimes Sandy when she’s wearing her glasses. Ah, if I could tell you about the girl I saw tonight, and she went off with a commercial artist from LA, a guy with a white rolled collar and a line like say baby, let’s me and you etc..… christ I need a long hill and a cold morning sun to get myself tuned again. I wonder if this writing to get famous isn’t probably like working to get rich, or all the other shit they tell you at Bauer’s (Louisville) and P. J. Clarke’s (New York) and the Buena Vista (San Francisco).13 Maybe the only human way is to go off and chop your own score and just leave it somewhere and let whoever finds it figure it out. But that’s a pretty tough way to go out, to win by a nose with nobody watching and no press around to tell the world by god here’s a man who beat it and let’s give him a hand and maybe a prize or two. I think that might take a third ball.
Yeah, and I weakened at the last moment yesterday and went roaring off to a good horse bar and watched the fucking Derby with all the other hard losers and, like I predicted, one of them even bought me a drink, and without me even having to tell him I was from there. A guy I talked to tonight said he’d lived in twenty-one towns for the first twenty years of his life and now when he got homesick he didn’t know where to call home. I told him he didn’t know how well off he was but he didn’t know what I meant.
Ah, that girl, that fine beautiful little human package—from Warwick, New York, of all places, up by Semonin’s old cabin where I nearly died one night when that scooter went down on a wet road. I still see those sparks when I think about it; all the while it was going over I kept telling myself no daddy this ain’t happening to you just lean a little bit and pull it back up again, but we kept going over and the metal was grinding off with all those sparks and then zango, all black and no hurt at all. I think that’s the way to go out, running the Big Sur highway on a big cycle with no lights and keep turning it over until the engine goes off in a wild scream and on one of the curves you keep going straight over, then turn on the headlight for the surf, and hold tight.
Well, I just wanted to send this note because it seems in my mind that I sent a shitty card or letter the other night and I thought I’d get this to you before it had to look like a reply or a comeback of some kind for anything you might already be sending. Your guns, as it were. I don’t claim to be invulnerable, but the one thing I insist on is that I can’t be croaked except when I give the word.
OK for now, and sorry if my letter sounded ugly but I couldn’t figure out which of my earlier things you were calling gratuitous because that’s one of those words you could call almost anything and for all manner of reasons. Anyway, send one of your drafts and let’s see what you’re up to, for good or ill.
HST
TO DAVE HACKER:
Thompson’s friend Hacker, editor of the National Observer, was in the hospital, recuperating from a heart attack.
May 3, 1965
San Francisco
Dear Dave:
[ … ] Things here proceed worthlessly. My total income for the year thus far is $500. Needless to say, that virtually cuts booze out of my budget. It’s my private suspicion, by the way, that you wouldn’t have had any troubles if you hadn’t given up booze. It tends to flush out the system, including the arteries—no matter what the quacks try to tell you.
I sent Tom Wolfe one of my drunken, night-life postcards the other night, offering him the use of my private army in his fight against the fags, but he will doubtlessly toss it off as the work of a loon, so I’ll count on a look at your material whenever you can send it. Needless to say I’m all on his side but I don’t want to come out publicly, as it were, until I’ve read the piece(s). He writes so close to the edge at times that it wouldn’t surprise me if he strayed into bad excuses now and then, but so far I’ve never seen any evidence of that. I’ve already asked Cliff [Ridley] for a shot at his book, coming out soon, and definitely look forward to it.
My recent work here has dealt with topless dancers, garbage in the bay, marijuana, karate and a generally non-publishable hellbroth of vagrant interests made possible by the part-time work of my faithful wife. Last night, in the course of my research, I smoked off a large reefer and went groggy for something like 12 hours. It was like drinking a gallon of stale beer, the same effect. I’ve never had much use for the stuff, mainly because it’s never done anything to or for me—even in pipeloads—but last night’s action was my last. I am lazy and unproductive enough on my own hook, without th
e help of a weed.
