Fear and Loathing in America

by Hunter S. Thompson

  Needless to say, we’ll reserve all rights to comment, whenever necessary, on the content of the ads … Or at least I will.

  Anyway, let’s print the article. If nothing else, it might serve as a good evidence/exhibit after the election. It also might work in the book … so somebody should probably check on getting the rights, etc.

  OK for now. I have no plans to come to California anytime soon—unless McGov follows thru on his rumored plan to campaign out there with Humphrey. If that happens, I’ll definitely make the trip. A horror like that would just about wrap the thing up for me, I think. With a little luck, maybe they’ll bring Al Barkan36 along, too. I look forward to that one.

  Hunter

  TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:

  Dissatisfied with his treatment at Rolling Stone—and particularly his relegation to the lesser media’s raucous but remote “Zoo Plane” throughout the 1972 presidential campaign—after the election Thompson resigned from the magazine, and took Raoul Duke with him.

  November 27, 1972

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear Jann:

  For a variety of reasons too tangled to explain at this time, this letter is my official resignation from the staff of Rolling Stone—effective immediately (Monday, Nov 27, 1972). It is also the official resignation of Raoul Duke, whose name—along with my own—should be removed from the masthead at once, beginning with the first RS press-date in December ’72.

  Don’t read any malice or strange fit of drug-anger into this; it merely formalizes the existing situation and confirms my status as a free-lance writer, visà-vis RS. My resignation (and Duke’s) from the staff will have no effect on the Final Campaign article or the Campaign ’72 book for Straight Arrow.

  Perhaps we can come to some contractual work agreement for 1973. If you have any ideas on this score, by all means send them along—to me, John Clancy, Lynn Nesbit, or all three.

  OK for now,

  Hunter S. Thompson

  TO MORTON DEAN, CBS NEWS:

  Morton Dean was a respected political correspondent for CBS News. Richard Nixon had been reelected in a landslide with 60.7 percent of the popular vote, carrying forty-nine states and winning 521 electoral votes to George McGovern’s 17. The “youth vote” the Democrats had counted on failed to turn out: fewer than half of America’s newly enfranchised eighteen to twenty-one-year-olds voted, and those who did split evenly between Nixon and McGovern.

  December 17, 1972

  Woody Creek, CO

  Mort:

  The closest I’ve come to NYC in recent weeks was last Thursday when Mankiewicz & I spent 20 minutes circling Times Square in a tiny chartered plane with a pilot who kept saying “Hell, as long as we’re stuck in the pattern let’s have some fun, eh?” I was sitting up in the cockpit with him, so I dug it. We came so low on TSq that I felt I could reach down & touch people. Very weird. Frank was back in the cabin & not especially happy with our standing on the wing & buzzing junkies, etc…. but what the fuck?

  Anyway, I’m desperate right now to get some Election Turnout figures for Nov 7, & I understand CBS did a survey that’s available to the public. My book deadline is Jan 15 & one of the most crucial unanswered questions in my mind is Whether or Not the Potential McGovern Vote Came Out. I figure this has a huge bearing on any future “new politics” campaigns … and I need some help on these FIGURES. Can you send me anything? I’ll consider it a huge & repayable favor. Let me know ASAP.

  I’ve been dealing with Desmond Smith & Hughes Rudd in re: a piece of some kind on me or at least something vaguely connected with me for the past few weeks, but I don’t know enough about what’s happening to tell you anything. In any case, I’ll call when I get to NYC in January.

  Thanx—

  Hunter

  TO SANDY BERGER:

  Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger was a McGovern speechwriter who had stayed with the campaign since the South Dakotan’s surprising showing in the Florida primary back in March 1972. Berger would go on to become a member of Jimmy Carter’s administration and White House national security adviser under the next Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

  December 17, 1972

  Woody Creek, CO

  Sandy …

  Sorry I didn’t get hold of you in the 2 or 3 days after our tequila dinner at La Fonda … but I was heavily preoccupied in various ways, including a postmortem talk with McGov & then missing the plane to fly out to SD with him.

  So I fucked up … but what the hell?

