This is the sort of thing I mean, and it’s very involved. The point I mean to make is that any book like this is written in a web of “additional” information that can’t be published. [Ernest] Hemingway referred to it, in a different sense, as that part of the iceberg that floats beneath the surface, or something more or less in those words.
As for your note on my “courage for spending a year with them,” I think you miss the point by focusing on the word “courage.” I never thought of it that way, at the time—it was simply an assignment: to write a true book, and to write the truth I had to get close to it. Right now, tonight, there are photographers and reporters in Vietnam doing far more dangerous things than arguing with Hell’s Angels. If you’re looking for an example of Courage this year, try a name like Martin Luther King.
OK for now. I hope this helps your paper a bit.
Good luck,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO TOM WOLFE:
Thompson admired Tom Wolfe’s sociological term “behavioral sink,” and offered up his own word jewel: “atavistic endeavor.”
April 21, 1968
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Tom …
I was talking to a friend in L.A. the other day & when he asked what I was doing I replied that I was into a “behavioral sink.” And I’m only putting quote marks on the term because he advised me that you’ve already written about it. He lived in New York until about two months ago; claims he read your “sink” stuff in the Tribune. Did he? If so, could you send me a copy?
The term itself is a flat-out winner, no question about it. Every now and then I stumble on a word-jewel; they have a special dimension, like penetrating oil. Right? “Behavioral Sink” is up in that league with my all-time, oft-used champ, the “Atavistic Endeavor.” I picked that up in a Ketchum, Idaho, bar about five years ago and I suspect it’s appeared in every article since then. Or almost. Even Kesey: his whole problem in La Honda was that he didn’t understand that his whole gig was an atavistic endeavor. How about that for a zapper? Yessir, penetrating oil. To queer the lubricant and bring us back to zero. Oh, it’s a good life here; meanness and terror on the land, the tax man just bit me with nine-league fangs. If you can send me a copy of that thing you wrote I might be able to get out of the … yes … and thanx.
Hunter
TO LARRY SHULTZ:
Another Hell’s Angels fan got a pointed answer to his question about Christianity among bikers.
April 21, 1968
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Mr. Shultz …
… in response to your query about the Hell’s Angels and Christianity—which I note you spelled with a capital “C.” In that context, I’d have to say that the Hell’s Angels have no attitude at all toward Christianity; this is one of the few redeeming facets of their collective personality. Through no fault of their own, they have been spared the millstone of one of history’s greatest lies.
… the answer to your second question should be self-evident by now: the notion that capital C christianity might reach anybody who’s in touch with the reality of this world strikes me as a hopeless joke. Those bastards have done enough damage with their hypocritical, dues-paying, soul-rotting cage of a mean religion. If any one of those hired swine had a decent impulse in him, he’d get the hell out of the way and make room for some christians.
I trust this answers your question.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO OSCAR ACOSTA:
April 22, 1968
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Oscar …
… you rotten brown freak, thanx for the clips that give me at least a distant notion about what you’re into. You forgot to explain it, in those other letters, so I didn’t know what the fuck you were talking about. I hadn’t seen the Time clip, for instance, or anything in the L.A. Times. All I had was a shoddy, amateurish story in the Free Press about a school walkout—and it didn’t mention you. Try to keep in mind that all your truth and passion and fiery brown baptist absolutes aren’t worth a hoot in hell out of context—or when you’re railing at a dumb anglo mutherfucker who doesn’t know Brown Power from Brown & Root.
This is the bitch I had with the book-stuff you sent me, and it’s also why I didn’t send it back. I knew you’d call me a dirty anglo hack if I told you that you have to at least pretend to be objective when you’re trying to sell a book to a New York publisher. I didn’t see any sense in telling you to back off and get un-involved … because you’d have told me to fuck off, right? I figured that the book idea would stand a better chance if I passed it along to the dirty white hack in New York, and tacked on a few explanatory notes of my own. To wit: “Oscar’s excited now, but believe it or not he can actually say what he means now and then—he has a weird instinct for dialogue: he can make it carry a whole narrative. There’s a good book in this, if you can get Oscar calm enough to write it … I suggest you offer him some money.”
Those aren’t exact quotes, but they’re the main tone of a long letter. And if Shir-Cliff hasn’t answered yet, keep in mind that he hasn’t answered me either—and he owes me a fat bag of money that I want NOW, AT ONCE to buy some Woody Creek acres. So at least he hasn’t burned you: that’s more than I can say. I just paid a New York lawyer $436 to deal with this shit (the $36 is for phone calls), and I can’t get anything out of him either. One of these days you brown and black radical blowhards will figure out that money is power in this country, and that money is colorblind. That bullshit about color is for the sheep—keep em squabbling, stabbing each other. And then lock em up, teach the scum a lesson.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe this is just another dose of gringo bullshit, but it seems to me that this color bag is so limited that it has to be self-defeating. I had this same argument a few years ago with a guy named Clyde Warrior, a wild-eyed beautifully articulate Indian freak from Oklahoma who is now raising some headlines by telling the tribesmen to use their rifles because that’s all the white bastards can understand. But Clyde can’t tolerate niggers, or at least he couldn’t then. Maybe he’s figured things out by now. I just wrote him at his old address, and if he’s up to anything active I might drive over there sometime soon and have some serious drink-talk with him. You’d like the bastard; if I can locate him, maybe the CP will pay your way out here for an eyeball-to-eyeball chat with him. He’s a natural ally, and he wails first-class at the podium. But he needs to be jerked out of that narrow pure-indian gig he’s into … or maybe he’s already out of it; I haven’t seen him in two years—for all I know he’s tight with Tijeria by now. Anyway, I should know pretty soon. Would you be interested in getting together with him if I can work it out? Send word.
