Fear and Loathing in America

by Hunter S. Thompson

  And this would be OK, too—if I’d really ended the piece on that note. But I didn’t. I tried, in the end, to make some kind of sense out of all that wild garbage I’d been through … and to chop it off leaves me standing there at the end with a bloody axe in my hand and no apparent reason for the heinous crime I laid on those shitheads. Hell, I may be crazy as a fucking loon, but it seems only fair to let me testify.

  Beyond that—and also to spread the onus to your end—it seems to me that my new, revised ending gives the piece a sort of ethical context that elevates it above the level on which it now seems to exist—that being a wild-eyed, ho-ho axe-job on almost everything in sight. I’m not sure what kind of magazine you’re getting out, but if you’re looking for any kind of literate audience I think this Killy piece will go down a lot easier if they find some kind of rational light at the end of the tunnel. There is also the fact that, if anyone who reads it calls me a mean, half-bright asshole for writing what I did, I’ll naturally say that “Hinckle cut all the sense out of it.”

  On the other hand, if you run this new 2½ pg. ending, I’ll take all the blame myself. On the whole, the editing job was excellent—particularly since you were dealing with 110 pages—but cutting the whole ending was a trifle heavy, I think. Why run amok at the end?

  I trust you see the point—and to make things easier, in terms of space, I’ve marked up a few possible cuts on (galley) pages No. 6, 10, 13, 14, and 15. I’ll trade these chunks—or almost anything else, for that matter—for the 2½ pages I’m enclosing with this letter. We’ve labored this far with the fucker, so let’s finish it off right. Thanks.

  On other fronts, why haven’t I received any promo stuff for Scanlan’s? You’re the last person in the world I’d expect to launch a new magazine by word of mouth. Do you plan to solicit subscriptions? Do you understand the nightmare of trying to sell magazines off the newsstands? I’m on every goddamn mailing list in the world, but so far I’ve received nothing about Scanlan’s Monthly. Where is your head? If I were you I’d send out notices promising a freshly cut human ear to every charter subscriber … then announce to the NYTimes that you’ve hired an army of speed freaks to go out and get the ears. That will get people thinking … and a massive mail response, too. You should burst on the publishing world like a wolverine with a head full of Sandoz acid.

  OK for all that. As for that awful Moon-shot scandal, I’m sure you realize that Arco, Idaho is now buried under 3 feet of snow.9 They would track me down and chop me up like hamburger if I tried to lurk around for investigative purposes. We should wait till the snow melts—for photos, as well as sleuthing. Meanwhile, I have a desk full of awful revelations. I’ll sift them and send word. But for christ’s sake use my new version of the original Killy ending.

  Thanks again,

  Hunter

  TO TOM O’CONNOR, IRVING LUNDBORG & CO.:

  Thompson’s stock investments had not been doing well.

  January 20, 1970

  Woody Creek, CO

  Tom…

  The more I think about it, the more I become enraged at the idea of your taking a leisurely ski vacation in Aspen while the “investments” you made for me were going down the tube. Your casual stupidity leaves me in a bad hole. [Robert] Craig wouldn’t tell me where you were staying over Christmas & I was too distracted to hunt you down … but next time I hear you’re in town I’ll damn sure make the effort. I think we should discuss the idea that a broker’s responsibility begins and ends with his commission. What you need, I suspect, is a stiff dose of calcium in your diet … and we can talk about that, too.

  Sincerely,

  Hunter

  TO OSCAR ACOSTA:

  Taken aback by Acosta’s last emotional missive, Thompson denounced his friend as a “Mexican dunce with the morals of a goat.”