  Anyway, it just occurs to me that if you’re looking for someplace to practice law for a while you might give a thought to Colorado—and specifically Aspen. We just elected our only two friendly anti-establishment lawyers to the County Commission, so now we’re faced with a sort of implied conflict of interest every time we have to deal with the power structure; or anything else, for that matter, since both these poor bastards are still identified with my Freak Power campaign.

  In other words, we need a new & at least apparently neutral mouthpiece. I couldn’t guarantee you anything for starters except instant action & a weird clientele. Aspen is heavily over-stocked with lawyers & always has been, but personal madness & professional incompetence are the only dominant characteristics of the whole lot & most people understand this.

  Success has fucked us, in a way; it’s hard for me to cope with the idea that my personal attorney & erstwhile mescaline dealer is now a County Commissioner.

  Which is neither here nor there, for right now. Just a weird idea you might want to think about … and there’s also the fact that I’m thinking seriously about running for the Senate against Dominick37 in ’74. In a week or so I’ll drive over to Denver for a chat or so with Gary Hart & Dick Lamm,38 among others, about how to handle a weird gig like that. I have a feeling it’s about time somebody rammed the fat straight into the fire on the national politics level: no more of this coalition/compromise bullshit—just offer up the symbol of The Hammer & say “OK folks, here it is, & if you’re too fucking lazy or stupid to use it in your own interest, then bend over & grab your ankles & don’t bitch about what happens after that.”

  The only people I’ve talked to at any serious length about this (Senate race) gig are Rick Stearns & Carl Wagner,39 who both seem sort of abstractly interested & that means to me I’m about 40% home … the other 60% would be you, Eli & Pokorny.40

  (& just for the record, that’s my list of five)

  But what the fuck? It’s 5:17 A.M. right now & the radio says McGov is calling Nixon a liar in re: Vietnam … a fearful surprise, eh? Who would have guessed it?

  I am coming more & more to grips with the notion that getting on the Zoo Plane permanently fucked up my life—and the only way to redeem myself is by seizing a seat in the U.S. Senate.

  So what all this boils down to, as always, is a sort of crab-wise move in the direction of self-interest—which is only another definition of Politics, as I see it—so if the idea of moving to Aspen & becoming the local Freak-Lawyer interests you, let me know & I’ll pursue it a bit further.

  If not, keep me posted as to your movements (write c/o Rolling Stone in San Francisco or this Owl Farm Address) … and let me know if I can crank up any personal highs on whatever you get into … Which still strikes me as the only true definition of What It’s All About.

  As for my own gig, I seem to be on the verge of signing another one-year contract as the National Affairs Editor of Rolling Stone … but this time with total control over whatever stories I choose to do (when, where, etc.), which means I can go just about anywhere I want to, for any reason that seems right, and work out on any asshole I can fix in my sights …

  … and that’s not a bad gig, considering what’s available.

  So … let me know what kind of drift you get into. If coming out here interests you at all, I’ll do everything I can to make it work … but if not, well, I figure whatever you get into should be worth a look from time to time …so I figure we’ll be crossing paths one way or another
sometime soon.

  On balance, I figure the McGov thing was A Botch. We can do a lot better. The Weight is out there, just waiting to be picked up & focused. If you have any good ideas, let me know. I figure my basic education is just about complete now … & I’m ready for The Main Crank. Kilroy died a long time ago. When the graffiti freaks start getting it on 10 years from now (or even 5) I’d like to think they’ll be writing “Thompson Was Here.”

  Right. Even if we lose in the end, I want to leave the bastards a scare they’ll never forget … when they reach down to scratch their swollen stomachs, I want them to feel a long blue lump with an itch that won’t go away. The idea of losing doesn’t bother me particularly, but the next time we lose—& I wouldn’t even be thinking about running for the Senate if I thought we couldn’t win—I’d like it to be for the right reasons, & not in the kind of confused haze that still haunts the McGov campaign.

  If we really are a Nation of Pigs, let’s make the bastards admit it. No excuses, no cop-outs—just back the bastards into a corner and make them say it.

