Fear and Loathing in America

by Hunter S. Thompson

  Okay … My schedule these days is a lot looser than yours, but my July 24 (or possibly July 31) deadline is a very serious matter to me, Rolling Stone, and my loan officer at the Bank of Aspen…. So please let me know, as soon as possible, if and when you’d feel comfortable having me join you for an afternoon or evening, or both, of the same kind of informally serious talk we’ve done in the past…. And if you think that’s not feasible, let’s talk about why. All I need, real quick, is an answer, so I can tell Rolling Stone what sort of an article to expect for the post-convention issue.

  Either way, I’ll see you in New York…. Which is not a thing I look forward to, and in a sense it’s your fault that I now have to spend a mid-July week in the bowels of Manhattan; but since it now seems inevitable, I might as well come out of it with a good, valid and historically meaningful story—which means I’ll need some private, un-hurried time with you, in Plains or New York.

  I can see how this might be a problem for you, in terms of schedule & priorities—but, in the context of our personal & professional relationship over the course of the past two years, it seems like a problem worth solving—in your interest, as well as my own. There are still a hell of a lot of decent, intelligent people “out there” who are not yet convinced that you’re human, and that’s a problem I think we can and should solve by smiting them hip and thigh, as it were, with another long JC/HST interview/talk/conversation about some of the things that concern them.

  Indeed … So it looks like a worthwhile project, and one that we both might enjoy; or at least that’s how it looks to me, and I hope we can find enough time to do it right.

  Let me know, as I’ve said, ASAP. You can call me here at home, or by asking Jody to track me down through Ed Bradley from CBS, who just left here to pick you up in Milwaukee. Ed and I have been brooding and haggling about you since those very early days up in Manchester & Boston when he was covering Birch Bayh, and ever since he got himself assigned to you we’ve been comparing notes and impressions at least three times a week … and, for whatever it’s worth, you’re still ahead on real points.

  Zang! This letter is getting too long, so I think I’ll quit right now. Anything else I have to say can wait until later….

  … Sincerely,

  Hunter S. Thompson

  TO U.S. SENATOR GARY HART:

  Thompson intended to see to it that his friend Gary Hart, who now represented Colorado in the U.S. Senate, was working for him in Washington.

  July 1, 1976

  Woody Creek, CO

  Dear Gary:

  I missed you at the Pomegranate in Aspen and also at the Demo “convention” in Denver … but if you get to NY for the love-in, I’ll probably see you there.

  In the meantime, however, could you bring me up to date on the progress (or fate) of S.1 … That’s S.1, which you assured me quite a while ago would never pass…. But I keep hearing ominous talk about it, and I figure it’s time for an update. If S.1 is likely to go anywhere at all, I want to come to Washington and make sure it doesn’t slip by without some fear & loathing attached. So please send me a progress report, to date, and then we can talk. Thanx….

  Also, I just caught an item on the CBS Morning News to the effect that the Senate just voted to end price controls on … What? Natural Gas? Gasoline? It went by so fast that I didn’t catch the details, but the main thrust was painfully obvious … and with that in mind, I wonder if you could supply me with a list of Yes and No votes in the Senate on this thing. Or was it a secret ballot?

  The enclosed material vis-à-vis my current problem with the Williams Energy Company should be self-explanatory, and I wonder if you can get a better explanation of their pricing-practices out of them than Sandy could by writing their office in Grand Junction. As far as I know, these bastards have a total monopoly in this area (Aspen is on natural gas, but us ranchers are stuck with propane), and $13.50 per day is a goddamn outrage—but to get a memo like this in response to a polite request for an explanation is like having your insurance man triple your rates and then set fire to your house when you complain.

  I haven’t given you a hard time about anything you have or haven’t done since ’74, but I think it’s about time you started earning your salary & this thing is too savage & obvious to ignore. The bastards should at least be forced to explain themselves, right? Let me know ASAP.