As for your “book,” I think I made myself clear to McGarr when he called the other day. My objection will obviously be the publisher’s—any publisher’s—and it dwells on the brutally partisan nature of your stance. It’s like [if I had] joined the Angels before writing the book—so that everything I said would be suspect, in terms of which axe I was grinding. And that’s all fine if we’re talking about biography—but neither of us is famous enough at this point to sell our life history and viewpoints to the evil anglo press lords. At least not in those terms. The thing for you to do, I think, is to write about a 3000 word article for The Nation … and send it to Carey McWilliams, the editor, with a note saying I thought he should have a look at it. Then, if he puts it in print, you’ll be in a leverage position on a book contract.
I’m not saying this is something you have to do; it’s just a ripe and proven way to get a book contract. All this talk ignores my obvious doubt that you’re capable, right now, of writing anything less partisan than a bazooka shot on this subject. There is a shale hassle, and after that I may or may not pick up that dormant thing I was doing on Aspen. These pigfuckers should all be boiled in oil. If I can find my latest Marty Bormann letter I’ll enclose it along with a clip on Diaz Ordaz, which I think you’ll like. If you can think of any c
entral happening that I could peg a story on (in connection with the chicano action), let me know and SEND a CLIPPING—which I can use to convince some editor to pay my ticket to LA or wherever. Your signed voucher won’t make the nut. Sorry.
As for here, it’s 6:37 now and the grey light of dawn is bubbling up on yesterday’s heavy snow. No sun, just stinking wet warm snow. Yesterday afternoon I stumbled into the living room and found Juan talking very straight and seriously to your wooden man with the necklace. He has served his purpose, at least to the extent of keeping evil spirits away. What I need now is a man to keep well-meaning people away.
Juan and Sandy both speak well of you, which is more than I can say for myself. And I’m about to go to the mat with the local greedheads. As for your car, it’s not a question of my wanting you to sign it over—I HAVEN’T seen it since you left, but unless you want it towed off to the Pitkin County dump, you’ll have to authorize somebody to cope with it. I can get it repaired—if it isn’t already stripped—but if I do, you’ll have to pay the repair bills before I sign it back over to you. If you send me the pink slip I’ll do something about the car; if you don’t, I’ll forget it. OK for now …
Hunter
TO SELMA SHAPIRO, RANDOM HOUSE:
In New York after visiting Thompson in Woody Creek, former Richmond, California, mayor David Pierce was supposed to hand-deliver a gift from the writer to Selma Shapiro, the Random House publicist for Hell’s Angels.
April 24, 1968
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Selma …
I was expecting a letter from you, but not the kind you sent—the LOOK/Mailer review, which I appreciated immensely, due to my crippled self-image as an actual working writer. Any mention like that reminds me of what I should be doing. And it also reminds me that people expect me to do it—although I’m not sure I need any more reminders on that score than I get every day in the mail.
But now … back to why I was expecting to hear from you this week: Pierce left my house about 10 days ago with your “present” (the long-lost totem) in his possession. He was en route to NY by train, which made him the first available human carrier I’ve managed to come up with in a year or so. He left the house about five in the morning and was due to catch the train a few hours later; the totem was all wrapped and tied with notes, addresses, etc., and all he had to do was get it to the train. But a few days ago I stopped at the hotel he stayed in here—and there was the goddamn totem, forgotten and abandoned on top of a disconnected bathtub full of firewood. I raised all manner of snarling hell with the tenants, whose responsibility it was to get him and all his baggage to the train station some 45 miles away …which they did, except for the totem … but they said he was pained and distraught from a flesh wound sustained the night before his departure while operating a tape recorder (and attempting to steal a tape) in my living room. He was shot in the base of the spine, he said, by a plastic target bullet of a .44 Magnum caliber—causing him extreme fear at the moment of contact, and prolonged pain thereafter….Ho, ho, hee … the giddy bastard thought, for an instant, that I’d laid a genuine .44 Magnum round on him. He thought he was dead, he said, but when he realized he could still walk, he fled from the house at great speed—abandoning the tape he was trying to get off with when I caught him in the act and nailed him on the coccyx bone with my trusty .44.
So I guess we can’t really wonder why good old Pierce, the prophet of non-violent theft, was not entirely straight when he gathered his baggage together a few hours after being shot. I just got a card from him today—from the boat. He said he wished I were there—100 yards off the starboard bow, floundering in the water, so he could shoot at me & hopefully teach me a lesson.
