Fear and Loathing in America
Page 12
As for here, things are momentarily good. I have to keep my literary/legal life separate from the daily Woody Creek/Aspen reality … which involves a lot of shooting, drinking, talking, and general laziness until everybody else goes to bed and I have to get back to reality and the typewriter and my lawsuits and agents and lawyers and contracts and statistics on Standard N.J. earnings for the past ten years and trying to figure out why they’ve spent their money on one kind of research instead of another … and right now it’s 5:10 a.m. and I have to be in Rifle, 120 miles from here, at noon to see a man on this oil shale business, so I’ll say goodnight and sign off. Let me know what’s happening on that end.
Love,
Hunter
TO CHARLES KURALT, CBS NEWS:
Kuralt had just launched his “On the Road” feature series for CBS News when Thompson began mulling a run for elective office in Pitkin County, Colorado, which was fast filling up with rich weekenders and East Coast exiles—such as disgraced former secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara, whose new condominium in Snowmass Village, a pricey planned community just outside Aspen, had mysteriously burned down a week after he bought it.
May 9, 1968
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Charley …
Enclosed is today’s issue of the Aspen Times. None of it will make any sense to you out of context, but the context, I think, would make a hell of a good TV feature. What’s happening in Aspen is a total confrontation between the liberal-Jeffersonian-hermits who more or less colonized the place … and the New Breed of planner-developer-builder types as typified by John McBride, who wrote the letter appearing on page 5-C and who also works for the Janss Corp. at Snowmass—the instant city.
At the moment I’m wrapped up in the Oil Shale story, which doesn’t have much to do with Aspen at least on the surface, but I’ve had an article pending with Harper’s for more than a year, a sort of Aspen Saga, that I’m thinking of re-activating. The story is complicated on paper, but harshly apparent to anyone walking the streets and talking to the actors. It’s the sort of thing you’d like, I think—it’s the tangible rape of the old dream of “getting away from it all.” People who came here 10 years ago to find their own world are now being chased (or bought) out of it by developers from Oakland & LA & Chicago. Yeah, it’s the same old story … but it’s being played out here in very stark and dramatic terms. I think you could define it and lay it out in terms of the camera and words that fit. I could give you enough help to get you started, and I don’t figure you’d need any more than that. Actually, you could probably get a pretty quick and accurate word picture of the situation from [Eric] Sevareid. He did a piece last year on Hunter Creek, but that was a long-range abstract sort of thing that would apply to a lot of scenes … but since then the Aspen action has come out in the open, with screaming public meetings and court injunctions and physical beatings and a half-mad sheriff who was once a local thug and local architects working for west coast developers who want to build condominiums that will cut off the view of the mountain from the town despite the fact that Aspen’s sewage is polluting the river … and, jesus, it’s too much to try to scratch out in a letter. Ask Sevareid for the general background, but he won’t know the current scene because it’s just developed. He’s a friend of Bob Craig’s, who’s thinking of running for county commissioner this fall with the idea of getting the rape under control. I told Craig last night that I’m thinking of running for county commissioner myself—to present an alternative as it were, and besides that I think it might be fun. McCarthy got a nice ride out of that alternative thing, and he might even win. I’ll be satisfied to make waves, as a candidate or otherwise. I’ve been running from this plastic shit for years, and now the shitmakers are trying to run me out of Woody Creek and I think it’s time to play cornered rat. This is the nut of the story, & also the reason I thought you might like it. Melodramatically yours,
Hunter
TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
As the epochal 1968 Democratic National Convention drew near, Thompson was eager to secure the best press credentials to cover the scene in Chicago for his prospective book on “The Death of the American Dream.”
May 10, 1968
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Jim …
I just got the Spring 1968 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, which contains an article (“Find a press seat at the conventions,” pg. 24) that gives me every reason to believe that I should get moving on this at once. To wit: I want some sort of press credentials for the Demo convention in Chicago. I covered the ’64 GOP thing in SF as part of the WSJ/Nat. Observer team, and I know from experience that “press credentials” are largely what you make of them. I was thrown off the floor, for instance, with a valid Wall St. Journal floor pass—but when I returned an hour or so later with a stolen Pinkerton badge I was treated like a rich tourist. The same mean freaks who threw me out when I was a journalist welcomed me in the guise of a cop. (I’m still not sure how to evaluate that situation. I got the Pinkerton badge from a mutual friend of [Kentucky Democratic senator] Thruston Morton’s son, who (the friend) was hired and fired from the Goldwater60 palace guard within 24 hours and simply neglected to turn in his badge. But the WSJ floor pass, which I came by quite honestly, was virtually useless in terms of realistic access to people on the floor. And not just for me; other WSJ staffers had the same sort of troubles … and of course there was that scene with John Chancellor [of NBC] being dragged off.)
