Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

by Hunter S. Thompson

  April 7, 1964

  Glen Ellen, California

  Dear Blowhole:

  Your foggy tome arrived yesterday and, despite grave circumstances here, I will now attempt to deal quickly with it. The concept (of the article) seemed real enough, but I can’t imagine anyone actually reading it through. Except for your mention of Harold Cruse,22 the whole thing is foam from your own brain, unsupported by any facts, pointers, possibilities or recent happenings to justify what you say. You may be right, but what reason do I as reader have to think so? You cannot write like that—and get paid for it—until your name rings bells; then you can foam to your heart’s content. I have the same continuing problem, and am constantly hung on it. Whether you are a journalist or not, the only way to attempt journalism is to assume you know nothing at the start, and then only write what you find evidence to support—along with the evidence, so neither the editor nor the reader is forced to take your word for it. So much for that; I said much earlier that I was keeping hands off your professional efforts, so pardon this release and do what you will.

  Anyway, I will take the piece, plus the letter, and see if I can stir up any comment in the murky world of San Francisco negro politics. I won’t use your name, but it should be interesting to toss your ideas around in the San Francisco Freedom Movement and see what happens, I am not too worried about being rejected for my whiteness, although I do in all truth think the idea of a Negro Nationalist party in the country is madness, because there are too many people in this country just waiting for an excuse to act like the racists they are. Hell, I have a strain of it myself, and the only thing that has brought me around this far is the fact that every time I’ve seen a black-white confrontation I’ve had to admit the negroes were Right. Once it turns into power-politics the negro loses his leverage on my conscience. Malcolm X amuses me and I bear him no malice at this time, but when he starts carrying a gun and talking about blowing my head off, there the dialogue ends. If this is what you see in the making, I think we are all in for a bad time. Malcolm X is a black Goldwater, and apparently just as dense.

  Anyway, now I have a son named Juan. Ten days old. Not a cent in the house and no cents coming in. I am seriously considering work as a laborer. They don’t give scholarships to my type. Beyond that, I am deep in the grip of a professional collapse that worries me to the extent that I cannot do any work to cure it. A failure of concentration, as it were, and a consequent plunge into debt and desperation. It has been going on ever since I got back from SA, and the cure is nowhere to be seen. That is the dullness on my knife, and not any lack of Marxist theory books. Frankly, I would welcome a race war, just to put a bit of zip in things. I am seriously considering a move to L.A. (Los Angeles). What are your plans? You never say anything specific. Your Dylan records will come when my cheques arrive. Yeah. I am immobile, incoherent and not without a sense of the waters closing over my head. In short, I am down and out.

  HST

  TO EUGENE W. MCGARR:

  Considering himself a practitioner of “impressionistic journalism,” Thompson informed McGarr about his new reportage assignment: writing a series of articles for the National Observer on the American West.

  April 9, 1964

  Glen Ellen, California

  Well, McGarr, it’s twenty minutes of one here and I’m just starting to work, which means, of course, just about what it would seem to mean. With luck, I will rattle off an answer to yours of today before I pass out. I read it in the Rustic Inn, which is the subject of a piece I am now doing for The Reporter, and which they may refuse to buy even though they’ve okayed it. I have discovered the secret of writing fiction, calling it impressionistic journalism, and selling it to people who want “something fresh.” I just sold the Observer one on the Beat Generation; it required one hour’s work, has a vague base in historical rumor, and they loved it. I am doing more of these things.

  I talked with the Observer yesterday and asked them what I should do, now that they’ve vetoed all my serious story suggestions. “Well,” said Ridley, “we bin wonderin what’s goin on up in Montana and the Dakotas. Why don’t you take a run up there and check it out? Figure two weeks and maybe three stories, like say ‘Saturday night in Butte, Montana.’ Just give us your impressions, Thompson.” So next week I’m off, all expenses paid, to wander around in the badlands and dig the scene. What it boils down to is a thing I’ve suspected all along: that people would rather read my letters than my work. And so be it. At $175, plus expenses, per letter, a man could do worse. My guess is that I will get to Bismarck, North Dakota and capitalize on the fact that it is 55 miles closer to New York than to San Francisco. A shorter trip, as it were. But that depends on whether I can interest The Reporter in this swing; they have become leery of me recently, and I have not done much to allay their fears. Next I will move to the Saturday Evening Post, which pays $2000 to start.

