Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
Page 47
TO DARYL HARRINGTON:
Harrington was a woman newspaper reporter Thompson had met in San Francisco. They maintained an intimate correspondence in the years to come.
December 17, 1962
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil
Ah, Daryl, Daryl, I always want to write you and always feel guilty when I don’t, but since I got down to this rotten continent both want and guilt have given way to necessity and I find myself forever writing double-spaced manuscripts and not much else. Jesus I worry about you there in NY, that rotten pit, and Sandy is here making me feel guilty for even worrying. I live about six lives and every time they touch it means trouble. If only I had more goddamn time so I could arrange things, but time being as it is, I have to pack it all in together and try to manage as best as possible. I’ve been gone for more than a month to Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Asunción, and got back here to find Robert Kennedy slipping in the back door and causing panic with the press corps, all of whom raced up to Brasilia today to get the latest mimeographed statement while I stay here in Copacabana and run for two hours on the beach to work off some of this awful beerfat.
How did your filthy job-hunt come out? I can’t imagine anything worse than teaching school in New York. You ask for “long-range suggestions” and I know this will sound queer but I really suggest you join the Peace Corps. I would if I weren’t such a reprobate, but then I can be twice as effective for the same idea by writing as I could by joining. But I’m serious—and don’t think I’ve gone gung-ho because I came down here thinking the PC was a bag of crap but now I think it’s the only serious and decent effort the U.S. is making in Latin America or anywhere else. In addition to that I keep running across PRIESTS of all goddamn things who really make me feel like a soft-life punk. I go out in the wilds and feel pretty proud of myself for managing to hang on for several days, and then I run across a priest who has been there for three years and two guys from the PC who’ve been there eight months. And I feel pretty cheap. About the best I can say for myself is that I know more about South America than any three people in the Rio Foreign Correspondents Association—of which I am a member, yeah—and that is without really trying.
The PC, I guess, is not so good for what it is but for what it can be if you really give it a ride. I have met a lot of punks and fools and jackasses in the thing, but I have also met a lot of people who’ve made me want to shake their hand and for me that is a damned rare feeling.
But I don’t want to ramble or preach here; it’s Christmas up there, I guess, and if you want to see how I feel about it try to get hold of the Xmas issue of the Observer. The bastards will probably rewrite it for Valentine’s Day, but I wrote it for Xmas and if it comes out this week it should pretty much look like I wrote it. I want to get back and do some shooting and drive around the country a bit and write about queer things. I’m pushing now for a run back to the States around March 1, just to amble around. If you’re there in NY I definitely want to see you. Maybe, if you have time, we can drive somewhere into the back country and shoot crows. All the way to Aspen, shooting crows the whole way. Your feeling about driving across the country is pale beside mine after being away this long. If I could do it now I’d accept it as a Religious Experience—whatever in hell that is. Don’t wait two months to answer this; I’m losing touch with the decent people of the world. Write soon, Love, Hunter.
Thompson at work on “The Rum Diary.” (PHOTO BY HUNTER S. THOMPSON; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
On his way to the West Coast Thompson took hundreds of photographs hoping to catch the essence of the On the Road experience. (PHOTO BY HUNTER S. THOMPSON; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
Hunting wild boar and elk was Thompson’s favorite pastime. (COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
1. Jenny New—a Trinidadian—was living with Jo Hudson in Big Sur. Thompson planned to stay with her parents for a while.
2. Robert Bingham was an editor with The Reporter magazine 1948–1964. In 1960 Thompson had pitched him a story on San Francisco’s “woeful” newspaper situation.
3. Don Cooke, a Louisville friend Thompson met in the Athenaeum Literary Association. He lived across the street from Semonin.
4. Barney Laschever was head of public relations for Panagra Airlines, Pan Am’s South American arm. He got Thompson discounted flights.
5. Nelson Rockefeller, the Republican governor of New York 1959–1973 and later vice president of the United States.
6. Jacques Chambrun was a literary agent.
7. Olay’s wife.
8. Ralph Hattersley, “Good and Bad Pictures,” Pop Photo, April 28, 1962.
9. A gifted photojournalist, Bone had worked with Thompson at the Middletown Daily Record and was his roommate in San Juan.
