Your “quote,” I suspect, is a bastardized, fourth or fifth hand version of an answer I usually give to people who ask me how much of my book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is true—and for reasons that should be perfectly obvious I usually reply with a figure ranging anywhere from 60% to 80%, and I’ve answered that question so often that I’m sure various versions of my answer are floating around so extensively that you probably caught one of them from somebody who heard it from somebody else who told it to a “straight” journalist who then passed it on as 100% fact—like “straight” journalists always do.
Anyway, enough of this shit. I don’t know what stage of publication your book is in, but I hope there’s still time for you to get hold of the page proofs and either correct that sentence so that it deals specifically with the Vegas book, or knock it out entirely—because otherwise the whole American book market (including many editors) is going to be flooded with an extremely damaging and entirely false “quote” regarding the alleged inaccuracy of my work, which we both know is just as false as that thing about Edith telling me I needed a bath when I was standing in your make-up room at CBS demanding to take a shower so I could get myself at least halfway in shape for the interview after the news show…. Jesus, and you’re complaining about the ugly press you got: In the past few months I’ve been accused of mass-rape in London, running up a $28,000 expense tab in Africa, working for the CIA in Saigon, and now I pick up a relatively friendly piece in Esquire and see myself labeled as some kind of smelly freak who has to be forced to take a bath at CBS and who insists that “at least 45%” of what he writes is true.
Like you said, Sally, this “celebrity” gig can be a goddamn nightmare, and sooner or later you get a little tired of just sitting back & gritting your teeth and saying “publish & be damned” like the Duke of Wellington27—who apparently didn’t give a fuck what was written about his personal life, but I suspect he’d have raised a very intense & painful kind of hell with anybody who falsely quoted him as saying that he won at least forty-five percent of his battles.
And that’s enough for now. For christ’s sake, do us both a favor and make that one simple correction…. I’ll even trade you that “need a bath” libel for the “45%.” The last thing I need right now is a goddamn lawsuit to ruin my summer, but I really can’t just sit back and let a false & potentially disastrous “quote” like that one go by. It’s just too goddamn heavy to ignore—and hopefully so easy to cure that neither one of us will have to ever mention it again.
In any case, let me know how things stand ASAP. Call me here—or you can reach me through Lynn Nesbit or Sandy Berger at his law office in Washington.
Sincerely,
Hunter
TO GORDON LISH, ESQUIRE:
Thompson was undecided about how he would cover the 1976 campaign.
August 12, 1975
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Gordon …
There are about 49 good reasons why I haven’t gotten back to you vis-à-vis whatever you were calling about (which I assume had something to do with a Campaign ’76 book, because of Clancy’s letter), but it would drive you fucking mad if I started telling you about a long summer of brutal struggling over things like water rights, septic tanks, crossover circuits, bad debts from London & Saigon, or anything else like that … so let’s just say I’ve been waiting for my focus to restore itself, more or less, in order that I might speak decently with people not accustomed to my day-by-day gig, which is Chaos.
But it’s 4:00 a.m. now & I have time to write a note, so I thought I’d write & ask what you have (or had) in mind, because one of the things that is definitely not in focus for me right now is what I plan to do about “covering” the ’76 campaign … and one of the main X factors in that area has to do with the possibility and/or advisability of committing myself to write a book about it.
My own feeling at the moment is very down … but I’ve been poking & prodding for almost six months, and I find that somewhere just under the surface of my own pessimism about the ’76 campaign is a tough nut of suspicion that it ain’t gonna be what me or anybody else can foresee right now; because what we have right now is such an obvious power vacuum in the challenge area that all we can be sure of is that Nature (human or otherwise) will move into it, if the politicians don’t … and this is the kind of reality that keeps me thinking in terms of sudden changes that could lead to something genuinely savage, like a Kennedy-Rockefeller race. That was my public prediction about a year ago, and although recent events would seem to have made me a fool, I’m still willing to bet $100 at 20–1 on it happening….
Yeah … you’ll notice I changed those odds from 10 to 20, and even at 20–1 it seems generous; so if you want to pick up an easy $100, let me know and I’ll sign on … or I’ll go 10–1 that both TK and Rocky will be announced or at least real candidates before the gig is over.
So you see my area of interest, which is the only thing that keeps me tuned in to the ugly machinations of the race. And with that in mind, along with the unhappy truth that I’ll almost certainly be covering it anyway, I think maybe the wisest way to go would be to sell a non-returnable $20 grand option for a book, just in case the bugger erupts into something genuinely berserk—at which point the option could be converted to a $20K advance against something like $150,000. That’s a Seven and a half to One bet, which is just about right, considering the odds on a really memorable and dramatic campaign.
Give me a call or a note on this, either way. I have no idea what your role would be in the arrangements, but if anything develops I’ll put you in touch with Lynn Nesbit, who maintains my link with financial reality in these matters … and meanwhile, say hello to Sally Quinn for me, if you see her. Okay …
Hunter
TO DON ERICKSON, ESQUIRE:
In a similar letter to his onetime Esquire editor, Thompson requested a full retraction of the false quote in Sally Quinn’s book excerpt.
