On the whole, the main reason I’ve been silent for so long is that I’m going into a kind of mad-dog funk after too many days with the Chronicle and the Examiner. And television, and radio—and random conversations. I have gone into a kind of karate tenseness; the super contraction of all muscles so it won’t hurt when you’re hit. One technique I haven’t mastered as yet is the puffing up of the jaws to create an air pocket around the teeth. Which is a thing I think we all need. The trouble with writing you about what my mind is up to is that this goddamn machine—and the other one too—is too damn slow. We need a sort of give and take, instead of this rotten formal presentation. By the time I’ve finished a sentence I usually see three or four ways to refute it or at least improve on it—but by that time I’m already thinking about something else.
What I’ll do right now is skim over your letter and lash at the main points, then, if possible, go back and try to clarify.
I’m not sure how well you know the value of the word you used (“infrastructure”) in relation to the projected difficulties of publishing that magazine. But that is a word you want to keep in mind. It covers a lot of ground and too many situations to name. You are fortunate enough now to be dealing outside the infrastructure—but not really, I almost forgot about Mr. Ford. Even so, I think you’re mentally outside it, and apparently most of the people you deal with are out there too.
A few weeks ago when the “nausea gas” story broke I happened to have the TV set on for all the network dinnertime newscasts. I got into NBC a bit late and only got a snatch of the story because it was right up front. Then, on CBS, it was the lead story and I was with it for all details, Capitol Hill reaction, etc. Then came ABC, and like the others their man [Peter Jennings] comes on with a quick capsule for the day’s news in headline form, then they switch off for a commercial. The headline technique is called a “teaser.” Anyway, the gas bit was number one for the day, then came a commercial. Then—for about five seconds—Jennings came back on for about ten words’ worth of the gas story: “Capitol Hill was buzzing tonight after official etc.…” and then another commercial, obviously spliced in, and ending some 30 seconds before the story itself came to an end, so a viewer also got the tail end of the gas action, but nobody who hadn’t heard it before could have known what Jennings was talking about. I did, but since I have no phone I had to walk three blocks to call the station and ask why the gas story had been censored. I was told there was nobody in the newsroom qualified to answer my question. I then wrote Carey McWilliams, editor of The Nation—for whom I just did a piece on outlaw motorcyclists—and told him about it, asking if he thought it was worth pursuing. The next day I went down to the station, introducing myself to the news director as a correspondent for the National Observer, and asked him why the gas item had been deleted from his newscast. His nervous answer—and he was obviously stunned by my query—was that the network shows are edited in L.A. and he was “just as surprised” as I was to see such a thing. He then gave me two ABC vice-presidents to query in L.A.—and McWilliams wrote back to say that they might use the item in a “paragraph” form, which form also pays $25 at most and sometimes $10. Which left me with a big, ugly story possibility on my hands and no money to pay the rent, the same situation I’m in now.
In other words, “who can afford to give a fuck?” I’m all right Jack, etc. (I just had to get Sandy up to change the margin on this rotten bastard and now the house is full of hell—this marriage thing is not a killer in itself but in the small routines and trivial obligations that come with it.) Besides that, I seem to be doing everything humanly possible to finish myself with booze and general physical abuse, pills, no sleep, etc.
The truth of it all is that I’m in a nearly perpetual rotten mood and rubbed raw each day by new lashings of bullshit. This Vietnam thing has driven me to the point of a continuing froth. I wrote Johnson, telling him to fuck himself and count me out under any circumstances—and although I already have one letter on file (to the AF) saying I would never again put on a uniform, that I wanted to reiterate this feeling and especially to withdraw my application for the governorship of American Samoa since I felt I could under no circumstances serve this administration either at home or abroad. It was a serious letter, in all, bearing down heavily on my prior Dow-Jones affiliation so they couldn’t write me off as a cloistered kook, and saying all any citizen would have to say in these times to get on all the wrong lists. When I go to vote, they’ll probably X me out, and the next time Johnson comes to San Francisco I expect to be interred for the duration of the visit. What I want to do in the meantime is a story of some kind on the FBI.
Well, we are not getting real far in this letter, eh? I now have freedom to run to the right edge of the paper and I feel better for it, but not much. Sandy says this is a worthless electric typewriter, an ancient and discredited model. So much for the natural integrity of my friendly typewriter merchant. This is a royal example of the shit that is driving me wild, of the horrible predatory rot that pervades the whole system. Once you become conscious of it, actually formulate it in your mind, then all manner of once-innocent and natural-seeming things begin falling into a pattern of imperialist savagery. But nowhere like on the TV screen. There is the furthest expression of the American dream.
Anyway, I’ve come all the way around, to agreeing with most of what you say—not because you’ve convinced me, but out of total despair of finding anything here to refute your arguments. Nor, however, do I see much on your side of the fence to give me any hope that even the most far-reaching Marxist takeover would get the stench off the decks. I read all these magazines out of New York, Harlem, etc., but one of the basic things about them is that their writers are worthless in the sense that they can’t put words together to mean what they’re trying to say. Something like this letter; I’m so pissed off in general and so out of tune with this rotten machine that I can’t say what I mean to say, and therefore waste all manner of time and paper nagging at something I should be able to outline and explain in a page and a half.