  Thanx,

  Hunter

  TO FRANK N. DUBOFSKY, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION:

  The state chapter had sent Thompson a long and wandering appeal for “a substantial contribution to the Colorado affiliate of the A.C.L.U…. above and beyond your A.C.L.U. dues.”

  July 6, 1976

  Woody Creek, CO

  Frank N. Dubofsky

  ACLU of Colorado

  1711 Pennsylvania St.

  Denver, CO 80203

  Dear Mr. Dubofsky,

  Your letter of March 29 just turned up in a pile of mail from Rolling Stone readers who want me to do everything from setting myself on fire to running for President…. And since I only subject myself to this kind of ordeal (reading the RS mail) once a month, I failed to see or read your letter until last night.

  And now, after reading it again, I am still a bit hazy what you want from me or why you wrote the letter…. Which is not entirely reassuring: If I were going to hire an attorney for anything important, I would be reluctant, as it were, to retain somebody who can write eleven paragraphs on two single-spaced pages and either fail to say what he means, or succeed in saying something so trivial as a request for money that could just as easily have been made on a 3 x 5 postcard. …You might at least have wasted a twelfth paragraph to say how much money you want.

  In any case, if all you want is money, you’d have been smarter to write somebody who has some. If I wrote a check for a thousand dollars today, it would probably bounce—and I have no savings account. I could perhaps double my annual contribution of (approx.) $50 to the ACLU, but on the evidence of your 3/29 letter to me I wouldn’t have much trouble concluding that any money I sent you might very likely be spent to pay the salaries of however many typists you need to write more letters to more people, asking for more money.

  And so much for that, eh?

  If I were you, I’d try to figure out some slightly more imaginative way to get money out of me…. Three or four of these come to my own mind immediately, but if I have to line them out for you, it raises a definite question of confidence vis-à-vis what use these monies might be put to. I have been a member of the national and/or N. Calif. ACLU for almost 15 years, so there is obviously no lack of interest on my part…. But I think it’s reasonable for me or any other member to wonder what my money is being used for, and who is spending it. Cazart …

  Hunter S. Thompson

  TO DAVISON THOMPSON:

  Writing to his brother, Thompson tried to reconcile his acceptance of a recent small inheritance with his earlier stance that “inherited wealth” should be abolished.

  July 7, 1976

  Woody Creek, CO

  Davison …

  Congratulations. I have a letter here from one Jim B. Johnson in Memphis, saying I finally won my long and savage “complaint” against Howard P. Pritchard, Executor of the estate of Velma H. Ray, et al.

  Needless to say, I feel a bit like the Lonesome End on the “et al.” team—especially since I long ago tried to quit the squad altogether & split my share among the other “et al.” members—but, as I explained to Mom on the phone quite a while ago, my offer (to quit & split, as it were) became null & void when it was judged to be legally non-feasible. That seemed fair to me then, and it still does….

  Which leaves me sitting here with this letter & xeroxed “settlement and decree” from Johnson, saying that all I have to do in order to collect $6000 is sign a receipt and send him my Social Security number…. But he didn’t enclose any receipt and I can’t tell whether I should send my SS No. to him or to you.

  Johnson’s letter also comes at
a time when I’m feeling nervous about re-paying a loan from Noonan for an amount not much less than my share of the “et al.” settlement…. So if you’re sitting there wondering if I really want the money, the answer is yes; not so much because I want it or even feel I deserve it, but because I now need it. Juan recently disposed of $4200 by an accident of logistics so incredible that it would take me three pages to explain it, but the bottom line is that I just got back from a nightmarish vacation in Tobago to find that my “Summer of ’76 Money Cushion” had been cut, in my absence, from $5000 to $800….

  But what the fuck? None of this gibberish really matters right now, does it? I’ve assured Noonan that his money is currently en route from a weird & mysterious source, and if it’s at all possible I’d like to end this thing, receive & distribute my share of the funds, and get enough out of debt to quit writing about politics and get to work on a new novel that’s due in Sept.

