Fear and Loathing in America

by Hunter S. Thompson

  This is too good a thing to write off—in addition to the hassle of finding another office, somewhere, and then paying for it. I haven’t seriously pushed the idea of sharing a part of the rent; I mentioned it once, but Tony shrugged it off. He’s clearly more interested in whatever side-benefits might come from having the RS operation in there with him—like the RS refrigerator ($72.50, delivered), and also whatever free records might come with having the DC bureau on the “record-reviewers” list. That kind of stuff, plus a bright & hopefully decorative girl assistant around the corner, would probably work very nice & not even cost much.

  In any case, we’re going to have to do something about the non-writing aspects of this gig. There’s no way I can hide from them. People know I’m here, & to some extent I’m a bit of a public figure—but I also have to work, and that means I need a human buffer to keep well-meaning people from driving me fucking nuts. I no longer have the protection of an unlisted phone in Woody Creek, Colorado; I’m now in the belly of the beast, as it were, and if things keep up like they have been, I see no hope for any sort of concentration …unless I do something like move to some fishing village on Chesapeake Bay & take a different name.

  There is also that quote from Max about RS making so much money that it’s almost obscene … which I promise not to tell anybody if you hire me some decent assistance. Otherwise, I’ll pass it on to Lee Berry & tell him to flail you with it.

  Another point, inre: your filthy comment on my “batting average” vis-à-vis my friends. By my count it’s at least .500—rather than the .333 you mentioned. I recall pushing you for 3 or 4 months to hire Eszterhas, & I also recall having to lean pretty heavily on you to even hire Steadman for one shot. Your first reaction to his Dog Book, as I recall, was something like … “who needs this kind of cheap Steinberg?”49

  But … well, yes … there was Ed Sanders, and Lucian [Truscott]. And also [John] Clancy, I guess, whose value remains to be toted up; that will come around Apr 15 of next year, I think—for both of us.

  Anyway, I insist on .500—and the only problem about Dan Greene, for that matter, is that the Observer pays him about twice what I get (on the salary front, anyway), and since he lives in a city where he never sees RS for sale anyway, he didn’t see where he stood much to gain by writing for it.

  That exposure problem goes far beyond mere sales figures. A writer wants to think he’s being read—and people who talk to writers want to think they’ll see themselves in print. And in that context, I might as well be the DC correspondent for EARTH [Straight Arrow’s short-lived environmental magazine] … and I want you to understand that this is a fucking, flat-out bummer to have to work with.

  But fuck all that. I realize the problems & I have total faith that they’ll all be dealt with—but I want you to keep in mind that RS looks a hell of a lot different from out there in that corner office on Third st. than it does to people here. We are not what you’d really call Big in this town—except with a handful of young journalist types who might, if this White House press hassle goes right, be precisely the ones who can give us the leverage we need here. So for christ’s sake get rid of your notion that we should tell our tiny handful of allies here to Fuck Off. That would be a terrible mistake, & it would put me in a very bad hole. (And keep in mind that you did say that—“tell them to fuck off.”) So if you get any calls from the Post, Star, NY Times, etc. about the White House press hassle, keep in mind that these bastards are in a position to make my life very difficult if you treat them like scum. The real issue is far larger than a simple little matter of whether or not I get a White House press pass. The important thing is whether or not people think it’s worth their while to even talk to me, and on this score we couldn’t ask for anything better than a clash with the White House with the DC press on our side. Fuck the credentials; what we need is a front-page argument with Ziegler.50

  OK for now, and so much for all that. The only other thing is the question of that phone-xerox machine. I already have the sending half of the action in the office; so all we need, on your end, is the receiver—which rents for $50 a month, according to Prisendorf, and which could also be used for NY copy. That would mean cutting our copy-transmission time down to three or four minutes per 300 words instead of 3 or 4 days by mail. I could finish a story at noon and have it on Charlie’s51 desk, ready for final editing, by 2 p.m. … or finish it at 6 a.m. and have it there by dawn, SF time.

