Fear and Loathing in America

by Hunter S. Thompson

  Anyway, my new lead takes off from a private conversation between me & Vare about whether this battle is worth fighting any longer (which gets into the “Is the country fucked, too?” argument) and also our reluctant plans for coping with what looks like an almost certain Mayor/Council election in May. So the dialogue of the lead involves both our loss last November & our private argument about whether to try again—in Aspen or anywhere else. I’m totally convinced that this argument has far-reaching national ramifications …because it’s beginning to look like the ’60s gave birth to a whole generation that now has no place to go—or at least no obvious place, and in truth not even a real direction. I was living 2 blocks above Haight Street in the spring of ’66 & I remember that sense of a whole new world taking root—but in retrospect that era seems more like a speed-laced acid trip than anything real, and since then not much has worked out. The movement to rural communes went limp pretty quick … although now I suspect we might be heading for a really massive “flee the cities” movement. Not to communes or anything formal—just out, a serious panic trip in any direction.

  Maybe even Aspen—which gets back to the theme. We tried to run the opening wedge for a New Boondocks program … but we blew it. So I guess the next section should deal with why & how we blew it: Our mistakes in strategy, direction, organizing, internal squabbling, etc…. All the stuff that combined to get us stomped at the polls. (And despite all the points we made & the chance of a new direction we may have created, I guess A. Rock has a point when he says “the first business of a politician is to get elected.”) Which is true, I guess—but it sidesteps the question of why? And it also misses the whole point of the Aspen campaign—which was that we ran the public line between the necessity for winning and the weird possibility of winning on our terms.

  That was the only thing that made the Aspen campaign worth the effort. Hell, any shithead can win. Look at Nixon. To him, the end justifies any means. But our idea was that maybe the means could be the end …The Concept is the solution. If the idea had been to simply unseat a stupid backwoods sheriff, I sure as hell wouldn’t have shaved my head & flooded the town with posters showing a double-thumbed red fist clutching a peyote button.

  But … so much for all that. The fact is that we ran what the NY Times called “the most bizarre political campaign on the American scene today” and, despite all our mistakes, disasters & panic-trips, we wound up winning the city of Aspen and only losing the county by a 45/55 or so split—against the combined muscle of both major parties. In other words, on Nov 4, 1970, “Freak Power” was the largest & most powerful single political voice (or tangible vote-bloc identity) in Aspen & in fact the whole county … and I think this is worth pondering.

  Anyway, the piece should move from the opening Vare/Thompson conversation inre: Freak Power here & elsewhere…to the May election & brief prospects … to the Big Question (fight or flee) & a brief discussion of that (in the context of the ’60s) … and then back to the Nov. election and a detailed account of our mistakes … along with heavy emphasis on the fact that we won the city & only lost the redneck county because of a last-minute GOP/ Demo trade-off.

  So in essence that leaves me with all kinds of options, once I get the lead done. And the ending, I guess, should focus on the “what next?” question. In Aspen & elsewhere. Or: “An Epitaph (?) for Freak Power.” Something like that. Or, Where do we go from here?

  OK for now…

  Hunter

  TO LYNN NESBIT:

  As usual, no matter how hilariously jangled an account he sent to his agent, Thompson couldn’t hide the fact that he was on top of every one of his projects.