  When I get to New York I expect you to have some lucrative contracts for me in the Creative field. If they think they got a fearless type with you, they need an hour or two of me and some Tulamore Dew. I believe I could scare up some rich contracts for us all, with very little effort beyond normal conversation. You appear to have stumbled into that parlor where people have more money than brains. I need a contact of that sort. I am one of the most reliable tax deductions a man could find in this land. I will, of course, count on camping in your quarters, but from the way you talk it will be sort of like visiting [John] Clancy, who looks, when he walks, sort of like a belly-dancer in reverse. He makes $250 a week, or some such, and he keeps a little box beside his telephone, for dimes. It is said to be the principle of the thing, Soon he will have permanent folds in his rump, deep ridges in which a man can place dimes with no fear of their falling out.

  Your orgasm film sounds nice. How about one on “The Myth of Semen”? I’ll write the script. My son is here with me; he can’t sleep at night except by the typewriter. He is not well coordinated; he can yank the false tit out of his mouth, but he can’t get it back in. He groans and thrashes about constantly, as if in close combat with the dark forces of reaction. He has a dangerous amount of energy and a huge set of balls, a sure formula for trouble.

  My best to the other hot shits.

  HST

  TO PAUL SEMONIN:

  April 28, 1964

  Glen Ellen, California

  Paul:

  Well bastard, it is now a year since I got back from South America with my head full of wisdom, my wallet full of money and my future full of fat leads. But the year has been a bust; for some reason I can’t speak the language here. I am not with it. For the past two months I have been in a black bog of depression, fathering a son, living among people more vicious and venal than I ever thought existed, and bouncing from one midnight to the next in a blaze of stupid drunkenness. Now—tomorrow—I am shoving off for Butte, Montana, Jackson Hole, Bismarck, ND and that area. The Observer wants me to go up there and see what’s happening. They’re paying. So I’m going. Maybe three weeks. Actually, I don’t particularly care what’s going on up there, but I see it as a prepaid chance to get off and think—and also ponder a book called the Badlands Journal that I am already wheeling and dealing with. It will consist of everything I should delete from my novel in order to make it a work of fiction. Sort of like your Vagrant Thinker thing. Or like The Fire Next Time. Personal Journalism is the Wave of the Future. Art is passé, and so is The New York Times. Now we mix it all up and come on strong.

  You have avoided all mention of your plans except to say that in maybe two years you’re going to stomp over us all with the Big Secret. But I doubt it; my reluctant conclusion is that Marxists are the Beatniks of world politics. In twenty years you and your boys over there will be like the veterans of the Lincoln Brigade. The Syndicate has taken over here with a vengeance. My view of Johnson has scared both the Observer and The Reporter. It’s a massive bandwagon: [James] Reston, Drew Pearson, [Walter] Lippmann, the TV Boys, Max Ascoli23; there is no dissent.
None. (I just heard on the radio that Johnson is running well ahead of Robert Kennedy in the Massachusetts primary.) This sheep mentality has given me the fear; it is a very German thing and the negroes in this country are up against more than they know. The brute conservativism of the U.S. is the number one fact of our politics. Despite my royalist tendencies I am put down everywhere by a dirty leftist radical; you would be locked up.

  I am considering a drift into the Underground, New York or LA—or Mexico City as a last resort. I have had no action in so long that it’s a wonder I can still write. You will have to wait for the Journal to know it all; that is the only way I can salvage this worthless, wandering year. It starts tomorrow and will be a loose and speedy job; I don’t want to let any torment seep in. Yeah.