One interesting item for the future may be this anti-OAS [Organization of American States] proposal that the Chilean boys are preparing for the Rio Conference in May, or June. It is supposedly a bombshell, aiming at booting the U.S. out of Latin planning, and replacing us with Cuba. If this gets a majority vote it will be interesting. But it probably won’t and even if it does I can’t see much coming of it in the long run. Like the Selma march, a TV spectacular—next summer we’ll have the Harlem Riots, presented by Monsanto Chemicals. I may be sick and a bit daffy, but something in me rebels at the idea of 500 or 5000 negroes kneeling on the streets of Selma, singing “I Love State Troopers in My Heart.” I think this whole non-violent thing was planned from the start by Cardinal Spellman. There is apparently a big underground split between SNCC and CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] but since SNCC can’t buy any exposure I think they’re out in the cold.
John Macauley’s idea of “talking to key people” in those various fields you mentioned is wholly preposterous and even depressing. Again, the infrastructure. The other end of the problem is, of course, how do you publish, pay for and distribute a readable magazine without it? You could put out a mimeographed newsletter, but before you go that route you’d better talk to some of the other people who’ve tried it and quit. If you are really serious about this magazine thing I think you’d be better off setting up in England or Spain or Chile or anywhere except this capital of high costs, hard-nose risk capital and 100 million fatbellies. There is plenty of money in this country, but only for the “right” things. The more I learn about how the machinery works the more depressed I become. The Observer and I have long since parted company on any but an occasional, off-beat story or book review basis, and I’m waiting now to see how The Nation handles the piece I just finished. The Reporter is another pass, since they bounced my editor. All their articles these days are by retired Generals.
I see here on the last page of your tome you say
the “humanist conservatives will have to be separated from the swingers.” Well, good luck—but when you finish this separation you’re likely to find yourself in camp with some very funny people. Like Hubert Humphrey, Joan Baez and [steel tycoon] Henry Kaiser. What you can’t seem to get through your head is the fact that the Establishment over here is swinging like mad and they pay well to be cleverly harassed. This is part of the game. Your mean judgments on the National Observer LatAm newsbook and the Herald Tribune stuff is wholly wasted. None of the hipsters read that shit, not even me. But they don’t read Fanon either. (Actually I’m probably wrong here; what I should say is that none of the hipsters will admit to reading that shit, which is a different thing, eh?) And don’t tell me you meant Swingers instead of hipsters, because here it’s all the same. In a nut, it is hip to be a swinger and Camp is in. And I’m out—further so, I suspect, than you because you still seem to think you can talk reason to a man with profits on the line. Even after all this time and all these mental gymnastics I have to go back to Mailer for a good nut: “The shits are killing us” and god help you if you still think you can take them for $5000 a year without coming up with anything in return. They are slow at times, but they can afford the machinery to be very thorough in the long run. And a lot of well-intentioned people, like Clark Kerr,11 are sitting in that machinery, making it go, because the people who own it still don’t wholly understand how it works or what it really means. I think Sartre does, and his answer recently was simply to refuse to come to this country and talk about it. I admire that kind of brazen honesty, but I think it bodes ill for your apparent hopes of a dialogue and a reformation of some kind.
But what the hell am I getting at except another night of unprofitable work and a big postage bill with this heavy stationery? We both have several years to look forward to and I’m damned if I want to spend them hashing around with this sort of bullshit that we both know and knew a long time ago. As for realities, your best bet if you come back to this country is to stay in New York—that is the capital of HIP and I read tonight that Westport, Conn. is now the “communications capital” of the U.S. because all the media people live there and I damn well don’t doubt it from what I see and hear in the media. You’ll at least find sympathetic spirits there and probably enough money to keep on being a genteel loser in a long-lost cause that has finally become fashionable because it no longer seems to be real threatening. (I say “seems” because I think you’re right in saying some real action is afoot in Africa & other non-American soil but unless De Gaulle manages to bust the Dollar sometime soon I think we are many moons away from seeing any real power shifts. On the other hand, this Vietnam thing could boil over any moment if Johnson really means to prod China into enough involvement to justify bombing their nuclear sites. That’s the word from [Oregon senator] Wayne Morse. He says the Pentagon has decided we’re bound to have a war with China eventually so we might as well hit them before they get a Bomb arsenal. What do you think?)
As for me, I half-heartedly mean to move to New York next fall, if only because that’s where the money lives and at least I’ll have some congenial company on the way down the tube. Out here is like Tulsa with a view. You ask for my monkey wrench and all I can swing on you at this stage of the game is a new version of an old meanness, and a much surer knowledge of what we face in the way of possibilities. I think this is what they mean by Maturity and all I can do is reject it. I suppose your suggestion would be that I paint a big sign and join some non-violent picket line; but no thanks again. That is for people who feel guilty and I don’t. I feel like I’ve been leaned on for a long time by people who don’t even have to know my name and should probably have their fucking heads blown off on general principle. I have in recent months come to have a certain feeling for Joe Hill and that Wobbly crowd who, if nothing else, had the right idea. But not the mechanics. I believe the IWW was probably the last human concept in American politics.