The point, at any rate, is that I’ll be at the convention in connection with the Joint Chiefs project (or the Failure of the Am. Dream, if you prefer), and I’ll need at least the facsimile of press credentials to make my way around. The real, honest-injun floor passes are like gold nuggets in press circles, but I think that a letter from you—on your own stationery and in your official capacity—might elicit a Random House floor pass for you or me or anyone else who felt any immediate need for being on the floor. If nothing else, a serious request for a floor pass would probably guarantee a second-level press ticket (which is good for everything on the floor except a reserved seat in the press hole).
But the seat itself is not important except that it commands a ticket that will allow the bearer to pass through the several gates between the public and the action. In other words, a 1-A press ticket at the convention is a pass to the whole action, but even a 4-B press ticket is good in the right hands. The only crucial prerequisite is to have something. I think the people who issue these press passes—a semi-sacred oligarchy called “the Standing Committee of Correspondents”—is pretty well aware that a valid press pass, in the hands of a quick-thinking reporter, is not necessarily subject to the restrictions imposed on it by a nervous committee of party press proctors. In other words, I think that any application for a blue-ribbon 1-A press/floor pass will result in some kind of password paper that can be parlayed into a ticket for any necessary purpose. I’m not sure what I’m going to want at this Demo convention, but the one thing I can’t do without is an ID card and a valid note for my presence—which is that I’m writing a book for Random House and therefore RH needs a floor-pass.
This is true; I could go to Chicago and spend all my time lost in mob scenes unless I have a ticket to the inner circle. I know this is true, on the basis of my experience in 1964. The press ticket is the opener to whatever doors it can breach … but without that original press ticket a man looking for answers at a political convention might just as well go to the nearest tavern and watch TV. The opener is the ticket—and that’s why I’d be very happy if your secretary could find time to request, in the name of RH, a single press ticket for the convention floor and all other press activities. We might even get it—since it’s only a single and the name on the request is Random House—but even if we don’t make the elite 1000 I think we’ll come off with a functional press ticket.
The first step, of course, is a quite official letter from RH to—I’d guess—the Democratic National Committee, desp
ite the fact that all press requests will end up in the hands of the Standing Committee of Correspondents. But I don’t think it would be good form to write them directly, if for no other reason than a deliberate lack of address. They’re not looking for mail; it’s a power center in the spirit of any Senate Committee … and with the same degree of power.
So if you could ask your secretary to apply, through the normal channels, for a Random House press pass at the Demo convention, I think we’ll eventually get what I need. According to the Columbia JRev., there are “only about fifty” 1-A floor passes available. But the truth of that figure is lost in the free-substitution ethic that prevails, due to obvious necessity, among the hundreds of press-types at every convention. What I’m trying to avoid here is the necessity of getting in line and begging for the momentary use of somebody else’s floor pass. And since I’m relatively certain that RH can root up adequate credentials by means of an executive-type letter, I think that’s the easiest way to handle this thing. If Esquire can get [junkie novelist] Bill Burroughs accredited, RH shouldn’t have any problem with me. Right? Write. And if you have any doubts as to the wisdom of my attending this convention, for christ’s sake let me know. I see it as one of the major power struggles of this era, and I want to understand it. So try to get off a note to the Nat. Demo Comm. Tell them that RH has moved to claim its own seat at the Animal Fair.
Thanks …
Hunter
… ah, shit …I just screwed up all my carbons, which happens every time I try to use both sides of a sheet, and that’s about once every two years, but Sandy has been screaming at me about “money awareness” these past few days, and this is the goddamn stinking result. I was trying to make a copy for Leon [Friedman] and a carbon for myself.
Anyway, the point of my grumbling about the lack of paperback exposure is that every major book-outlet that’s never heard of the H.A. book costs you a nickel for every nickel it costs me. And if Shir-Cliff has sold 650,000 copies at whatever bookmart in Maine he’s sending them to, I think it’s worth a stab at the national paperback market, or at least five copies to one rack in a major airport. It took me about an hour to search the racks at that huge bookstore in Denver, and after I gave up on finding a copy of H.A. I broadened my focus to include any Ballantine Book. I worked my way back—all the way back—from the front of the store where people were buying things, to a dingy half-shelf in the rear, about 12 inches from the alley entrance. And there, by Jesus, were six Ballantine Books … there was Flak Over Warsaw, as I recall somewhat dimly, and Good Japs Are Dead Japs, along with four others, all by the same author, [Arizona murderer] Winnie Ruth Judd. So I left that store by the alley entrance. And wrote Shir-Cliff a letter, the sixth in a series … and I’m only mentioning this ugly subject to you because I figure you like nickels in large quantity, and that maybe you can prod those people into taking at least a thousand-nickel risk now and then. It might even work … right?
Hunter
FROM CAROL HOFFMAN:
Illinois housewife and aspiring author Carol Hoffman so admired Hell’s Angels that she couldn’t help but tell its author what she thought of his book.
May 10, 1968
Tinley Park, Illinois
Mr. Hunter S. Thompson
c/o Random House, Inc.
