Fear and Loathing in America

by Hunter S. Thompson

  OK. OK. OK …we must end this. And what have we solved? You have a massive goddamn ms. for the anthology, and I have a massive goddamn cash shortage, along with constant pain in my life because of it … so I think, on almost any standard, that an immediate decision and/or cash on that one is not unreasonable, and that means before you take off for Europe … and a $10K check would free me to make a final rush on “The Siege of Laos,” another $5K and the breaking of the Siege of Woody Creek, which might turn out to be my swan song in journalism… but I’m not really looking at that.

  Ah, fuck—this Kent State verdict on the CBS Morning News; we are pushing the Midnight Hour, I think, and the ’76 Campaign story will not be what we’re looking at now….

  As for the Coors memo and your recent letter, I’ll do it as soon as I can—which means, in effect, that if we can settle this anthology thing quick, I can focus on things I have to write instead of grappling with creditors, but in any case I think it has to be done (the Coors memo). The main thing at the moment is not to fuck around or kill any more time. Or if that’s what you want to do, you should do it out front and not even try to be polite about it—because I’ve wasted as much time as I can afford to on this bullshit, and I don’t really have any choice now except to get rolling, in whatever direction where I can see some light on the tracks. The best sequence, as I see it, would be 1) a firm decision on The Anthology, 2) Coors Cunts & the Straight Press memo, 3) Laos, in extremis, which means a long and ragged piece—probably as weird as anything since the first “Vegas” hit, 4) A decision of some kind, if only an option for interim coverage, on the ’76 campaign … and we can wait as long as we have to for that summit conference you’ve mentioned; I’ve been through enough of those to know what they mean, come sunrise. And that’s it for now; here’s Rocky on TV, butchering “the liberals” in S.C. How long, O Moloch,29

  how long …

  HST

  TO U.S. SENATOR GEORGE MCGOVERN:

  There is a special poignance in Thompson’s longing for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “fresh green breast of the new world” via the governorship of American Samoa: after all, he made the plea to George McGovern, who had been trounced in the 1972 presidential race and wasn’t even running in 1976.

  September 5, 1975

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear George …

  I don’t know how your mail is running these days with regard to these foetid rumors about a Humphrey-McGovern ticket in ’76, but mine is getting pretty goddamn nasty … and since I haven’t been reading Dorothy McArdle recently I don’t know your thinking, but my mail is piling up and pretty goddamn soon I’m going to have to explain to these people, in print, what I think is going on….

  Because I simply can’t answer all these letters, George. I don’t have a machine like you do—and besides, the kind of people who write me would run amok if I started sending out form letters, especially in response to mail that is drifting more and more into the realm of personal abuse.

  God knows, it never occurred to me back in ’72 that I’d one day be called to account for your behavior on the national stage, but that’s what’s happening and I’m getting very unhappy about it … for a variety of reasons, but mainly because I don’t know what to tell these people.

  We talked, as you recall, about your feeling and/or personal connexion with Hubert in ’76, and unless memory fails me I think you dismissed it as a bad joke … but if you’ve changed your mind on that subject, I don’t feel it’s out of line for me to ask you as a friend just exactly why I’m being plagued by these hideous rumors of a Humphrey-McGovern alliance in ’76, and how I might explain it.

  Because at some point, George, I will have to come to grips with this rumor, if only to clear my own name … and if you can give me help on this score, I’d greatly appreciate it. We can do it either on or off the record, by mail or in person. I’ll be in Washington for most of the first week of October, staying in the sleazy but venerable National Affairs Suite at the Washington Hilton …or you can find me via John Holum or Sandy Berger.

  Maybe we could have dinner sometime in that week, perhaps with Sandy or Carl Wagner, if he happens to be in town—and get ourselves grounded at least well enough to survive this ugly rumor.

  Maybe it’s this goddamn isolation I live in. And it has been a wretched year … but, my friend, you don’t know what wretched slime is until you put yourself in my shoes and try to look forward to a campaign year that could end with Ford&Rocky vs. Hubert&George. I just heard that Bill Greider is taking ’76 off, going to Europe to write a novel—and that knowledge gives me the fear, because Bill has good instincts.