  This would also work for NY stories. The fucker will even transmit photos. Tony sends all his stuff to the Post on the thing. It would virtually eliminate the mail/deadline lag … and, given the tax problem with all those obscene profits, you could probably get the net-transmission cost down to almost nothing.

  Anyway, you should definitely check it out. There’s no fucking reason in the world why I should have to kill the last four days before deadline time with an airmail scene—when the whole thing could be easily solved by a relatively cheap machine. Shit, they even make them in portables—so I could walk into any phone booth in Chicago and transmit the whole thing, comma for comma, in less than 30 minutes. These things are common equipment even for sportswriters….

  (Good God, I feel a vomiting fit coming on … cold sweats & all that, so I’ll hang this thing up and go outside for some air.)

  Ciao …

  H

  TO RALPH STEADMAN:

  British artist Ralph Steadman’s illustrations for Rolling Stone’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” articles—published in the magazine’s November 11 and November 25, 1971, issues—exactly captured the Gonzo spirit, and Thompson knew it.

  December 16, 1971

  Washington, D.C.

  Dear Ralph …

  Thanx for poking Thames TV for the campaign film; they said “fuck off,” but that won’t be the end of it. I’ll take the problem from here—now that you’ve put them on record.

  On other fronts, the Random House deal seems fixed—at whatever price your agent can grind out of them. If the price seems low, keep in mind that my book contract with RH (for the Vegas book) says that it will include “drawings by Ralph Steadman; cost to be borne by the publisher.” So for fuck’s sake don’t settle on any price before you talk to me … because it’s already in my contract that the book will include your drawings; which puts us in a very comfortable bargaining position, and as far as I’m concerned (which is only my opinion and general outlook), you shouldn’t settle for anything less than at least $5,000—which is a bit less than half what they’ve agreed to pay for the writing, and I figure that’s just about fair. I feel the drawings are necessary to the book—but what we have to keep in mind is that Silberman (RH) seems to feel the drawings are a sort of indulgence to the author; and he’s hinted here & there that he’d just as soon publish the book with no art at all.

  The kicker here, however, is that everybody now involved with “Vegas” is on record, unofficially, to the effect that I should never have gotten involved in a piece of shit like that in the first place. My agent advised me against even going out there for the Mint 400, Rolling Stone refused to pay my expenses for either trip, and Random House refused to even consider the ms. for a book until I arrived in NY with the bastard totally finished.

  So on that score we have them all. (This is a long story & I’ll let it hang for the moment; I’ll fill you in when you get over here in January.)

  I’m absolutely certain I can sell that trip to the Super Bowl over here for a nice chunk of $, or at least as a package with other, more political stories—there’s a paddlewheel steamer leaving St. Louis two days before the game (a steamboat trip down the Mississippi) and I told Wenner tonight that he had 72 hrs to say Yes or No; leaving me free, if he won’t pay fat for it, to sell the whole spectacle to somebody else. (Wenner almost cried at the idea of paying your expenses to come over here for one story—so I told him we could bring you over in January and then keep you around for the entire Presidential campaign. In other words, to do all the illustrations for
my bi-monthly coverage (a regular column called Fear & Loathing in Washington), and also for the book, which is already contracted to the Rolling Stone book division.

  You should give this idea at least a serious thought. For one thing, there’s a definite chance (better than 50/50, I think) of a film on the book—and one of the main ideas right now is centered on that animated drawings idea that I mentioned on the phone. We should know the prospects on this by the first of next year.