  Hudson went out to Hawaii to pick up his boat. His woman went back to Trinidad and he has a new New York nymphet who is nice but not real hot stuff. Mac [Macauley Smith] is coming west in a trailer and Cooke is hustling in New York after his Booth marriage.24 I’m glad that clicked. I’m supposed to go back to Louisville in June for Davison’s wedding, but I hate it like the plague and will duck out if at all possible. The only hope is The Road. A clear head in a bad hour. Things are not breaking like they should. I think the boys in Zanzibar read the signals pretty well; it won’t be long before we have Castro on Meet the Press again … We are coming to another Eisenhower age, and everybody digs it. Even Nixon, who is back in style after a short winter. Johnson has eight years unless he croaks. We will all be old men by then. What do you have on tap?

  Hunter

  TO PAUL SEMONIN:

  Marooned in Butte, Thompson pondered the spectacle of American politics.

  May 23, 1964

  Finlen Hotel and Motor Inn

  Butte, Montana

  Dear Bobo:

  You have failed in every way to combat my wisdom. I therefore urge you to forswear politics. It is a tub of dirty water. The more I write about it the more I piss on it. The fatbellies are well entrenched, long-rooted and much tougher in the clinches than I thought. What we knew in Louisville were the drone bees of the system; the big boys all carry Magnums. Their strength is not in their action, but their staying power and godawful resilience. I am coming to have a lot of sympathy for Mao, but less and less belief as time goes by.

  By dealing in politics you accept their terms. Politics is economics, and when you deal in that league you are on the fatbellies’ home court. All political revolutions start out to create a frame of reference, and end by accepting one. Marxism is over the hump for the time being; we will both be old men before the world power structure rests on another three-cornered sense of humor like Khrushchev, Kennedy and Pope John.

  I was wrong when I said the negro had already won his fight in this country. In the flux of the Kennedy structure he was on his way, but the Johnson gang is sewing up the holes on us all. That is the climate. Political fatigue is on us all, even Castro. The tides have shifted considerably since you left last summer. Look at Brazil. If you can refute this with any conviction I’d like to get the word. Out here in Butte it is not easy to be sure about anything, but I get the scent and I have to trust it or lay myself open to bullshit from every angle.25

  I am on a swing and it is a fucking nightmare. Nevada, Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming and back to San Francisco. The language barrier is immense. If you thought you were in the “West” down in Aspen you better think again. That is a suburb of Manhattan with Western trappings. What it will come to I can’t say, but I am seriously considering Mexico—but not for the politics.

  Send word c/o Glen Ellen. I am half mad for communication. The finality of the choice has just come into focus for me, and it makes me nervous.

  HST

  TO LYNDON JOHNSON:

  Drunk and in good humor at the Holiday Inn in Pierre, South Dakota, Thompson appealed to President Lyndon Johnson for a job.

  June 3, 1964

  Holiday Inn of Pierre

  Pierre, South Dakota

  Lyndon Johnon

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  Dear Lyndon:

  It is with great pleasure and a sense of impending achievement that I make myself available at this time for the governorship of American Samoa. Given a certain knowledge of the character of one Joe Benetiz, who previously occupied that position—and having no knowledge outside a good instinct concerning that person who holds it at present—I feel that my offer can only be rejected at our collective peril. In this I refer mainly to the American Samoans, but certain tangential effects necessitate the inclusion of the rest of us, as well.

  My position at this time is in flux enough to allow my serious consideration of such a move. I am a roving correspondent for the National Observer, a sporadic contributor to The Reporter, and a fiction writer of no mean merit. All this, plus a general humanity and a good instinct for the openings, would seem to guarantee my candidacy beyond much doubt.

  Beyond this, I have a need for an orderly existence in a pacific place, in order to complete a novel of overwhelming importance to the sanity of this era. This need alone should snap your mind into the proper orbit for the required action.