Anyway, I’m sorry as hell to hear about your heart thing, but like you say, it doesn’t sound real dire. It seems to me that they could just lift out that fatted-up section of the artery and replace it with something synthetic. I think the quacks have a vested interest in keeping us all scared half to death. My advice to you is get out of the hospital and whack off a bottle of John Powers Irish; that should get the life-juices flowing again, and knock out all the stops. For the moment, you sound pretty lively, although I can’t say much for your handwriting. I knew something was wrong with you the minute I tried to read the first paragraph; it looked like the work of a man far gone with delirium tremens.
In closing, all I can say is don’t let the bastards scare you. We are tougher than they want us to think.
HST
TO RICHARD SCOWCROFT, STANFORD UNIVERSITY:
Ken Kesey and Dick Elman had told Thompson that Scowcroft gave grants to aspiring writers.
May 13, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dick Scowcroft
English Dept.
Stanford Univ.
Palo Alto
Dear Mr. Scowcroft:
I’ve been putting off writing you because my letters have wrought more ill than good, recently, but after a bit of a layoff I figure it’s time to take a chance again.
Dick Elman suggested I contact you regarding the possibility of gaining funds to keep The Man off my back while I rewrite a novel called The Rum Diary. All he said was that you “help give out money for creative writing grants.”
I would certainly like some and could put it to good use. At the moment I’m free-lancing as little as possible while trying to turn out as much fiction as possible after a long layoff—nearly three years. For a year and a half of that time I was the National Observer’s accredited correspondent in Rio de Janeiro. Then back to Colorado, mainly for the Observer. I just sold a piece on the Hell’s Angels to The Nation and I guess it will run soon. And I’ve sold articles and fiction to Rogue, although that was a long time ago when I was living in Big Sur and doing the first draft of The Rum Diary. I’m 27, married, one child, broke, holder of many pawn tickets, fighting eviction, etc. I guess you’ve heard that story before.
I’ve never given much thought to grants but now that LeRoi Jones has a Guggenheim I have to consider the possibility of a new era, for good or ill. So if you’re sitting down there on a bundle of loose cash I’d appreciate any and all advice as to how I might lay hands on some of it.
Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO SARA BLACKBURN, PANTHEON BOOKS:
Blackburn, an editor at Pantheon (a division of Random House, Inc.), had expressed interest in publishing “The Rum Diary.” The “fringe book” she suggested Thompson write eventually developed into Hell’s Angels.
May 17, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dear Mrs. Blackburn:
Thanks for your letter of the 12th. I was beginning to think the FBI had put a seizure-type mail watch on me. After my last letter to Lyndon I see no reason to believe I am not under constant surveillance; the next time he comes to California I expect to be locked up for a few days.
And be all that as it may. I was pleased and somewhat puzzled at your “fringe book” suggestion. I’m not sure what you mean. The idea interests me but I’m leery of actually saying “yes” because I have no idea how you people work in the area of expenses. In the past I’ve agreed to do articles that simply cost too much. Nearly all of them, in fact. So if I seem a little uneasy here it’s not because I don’t like the idea but that I’m not sure what grounds we’re dealing on.
I could, for instance, do an outline for a book on Hard-Rock Diggers, Carny Hustlers, Braceros [migrant workers], Hell’s Angels, Aspen Philosophers, free-lance foreign correspondents, ski bums and Kentucky Mountain disc jockeys—but that would cost a hell of a lot of money and require a bit of travel. I know because I’ve been there, as it were, and I know who pays for the drinks when a writer shows up and starts buttonholing “fringe types” for information. The other way is to play it like John Howard Griffin when he wrote Black Like Me. But that wouldn’t be possible in a book dealing with entirely different types—and besides, as I said, I’ve already been there. And it’s no fun. (As a matter of fact I’m still there; on Saturday I was evicted, tomorrow I’ll sell a pint of blood for $10, and on Wednesday I’ll shape up at 5:00 a.m. to deliver circulars with a gang of winos for $.60 an hour.)
All I’m really getting at here is the question of who foots the bill. I see no sense in doing an outline for a book I couldn’t deliver. But if you’re willing to pay my expenses for a while, that’s a different thing—and it would also be a giant factor in determining what kind of book I could do.
