Your friend,
Jimmy
TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
November 18, 1975
Woody Creek, CO
Jim …
Your letter of Nov 10 arrived in the same mail that carried mine of Nov 15 off to you—which, if nothing else, seems to establish a new, five-day mailing time between Manhattan & the Owl Farm. (In the good ole days, before Free enterprise took over the Postal Service, it was three days: Selah.)
Which reminds me that you should tell Selma [Shapiro] to be alert, on Nov 23 or 24, for a bulky, lightweight package in a padded book-envelope with a Quadrangle Books mailing label on it—just in case the two of you ever want to visit the Rainbow Room again, on your own. And just in case she can’t cope with the complexities of the enclosed Shure stylus, she can call my friend Tim Ferris for expert advice … (and just for the record, you rabbit-punching bastard, I left The Tie in Ferris’ hands, for delivery back to you; Tim’s agent, as you know, is Erica Spellman, who works with Lynn …) and the next time you lay a shot like that on me, get ready for a few collect-call editorial queries at four or five in the morning; I am getting mean & merciless in my old age, Jim, and just because I chose to ignore your comment up there in the Rainbow Room about Asians not having the same respect for human life as we do, doesn’t mean I won’t remember it….
And so much for all that, eh?
Which is not the point of this letter, anyway.
There are, in fact, two points: 1) I won’t be getting back to NY on Nov 21, & probably not for a few weeks after that, because I suddenly have two critical magazine deadlines to meet before Dec 1; Wenner is threatening to sue me (again) for outstanding expenses, so I have to get an Indochina piece to him immediately, which will keep me busy for another week… and,
2) I hate to formally temper my enthusiasm for the idea I presented so feverishly with regard to the Texas book—but I agreed with Bob Rafelson that I would do the initial research for a film, instead of a book. I think you’ll agree that I should go ahead and do it that way—for a variety of good reasons, but mainly because the gun-running aspect of our back-burner Texas-book notion was a thing that Bob & I developed mutually in a conversation out here about a month ago, it seems right to keep it on that track until Bob has a chance to either get into it or reject it as a film, instead of putting him in the position of being offered the chance to buy it in book form, later on. I assume all this makes sense, or at least reads coherently (jesus, I just found that Selma’s package has a TWA mailing label, still in a padded book envelope—so forget that Quadrangle business, and if it gets lost, don’t look for it …).
Anyway, back to the Texas gig—which probably doesn’t make any difference anyway, because by the time you’d get around to grappling with the idea, Bob and I will no doubt have settled the film aspect anyway, for good or ill. And besides, your 11/10 letter was considerably less encouraging about the idea than your talk that Thursday afternoon in your office…. So the next time we get together, this will definitely be a main topic, because by that time I’ll have spent two or three weeks in Texas and I’ll know a lot more about it, and probably be a lot more into it—because the only difference in my root feeling about the Subject, since we first discussed it about two years ago, has been the ever-changing focus in each of our priorities (& connexions), along with my three visits to Dallas, Houston, & Austin that mainly served to confirm my most savage suspicions. The only thing that could turn me around on this one, now, would be a sudden & overwhelming conviction that I was headed for terminal violence—and I suspect we both have our doubts about the effect of even that, eh?
In any case, I can’t see where a film-priority at the moment should have any effect on the book idea except to postpone the final decision for a month or so. I told Bob to arrange for a summit-meeting at the Royal Biscayne hotel across the bay from Miami at Super Bowl time, and by then we’ll both know enough to make a decision on the film. I may or may not get to NY before then (unless you convince me it’s necessary), but I’ll definitely be in touch by phone, with both you & Wilcox … and if this letter puts you off balance in any way, for christ’s sake let me know, because that’s not my intention. I didn’t realize how much I liked the idea of working with you and Selma again until I got into your office and put on my tie. Getting famous in 49 states wasn’t half as much fun as I thought it would be, especially since it didn’t make me rich and drove Sandy half-mad in the process … so if I have to play writer for a living, I figure I may as well do it in decent company.