10. Bill Williamson was editor of the Brazil Herald, the leading English-language newspaper in Latin America.
11. The National Observer, just founded by the Dow Jones Company.
12. Mike Alexis was a photographer for the Puerto Rican News Service.
13. The model Hunter had fallen for in Aruba looked like Dana Kennedy.
14. A tiny, flea-like insect.
15. Eugene McGarr was in Morocco.
16. Harvey Sloane served as mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, for two terms (1973–77 and 1981–85). In 1960 Sloane met Thompson in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and they became longstanding friends.
17. PIX was one of the largest photo agencies in New York. Thompson often sold them his work.
18. Semonin had sent Thompson a newspaper article he’d read about nuns being raped in Colombia.
19. W. R. Grace and Company had served as Thompson’s entrée to Latin America and also cashed checks for him.
20. Jomo Kenyata (1889–1978), an African nationalist leader, was the first president of independent Kenya (1964–78). Under his leadership Kenya followed a pro-Western course.
21. Andy’s was a Louisville pub.
1963
DOW JONES’S MAN IN RIO … POWER BROKER FOR THE PEACE CORPS … TRIUMPH OF A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT … COUNSEL FOR THE WASHINGTON POST … BACK TO THE USA, HONORED GUEST OF THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB … GOING WEST, RIDING HIGH … BOOK REVIEWS FOR BEER & BULLETS … THE DIRTIEST HOUR OF OUR TIME: NOVEMBER 22, 1963 … THE DEATH OF HOPE …
When the cold Andean dusk comes down on Cuzco, the waiters hurry to shut the venetian blinds in the lounge of the big hotel in the middle of town. They do it because the Indians come up on the stone porch and stare at the people inside. It tends to make tourists uncomfortable, so the blinds are pulled. The tall, oak-panelled room immediately seems more cheerful.
—Hunter S. Thompson,
“The Inca of the Andes: He Haunts
the Ruins of His Once-Great Empire,”
National Observer, June 10, 1963
TO JO HUDSON:
Hudson, still in Big Sur, kept threatening to sail to Rio if he ever finished building his boat.
January 1, 1963
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil
Well Jack, I’m getting fat and I need the big action. To put things in a nut-shell, I am living high in a fine town but not really enjoying it because there is nobody here with any balls. If you blew in with a rack of guns, a boat offshore, and all manner of hairy schemes in your brain, I think we could stir up enough noise to satisfy us both. There is a shortage of money, as always, but on a different level than before. One of my worries now is whether or not to give the maid a raise—from $6 a month, to $7.50. It’s a bitch of a problem. I recently swung through Manned Wolf territory, but didn’t get your intelligence until my return, so I missed the animals. I am so fucking involved in politics, etc. that I don’t have much time for the oddball stuff that is really the most important. I am making a decent living with prospects of a better one, but the temptation is to pare it down and forget this political shit and concentrate on the business. I am trying now to write myself into a position to grab off a jeep for movement into the interior. With a boat in the bay
and a jeep on the shore we’d be master of all we surveyed. Brazil is immense, and all the bigger because of no roads or communications to the interior. Last night (new year’s eve) we went out on the beach to watch the Macumba (voodoo) ceremonies. Man, it would have curled your hair. And they’re talking about civilizing these people. For god’s sake, bring MAGNUMS.
My only real worry on your score is that the goddamn boat won’t make it. For my part, I am ready to move off in all directions. I have a guaranteed minimum income now, no matter where I go, and as far as I’m concerned, the hairier the better. Along those lines, I’m plotting a return to the States after Carnival (end of February) and will do my damnedest to get out your way if you’re still there. If not, I might consider chasing you down and returning here under sail. At any rate, I’ll leave Sandy here when I go, and will definitely return in a more or less short time. Living is so goddamn cheap here that, for the time being, I can’t afford to base anywhere else. My apt. in Copacabana costs $30 a month. Good champagne is 50 cents a litre, gin is the same, and most other things fall in the same cost range. It is the only decent country in South America, but then it’s also the biggest—and half the continent. In other words, I recommend it. But god only knows if and how you can get here by boat. It’s a long run. But, with the possible exception of Mexico, I think all the good runs are long ones. God knows, it took me eight months of shitty travel to get here, and all things considered I suppose it was worth it. Since then I’ve been down to Uruguay, Buenos Aires and Paraguay (wild country), but they don’t stack up to Brazil.