I spent this afternoon watching a karate class in action. In the past year it has suddenly dawned on me that people are goddamn dangerous. My good time badass fuckaround is going out of style; the general threat pressure of life in the country seems to be spawning its inevitable results—several “secret armies” in Calif., a tremendous upswing all over the country in crimes of pillage, robbery, and violence, cops with shotguns riding every subway in New York between 8 pm and 4 am—that’s the truth—and an estimated 6 or 7 thousand working karate busters in the Bay Area alone. This last is a frightening thing when you consider they are a vengeful lot to begin with and that they leave each lesson with a secret yearning for somebody to say something pushy to them. I know because I went to a bar with two of them afterwards and had to keep one little guy from chopping up an old man who had no idea in hell what he was dealing with; another guy, on leaving my apartment tonight, kicked a chunk out of a telephone pole. So, when you get back to New York be careful who you snarl at in taverns—I think that’s why coffee houses are so popular these days; they’re generally safer. New York seems to be a peatbog of slow-heating violence, physical and otherwise. If and when I go back there I definitely mean to carry a small pistol and take my chances with the Sullivan Act. I think there is a terrible angst on the land, a sense that something ugly is about to happen, an hour-to-hour feeling of nervous anticipation. Whether it’s the Bomb or a simple beating, you never know—but, in your terminology, there is a feeling of push coming to shove and what the hell of it? [ … ]
Ah, this fucking rotten machine. One more strike against those pig-fuckers. In closing I remain, increasingly savage and unreasonable—HST
TO CAREY MCWILLIAMS, THE NATION:
Thompson reflected back to the late 1950s, when he saw Jack Kerouac at a tavern near Columbia University, and looked forward to writing about Ken Kesey’s LSD-inspired antics in the Bay Area.
April 28, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dear Mr. McWilliams:
a axgghs;;;;llf ;mbvcbh n njwqk/ fB Q
M QAW bmfddxxsxfr zx s bdfxse3rv
fx zczsqw ZAnmmm,
Well, that was a message from my year-old son, Juan, who just woke up and can’t be kept away from this electric typewriter. I guess it shoots to hell Thurber’s old theory that a bunch of apes set loose on typewriters will eventually turn out wisdom. Or maybe not, maybe there’s something in the above declaration that neither of us can grip. He stares very carefully at the keys before making his choice, and who are we to call him incoherent? (That is, of course, the generic “we”; you and I are the exceptions, eh?)
And now to your letter of April 23. I am, of course, quite familiar with the “non-student” phenomenon, and have been since I was playing that role around Columbia in ’58–’59. At that stage of the game I believe we were called “bums,” although “beatnik” quickly became popular. I recall one night in the West End Tavern, when hundreds of people gathered to watch Kerouac’s first appearance on TV. It was the John Wingate show, and when Kerouac came slinking out of the wings a great cheer went up in the West End. He was, I suppose, the Bob Dylan of his day—and saying that makes me feel damned old.
Anyway, it sounds like a good idea for a piece and also for me, but I don’t want to commit myself to it until I get hold of some people who can give me the real score. I’ve made a few calls and have a few names, but for the past few days I’ve been dealing with a different story, which may interest you.
Ken Kesey and 13 of his friends, including Neal Cassady (the Dean Moriarty of On the Road), were busted last week on a general charge of possessing marijuana. Kesey wants to make a real case out of it—a confrontation with the law, as it were—but his attorneys are inclined to fight it on an “illegal search and seizure” basis. I just got back from talking to Kesey and his attorneys and of course I’m all for the head-on confrontation. Probably I should warn you that I represented myself as “a writer for The Nation,” which is a hell of a lot more comfortable on a story like this than being fr
om the National Observer, which is what my business cards say.
At any rate, I mean to follow the story, for good or ill, and regardless of whether I get any assignments on it or not. Kesey seems like a very decent guy and certainly nobody’s hophead. If the attorneys lose control of the defendants, which I deem likely, some of them are capable of making a real case of this thing. The argument, which I presume you know, is that marijuana is not a narcotic but a psychedelic—a consciousness-expanding drug, rather than an addictive opiate, and in no way harmful except to the prejudices and opinions of the bourgeoisie. If it comes to this it will make a fine story, but if the lawyers have their way, it won’t. Actually there is a story merely in Kesey’s problems in explaining his position to a lawyer. One of the big arguments tonight concerned what manner of garb the defendants should wear at the arraignment May 10. Kesey and his people resent the suggestion that they should wear coats, ties and stockings.
This is not a “typical beatnik” case, in that Kesey and the others are constructive, creative and articulate, by any comparison to the stereotype—and certainly by comparison to the “typical middle-class American.” Of course all this must sound pretty hazy to you now, but if the idea interests you, let’s keep it in mind. As far as I can see, there is no real time factor involved unless we want to make one. What concerns me in this thing are the questions of attitude and structural anachronisms that will be brought to bear on the case. Sooner or later the Law is going to have to face some of these “dangerous drug” questions, and this case may turn out to be a big step in that direction.
Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 Page 65