And so much for all that, too. On other fronts, please be sure to send me those books I left in the office—and definitely send me Frank Gannon’s36 book; that’s an extremely weird twist, and as much as I hate to pursue it somehow, I feel I must … because it just occurs to me that Gannon probably knows Judith Campbell.37
(cut to pg. Three—48 hours later)
Ah, yes … sweet Judy: They warned me she was bad company, and I knew she had heavy friends … but I was young & foolish then, and how could I have known that when she wasn’t with me she was off with Sam and/or Jack?
It hurts, Jim—so please never mention it to me. Like Mr. Gatsby said, it was “only personal,” and I’d just as soon not talk about it, except for something like $400,000, and even then I might lie to you.
•••••••••
Zang! How do you like them column-breakers? Do you have a key like that on your typewriter?
Anyway, we talked today and that naturally changes the tone of this letter. I have a strange feeling that I’ve out-flanked myself on this Texas gig; it flowered so fast that I never had time to put a price on it … but all the best ones seem to happen that way, so what the hell? The main question, as always, is who’s going to pay for education.
Jesus, where has Clancy been on that one? Why the fuck should a geek who was expelled from high school for rape have to pay taxes on monies advanced to him for the purpose of furthering his education? I think those bastards at the IRS owe me a hell of a lot of money … and it occurs to me now, once again, that lawyers are the real police-class in our society, because their minds are fixed on precedent, which is another word for laws.
When Brown’s Hotel of London tracked me all the way up here to the Pitkin County courthouse for an unpaid $1000-plus bill that Wenner refused to pay, my Aspen lawyer asked me what kind of defense we should try to run on them & I said “Insanity.” And he said, “You can’t plead ‘insanity’ in a civil case,” and I said “Why not? I was insane. Only a lunatic would have gone to London & torn up a suite in Brown’s Hotel & expected Wenner to pay for it. Indeed—prima facie Insanity; we can even subpoena Wenner and force him to testify in my defense….” So we may have a precedent coming up on this one; nobody has ever even tried to plead insanity in a civil case, but I have nothing to lose … and the case comes up on Dec 3; I’ll keep you posted. We might rattle a cage or two on this one….
And so much for all that. On the basis of our talk today (11/20) I think the new password is “Galveston.” And now I think I know how MacArthur felt when he first thought of that Inchon landing,38 coming out of his bed one midnight and seeing the full moon and the rising sun at the same time, one in front of each eye and about three feet away … leaping out of the khaki sheets like some kind of killer jack-in-the-box and thinking: Hot damn! Wait till they hear about this one, back at The Point! Stone silence on The Plain, a shudder of true madness in the Long Gray Line …
Hell, I could do that one better, but I don’t have the time right now. I’ve been listening to MacArthur’s speeches, and let me tell you, he stomped on the terra. There’s nobody in politics today who could stand on the same stump with that crazy bastard. I gather, from some of the people I’ve talked to who were there when it happened, that there’s a fiendish drama in the Senate hearings where Russell39 ambushed MacArthur and put him on the record as a madman…. The book on those hearings would be hard to get, but I suspect it would be worth some
effort; I’ll lean on my end if you’ll lean on yours, and maybe we’ll come up lucky: What we want, I think, would be the testimony of Gen. Douglas MacArthur at whatever hearings Sen. Russell, D—Ga. (is that right?) was conducting just after Mac came back from Japan/Korea to deliver his “Old Soldiers Never Die” speech. That was Apr 19, 1951, so the hearings were probably in late ’51 … just in time to derail MacArthur’s presidential express in ’52.
Yeah … and speaking of generals, I’ve been talking to Carl Wagner about Napoleon and his logistics. Carl is the best political organizer in the country, according to people who should know … and if the name seems familiar, he’s the one Jann wants to edit the Elko book, and Carl called me the other day to ask what it all meant …so I told him I’d ask you, rather than Jann, and get back to him. Which is entirely logical, since I was the one who conceived the Elko meeting & put it together—a secret meeting of ten of the country’s heaviest politicos at the Stockmen’s Hotel in Elko, Nevada (Dave Burke, Dick Goodwin, Adam Walinsky, Rick Stearns, Carl, etc.). It was supposed to be a blueprint meeting for a flat-out takeover in ’73, and Jann paid for it, but nobody ever followed up & I regard it now as one of the great Lost Opportunities of our time … and if you see any kind of a book in it, you should definitely talk to Carl, if only to see where the future lies. But he’s leery of Jann’s offer to be the “editor,” and I can’t really say that I blame him—if you see even the seed of a book in “Elko” (or even if you don’t), you should at least talk to Carl and get to know him. If I were running for President, he’d be the first person I’d hire … so it would probably be worth your while to call me and pursue this connexion a bit further, because one of these days you’re going to be calling me to get his private number at the White House. Selah.