  January 20, 1970

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear Oscar …

  Your letter came on the same day that a friend who just made his first LP asked me what I thought about it. I told him (he insisted that I give an honest opinion) and he immediately freaked out and cursed me with all his heart. It’s the oldest goddamn story in the world. And I’m through with it. I don’t ask people what they think of my act—or my writing, for that matter—and my life is a lot easier, I think, for not going around asking for criticism. Even from good friends. (Yeah—I recall asking you to read that Gun article, but not with the idea of arguing with you if you said it was a heap of shit. My idea was that maybe you’d see some obvious flaw or contradiction that I’d missed from being too close to it … and as I recall you hit one or two things that helped.) Anyway, the next thing you send me I’m going to praise to the fucking skies—no matter what it is or says or isn’t. Maybe you should send your stuff to [Tim] Thibeau.

  As for my criticism of your “use of the mass media,” it seems to me that I was talking about your over-indulgence, not your “use.” That Xmas eve gig struck me as a fine idea and well done; it even got a big play in The Denver Post. But to follow it up, almost instantly, with a melodramatic “fast” struck me then—and still does—as very bad strategy. Maybe I’m wrong; maybe you got fantastic coverage out of it—I don’t know. But from my own POV, the Xmas eve thing looked like a legitimate story and the fast looked like a too-obvious PR shuck. A good reporter doesn’t mind being used, particularly if he’s basically sympathetic—but you have to keep in mind that nearly all journalists hold PR men in serious contempt. They cherish the illusion of their “objectivity” and they snarl at the notion that anybody can “use” them. Which is bullshit, of course, but it’s one of those Golden Rules they teach in journalism schools and it hangs on. Like the bullshit about Blind Justice they teach in law schools.

  Anyway, I can’t go into long arguments about law and journalism right now. I have a lot of crap to get done and I’m way behind—and seriously broke, to boot. Most of your letter seemed written for The Ages, as it were… and although I agreed with most of what you said, I don’t see much point in haggling about it. Nothing you can say is going to change my opinion of that screenplay you sent. There’s nothing wrong with writing propaganda, but you have to be pretty damn good at it before you can get away with calling it something else. And despite your disclaimers, Perla Is a Pig is a very different kind of writing from that screenplay. PIP is a good story about real people; that other thing is hung up on racial & cultural symbols.

  And so much for that. Random House is on my ass very seriously for not sending them a book ms., and I have to get at it. In closing, let me suggest that you look back at your carbon of that letter (to me) and ponder graf #2 on pg. 1 … the insane implication that my deliberate refusal to render advice caused you to take 150 acid trips and destroy your mind. Just read it over and ask yourself how it sounds.

  And before you start writing a “collumn” for the LA Times, you should at least learn how to spell column. (See what kind of things journalists notice?) Cheap shit … but that’s the way they think.

  Other last-gasp notes: Most of what you said about my scene out here is true … and the mindless isolation worries me to the point where I plan to get out of here before next winter. But I want to try to get this house nailed down first—because I want to have a place where I can live like a human being when I get tired of all the screaming bullshit that comes with trying to change a nation of vicious assholes. That’s what I meant by saying you should get hold of a hillside somewhere—not as a solution, but a potential refuge from solutions. You already seem half-mad from running around the streets with a head full of acid, with no address & getting constantly fired … but those are all details; the real problem is that none of it seems to be doing your head any good. You’ve got yourself so wired up with that Jesus-complex that you cause more problems than you cure. …(Well, that’s a bit heavy and I don’t mean it to be ugly—but that Jesus thing is very acute in your case; your letter reeks of it.) And shit, maybe you are Jesus … and now, looking back at your letter, I see no
point in trying to argue with you. (Now I see your final pronouncement about “Mankind is Doomed. Period.” Which is true—and all the more reason for trying to save at least a small chunk, instead of insisting on the destruction of the whole thing because they won’t give you credit for saving it all.) But I learned a long time ago that you can’t reason with preachers, so fuck it.

  I got a very depressed note from McGarr today. Why don’t you check on him—without your soapbox. He’s a good person & you don’t need acid to talk to him. You have to realize that you come on very strong with most people & most of them don’t need it. They have their own problems. The only exception I can think of offhand is me. I don’t have any problems. OK … Hello to Socorro … and, as always, send mescaline. Ciao …

  Hunter

  Enc. 2 caps mesc.