  Indeed … and now is as good a time as any to mention this: It’s an ugly hustle, but why not? 1976 might well be the year of the Ugly Hustle, and you know how I like to stay ahead or even sometimes beyond things … so let me just ask you flat out, and even for the record, if necessary, if you can do anything to remove that psychotic basketball coach from the Governor’s Mansion in American Samoa, and put me in it. I’ve been lusting after that job for many years, George, and nobody in his right mind will argue that I’m not eminently qualified.

  Under any other circumstances, I’d be far more subtle. Certainly you understand this. But we are dealing, in this case, with an appointment that, from time immemorial, has been visited on some of the most lame, savage and demented yo-yos this side of the long-armed jacket … and the underlying reason for all their appointments has always been to get them out of the country, for reasons that have never been bandied about in public.

  Which is not to suggest any downbeat parallels or comparisons … Because when I think of Samoa, George, I think of the last Jeffersonian frontier, a slow-paced agrarian democracy where no man need fear the bent tangents of his neighbor, or the twisted frenzies of local winos, cannibals and politicians. …Yes, a fresh green breast of the new world, that same enchanted island that once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.

  Ah, think of it, George: The Green Light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us …With Greider in Europe and me in Samoa, there’d be nobody left on The Bus with the balls to properly express the kind of monumental repugnance that I fear awaits us on the campaign trail next year.

  I trust you’ll give it some thought between now and the first week in October, when I get to Washington… but in any case please let me know.

  Thanks,

  Hunter

  TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:

  In a particularly high-spirited letter, Thompson asked Wenner to take care of Rolling Stone’s bills. Wenner had sent Thompson a check.

  September 7, 1975

  Woody Creek, CO

  Jann …

  I hardly know what to say, and frankly it’s very difficult for me to even type this thing because I’ve been crying most of the night & I can barely see …and when I talked to Lynn a few minutes ago she was crying too and goddamnit Jann I won’t have you abusing that poor woman … and why the fuck is Tom Wicker calling me three & four times a day to bitch about that money you owe him? Why in the name of god can’t you just pay these people what you owe them? Hell, you know I’m not concerned for myself; Baker’s been sending me the checks right on schedule—but what kind of perverse instinct makes you pick on decent people like Lynn & Tom?

  You dirty racist bastard: One of these days they’ll pop you, and don’t come running to me for help.

  Yeah … and I just picked up a rumor that you actually sent Lynn a check. But I told her not to cash it, because it’s not made out to me—and I also want that evil pigfucker from American Express to have a chance to work out on you for a while, with regard to that $1620 you owe them for the cataract operation on that transvestite you hired under false pretenses … and why the fuck am I getting bills from Hong Kong? You know I always pay cash in Hong Kong. I got a bill for 700 HK dollars the other day for those ice-picks you asked me to send to Murray Gart….

  Ah, Jesus …I can
’t keep it up. Nothing intolerable has happened to me for three (3) consecutive days, and I can’t handle it. The peacocks have hatched, the Crop has come in, my incredibly expensive maze of underground water spouts is working for the first time in a year, and the two grisly rake-murders in Snowmass remain unsolved.

  The Siege of Laos creeps along, but unless you stop payment on the book-check I suspect we are through a very nasty bottleneck and I figure I can now afford the risk of sending a few chunks, rather than sit here and brood on the whole goddamn thing. It also helps that the NY Times has finally declared Laos a fallen country, which finally gives me a stable time-frame for the thing … although I will, of course, have to return to Laos for a few weeks to update my notes.

  Jesus, it’s taken me all afternoon to write this goddamn page. The phone rings constantly. Many offers. Sally Quinn wants me to write a musical comedy with her for $500K, but I’m afraid of her so I can’t do it. Ed Williams has offered me the presidency of the Redskins when he quits next year, but I’m afraid of George Allen so I can’t do that either.30 The one offer I’ve accepted, however, is the position of Drug Consultant to Doctor Nork, who is now at the Aspen clinic.