  So please let me know what I must or should do, in order to get my hands on the money. I still feel like a drooling greedhead because of my part in this gig—mainly because one of the main points in my “tentative platform” when I was thinking about running for the U.S. Senate back in ’74 had to do with my plan to abolish the whole concept of “inherited wealth” in this country; but now that I’m on the legal/public record in the Chancery Court of Tennessee as a complainant in a lawsuit over a contested will, I figure I might as well take the money.

  As a Senator I could have skimmed $6000 a month with no trouble at all, for at least the next six years…. But now I guess I’ll have to get by on my own, which means I have to keep a sharp eye on the trolling lines, for good or ill…. So it’s back to the drawing boards and to hell with politics.

  On other fronts, life at the Owl Farm remains much the same as always—a never-ending chain of crisis-peaks and occasional peaceful valleys. If I’d had any sense I’d have been a goddamn lawyer, but I’m a bit too old for that now, so I guess I’m stuck with whatever I am.

  Right … and now I have to go into town to file a massive lawsuit against [George] Stranahan about my water rights, so I’ll finish this and leave the next step with you. If I get a check in today’s mail for the movie rights to Vegas (or any other unexpected windfall), I’ll re-assess my position vis-à-vis my share of the settlement. The simple reality of being able to turn the money down would be a tremendous high for me—but right now that’s a high I can’t afford.

  And to hell with all this. After 20 years of practice, I’ve developed a certain talent for affording un-affordable highs, and maybe I can deal with this one, too, in time. My latest news bulletin on your situation was decidedly upbeat, so I assume you’re still holding the fort on your own terms—which is the best any of us can hope for in this world, I think; but every once in a while I get a powerful urge to abandon everything, change my name, and become a terminal wino in some rotten skid-row town like Galveston or Pittsburgh.

  If you have any better ideas, let me know ASAP.

  Zingo,

  Hunter

  DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION NOTES—2 HRS. BEFORE LEAVING WC FOR NYC:

  Thompson composed this elegant reflection after a late-night swim two hours before he had to leave Woody Creek to cover the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York City.

  July 10, 1976

  Woody Creek, CO

  A full moon tonight, and a cold bright sky above the long pool behind the Jerome Hotel. The Milky Way looking down from so close that it looks like a madman with good reflexes could shoot the stars out of the sky, one by one, with something like a .264 Magnum or maybe a .220 Swift. The pool is warm, the bar is closed, Main Street is empty except for an occasional cop zooming by in one of the red Saabs they use. No cars on fire in the parking lot behind the Jerome tonight, no dope addicts lurking around in the darkness under the tent, no red-tipped cigarettes glowing suddenly back in the darkness where white iron lawn tables, wet on the tops from cold mist & dampness, sit under the big cottonwood trees behind the old Aspen Times building….

  Easing into the pool around 3:30, no racing dives at this hour of the morning when a 200 pound body hitting flat on the water would echo for three blocks … just quick & naked over the side and into the cold deep end, then pushing off fast to neutralize the cold, and then the burning energy takes over …cruising along with no sound, looking up at the stars and the blue-black infinity so close to my eyes now stinging from the first hit of chlorine … 21 laps with no sound but rippling water and blow-hole breathing like a whale. Marty Nolan18 once told Sandy that I swim “like a school of whales.” And Craig Vetter described my “rodent-like crawl.” The only other animal who swims like me is the Stoat, but his reasons are different. The stoat wants the best possible combination of speed and silence; he is not especially concerned about “exercise.” But I want the feeling of muscles pulling, stretching, pulling, relaxing—every muscle from the thin layers under my scalp to the tendons down in my toes, and this is the only stroke I know that pulls every muscle; and if I feel one that isn’t working I can roll over on my side or kick vertically instead of like a frog, until I feel the lazy one come alive…. Pulling deep with the arms, almost straight down like rowing with muffled oars, fingers tight in a web/cup, legs intensely rigid at the end of each deep stroke to get the best possible glide, and then a moment of total relaxation just before the next stroke, when the energy of the glide starts falling off. This is a home-made stroke, mainly for ocean swimming because the face can be tucked down on the chest and the waves break over the head instead of into the face, and that moment of total relaxation between strokes lets the lymph glands/nodes empty, so the muscle fatigue of each stroke has time to dissipate instead of building up.