  TO BILL CARDOSO, THE BOSTON GLOBE:

  Scanlan’s looked promising enough that Thompson suggested to talented friends that they write for it, too.

  January 29, 1970

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear Bill …

  You really ought to get out of that fucking Boston & into someplace where culture is happening. I’ve been brooding over my copy of [Frederick Exley’s] A Fan’s Notes for more than a year—pushing it at the bookstore and that kind of shit. It’s a terrible fucking book—breaks every conceivable rule, etc.—for some reason it’s one of the best things I’ve read in years.

  You should try your own kind of weird writing on Scanlan’s Monthly. They would dig an anonymous piece (or at least unsigned) by a big-time journalist who went to Israel and spent all his time with Mandy Rice-Davies and a bunch of dope-crazed Arabs. If you could do the whole piece in the same style of your 2 grafs in the letter, it would be a zinger. I could probably sell them on the idea if you want to do it. They’re running a weird show down there in NY—a madhouse of some kind, with edit rooms in a converted ballroom above a pub near Times Sq. I called them last Sunday at midnight & the office was full of people, all twisted. God only knows what kind of magazine it will be. I hate to say it, but there was talk of cutting the Boston airport lead off the Killy piece; I’m fighting all cuts, but with a 110 pg. article my position is untenable. The first issue should be out around March 1.

  I was kidding about writing a column—or maybe I wasn’t. If I can’t get this book done I’ll be out on the street looking for work. Your letter gives me the fear—maybe I’ll really get to work. Hopefully I can get onto a schedule of working six days a week and totally amok on mescaline every Sunday. For the past month or so that’s been my act: Loading up on Sat nite, locking the doors, building a huge fire & turning up the amplifier—wiring headphones to the bed with strange lamps burning and humping myself to a frazzle. Try mescaline—I recommend it highly. Or have I already said that?

  A friend of Lee Berry’s showed up today, looking for a cheap house. I killed him with a double-strand spear gun & the dogs cleaned his bones almost instantly. Berry is OK; he’s in NY now. Try him again sometime—after he gets rid of that Italian hair-do. OK for now; I have to get back to work. Hello to Susan …

  Ciao,

  Hunter

  TO VIRGINIA THOMPSON:

  Thompson reflected on his youngest brother’s difficulties finding meaningful employment in Kentucky.

  January 29, 1970

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear Mom …

  Sorry to be so late getting back. Bruce Innes & his band have been here for 2 weeks & the chaos has been worse than usual. I’m also into a money bind—not gut-serious, but constant mounting pressure to “produce” a new book, and it keeps me in a sort of muted rage at all times.

  Jim’s situation sounds grim, although not a hell of a lot worse than mine at age 20 …remember that letter I wrote you when I got fired from the Middletown Daily Record right after I bought the Jaguar? But maybe Jim’s scene is different—if only because he doesn’t seem to have any idea what he’d even like to do, much less what he can do. At that point I at least considered myself a writer. The situation with his friends sounds bad, but maybe he’s just growing away from them a lot faster than I grew away from mine. By age 25 I no longer had anything to say to my old friends in Louisville; maybe Jim is just making the break a bit earlier. But actually I don’t know him or his friends well enough to even guess what the problem is.

  It sounds OK if he wants to come out here in May. Probably June 1 would be better, or maybe not—depending on the weather. It’s hard to have anyone here when it’s cold outside, because we can’t get away from each other & the snow makes the house a sort of fort & refuge. In the spring, once the sun gets a grip, there’s always plenty of work to do outside & our world expands about 500%. I wouldn’t want to commit myself for any length of time, since it’s entirely possible that it might get on my nerves. But he could come out for a week or so and maybe longer if it worked out. There’s a DIM possibility that I might be able to get him a job of some kind, but again that depends on what he feels like doing. And what he can do. What is his address in Lexington? I haven’t sent Davison anything either, but I have a pair of boots for him—and I’ll get them off sometime soon. Anyway, send Jim’s address. And if you talk to him, say I wrote and mentioned having him out for a week or so in the spring—when there’ll be plenty of work to do.