  And that’s just about all the news from here, Jann….

  No, wait a minute, I just noticed your extremely queer letter of 8/12, which seems to indicate that we can actually do the Coors memo before Laos, so I think I’ll get to that while I’m still in the proper mood.

  In any case, I’m feeling too weird to continue with this. My intake has finally leveled off at six to eight Quaaludes and about 30 whites a day, which seems about right for doing business … and speaking of business, I’m enclosing a letter I sent to McGovern earlier today. I think we are going to have to treat this campaign nightmare with extreme caution.

  (Now, several days later, I think I’ll just send The Above gibberish along, for the record … and, yes, speaking of records, I just got the check from Lynn and also a copy of the ms. for the anthology, which I’m now looking at for the first time & also in light of Lynn’s comment (when I asked what you plan to do with it) that you were “sending it to Silberman.”)

  Jesus, the copy of ms. that I have is in no condition to send to anybody—mainly because of that goddamn interview that still exists only in the form of raw transcripts, and I have to wonder how we’re going to cope with the fucker, now that you have no editorial machinery & no people to deal with a monster like this, which still needs a hell of a lot of work if we stick with the original plan of weaving the interview around the pieces … so I think we should talk about this thing ASAP; satisfying the conditions of the contract is one thing, but publishing an embarrassing book is something else again (for both of us, I would think …).

  We should also ponder the ’76 campaign, for good or ill. I still plan to “cover” it, but without a book advance that would make it worthwhile or even the prospect of a sharp-edged campaign, I’m beginning to get a bit concerned about a year in that hell-hole … and I think we should talk ASAP on this one, too…. In any case, thanx for the cheque. I guess it’s my turn to act decent now, so I’ll give it a try. OK,

  Hunter

  TO DICK DRAYNE, PRESS SECRETARY TO U.S. SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY:

  Thompson suggested interviewing Senator Kennedy for a Rolling Stone piece.

  September 9, 1975

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dick …

  I don’t know how me & EK got on the same mailing list(s) for all these nuts, but the one I got most recently (from a “Robert J. MacDonald” in Ketchum, Idaho) strikes me as worth noting. The style & tone of the two letters he sent me by Certified Mail to the RS office in DC—along with copies of one to Teddy & another to Weinberger31—had a quality of aggressiveness and perverse competence about them that caused me to put them in a different pile from the rest of my mail. There was nothing explicitly quotable from either one, but the tone was distinctly menacing, and I don’t get many like that—although I do, in fact, get threatened with a fairly consistent regularity, and I also get a lot of letters “from prison,” etc. like the last one I sent you.

  But this last thing from MacDonald in Idaho had a very sharp edge to it, and if EK has been getting the same kind of stuff from him, I just thought we should compare notes.

  It also occurs to me that a good story might lurk in the twisted depths of EK’s daily mail—a sort of weird compendium of all that gibberish you get; perhaps in connection with a RS interview, or maybe on its own.

  And in case you don’t know, Ketchum, Idaho is the town right next to Sun Valley, where EK has been known to spend some winter time in the past & where I know some people … but I’d prefer to tread very lightly when it comes to using my friends as potential intelligence sources for anything connected with the government, so unless it seems absolutely necessary I’d rather not get involved in evaluating the potential threat of crank letters by questioning friends about somebody they may or may not know … but if you see a good reason, let me know and I’ll do what I can.

  OK for now. I’ll be in DC for the first week in Oct. I’ll try to stop by for a drink or six. See you then….

  Hunter

  TO SANDY BERGER:

  Once again Thompson sought Berger’s counsel on a potentially actionable case of libel—this time cartoonist Garry Trudeau’s addition of the drug-addled shyster “Duke,” a character clearly based on Thompson’s public persona, to his popular Universal Press Syndicate comic strip, Doonesbury. Trudeau won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.