August 25, 1975
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Don …
No, we are not agreed; no, it is not OK; and, no, you did not work with me on a magazine excerpt of Hell’s Angels. As you know, I was not consulted in any way inre: the HA/excerpts that ran in Esquire—any more than I was consulted, called or checked with to verify that ugly “45% true” quote in the Aug. issue.
Jesus! This thing again.
I realize, Don, that I’m extremely naive to think a simple mistake can always be simply corrected … but, for reasons of my own, this is a basic, sort of geometric belief that I’d prefer to hang on to … because the human mind is not capable of handling the geometric realities implied in the notion that a simple mistake might logically require a complex correction and/or solution …and once we accept that, even the slightest deviation from a one-to-one gear ratio, we have to abandon the idea that man is capable of either governing himself or correcting his own errors, because once we accept that imbalance, it is a mathematical certainty that our capacity for mistakes will at some point outrun our capacity for solutions …a sort of metaphysical check-kiting (sp?) that would drive us all mad if we thought about it long enough, and right now I’m not in the mood for it.
I want to thank you for your letter of Aug. 22, but I don’t really think that yr. publication of a letter from me—particularly your own version of any said letter—will make the point that I know you understand as well as I do should be made: just a simple fucking admission that Esquire & Sally Quinn quoted me as saying something I never said or even thought, and which—if taken literally—could cause me considerable grief as a political journalist, and also have a nasty effect on my income in that area.
But this is not the thing we’re arguing about, is it? Jesus … Sally says she doesn’t know where she picked up the quote, you say “it’s right to correct the record” … so why don’t we just correct the record? And you know as well as I do that a grumbling letter from me won’t do it.
Hunter S. Thompson
TO
JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:
The Rolling Stone Press anthology of his work that Thompson refers to here would be published in 1979—through Simon & Schuster’s Summit Books division—as The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time—Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1.
August 28, 1975
Woody Creek, CO
Jann …
I talked to Lynn tonite about your reaction to Alan [Rinzler]’s submission of the anthology and I got a drift in the talk that I don’t think we need right now—to wit: The assumption of compound treachery on all fronts, mine, yours and everybody else’s; a massive juggling of contacts, contracts, plots, plans, back-stabbing, etc…. and although none of this came from Lynn, in so many words, I got a definite impression that she was confused as to which one of us was lying to her (or maybe 3rd or 4th parties compounding the lies) …so just for the record, I’ll send a carbon of this letter to Lynn. I’d like to focus your head on reality in terms of just a few points, and if they get a bit tangled in the telling, just keep in mind who’s sitting at this typewriter (which is not the one, incidentally, that you sent me via Parker in exchange for $458—that one is useless & I’ve been offered $199 for it by the local IBM man, so I’m back to using this one, which I got from Oscar for $200. … I think Oscar’s ominous disappearance is a story we have an obligation to do …).
…I am thinking very abstractly here, and perhaps even cosmically—but then I just came back from a long night with [musician Jimmy] Buffett & Rafelson—and I want you to be certain that no vision of you and/or yours has crossed my mind in many weeks, until I talked to Lynn today and heard you were withholding payment on the book on the basis of a clause that was already in the contract … and it was at that point, Jann, that I felt my chain slipping on the teeth.
So let me suggest this procedure, for now: 1) I have an immense personal investment in the anthology, far beyond any $10K advance, and I want to get the bastard en route to publication, not litigation, as soon as possible—and, as evidenced by my emergency editing run to Berkeley 10 days ago, I’ve put a very high priority-rating on it … because I will have to live with the bastard for years, and it’s a very different kind of book than anything I’ve ever published before; it’s a far more personal book (if you’ve read even the raw transcripts of the interview) than anything I’ve ever done; and its involvement in a stupid, paranoid squabble is the last conceivable thing I’d want for it right now … and I’m fucked if I can understand why you’re treading water with it, bitching about a clause that’s already in the contract (according to Alan & Clancy). Jesus, the very nature of the goddamn book makes it obvious that I’ll do everything even halfway necessary to be sure it gets published in the right way…ah… fuck… why? why? why?
Why indeed? Which gets us back to The Procedure… and that leads back to the anthology, which Sandy informed me earlier tonight cost me another $800-plus for the 4/5 day editing rush in Berkeley….
So I think all you have to do right now is decide whether or not you want to publish the bugger—and if you don’t, just tell Lynn right away and that’s that … but if you want to publish it under whatever kind of imprint you have in mind, the first order of business will be to send me that $10K check … because once I get paid the advance, I’ll at least know the bastard is on its way to the printer (somewhere, somehow) and I think you know me well enough to know I’m going to brood & bitch over every comma & column breaker all the way to the press—which is not a thing either one of us should be overly concerned, at this point, with pointing out to any potential copy editor; because some poor, unsuspecting woman, unknown to either of us right now, is going to have her hair turned cotton-white on this one … and now that I think on it, the only person I know who could naturally handle a nightmare like this is a girl who used to work for Random House who did all the editing on Hell’s Angels; her name is Margaret Harrell, and Silberman could probably find her if necessary. As a matter of fact, she’s the only editor I can think of right now that I could work with on a book like this in total confidence … she married a Flemish poet a few years back & went off to Morocco, but her forwarding address is Margaret Harrell c/o Harrell Family, Greenville, North Carolina…. I once recommended her to Alan, but that one went by the boards like all the others….