  In the meantime, for christ’s sake don’t make any agreements with anybody to do anything over here in the U.S. Obviously—if somebody offers you a hell of a lot of money to illustrate something you should probably go ahead & do it … but you should balance any offer you get against the idea that by June of ’72 we (the Steadman-Thompson coverage, etc.) are very likely to be worth more than the sum of our parts. In other words, we can probably earn twice as much together than either one of us could earn separately. (I’m not totally sure of this, but I’d be willing to bet on it. That Vegas saga has had a massive impact among the sort of in-group, writer/editor clique—and I think if we wait till the Random House book comes out we’ll be in a position to sign a really staggering contract, for almost any story we want….)

  Keep this in mind. We really cracked the buggers with this one; we drove them right down to their fucking knees … and the most fantastic thing about it is that the thing is really flat out fucking good. It’s a genuine fucking classic; the overall reaction to the thing has put me seriously off balance … people are reading far more into the story than I ever intended to write. And god only knows what will happen when RH floods the bookstores with the hardcover version. (You should, by the way, tell your agent to negotiate some kind of agreement that will make you more money if the book becomes a best-seller, which is not unlikely….) In other words, the idea that you might make more by asking less in front is entirely feasible. Give that one some thought, too.

  OK for now. The thing to do, right now, is really to sit back & wait until the book comes out—and also to let me know if you’re up to coming over here in early January & staying a few months. Maybe six—possibly nine; all the way up to election day, doing the whole fucking campaign … think on that a while & let me know. But remember that riverboat trip down to the Super Bowl; I think that’s a must.

  Ciao …

  Hunter

  TO IAN MARTIN, THAMES TV:

  London’s Thames TV production company had sent a crew to Aspen to film Thompson’s 1970 campaign for sheriff for the British news show This Week.

  December 21, 1971

  Washington, DC

  Dear Mr. Martin:

  You cheap, half-wit asshole. What the fuck do you mean, “We cannot normally make them (film-prints) available to people who have taken part in programmes”?

  I realize that you’ve just answered a complaint according to the RULES of the network, and of course you’re not to blame for anything … and beyond that I don’t expect this letter to have any effect over there, because I understand quite perfectly that you executive types can’t be held responsible for agreements made by your film crews when they’re across the water.

  But just for the sake of history I want to clear up a detail or so. That was my campaign for sheriff that your clumsy eight-man crew swarmed onto in Nov of 1970 … and they were only allowed to cover it after lengthy conversations between Peter Ibsen & Udi Eichler for your side—and several of my campaign managers, representing me. It was a horror to have those fuckers around, with all those lights & cables & other assorted garbage everywhere we went; but we figured we stood a good chance of winning, & for that reason we also thought it would be good to have the story on British TV.

  To this end, after lengthy negotiations, both Ibsen & Eichler agreed to furnish us with $100 for the campaign-headquarters beer-pool and a print of the film, as soon as possible. This was accomplished only after long hassling with several members of my staff who felt it would be a terrible mistake to lay that kind of trip on the locals—huge banks of lights & 8 people yelling with heavy British accents at every public gathering at the climax of a brutally emotional campaign in a treacherously unsophisticated Rocky Mountain community.

  This proved to be a mistake as we thought, and the reaction came almost immediately—but since we had made the agreement & also because we had more important things to worry about, we tried to ignore Eichler’s crew and assumed that they were at least serving some purpose by getting the campaign on record.

  Another factor here is that, a month or so after the campaign, I called Ibsen at the ITV office to ask about the film, and he assured me it was “coming very soon.”

  But now I understand. They never had the authority to make any agreements, anyway, so how could we have been so goddamn foolish to have taken them seriously in the first place?

  How indeed?

  Well, Martin … perhaps one of these days, in my travels, I might have the opportunity to discuss this problem with somebody from Thames TV. We have another campaign over on this side of the water, this year, and perhaps you’ll be wanting to cover it.

  I plan to cover the entire campaign—including most of the primaries and both conventions—for Rolling Stone, and somewhere along that ugly trail I’m sure I can be of some assistance to your people; like maybe helping you arrange a bit of coverage, or something like that. Don’t hesitate to call on me. I’d welcome an opportunity to do a bit of translating for you, with the locals.