457 Madison Avenue
New York 22, New York
Dear Mr. Thompson,
First of all, may I compliment you on the excellent job you did in compiling your publication, Hell’s Angels. I have the book in my personal library and it has been read and re-read for my own enjoyment. Your “associates” still intrigue me.
I am one of the nineteen million bored-to-tears house-wives in this nation! I am married and have three children, two boys, aged 9 years and 6 years. Then I have a charmer of a daughter, twenty months old! I thought I could battle the day to day tedium of my life by writing, so I enrolled in the Fiction Writing Course offered by the Famous Writers’ School in Connecticut. Evidently my “creative imagination” has “up and got lost” on me! I was a straight A student in high school and when I received my first two assignments in the mail and found them marked “C,” I was bitterly depressed. To me this is as good as failure! I don’t accept failure very well! I know your time is very valuable and precious to you, and I also realize that my request is highly irregular for the simple reason that we don’t know each other. But for this very reason, I would like to enlist your aid in this project of mine. My utmost intention is to pass this course with flying colors and the flag is at quarter-mast! I am hoping you can give me some general pointers and some moral support. Would you please?
Back to your swingin’ Angels!! These fellows sound wild and delirious! I realize there was some danger involved by just being around them, but, speaking for myself and several others I know, I envy you the experience and the fun you must have had with them. You must have had a perpetual ball!! I wouldn’t want to wish anyone any bad luck, but I have wondered what the proper, conventional, conforming people in this town would do if your Tiny, Magoo, Terry the Tramp, and Barger were just to cruise down the residential district? Just passing through, so to speak. They would die instant deaths!!!! The people, I mean.
I have only lived here for a year and a half, but I hate this town like rat poison. The Rock Island Railroad transferred my husband here from Des Moines, Iowa. Recently, I made a trip back to my old stomping grounds and I heard through the local grapevine that the Big Gun with the Hell’s Angels was in town. There was quite a lengthy story connected with the fellow and his unannounced appearance. But I won’t go into that here. Do you know anything that would substantiate such a rumor? Do you ever hear from any of those fellows anymore? Sometimes some firm and lasting friendships develop from experiences like yours.
I know this letter isn’t according to Hoyle61 and that society would frown on my nonconformity. I thought you would like to know that we people do read and yours was the best book I’ve read in months. Best of luck to you on your future publications.
Hoping to hear from you, I remain,
Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Carol Hoffman
TO STEWART UDALL, U.S. SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR:
Thompson had read in Newsweek that Stewart Udall, secretary of the interior through the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, had proposed a government program to hunt down wild horses on federal lands and sell their carcasses for dog food.
May 17, 1968
Woody Creek, CO
Stewart Udall
U.S. Dept. of Interior
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. Udall:
I thought I’d be calling you this week in connection with a magazine length article on Oil Shale that I’m doing for the Los Angeles Times. I’ve spent the past two weeks dealing with people like J. R. Freeman, John Savage, Russel Cameron, Jim Smith and others, plus numerous phone talks and enough reading to convince me that nothing I might write would be complete until I’ve talked at some length with you. I’m sure you’re aware that you’re getting rapped from both sides on this thing … and as I see it that’s a definite recommendation. Keep in mind that Scott Fitzgerald couldn’t spell either. And George Sand62 had a thing for billygoats … so none of us is perfect.
Which brings me to a separate issue, and one that I found myself howling about today with Jim Smith. What in the name of a crippled half-mad jesus are you thinking about with this scheme (according to Newsweek 5/13/68) of auctioning off nearly all that herd of mustangs in northern Wyoming for dogfood? If this is the sort of thinking that permeates the Dept. of Interior—as manifested by the sub-human comments of those BLM [Bureau of Land Management] functionaries who worry about the grass these mustangs are eating—then I can’t help but wonder if perhaps there is something badly out of focus in the Interior Dept., or at least on that level on which major decisions are supposedly made.
It’s a bit of a depressing thing to know that the man who is capable of selling off the last of this cou
ntry’s wild mustangs for dogfood is also the man responsible for coping with the Oil Shale question. I’m sure that connection is as apparent—and as ominous—to you as it is to me. But what I really assume is that Newsweek got hold of that story before you did, and that you came up with the obvious solution just as soon as the problem was made known to you. Probably by now you’ve already decided to move those horses to some other place, right?
Or maybe you own a dogfood factory somewhere on the north edge of Georgia, or … well, there’s no end of connections in this world, but I guess you know that by now. The link between mustangs and Oil Shale is so weird that it could only be made under these circumstances, and at this accidental time. But as a journalist looking for something to start with—in terms of a point of view on the Oil Shale situation—I can’t help but wonder about what sort of man would sanction this Final Solution to the Mustang Question. How would that sort of man tend to deal with something as massive and subtle as Oil Shale?
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO ROBERT BONE:
Thompson had gotten to know photojournalist Robert Bone in 1958 when they worked together on upstate New York’s Middletown Daily Record and then at the San Juan Star. Bone was now living large in Mallorca.
May 17, 1968
Woody Creek, CO