  February 22, 1971

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear Lynn …

  I need advice at once. My priorities are becoming badly scrambled. The other night I found myself roaming around my house in a crowd & wondering who might be good for the price of a pack of cigarettes while Billy Hitchcock’s7 girlfriend is cooking up a pot of peyote tea on my stove and Jann Wenner is on the telephone screaming at Gates Lear Jet in Denver trying to charter a plane to LA at once because he (Wenner) can’t communicate with Bob Rafelson who’s too stoned to remember where he left (or put, or sent) his Lear Jet that he just flew in on … and all this is happening in the kitchen while Arthur Rock is having some kind of public crisis in the living room wondering out loud whether to put a million dollars behind McGovern along with his partner Max Palevsky who seems to own not only Xerox but Rolling Stone & just about everything else in the fucking world except enough mescaline to get thru the nite on … and the instant Wenner gets off the phone it rings & here’s Clancy & Hinckle both crazy drunk at the Plaza trying to sell Scanlan’s to Rock for a massive tax loss and Rock is so stoned he thinks it’s [New York Mayor John] Lindsay calling him for money to fight Muskie & McGovern … and somebody says, “No, it’s Max demanding drugs” and meanwhile Clancy is shouting “It’s all over, your money is doomed.” And all I can curse him for is being drunk & Irish or maybe Jewish, or at least a lawyer … and suddenly people are yelling “Hang up! Hang up on that bastard!” Which Clancy hears & goes crazy with rage because he thinks they know he’s calling … but actually nobody knows who’s calling, or cares, but they want to call a doctor because Rafelson has freaked in the kitchen & fallen on top of a huge sleeping Doberman, which has bitten him & drawn blood … and Rock is screaming “I knew these goddamn dogs would turn on us sooner or later!” And my wife is crying because somebody poured the peyote tea into the chicken curry …and the minute I hang up on Clancy, Wenner yanks me aside & says “Look at this”—which is a list of inoculations I have to get before leaving for Saigon on June 1, and it occurs to me that I might as well start right then by shooting up with that fine chicken curry tea … but at that point I’m still trying to be reasonable, although Noonan the mad Coroner8 is slobbering over Rafelson’s wound and suddenly the phone rings again & this time it’s Oscar Acosta in East LA, screaming that the Pigs have surrounded his house & are about to finish him off with mustard gas … and just then the door opens & some freak rushes in yelling, “We need a thousand dollars at once for the lawsuit.” Which is a lawsuit to tie up the Aspen city govt. for the next two years, guaranteed chaos & civic/fiscal collapse … and just then I remember that I haven’t paid the electric bill & the lights might go off any minute & I don’t have any kerosene & now all three Dobermans have gone wild on the smell of blood & the noise is so bad that I have to hang up on Oscar & leave him to his fate and …

  … Well, why go on? That scene is pure fiction, of course. It could never have happened. Especially in writing. And to that end I suspect you should bury the first page of this letter. All I meant to convey, when I started, was a sense of stone-mad helplessness in a scene so weird that it’s hard to understand how the host to all that craziness could be too broke to buy a pack of cigarettes. So let’s chalk it off to fiction, for now, and focus down on a few facts. To wit:

  Wenner wants me to become a “Contributing Editor” of Rolling Stone. Which seems fine to me, but I’m not sure what it means in terms of money, obligations, time, problems, advantages, etc. I deliberately avoided talking specifics with him, until I could find out what an arrangement like this would mean in terms of contracts & that sort of thing. For instance, my first assignment would be to spend six months in Vietnam, covering the U.S. retreat in a series of articles that would eventually become a Rolling Stone book. I said Fine, because it’s a story I’d very much like to work on … but I hesitated to commit myself to a book until I talked to you (although I asked John Sack9 about it & he said “no problem”).

  Anyway, that’s just one loose end. Another is a piece that I originally did for Scanlan’s called “The Murder of Ruben Salazar” (the Chicano journalist killed in LA—by the cops) that Wenner now wants to buy for Rolling Stone, along with a week’s worth of up-dating that it definitely needs. We didn’t mention any price on this … although what Hinckle had agreed on was $1200 to me
and $300 to Acosta for the legwork (the piece was bought, edited, set in type & sent to the original printer, but by the time the goddamn thing got printed finally in Montreal Hinckle had dropped both the Salazar piece & another by Min Yee in favor of his (Hinckle’s) introduction. Which is neither here nor there; I only mention it to give you some background).

  Which leads me to another problem, of sorts. At some point in the midst of the election madness I agreed to do an “aftermath” piece for Rolling Stone—which I never really did, although about six weeks ago I sent John Lombardi about 200 photos & 140 pages of first-draft text that I was essentially writing for the Random House book. The text began with my Scanlan’s-commissioned coverage of the America’s Cup yacht races last September & then jumped to Aspen & the madness of the Sheriff’s race. I wrote it that way because—as I told Silberman—I intended to open the book with a quick America’s Cup scene and then run through a series of flashbacks (50,000 or so words) leading up to the 1970 freak power election. In other words, my idea was to write a long rambling article that would eventually become the first and last chapters of the American Dream/Battle of Aspen book. This came to mind perhaps because the same kind of setup worked out very nicely, by accident, for the Hell’s Angels book. In that case, Playboy commissioned a Hell’s Angels article that they eventually rejected—but in retrospect the rejected Playboy article was transferred almost word for word into Chapters One and (Final—I forget that number) of the book.