In any case, yes … The Procedure … which means that if you want to “publish” the anthology then you’re going to have to pay the $10K advance immediately, and at that point you or anyone you choose to “assign” will have my total cooperation … and if you don’t want the book, I’d be inclined to look with a very ugly eye on any attempt by you to hang it up in cheap niggling, because at that point I would start taking the situation very personally.
Which is exactly what I’m trying to get away from now. The only reason you don’t have huge (& I mean fucking huge) chunks of “Siege of Laos” on your desk today is that I don’t want to risk sending anything less than a total ball-buster, for fear you’ll use my otherwise-normal, scrambled submissions as an excuse for refusing to pay off the expenses—mainly the phone & the AmExp cards—which are causing me endless grief; for reasons I know, from experience, will seem small & silly a year from now, but at this moment in time they are causing me PAIN, constant goddamn pain, and everybody in town who’ll still speak to me is feeling the rotten effects of it….
And that about takes care of The Procedure, I think—at least in terms of The Anthology; and if you want to fuck around with that, I have more than enough pages of Saigon/Laos to send, in order to demand at least the $5K you agreed to pay for it … but if we’re going to have to fight over that one, too, then I think we may as well take the axe to the whole goddamn relationship right now, for good or ill … although not without a settlement on the Saigon-Laos piece.
And I suppose that’s okay, too, but I’m getting a little bit tired of it … and, once again for the record, the only serious change I’ve been talking about recently, with [Playboy’s Geoffrey] Norman or anyone else, is the flat-out, mathematical impossibility of making a living by means of serious journalism … and, needless to say, your name has become part of the formula; because it seems to me that if a local plumber can come out here while I’m in Berkeley and scare the shit out of Sandy with physical threats over a $488 bill that’s about 39 days overdue, then the past ten years of my life has amounted to nothing at all—because that’s precisely the kind of shit I’ve spent most of my life trying to get away from.
Yeah, I fully understand that you have a different viewpoint—the larger view, as it were—but not all of us live out our lives from the red-leather driver’s seat of a big white Mercedes sedan, and not all of us keep a team of PM&S attorneys on retainer to deal with leaks in the system…. Which is a cheap shot, and I’ll admit that much, but since we’ve begun this system of third-party communication I’ve been severely impressed by how far apart our basic stances really are, and how little you seem to understand that difference.
Jesus … where the fuck did that come from? I think I was talking about The Procedure, which by my lights means an instant payment of $10K for The Anthology, in exchange for a total and perhaps onerous cooperation from me on the book, all the way to the printer. Or, failing that, I think the thing for you to do is sign off on any personal or professional obligation inre: The Anthology, and Lynn can take it from there. At $10K, I think we can probably sell it quick, so either way you can’t lose—at least not on the balance sheets.
And so much for all that shit. This is another wasted night in terms of work and this constant expenditure of angry energy is useless to both of us…. What I am mainly looking for at this point is some indication that will open the bottleneck that began when I learned I’d been fired (or “Arbitrarily Removed from the payroll,” as you put it) while en route to Saigon, which still strikes me as one of the most monstrous acts in the history of journalism … but my anger over the thing has resulted in the crippling of one of the best stories I’ve ever smelled, much less been a part of, a
nd it’s also been financially ruinous.
So there is something very basically wrong here, and perhaps my anger is a main ingredient—because journalism, after all, is a business like any other, and perhaps I misunderstood that truth all along … but whatever I might or might not have misunderstood in the past, I’m getting awful goddamn tired of not writing for print & payment, and I mean to chop that knot just as soon as I can. My writing income for this year has been zero, and my tax bill—which I paid, for some insane reason that embarrasses me now—for ’74 was almost $15K, so the figures alone should tell you why the Owl Farm has been gripped, of late, with a serious high-tension angst. There are so many goddamn things I must deal with, that I can’t deal righteously with any one of them.
But this bullshit has gone on too long; it’s getting light outside & I almost wish I was stuck in some hellhole like the Sheraton-Schroeder, in the belly of some corrupt & doomed campaign … or back at the Lane Xang Hotel in Laos, where life was extremely direct, if nothing else.
Ah … the stories, the madness, the sheer fucking strangeness of that trip are like foam on the brain … and I would definitely like to get that piece done, particularly right now, since Laos has finally & officially gone under.28 The truth, of course, is that it went under about three days before I left—but it couldn’t be official then, because David Andelman of the NY Times had not yet arrived to take over the Global Affairs Suite in the Lane Xang, when I left. Andelman is one of those people you’d automatically choose to be plunged into a vat of aboriginal clap-spoor, just to test the effects … and as I was emptying my money belt to leave the hotel, he was screeching heavily at the manager to make sure “the Times” got my room—#224: remember that secret number if you ever go to Laos, because it’s a “private” suite, and not on the list.
Fear and Loathing in America Page 87