  You scurvy, lying pigfuckers deserve all the help you can get, right?

  Right.

  Just ring me up anytime, Martin. I’ll be traveling a lot, but if you can’t find me anywhere on the campaign circuit you can always reach me thru Rolling Stone in San Francisco.

  My name is

  Hunter S. Thompson

  1972

  FREAK POWER GOES TO WASHINGTON, STRATEGIC RETREAT INTO NATIONAL POLITICS … MADNESS & VIOLENCE ON THE SUNSHINE SPECIAL … GETTING TO KNOW THE WHITE HOUSE, LEARNING TO FEAR RICHARD NIXON …FALLING IN LOVE ON THE ZOO PLANE, FAREWELL FOREVER TO INNOCENCE …

  (COVER BY TOM BENTON)

  Hunter and Juan Thompson at home in Washington, D.C., 1972.

  (PHOTO BY ELLSWORTH J. DAVIS)

  California campaign trail, 1972.

  (PHOTO BY ANNIE LEIBOVITZ)

  Dr. Thompson and George McGovern on a train in Nebraska, 1972.

  (PHOTO BY ANNIE LEIBOVITZ)

  Democratic National Convention, 1972. Front to back: HST, Pat Caddell, Warren Beatty, Tim Crouse.

  (PHOTO BY BOB MCNEELY)

  TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:

  Throughout 1972 Thompson was so engrossed in covering the presidential campaign for Rolling Stone that he found little time for private letters—but his editorial correspondence with Jann Wenner proved so politically astute that much of it would be published in his next book, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.

  January 3, 1972

  Woody Creek, CO

  Jann …

  I fucked around with the Chicago/Youth Vote thing for about five hours & didn’t get a hell of a lot done, but I think it looks okay for getting finished this week. I’ll definitely plan on that. So I can get up to N.H. next week with George McGovern.

  No point hanging around here any longer. I’m taking off today at 2:30 on TWA. It’s 6:00 a.m. now & my brain is too tired to keep humping along on this thing … but I think it looks okay for a finish in 3 or 4 days. That’s not a promise, but I see no reason why I can’t get it done by the weekend and then move north.

  I feel much better about the gig now. For some twisted reason, my head is a lot straighter today than it was when I got here—despite all apparent evidence to the contrary. (The fucking CFIP got me again last night & put me thru the roadside acrobatics trip again. Incredible! Twice in 4 days. How could it happen?)

  Anyway, I’m heading east on the assumption that we’ve cured whatever was trying to kill me—but not necessarily on the basis of what we talke
d about that afternoon (thurs.) on the balcony. After the meeting-talk, I decided that we’ll have to make the column a separate gig—keeping it fairly short, with the same title, in order to keep my opinions from becoming a problem for everybody else … and also to croak any conflict that might arise vis-à-vis my corporate identity (that columnist vs. editorial writer thing, which tends to haunt me in a way that I can’t even rationally explain. But it’s real, so we may as well deal with it).

  All in all, I think we have the thing under control. I’ll get on that secy/researcher thing at once, & also call Tim Crouse, Landau & Tim Ferris1 so I can organize the eastern front ASAP. Hopefully I can check thru NY next week, en route to Boston & then to N.H.

  I can’t figure out what the fuck makes me think the Big Sur gig was an unquestionable success, but as far as I’m concerned it was. (Except for Felton, that treacherous little fart. Why not send him to open a Lima bureau & then stop payment on his expense checks? That would sure as hell teach him a lesson, eh?)

  On balance, I think we somehow managed to chop the Great Gordian knot. If the week served no other purpose, it at least gave Duke a stay of execution, & I think that’s Important. Sorry we didn’t get to talk more, but what the fuck? The important thing was to croak my Hate Trip, & that worked out. I feel definitely Up about things now, and I was impressed with the general style & tone of the crowd you’ve managed to put together. Whatever problems we have now seem minor.