Anyway, let me know your schedule. [Donald] Maynard says you postponed again, so I’m assuming you’re there for a few more months. What the hell are you doing for money? Keep in mind my idea of returning to the States in March, but don’t let it change your plans because I’m not sure. Whatever you do—and wherever you go—take weapons. Once outside the U.S. you might as well try to buy gold bricks as a good pistol. Or ammo. Remember that. And write your plans soon.
Chao, HST
TO PHILIP L. GRAHAM, C/O NEWSWEEK:
Graham was publisher of The Washington Post and Newsweek.
February 8, 1963
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil
Philip Graham
c/o Newsweek
444 Madison Avenue
New York City
Dear Mr. Graham:
I read with interest and amusement your comments on the National Observer (Newsweek, January 28), and, all in all, found it a hell of a lot meatier than a similar story that appeared recently in Time. You made some good points with terms like “cold hash and rehash, a paper without reporters,” and that sort of thing.
The day after reading the article, I went out to Itamarati (which is Brazil’s Foreign Exchange Office) to register as the Observer’s correspondent in Rio de Janeiro. It is an unsalaried job; I am also young, inexperienced and moderately paid—and if those are sins, then hell must be full of good correspondents.
At any rate, the press secretary at Itamarati mentioned the Newsweek article, and expressed mild surprise at my presence. It seemed to strike him as a bit odd that the Observer—a paper that rehashes all the news—should have a correspondent in Rio, whereas Newsweek, a fat-wallet book that criticizes other people for rehashing the news, is represented here by a virtually unpaid British stringer whose stories are published with all the tack-sharp regularity of total eclipses of the sun.
Newsweek’s last story on Brazil, in fact, was held up by the Rio press corps as a hideous example of what happens when Latin America is covered from Madison Avenue. It was so full of stupid mistakes that, frankly, it was hard to believe that it was meant to be fact, instead of fiction. Your stringer was embarrassed by it, since some of the statements were so wild and outlandish that nobody who had ever been in Brazil could have written them. God only knows who wrote the rotten thing; the only explanation that seems reasonable to me is that it was slapped together by a committee of buffoons whose ties were too tight on their necks on whatever morning they gathered to hash the thing together. (Incidentally, I have no intention of either documenting or answering the charges I make here; the story I am talking about had something to do with the January 6 plebiscite.)
The thing that really surprised me about the story, however, was not that it was shot through with errors, but that it appeared at all. Your normal South American “coverage” is a silly joke, and about as nourishing as a month-old hamburger. In the past eight months I have been through every country on this continent except two, and I have met only two people even vaguely connected with Newsweek—both in Rio. It is a goddamned abomination, a fraud, and a black onus on American journalism that a magazine with Newsweek’s money and circulation so slothfully ignores a continent as critical to American interests as this one.
In the past eight months I have written (and signed with my own name) roughly 3000 words a month on South America, most of which have appeared in the Observer—I’d say about 95%. Do you have anybody down here who can say that? Your issue of January 28, which carried your comments on the Observer, had room for about 200 words on South America—and that concerned a sort of Daily Newsy story on a minor art theft in Venezuela. Hardnose stuff, eh?
With that vast, driving, stiff-necked staff of yours, I’ll bet a bottle of Old Crow that, over the past eight months, you haven’t even equaled my published output in words, much less in significant stories. And, hell, I’m only a young, inexperienced and underpaid punk.