And … yes … it’s about time to end this bugger, eh? So ……1) I talked to Wilcox today, after we had our chat, and I think he’s doing fine on the Anthology … and 2) I’ll send a copy of all this to Lynn, so she can straighten out my affairs while I have a look at the Texas border, & after that, we can talk about making me rich … and meanwhile I’ll settle the film-situation with Bob, so that next time we talk I’ll know what I’m doing inre: Galveston … which is not to say I don’t know already, but there’s always the problem of finding the right legal words for it.
Okay for now …
Hunter
TO GOVERNOR JIMMY CARTER:
Thompson sought to correct Carter’s impression that he was actually running for the presidency by offering political advice to the real candidate.
November 24, 1975
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Jimmy …
Thanx for the note inre: my “announcement”—but, just for the record, I’d like to make one thing perfectly clear: I was careful not to say I was running for president, but only that I refused to take myself out of the running, as long as the nomination of Hubert Humphrey remained a possibility. And I saw McGovern saying almost exactly the same thing on the news tonight, which indicates a change for the better in his thinking because less than two months ago he was thinking seriously (although he refused to admit this to me) about a Humphrey-McGovern ticket as a possible solution to a deadlocked convention. My advisers in Washington keep me on top of these shifts, and what they’re telling me now is that we should get ready for the spontaneous eruption of a McGovern-Thompson ticket. (At first they said “Thompson-McGovern,” but I felt that would be speaking too soon, so I’ve instructed them to deny everything except my reluctant availability for “a place on the ticket,” but only if it becomes absolutely necessary. I’m sure you can appreciate the wisdom of this stance, and for reasons of personal friendship I thought I should tell you about it. Selah.)
Also—despite my conscious refusal to get physically involved in the campaign until Jan 1—I’ve been watching it pretty closely and talking to a lot of people, and the only real change I’ve sensed in the past few weeks is that the people I talk to have suddenly decided to take you seriously … and one of these you should know about and talk to personally, if possible, is Carl Wagner, who works for the Municipal Workers Union in Madison, Wisc. (At least I think that’s what he’s doing right now, officially, but what he’s really doing is looking for the right campaign to get into, and if I were running for president, Carl would be one of the first three people I’d hire.) If I were you I’d call him, because it probably wouldn’t take much more than that to get him involved in the Florida primary. We talked a few days ago and agreed that you might actually be the front-runner by mid-March (or close enough to act like one) if you can finish at least third in N.H. and then convince the national press that Wallace needs 60% of the vote in Florida for a real victory. My own feeling, after watching Wallace on Meet the Press last Sunday, is that it’s entirely possible for you to win in Florida—especially if you can break Wallace’s grip on the “Richard Petty40 vote.” In any case, there’s no way the bastard can get 60% down there. In ’72 he pulled about 42% or 43%, and that was against a crowd of dumb zombies. My main impression of the ’76 Wallace on TV, however, had to do with his tendency to lose his temper, even under the most passive kind of questioning. And if I were running against the bugger down there, I’d try to get on the same TV screen with him as often as possible, hopefully in a Q & A situation with some fairly aggressive press people, and let him beat himself….
But what the hell? I’m slipping out of my journalistic role here, and I think it’s a bit too early for that. Some of the things I’ve said about you have already been interpreted as a mystic endorsement of some kind, so I have to be care-ful—or at least act that way, for now, because I’m still not sure what role I’ll be playing in this campaign, if any … although I’ve already made reservations at the Wayfarer in Manchester and the Royal Biscayne in Florida.