  If nothing else, it would be a king-hell Bitch of a campaign—one of those special gigs where you could always look back & say “Yeah, but there was one time when we really got it on.”

  Shit …I seem to be lapsing into a stone politics pitch here, and that wasn’t what I had in mind when I started.

  So I’ll quit & go to bed; hopefully in time to get up & do some crosscountry skiing before the sun goes.

  Meanwhile, let me know how you’re thinking. Call my home phone, but don’t give the number to anybody … and especially not to Ted Van Dyk,41 because I’m about to libel that worthless pimp bastard in the heaviest language I can conjure up & still stay out of court.

  OK for now. Hello to Susan & good luck with the baby. If you feel like stopping out for a look at the place, feel welcome anytime after Jan 15 or so. Until then I’ll be locked into total speed-work on the campaign book (Number 21, as I recall) … but as I look around at the competition I don’t feel especially bothered.

  Cazart,

  Hunter

  MEMO FROM THE SPORTS DESK: FROM HUNTER S. THOMPSON

  TO: JOHN CLANCY AND JANN WENNER

  IN RE: 1973 HST/DUKE WRITING CONTRACT WITH RS

  Too shrewd to accept his star writer’s resignation, Wenner had instead offered Thompson the upper-masthead title of National Affairs Editor of Rolling Stone.

  December 19, 1972

  Woody Creek, CO

  In general I think we’re about settled on all the main points, but one or two questions remain—and one of them seems at least potentially central to my whole relationship with RS, to wit:

  1) I’m assuming the $80 per diem expense arrangement applies to the 13 proposed columns as well as the Six Main stories—if only to give me the option of de-escalating (or perhaps even escalating) the proportions of a story once I’ve gotten into it. Needless to say, if I fly off to Chicago on the basis of a seemingly reliable rumor that Mayor Daley will be burned alive the next day on that Picasso sculpture in the Loop—at a guaranteed $80 a day—and when I get there I find it was really Mike Royko42 who was scheduled for burning that day & he failed to show up due to over-weening drunkenness, I’m going to feel in a bit of a bind if I’m faced with a choice of filing 7500 words for $2000 & $80 a day, or scaling the thing down to realistic proportions for $350 that probably wouldn’t even cover my real expenses for the trip. My entirely reasonable reaction under those circumstances would be to hang around Chicago long enough to get 7500 words—or, if we couldn’t agree on that, to find another Chicago story & sell it to the highest bidder (other than RS) who would sure as hell pay more than $350, plus all expenses … but the very last thing I’d be inclined to do, under those circumstances, would be to slink back to Woody Creek at my own expense and zap off a fine, ho-ho big readership column for $350 … & then get a bill on my own Carte Blanche card for $415 for the Chicago trip.

  An exaggerated circumstance, of course. Probably even paranoid. In any case, it’s something I want to be sure of—on paper—before any final agreement.

  2) The reason I see this as “potentially central to my whole relationship with RS” has to do with the question of Personal Autonomy … whether I’m a freelance writer with certain sharply-defined obligations to a pop-music magazine in San Francisco called Rolling Stone, or whether I’ll be functioning more or less full time as the “National Affairs Editor” (or “National Correspondent,” as the case may be) for a “new” San Francisco–based national magazine that has only recently come to be taken seriously by the vanguard of a potentially massive readership that doesn’t give a flying fuck what the Jackson Five43 eats for breakfast, but which—to a degree that surprises even me—has suddenly come to take RS seriously as “a voice” for/of something that nobody quite understands yet, but which even Stewart Alsop has cited (in his Newsweek column) as a voice to be reckoned with.

  Which may or may not be true. I don’t know, myself, and I seriously doubt if anybody else now on the staff does either—including Jann. RS was born in a cultural vacuum that no longer exists. In 1968 Bob Dylan could have run for president and—given the same organization Gene McCarthy had—probably done as well or better than McCarthy himself. But in 1972 Dylan would have run neck-and-neck with Sam Yorty44 in the New Hampshire primary …at 3% or so.

  “How does it feel … to be out on your own …?”

  How indeed?

  What the fuck is Rolling Stone in 1973? Where do we go from here? Why do we even exist?