I’m beginning to think you’re a phony, Graham. You hired Walter Lippmann, and his debut—that thing on John Kennedy—was the coldest hash I’ve read in a long time. If you hired the Marquis de Sade, he’d come out bland. Maybe you should loosen your tie a little bit and consider your own hash—because, dollar for dollar, it ain’t so tasty, and you’re sufficiently old, experienced and overpaid to have no real excuse at all.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
Rua Mexico 3
c/o Brazil Herald
Rio de Janeiro
(that’s in Brazil)
FROM PHILIP L. GRAHAM, PRESIDENT, THE WASHINGTON POST COMPANY:
Thompson was shocked that Graham saw fit to answer his ill-tempered letter of February 8, and he admired the “high style” of the response.
March 25, 1963
Washington, D.C.
Mr. Hunter S. Thompson
Rua Mexico 3
c/o Brazil Herald
Rio de Janeiro
BRAZIL
Dear Mr. Thompson,
For the past few weeks I have been mainly away from my office enjoying the normal sybaritic pursuits of proprietorship, and so have only today come across your moderate and shy letter of February 8th, in which you say that “I’m beginning to think you’re a phony, Graham.” This displays a very notable cultural lag on your part. Many intelligent leaders have long ago got themselves to the conclusion that you are only beginning to think about.
Now, why don’t you write me a somewhat less breathless letter, in which you tell me about yourself, and don’t make it more than 2 pages single space—which means a third draft and not a first draft.
Sincerely,
Philip L. Graham
TO CLIFFORD RIDLEY, NATIONAL OBSERVER:
Thompson was ready to head home after one last foray to Bolivia for the National Observer.
April 6, 1963
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil
Cliff:
Yours finally came. Let us now get one thing straight between us: I am never going to back off of a story because it’s “a bitch.” The bigger, meatier, and gutsier a story is, the more I want to have at it—normally. The problem now is that my outlook on South America is entirely abnormal. In a phrase, I no longer give a fuck. But don’t translate that as evidence that I am getting soft & fat & I only want to do the easy stories. At the moment, in fact, I don’t want to do any stories. Witness my six-week silence. Don’t worry about gettin
g 4 stories from Brazil; I’ll be damn lucky to send you even one.
Fortunately, you opened that letter from Bolivia & got a first-hand idea of what is getting on me down here. It ain’t the stories, Clifford. Those are easy. It’s the goddamn awful reality of life down here. I can’t shrug it off. I can’t avoid it. I can’t hire a legion of “boys” and assistants & secretaries to insulate me from the fear & rot in the streets. I can’t pay $250 a month for a mile-high apartment (with Telex*) overlooking Copacabana beach. Christ, I have to live like the rest of these poor bastards—harassed, badgered & put upon from morning till night for no good reason at all. I wouldn’t blame them if they revolted against just about everything—and in the name of whatever party or Ism that supplied the means of revolt.
Hell, I can’t even deal intelligently with your letter [filled with detailed travel instructions]. I can barely do anything these days. All I know is that I have a ticket from Rio to New York; that is a tremendous factor in my thinking. As a matter of fact it is all I can really think about. Which is as good an indication as any that I don’t really think anymore.
All I can say for sure is that I reject, out of hand, your suggestion that I hustle up to Baja (on my way north) to check on the Red Menace.1 If I ever saw a trumped-up story, that one by Ruben Salazar is it. The easiest way to get published from down here is to write about the foul & sneaky reds. Hell, they’re in worse trouble down here than we are. All they do—& all they have ever done—is take advantage of our mistakes. Baja Calif. is the coccyx bone of the universe. I’ve been there—all too goddamn often. It’s the abortion hospital for all of California & god knows how many other states. But there’s fine lobster-diving in the bay of Ensenada. I’ll be happy to go there—from California, but not from Mexico. Hell, you could shoot a .22 from U.S. soil to Mexicali. Or maybe you’d need a 20mm cannon. Anyway, it’s right up there on the border, & the only logical way to approach it is from the north, like everybody else does. The rest of Baja is a goddamn rock pile. From Ensenada, 60 miles south of San Diego, down to La Paz at the tip, it’s 900 miles of absolutely nothing. Not even roads.