The nut of it is that I’d very much like to do the sort of book I think you have in mind, but I can’t possibly do it on my own hook.
As for the novel, I completed it three years ago and now find it generally embarrassing. What I’ve been trying to do for the past few months is rewrite it, but every time I get settled down to the job I have to zip off on some wholly unrelated article, just to pay the rent. So again, the problem is funds. My angst is permanent, I think, and I’ve learned to live with it.
The novel, however, will be finished sooner or later. There is no real question on that score—although now and then I have my doubts and that’s when the angst really bothers me.
There’s a possibility that I could send all or part of it to you for a quick look, but I’d have to go over it again to make sure I want it read at all. Parts of it are fine and require little work, but other parts are worthless—such as the first 100 pages. I am also starting up a new one, a very different thing, which began from a phrase in a letter: “… a telegram to the right people, explaining my position.” I could send a few pages of that too, but they’d probably frighten you.
In all, I think the best bet right now is The Rum Diary, although I can’t really tell about the “fringe” thing until I know how you operate on expenses. It might be that a “fringe” book would buy me enough time to finish the novel. Or perhaps someone will simply send me a barrel of cash; I have a secret faith that this will happen—like Gatsby and his goddamn green light. And you know what happened to him.
So … send a line and say how it is on your end. Keep in mind that I’m interested and even eager to get dealing on something, but my position right now is like that of a man being carried off by wolves and shouting to his poker companions: “Go right ahead boys, deal me in, I’ll be right back.”
Or, like Bobby Cleary14 was telling me that night in Missoula: “That’s the way it goes, first your money, then your clothes.”
And that’s my wisdom for tonight. What’s yours?
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO CLIFFORD RIDLEY, NATIONAL OBSERVER:
On May 2, President Johnson had raised the number of U.S. troops in the Dominican Republic to fourteen thousand to “prevent another Communist state” from arising in the hemisphere.
May 18, 1965
San Francisco
Dammit Clifford, I’ve been sitting here for three hours working on a piece pegged generally to the Dominican situation, but no matter how good it looks I’m faced with a near certainty that you wouldn’t run it anyway, so I finally had to give up. Politically, it’s a pretty apolitical thing, based on my feelings that there should be no question as to whether this “revolution” is Communist-controlled or not. If we had competent ambassadors and political attachés in these countries, plus adequate press coverage, we would know the score without any doubt and avoid this general angst concerning the wisdom of our actions down there. I’ve read everything I can get my hands on from the D.R.—including Chew’s Embassy copy—and I’m damned if I know even now. My instinct, of course, is to assume that the 58 Communists are no more than a red herring, but on sober reflection
I know there’s a possibility that the revolution is in fact a front for a Castro takeover.
My argument is that we could avoid these quandaries by not waiting until the crisis breaks to figure them out. It’s on the day-to-day level that the Reds are beating us in LatAm. Hell, by the time they light the fuse they know how it’s going to burn, while we apparently don’t. So, as usual, we’re on the defensive, leaping from one massive reaction to the other—while the whole ugly business could have been headed off a year ago if we’d had a decently staffed embassy down there. Hell, when I was in Brazil I knew the names of any Communists likely to be part of a rebel command—and if I didn’t recognize a name I could find somebody who would. But not through the embassy, and there’s the rub. Now that I’ve started paying taxes I’m personally offended at the idea that some worthless clerk is being paid good money to sit down there in a plush office and do nothing at all. Of course the situation varies with the different personnel from one embassy to the next, and that’s what I was writing about before I gave up.
Well, what the hell. Is there any sense in my continuing to submit stuff? What happened to the A. B. Guthrie review? The Kurt Vonnegut thing? How do we stand on the money front? There are several things I could do for you but I can’t work up much enthusiasm for writing stuff I figure is going to bounce anyway. Have I been put in the “Crazy Red” file? I can’t find anyone who agrees with what I write or think these days, so I guess I must be getting closer to the truth. [ … ] I’m beginning to understand why Castro went Red, and the fact that I feel saner than ever probably means I’m losing my mind. Send word of some kind. Any kind. And also say if my (above) thesis interests you in the form of a piece.