  September 10, 1975

  Woody Creek, CO

  Sandy …

  Jesus, am I doomed to spend the rest of my life in a maze of demented litigation? First Sally Quinn & now this (see enc.) from that dope-addled nazi cartoonist… where the fuck will it end?

  Thanks for the (copy of) the letter to Esquire, and I hope the rest of that action goes smoothly; because frankly, I’d like to get back to work … and if I don’t, you can forget about sending me any bills.

  Anyway, this shit in the comix may or may not raise an interesting legal possibility with regard to the definition of a public figure. I think I mentioned a recent decision in Chicago during one of our recent phone talks, where a man who had been a public figure (looking at NY Times vs. Sullivan) was deemed to have lost that status—thereby winning his libel action—when he quit politics & retired. …I have a copy of the opinion (or decision) here somewhere, so if you haven’t heard about it, let me know and I’ll send it along when I find it.

  There might also be a very real possibility of malice in this comic strip stuff, although I’m damned if I could point you to any tangible reasons, since I’ve never seen the cartoonist and don’t know him at all. …Or, if we want to give paranoia full rein we could assume this is Wenner’s way of getting back at me for some of the things I’ve said about him, by using Trudeau’s strip as some kind of Rolling Stone mouthpiece.

  But that’s about as close as I can come to a shrewd guess … and the only way I’d want to get involved in any litigation on this is if you (or [Merrit] Prettyman, or whoever) might see a firm handle on it, both financially & in terms of case-law. With the legal definition of a public figure a bit hazy now, this comix assault strikes me as playing with fire … or maybe I’m totally wrong & I can be whacked just as heavy in the public prints as I whacked Hubert in ’72; and if that’s the case I sure as hell don’t want to get tied up in a money-ulcer lawsuit that’ll drive me mad…. But from the standpoint of my own work, as well as that of others, I think it’s important for me (both as a working journalist & a victim) to know exactly what the definition of a public figure is, and right now I don’t, and I’m not sure the papers who publish Trudeau do either. I’ve talked to Mike Howard (of Scripps-Howard renown) at the Rocky Mountain News, and he says his lawyers have told him the “public figure question” is now a grey area, in the context of libel suits, and that the Chicago decision I cited earlier might have a serious hedging effect on T
imes/Sullivan—provided it’s upheld, if & when….

  Anyway, just in case you don’t have much else to think about these days, I thought I’d lay this one on you for some mental exercise…. Because I think any case that re-defines a “public figure” in terms of potential libel actions could have as much effect on (at least my kind of) journalism as the Nixon-era “new crime code” or whatever they call it that Ford would apparently like to pass—the one that would allow reporters & editors to be locked up for publishing “classified” information, a sort of U.S. version of the British “state secrets” law.

  I’m just talking off the top of my head here, and I may be wrong on a point or a memory here & there, but as I get the drift of things, it looks like the kind of journalistic freedom that a lot of us have enjoyed for the past decade might be on the verge of a drastic re-structuring.

  Or maybe not … But if the question of doubt exists, then so does the question of risk, and I’ve argued with enough pub/lawyers to know they always win if they can raise a real question of risk. Hell, not one of the three books I’ve published would have gone to press if the pub/lawyers had prevailed with their initial objections … but until now, I’ve always had a pretty good nuts & bolts grasp of the libel laws.

  That’s what’s worrying me now: I’m no longer sure just where the line is, and I get the feeling that nobody else is either…. Which gives us all something to think about, eh?

  Anyway, ponder the meaning of these comix & tell me what you think. If this kind of shit is legal, then I don’t think I have to worry about any libel actions against me, because I’ve never pushed my luck this far, not even with Hubert. If this comix stuff is libel, then of course I’d like to sue for at least $20 million in damages…. And if it’s not, then it gives me a new sense of freedom in my own work.

  I’ll be at the Hilton for the first week of October & we should definitely connect early on, before I run amok. Did you call George about dinner? And if you & Susan feel like coming out here for a visit anytime soon, let me know & I’ll have the guest room re-assembled. That’s a serious invitation, and I’ll see you in a week or so.