  So that’s what I decided to do on this too. And the only problem is that Wenner wants to buy both segments as articles. In other words, he wants the America’s Cup piece (no price mentioned) and also the “Freak Power Election” piece (which I thought had been rejected in embryo by Lombardi just before he moved to Esquire, but which Wenner now wants to resurrect—for $1000, a price that Wenner tells me you muscled out of Lombardi). And I use that word “muscled” in a friendly sense; the only point being that Wenner feels that $1000 is the price already agreed on for the #2 Aspen piece. And that’s fine with me—unless it happens to get in the way of a serial-sale for the book. Which is not impossible if I sell it in tandem with that America’s Cup/opening chapter scene … in other words (& I explained this to Jann) I’m not sure how Silberman would feel if I told him I’d already sold the first & last chapters of the book as Rolling Stone articles. I recall his reaction to my insistence on selling the entire Hell’s Angels book to Esquire for $1000, and I’d just as soon not be made to feel that stupid again. (I’m particularly sensitive on this score after hearing that Dave Meggyesy, my #2 bodyguard during the campaign, just sold his football book to LOOK for $12/14K. That figure didn’t come from Dave; & maybe it’s only a rumor….) But in any case I think you can probably see, by now, the roots of the general money/politics hassle behind this thing …and I offer my profound apologies for making it seem so complicated.

  But I’m afraid it is. (Recall pg. 1, above.) But for now let’s try to keep it as simple as possible … and to that end, here’s the schedule:

  a) I’ve already agreed to deliver the “Freak Power” piece to Jann in SF on March 15. The agreement is that the draft I deliver at that time will be app. 100 pages long & “at least 75% finished.” March 16 will be spent in SF, working verbally on the Aspen piece—deciding how to finish it off. March 17 will also be spent in SF, deciding what we need to complete the Salazar/ Chicano piece. Then, on March 17, I will go to LA & spend 3 to 5 days gathering whatever bullshit I need to update & flesh out the Chicano piece. After that I will fly back to SF & finish off both articles (Aspen & LA Chicano)…. (Jesus, what the fuck have I agreed to? This is the first time I’ve lined this gig out on paper—& even now, on the upswing, it looks like the Final Speed Trip.)

  b) and so much for that. By March 25, at the latest, I should have two very large features finished for RS. This ignores, however, the America’s Cup sequence that Jann wants to buy as a separate article but which I’ve already written, very roughly, into the first draft of my Freak Power piece that is also the final chapter of Silberman’s book. In other words, on March 15 I’m going to be standing around Wenner’s office in SF with about a third of Silberman’s book in my hands—in rough draft, of course—but even then with ½ of that third already sold for $1000 and Chapter One not yet sold but very much on the block at that time because there’s going to be no way to ignore it or even dodge the issue once I show my draft to Wenner. He’s already said that he wants both ends of the thing—which is fine, except I’m not sure what that leaves us to sell for serial rights. If anything.

  So consider that. On March 15 I’ll be standing in SF with three articles in my hands, as it were: 1) Salazar/Chicanos, 2) Aspen election, and 3) America’s Cup, which is also the lead into Aspen-election. #1 is the piece originally commissioned by Scanlan’s (but not paid for—not even the expenses, which contributed largely to the loss of my American Express card). Anyway, this one is not only written but already set in type (final galleys) and all that’s left is to write a new lead, a new ending and a fee.