  Otherwise, things sound pretty good there. I hope drink isn’t a problem—and I don’t get the impression that it is. Unless there’s something serious I don’t understand about Jim’s situation, it doesn’t sound like anything to panic over. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll be able to see it more clearly after a week of having him out here. Meanwhile, I have to get back to work on this stinking book.

  Love,

  H

  TO EUGENE W. McGARR:

  Close since their drinking days in New York when both were copyboys at Time magazine, Thompson and McGarr had begun to drift apart after the Bronx native moved to Los Angeles.

  January 29, 1970

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear Gene …

  (I don’t recall ever having used that formal opening, but the tone of your letter leaves me no choice …) Anyway, it sounded sort of grimly honest—not exactly the kind of thing I’m accustomed to get from you. At least not in the mail. Right???

  I’m sorry my visit was such a bummer and in retrospect I understand what you mean. One of the reasons, I think, was that it was mainly Sandy’s trip. I had no reason at all for staging a $2000 freakout that I can’t possibly pay for (since I couldn’t justify the trip to Random House, they won’t pay for a cent of it)—but Sandy has been so generally depressed since that child-death thing that it seemed necessary to get her away to some weird and different scene. And it seems to have worked just enough to keep things level here. It was sort of a long-delayed mescaline honeymoon—an orgiastic Trip that got her back in my world for a while. She was beginning to feel seriously left out, I think, and blowing a Diners Club card is an easy way to stay sane—if that’s all it takes.

  Oscar cursed me too—for the same kind of reason, I guess. But what the hell? I behaved irresponsibly and perhaps inhumanely, but at least I spent my goat hours very pleasantly with my wife, and she dug it, so I have to say it wasn’t a bad trip from my own point of view. The child-death thing had gotten to her in a way that had me worried; she was getting very freaky about a lot of things, very depressed and not happy with life in general.

  But so much for all that. I had no idea that you were any more anxious to “make contact” with me than you were a year earlier, or the year before that. Or … etc. Now, reading your letter, I feel like a giddy asshole … or maybe not, because all you had to do was suggest that Sandy stay with Eleanor while we zapped off to one of the beach towns for a day of beer and babbling. You can’t expect to drop into a dope freak’s hotel room at the cocktail hour and get locked into serious talk. I had a vague feeling that you weren’t particularly happy with life, but I wasn’t about to grab you by the elbow and demand an explanation. That’s not
my style …

  … whatever else might be, and I really can’t say. I’ve always communicated with most of the people I call friends on two very distinct levels: One a sort of verbal fuckaround and the other … well … whatever the term is, you’re right in saying we haven’t been working that channel for a while. I don’t know why. I figured your mind had fused completely to your groin. Now, looking back, I think I understand you a little better than I used to. It’s an interesting subject and we should ponder it sometime—the notion of fucking as an outlet for frustrated energy. I’m sure a lot of people have written about it, but I haven’t read their works, so it still interests me. Personally, I find frenzied humping an excellent substitute for hard writing. My humping action seems to decline in perfect inverse ratio to the number of pages I write each night. But maybe I’m just weird.

  It’s also a fact that almost everybody I know—or used to know—seems hopelessly fucked up right now. Sending you that old Time mag. piece was no house-cleaning accident; I spent hours looking through trunks for the fucker. For my own reasons. I’m sitting out here in a deep and wretched funk, trying to write a book I don’t like and which makes no sense to me—but which I have to finish very soon or find myself screwed to the floor & back on the streets looking for a sportswriting job. It scares the shit out of me; the pressure is much worse than it was with the first book—which set me up for a guaranteed failure this time around. The only way I can beat it is by writing a goddamn brain-ripping beast of a book, but so far I haven’t figured out how to do that. And my brain gets a little knottier every 24 hours.