  For the next ten days I will be in Pierre, Jackson Hole and Sun Valley. After that I can be reached at my home near San Francisco. In the meantime, I remain,

  most sincerely,

  Hunter S. Thompson

  FROM LARRY O’BRIEN, SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT:

  June 17, 1964

  The White House

  Washington

  Mr. Hunter S. Thompson

  Owl House

  9400 Bennett Valley Road

  Glen Ellen, California

  Dear Mr. Thompson:

  The President has received your recent letter and asked me to thank you for it.

  He has noted your desire for an appointment to the Governorship of American Samoa and you may be sure you will be given every consideration.

  Sincerely,

  Larry O’Brien

  Special Assistant to the

  President

  TO WILLIAM J. KENNEDY:

  June 24, 1964

  Glen Ellen, California

  Dear Willie:

  Here’s ten for that silly phone call. I was hardly worth talking to and you should have refused it. I wouldn’t have called collect except that my bill was already so high with the hotel that I feared my ability to pay if I loaded up a long call on it.

  Your acceptance was christian, none the less. I’ve been putting off writing because I thought I had a New York trip coming up and I’ve been waiting for it to break, but I think it’s out now. My friend McGarr, whom you may or may not have met, thought he had me a $6000 film-writing assignment for National Educational Television, whatever in hell that is. But the honcho is scared of me, although he dug my clips. Now there is only one chance in a thousand he’ll relent and hire me instead of some hack. We’ve talked several times on the phone, but he’s too nervous.

  I just sent the Observer a $1654 bill for my expenses on the Montana trip.26 God knows what they’ll do with it. They were figuring on about $400, but the good-will aspect of the tour was more than they’d counted on. But not me. I knew what it was going to be. Unlimited free booze for six weeks for me and quite a few others. In six states. It was a whore of a trip and almost killed me. The Hemingway piece was the only one I still feel like claiming.27 That front-page monstrosity (upper left) sent me off in a rage. I called Candida Donadio at four in the morning and finished myself there; I was seeking a grant to go back into fiction, but she snapped and snarled like a bull-dyke dealing with a subway masher. Ugly.

  Your comment about “regressing” stuck in my ears. I think part of the reason you feel that way is because you regressed geographically. I’d probably commit suicide if I found myself working back in Louisville. Even so, there is more to it than that. A journalistic retrogression can be a big step forward if you can get another prong going for you. Tha
t’s what I’d like to do now, but my mind is blank for ideas. I couldn’t possibly quit journalism, put in six penniless months on the novel, then start again on the old round of “Dear Sir, here is my novel, I hope you, etc.…” Those rat-bastards would drown me in no time. I am coming to view the free enterprise system as the greatest single evil in the history of human savagery. I am also beginning to believe Goldwater could win in ’64. At heart, this is a sick and vicious country, hiding from itself behind a veil of romantic sentimentality. In order to see this you have to know the West, where the myth is still extant.28

  Every Republican in the land should be horsewhipped—and every Democrat, too, for that matter. It is a horrible circus and I think LA must be the center ring. For that reason I believe I will move there and try to last a year. Then off again to the periphery, maybe then for good. We need a two-week session to loosen us up. Semonin will be back in New York in July and that will quicken my incentive for a trip. But the money problem remains. The Observer wants me out here and The Reporter don’t dig me at all no more. Martin wrote and explained the score. Nobody likes me now except Max Ascoli, and I can’t get to him. Like Philip Graham was my only contact in that other outfit. It’s the old Air Force story: the sergeants are still fucking me. I just tried an end run and wrote Lyndon for a job as governor of American Samoa; Larry O’Brien wrote back saying I would be given “every consideration.” I am going to press for it. If they’ll consider Joe Benetiz, I should be a shoo-in.

  Anyway, hold this check at least ten days. It won’t be any good until they send my expense check. But don’t hold it too long after that. I am going to have to buy another car to replace my dead Rambler, so get your ten before I wipe it all out again. And send a line. Right now I am stone broke and just sitting here, waiting for the check. If they reject my claim, I’m dead. I owe every human being I know, and quite a few I don’t know. In all, I may be ready for a giant retrogression myself, but we’ll have to talk first. Zingo—HST