Anyway, that’s why I didn’t get a letter from you last week, either thanking me or cursing me for my present. It’s sitting on the porch right now, covered with stinking evil snow. The weather has gone mad here—fine spring days laced with blizzards and freezing sleet. And last week I got swacked with a $2800 tax bill.
I told Gerald Walker of The New York Times this would happen. His circular said he wanted the signatures of “respectable, law-abiding (and presumably tax-paying) writers.” I tried to explain that I was none of these, and that any tie to me would compromise the high liberal masochism that he seemed to favor. What is the position of the tax protest right now? Is Wilbur Mills48 running it? I suspect I’ll be locked up for egregious non-payment before I have to decide whether to withhold 10% or 23%. I think that’s the last one of those white-collar protest gigs I’ll get involved with. Or maybe not. I was going to say that the whole tax protest was a bad joke, but I guess that’s not fair.
And it’s not fair to grapple with anything that complicated at this hour of the morning, which is late and getting light. For the moment I’ll just say goodnight. Send a decent letter, when you have time, and tell me what’s happening there. As for here, I just focused back on The Rum Diary—after losing the Johnson fantasy book and the easiest $10,000 I ever thought I’d see—so maybe I’ll get off something human and interesting before I have to get into that stinking fat compendium on the American Dream/Power and Reality. In the meantime, I have to go over to Denver on May 1, for a conference on the Oil Shale menace—an article for the LA Times. Call if you feel like talking; I’ll be at the Brown Palace Hotel from May 1 to May 4. Wheeling and dealing with the oil moguls. Drunk and oily … and quite faithfully yours in half-light …
Hunter
TO BERNARD SHIR-CLIFF, BALLANTINE BOOKS:
Thompson responded to his editor about the possibility of writing a short book on American violence.
April 26, 1968
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Bernard …
Two days have gone by since I talked to you by Bell telephone regarding the commercial withering of my Johnson File and the new possibility that you mentioned—a quick book hung somehow on the title: “Violence in America, Does it have a future?”
Well ……………… I’ll bite. Does it?
This is a really fascinating question, Bernard, but I’m damned if I can see any way to make a book out of it unless you want to roll high and wild … and make it a sort of essay question for me. This could produce almost anything: 40,000 words of mad drivel, perhaps. Or a strange manifesto of some kind. I’ve thought about your question long enough to know I can’t give you a quick answer.
As you probably suspect, I think that Violence in America has a Fat and Happy future. I have before me at this moment in space and time—a printed advertisement from the Shotgun News, which I’d otherwise enclose for your amusement except that I want to order several of these items, to wit: One tube of Mace Gas, complete with “top grain belt holster,” and maybe a GR3 “All chrome, lowest priced .38 Special on the market—$32.95.”
There is a touch of fine humor in this gunpowder game these right-wing allamerican waterheads are said to be loading up like young oxen … 40 feet of running room and a cheap, unreliable, overpriced weapon in every loser’s pot. They are due for an awful surprise when the go-horn sounds … sort of like Batista.49 They are courting some weird echoes. Which is neither here nor there, except to stress the peculiar and potentially biased tone of my own involvement. Any realistic appraisal of the next few years of history and action in this country would have to be weighted heavily on the side of tearful, mind-bending violence. It will come to the point of martial law and a non-elected “emergency” regime, headed by god knows what sort of monster—but a military man, choked up from the ranks of that faceless, soulless, hopeless power tribe that Mendel Rivers50 has helped us make for ourselves.
Maybe Pat Nugent.51 Or where is Dave Schine52 these days?
Well … I had to let that rest for a few days; I can’t handle too much of my own bullshit at any one sitting. What’s fun in two sentences becomes rancid in two paragraphs. I get tired of whipping on the same old freaks; we need some new villains or at least some new names. Anyway, I’ve drawn a blank when it comes to thinking
of specific forms, shapes and contexts for a Violence in America book. The more I think about it, the more it sounds like my Joint Chiefs idea. Hell, it’s all the same subject—the one we’ve been haggling about for more than a year. Let’s assume this and get down to the narrow, finite focus we need for a beginning. It’s the same subject; what we’re looking for is that opening that newspaper freaks call a “peg.” And that, as I see it, is more your province than mine. You’re an editor, right? I’m only a writer … and maybe we’re both on the skids if you overprinted the H.A. book by 400,000, which is what I have to assume if I have only $10,000 on account with 600,000 copies in print. Why don’t you put your sales & distribution guru in a heavy canvas bag and send him to me—COD, Woody Creek. I think I could use some instruction in The Basics: windsprints with Doberman pursuit, etc.
Sincerely,
Hunter
TO RUST HILLS, ESQUIRE:
Thompson had enrolled in Rust Hills’s creative writing course at Columbia University in 1958. Now he let the critic know what he thought of Esquire’s kid-gloves review of Making It, the latest neoconservative screed from Commentary magazine founder Norman Podhoretz. A decade earlier—in his December 1958 Esquire article “Where Is the Beat Generation Going?”—Podhoretz had proclaimed that “what juvenile delinquency is to life, the San Francisco [Beat] writers are to literature.”