  This is as close as I can come to peace—out in the middle of a big olympicsize pool at 3:30 in the morning; nobody can get to me out here, no phones ring, nobody can interrupt to, say, ask me about Jimmy Carter, to offer me drugs, to call me a bastard, or ask me why Claudine really shot Spider.19 I am moving too fast to hear anything but the sound of moving water and the pumping of blood through my body and my own sputtered blasts of breathing between the long slow strokes. The Jerome is a 10-stroke pool, which means I can cut it to nine if I concentrate totally on every stroke—and if I keep my toes completely straight and my fingers straight and tight against my body at the end of every stroke, I can make it from end to end in eight strokes. But if I don’t pull deep enough or fail to concentrate all the way to the end of each stroke, (or if I fuck up on my breathing) the Jerome can be an eleven or even a twelve-stroke pool.

  Three extra strokes per lap for 21 laps is 63 extra strokes: 252 strokes to cover the same exact distance that I’d cover with 189 strokes if I concentrated on maximum thrust & glide, with minimum resistance in the water: the idea is to move like a torpedo instead of a terrified squid….

  Jesus! I am thinking like Jimmy Carter again—adapting the language of physics to the inefficient realities of everyday life, thinking in terms of the Power Train, concentrating on minimizing the ratio between energy and effect. The energy that goes into 63 wasted strokes could be used for writing these pages, for instance: 63 strokes would cancel at least three pages, and at my normal rate of one page an hour, that is the main part of a night’s work at the typewriter…. Or maybe three delegates, in the context of presidential politics.

  The language of physics and the language of law have always fascinated me; they are not the same, because the ends and antecedents are different, but there is a sameness in the precision and the efficiency, although the language of physics is bent to solving problems, while the language of law can be just as precise and efficient when used to create problems, or obscure them, or even to alter the nature of problems and create the appearance of a solution. …But there is no room for an adversary relationship in physics, because that in itself is a problem and a barrier.

  Right … and to hell with all this. I wanted to sit down and write a few pages about what I expect from the next fe
w days at the Democratic Convention in New York. I had not planned to go until last week, when I realized that Juan’s incredible expenditure of $4200, along with Wenner’s refusal to pay $5000 or so of my expenses for the Carter article, had put me deep in another money-hole … and then came the idea for another annual conversation with Carter, whose reality has changed so drastically since I first met him that the most amazing thing about the change is that it now seems entirely logical….

  But I mainly want to get down what I expect to find in NYC, or at least what I plan & want to find—so I can have these pages as a baseline, when it comes time to write, exactly seven days from now.

  What I want and expect is at least a good talk with Carter, and to be with him in his Americana hotel suite on the night of his nomination. We will need a day or so later, in Plains, for the sort of conversation that we had last May. And I expect to get that too. This is the first time I’ve ever asked for flat-out preferential treatment as a journalist. Jody Powell says there are a hell of a lot of journalists who want private time with the next president; he has a long list of requests, or even demands in some cases…. But my feeling about that is Fuck Them; where were they when there were no lines at Jimmy Carter’s door? There was plenty of room last year on Jody’s list of Requests for Interviews. In May of 1974 when I first met Carter—by accident, while covering Ted Kennedy—he was so hopelessly obscure that I turned down an invitation to spend the night at the Governor’s Mansion in Atlanta with Carter and Kennedy … and in May of 1975 when I went down to Plains to have a personal talk with him about his just-announced candidacy, I called him at home and wound up spending the next two or three days with him at home, “sleeping” in the guest room over the garage … and the only other journalists I ran across during that time were two from The Atlanta Constitution, which had strongly opposed Carter before, during and after his term as governor….