Indeed, and on the Florida front you might be able to do me a favor. My reservation at the Royal Biscayne is from Feb 15 to March 13, but they say they can’t guarantee me a ground floor room near the beach, which is very important to me—especially if I have to stay there for almost a month. If you have any leverage with those people (it’s a Sheraton/ITT property—or at least it was) through your hq. in Florida, I’d appreciate it if you could nail down a ground floor room near the beach for me. Or maybe a beach-front room at the Silver Sands, next door to the Royal Biscayne … The Key is only 10 or 12 minutes from downtown Miami, but in terms of pace & privacy it seems a hell of a lot farther.
Another small favor has to do with the renting of a convertible, which are no longer available from the big rent-a-car companies—but which can be had fairly easily via the yellow pages (car rentals) in the Miami phone book. The last time I was there I got one from a used-car lot, but that’s a little chancy unless you have time to look around; so if there’s somebody in your Miami hq. who can locate & reserve a convertible for me (any make), I’d appreciate that, too … but neither one of these things is a serious problem & I don’t mean to lean on you with them, but what the hell? If they’re easy, why not do it that way? And while we’re at it, another thing I’ve always had trouble with in Miami is renting an IBM Selectric typewriter….
Hell, this is awful. All I really meant to do was answer your note, not ask a gaggle of favors—but again, what the hell? If it’s easy, let’s do it. If not, I’ll be there anyway, and I’m definitely looking forward to it.
In the meantime, say hello for me to Rosalynn and all the other Carters. I got a note from Jack recently & he sounded like he was ready to move right into the White House. Sandy thinks you’re all crazy for wanting to live in Washington, and I tend to agree … but good luck anyway, and I’ll see you in New Hampshire.
Hunter
1976
JIMMY CARTER & THE RISE OF THE ROCK & ROLL VOTE …MARIJUANA GOES TO THE WHITE HOUSE … CRIME IS THE LONG-TERM ANSWER … PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT FOR JOURNALISTS … BUY THE TICKET, TAKE THE RIDE …
With Darwin, Woody Creek, 1976.
(PHOTO BY MICHAEL
MONTFORT)
Juan and Darwin, Woody Creek, 1976.
(PHOTO BY HUNTER S. THOMPSON)
The Reader’s Chair—Owl Farm, 1976.
(PHOTO BY MICHAEL MONTFORT)
Taking instructions from Hughes Rudd in New York, 1976.
(PHOTO BY JILL KREMENTZ)
Key West, 1976.
(PHOTO BY N. A. LUKAS, COURTESY OF HST ARCHIVES)
Fire Ball: HST and Jann Wenner celebrating Jimmy Carter’s Democratic presidential nomination at a Rolling Stone party, 1976. (PHOTO BY ED BRADLEY)
TO JANN WENNER, ROLLING STONE:
As he prepared to set off on the 1976 presidential campaign trail for Rolling Stone, Thompson wrote to thank Wenner for sending him a “mojo wire”: his term for a Xerox telecopier, sort of a first-generation fax machine.
January 2, 1976
Woody Creek, CO
Jann …
The goddamn mojo wire arrived by UPS (right to my front door) on Xmas eve … Jesus, what a wonderful present!
There is, of course, the matter of the traveling case—an extremely crucial item for any sort of road-work … and, speaking of road-work, we should have a talk ASAP about how to handle the early primaries. Canceling the Playboy piece left me with a grand or two in rudimentary, out-of-pocket expenses—mainly phone calls, lunches in Washington, etc.—that I’ve incurred during the long watch-and-wait period since last July. None of these are legally yours, but since all that background material will turn up somehow in the early pieces on the campaign, I assume we can charge most of it off to expenses, not all, but I’ll have to check with Lynn on the amount….
Okay for now. [David] Felton called me from either SF or NY inre: “Laos,” but his call came in the midst of a 3-day frenzy and when I tried to call him back, the people in NY said he was in SF, and the people in SF said he was in NY. I’ll try again today—which reminds me that I don’t know where you are either, so I’ll send a carbon of this note to NY.
Fear and Loathing in America Page 90