  None of which is especially pertinent to this memo, except that these are the questions I get hit with every time I find myself wandering around in public as a representative—not just a writer or editor—of Rolling Stone. Maybe other RS writers get this kind of thing; I don’t know (except for Tim Crouse, who repeatedly fouled his own nest—as persons of Germanic ancestry often will, in times of stress—by allowing himself to be trapped into defending not only Rolling Stone but the madness of the national affairs editor as well)….

  But what the fuck? I seem to be wandering. The point I was leaning into was that there’s a hell of a difference between being “a writer from Rolling Stone” in a familiar sympatico scene (say, a mood piece on a Boz Scaggs45 concert in Berkeley) and being a writer for a “rock & roll magazine” that nobody’s ever heard of in a relentlessly hostile environment (like trying to get a seat on the Nixon/Agnew press planes—or even getting into a McGovern “situation room” on the night of a primary when the only other press person allowed through the door is John Chancellor).

  1973

  THE GREAT SHARK HUNT … MARLIN FISHING IN MEXICO, KILLING TIME WITH THE OAKLAND RAIDERS … ROOKIE OF THE YEAR IN WASHINGTON, RUBE OF THE YEAR IN HOLLYWOOD … WAITING FOR WATERGATE, HATCHING THE PLOT TO CROAK NIXON … THE CURSE OF SUDDEN FAME …

  National Affairs Desk, Key Biscayne, 1973.

  (PHOTO COURTESY OF HST ARCHIVES)

  Hunter, Juan, and Sandy, Woody Creek, 1973.

  (PHOTO BY MICHAEL MONTFORT)

  Cozumel, 1973.

  (PHOTO BY SANDY THOMPSON, COURTESY OF HST ARCHIVES)

  Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum.

  (PHOTO BY MICHAEL MONTFORT)

  FROM JUAN THOMPSON:

  Holed up at San Francisco’s Seal Rock Inn to finish Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, Thompson got good news from home from his eight-year-old son, Juan.

  January 25, 1973

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear DAD,

  I Did everything You Told

  Me. And Now I Am The Most

  Popular Kid in the County.

  Thanks For The Suggestions.

  Love Your Son

  TO KAY AGENA, PARTISAN REVIEW:

  Kay Agena of the conservative Partisan Review had written to tell Thompson that he had finally become respectable enough to be given a low-risk tryout with the magazine—which Thompson described as run by “a rigid cluster of right-wing neofascist intellectu
als in the pay of the CIA.”

  January 26, 1973

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear Kay …

  This is a very difficult letter for me to write. But, after giving it a lot of thought (inre: your letter of Jan 19), I’ve decided that it would not be a good thing for me or anyone else if my name somehow showed up in “PR’s table of contents.”

  Nothing personal; I assure you of that … and I thank Sweet Jesus that there is still room in this world for gentlemen of taste & insight like [Agena’s fellow contributing editor] Dick Gilman. I admire his talents no less than his tolerance, but I think he’s biting off more than he can righteously chew when he says my “rhetoric can be gotten around.”

  Ah, Kay … I hate to say it … but not even Gilman can get around my Rhetoric. It’s too heavy, too rude, too weird & with too many sharp edges … and besides all that, I like it.

  Which is a horrible thing to say, I guess … but it’s true: I get a real boot out of writing that crude & unconscionable gibberish. It’s fun, in a strange kind of way … Jesus, maybe I shouldn’t put this in writing, eh? Especially to the Partisan Review … Holy fuck!

  Have you checked out these rumors about Hubert Humphrey having leverage of some kind with the PR editorial board? He’s never liked me, and this may be his way of trying to burn me on what he naturally assumes is my own turf … God damn his treacherous ass! Who’d have guessed that a useless atavistic dingbat like Hubert would have zeroed in on my one weakness?

  So … save your energy for better things & stop trying to crash my byline into PR. I’d just as soon save that for when I get a lot older and can’t get it up …when I start sounding like Norman What’s His Name & those people. But not now; it would be like wrapping me into a nine-numbered strait-jacket.