  #2 is already committed for the $1000 fee that I assume you agreed on with Lombardi—although in the last phone-talk I had with him we both assumed that the Aspen piece was croaked (for RS) and the last thing I recall telling him was “Yeah, I definitely want to go to Vietnam, but I can’t agree to anything until you’ve talked to Lynn.” And that was the last I heard: from you, Lombardi or Wenner—until Wenner called a month or so later & said he not only wanted the Aspen & Chicano pieces, but he also wanted me to go to Vietnam for six months. Which is the next problem to cope with, but before we get into that let me finish off the list (above) by harking back to #3, the America’s Cup thing that Wenner wants to buy but which is also the Opening chapter to Silberman’s book. And #3 is the only one of these not already committed, at least verbally, to Rolling Stone … and I say this on the assumption that you somehow sold them that Aspen piece for more than they originally agreed to pay for it & also when both Lombardi & I had already decided to junk it.

  Which leaves us—for good or ill—with the Ominous Vietnam Caper and the Contributing Editor Gig still un-resolved. (Which also leaves me—not incidentally—with about two months to finish Silberman’s book, before jumping off to Saigon….)

  Ideally, my departure for Saigon should be delayed until I finish that book for Random House (much of which is already written in rough form) and then I can flip off for Saigon as a salaried, Contributing Editor of Rolling Stone—for six months or as long as it takes me to get either killed or dis-accredited by the Army press office. In the “contributing editor” context, Jann spoke of “a salary, a draw & expenses.” But I have no idea what this means—although I assume it’s the same kind of gig Sack has with Esquire or Frady has with Harper’s.10 Or maybe not. I was once appointed “Aspen bureau chief” for Ramparts, at $150 a month with no duties at all. I was supposed to write a column, as I recall, but the cheques never came & the columns never got written & looking back I suppose all that was for the best. Although maybe not; who knows?

  (Also, before I forget, Jann expressed interest in publishing a photo book titled “Freak Power in the Rockies,” composed of photos taken during (mainly) this last campaign, but also many others to give the thing dimension … but he said “Of course we’ll need your text.” Which is cool. Shit, I’ll write anything. But it might prove awkward if that “text” for the photo book also turns out to be the final chapter of Silberman’s book, which is already sold & published as a RS article, etc. etc. etc…. but I felt I should mention that, too, despite the complications.)

  So … what we have here is a terrible hellbroth of loose ends that might—despite all odds and probabilities—fit into a sort of accidental package focused mainly (hell, entirely …) on Rolling Stone. Which is fine. All things considered & naturally for my own reasons I can’t think of any publication in the country I’d rather get into than RS (only a relative judgement A-Z, on publications—nothing else) … and that includes a lot of lo
gos I’ll only allude to, quite gracefully, without listing their names because the list probably wouldn’t make much sense to you & maybe to me either, once I give it some thought …but what the hell? As long as New York exists I suppose we’re all slaves to it, in some awful unnatural sense, and after reading (tonight) the current issues of both the National Lampoon & the NY Review of Books—& also after watching [Tom] Wolfe & Buckley11 on TV last week—I have to wonder if maybe Goldwater might have been right when he said New York should be cut loose & floated out to sea … and then I remember that evil treacherous pig Sidney Zion (a lawyer) & then I wander upstairs & turn on my TV set for the morning CBS news & I see that demented old hag [Israeli prime minister Golda Meir] who looks so much like LBJ that I freak at the sight of her … & it occurs to me that maybe Arafat12 has a point, after all. Yes, the Jews should be driven into the Sea—along with the Irish & the Spics & the Okies & the Niggers & all the rest.

  Indeed. We are all pigs. And I can tell you from bad experience that that’s a nasty truth to live with … but that’s another, longer story & no point getting into it now. Except that it leaves me vaguely baffled at the continuing contradiction of my decent relationship with Jim Silberman (a definite point here is that I think the R.H. book should still be first priority, right?) who I’m sure is a rotten bastard, on some level, but so far I haven’t been able to place it. What is it about Silberman? It’s impossible to be comfortable with a man whose essential foulness remains hidden. That dirty bastard!

  Wow! None of that, eh? If I learned nothing else from that last election, I was battered to a painful understanding that my sense of humor lacks range & easy mesh quotient. Which made a nasty difference in the last election: Like, when I said I planned to “put the (incumbent) sheriff on trial for his life” when I won … well, a lot of people really believed that. Which was hard to explain in the crunch, & which also hardly matters here….