But I also suggest that American Motors is in no position these days to follow Bamum’s lead. I don’t need a Standard & Poor sheet to tell me your share of the market is slipping. All I have to do is look around. And if your public relations people have any kind of imagination they can get a lot of press mileage by using this letter as a reason for putting me behind the wheel of a new Rambler. As a gimmick it would cost you less than nothing in terms of your advertising budget, but if your people handled it with any élan it could easily be turned into an original and effective advertisement
Obviously, I’m not taking all this time and space with the idea of doing you a favor. The nut of my argument is that I’m driving around in something that I—in your position—would go to great lengths to hide from the general public. If my fiscal position were such that I could obtain a loan to buy a newer and better car I would certainly take advantage of it and not bother you with this kind of correspondence. Honesty compels me, however, to say that if I had the funds to finance a new car I would not buy a Rambler. And I don’t believe you would, either, if you had the kind of experiences that I’ve had with this one.
So that’s about it, from here. I look forward to hearing from you in one way or another. I won’t be holding my breath until somebody presents me with a gift certificate for a new Rambler, but as I said earlier I think you can do more with this letter than brush it aside as the ravings of a crank … which I may be, but I make my living writing for national magazines, so I leave you to ponder the meaning of it.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO R. A. ABERNATHY, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN MOTORS CORP.:
Thompson had received a bland, form-letter response from American Motors Corp.
December 10, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dear Mr. Abernathy:
I received the letter from your flunky and consider it a challenge to my imagination. With the help of several friends I am going to turn my car into an exhibit. It will move around the Bay Area, covered with various signs and slogans taken from Rambler advertisements. I am very proud to be aware of my pride. Today I arranged for a sign-painter to reproduce selected portions of our correspondence. It will take a week or two before the exhibit is complete. At that time I shall send you a few color photographs.
In closing, I remain, yours for more creative advertising.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
Hell’s Angels Terry the Tramp (left), Mountain Girl, and Sonny Barger at Ken Kesey’s La Honda retreat.
(PHOTO BY HUNTKR S. THOMPSON; COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
Thompson after his stomping by Hell’s Angels.
(COURTESY OF HST COLLECTION)
1. Richard Elman was a liberal writer who would later review Thompson’s Hell’s Angels for The New Republic.
2. Tad Minnish was a Louisville friend Thompson kept in touch with.
3. California’s Proposition 14, passed in November 1964, overturned the Rumford Fair Housing Act, which had prohibited discrimination on the basis of race or national origin by property owners. Proposition 14 was declared unconstitutional two years after its passage.
4. Harcourt Kemp, a Louisville friend.
5. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, formed in 1960 to battle segregation through direct action.
6. Fred Friendly, then executive producer of CBS News.
7. Kuralt’s wife.
8. Draper and Jarvis both worked for the San Francisco Chronicle. Jarvis—who appears as “Preetam Bobo” in Hell’s Angels—introduced Thompson to the biker gang.
9. The Native American equal rights rally in Oregon Thompson had covered for the National Observer.
10. Mario Savio was the spokesman for the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
11. Clark Kerr was the president of the University of California at Berkeley.
12. McWilliams wanted Thompson to write on the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. As a result, Thompson wrote “The Non-Student Left” (The Nation, September 27, 1965).
13. Bars Thompson used to frequent.
14. The hobo Thompson wrote about for the National Observer on his Western trek.
15. Burt Quint was a CBS correspondent in Latin America.
16. Antonio Imbert Barreras, Dominican junta leader.
17. Spider, a Berkeley-based magazine, was the voice of the Free Speech Movement.
18. Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America (New York, 1965).
19. The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (New York, 1965).
20. Steve DeCanio was a twenty-two-year-old Berkeley radical and editor of Spider.
21. The trial ended with a hung jury and eventual reduction of the charge to assault with a deadly weapon, to which Barger pleaded guilty and served six months in jail.
22. Director of The Wild One.
23. Jim Silberman, who was senior editor at “little” Random Mouse (the eponymous flagship division of the corporation that owned Pantheon and Ballantine), had seen early chapters of Hell’s Angels and insisted that his division should bring it out in hardcover before Ballantine published the paperback. The contract Silberman and Thompson signed effectively took “The Rum Diary” away from Pantheon, though Random Mouse never published it.
24. Theron Raines was Thompson’s agent for Hell’s Angels. Thompson dismissed him shortly after this letter.
25. The Matrix was the seminal nightclub for the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and other “acid rock” bands.
1966
318 PARNASSUS … ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE … SAVED BY CHARLES KURALT … FALLING IN LOVE WITH A 650 LIGHTNING … ARMED AND DRUNK ON HIGHWAY 101 … STOMPED BY GREEDY ANGELS … FAMOUS WRITER FLEES RONALD REAGAN … FROM THE SHIT HOUSE TO RANDOM HOUSE …
Far from being freaks, the Hell’s Angels are a logical product of the culture that now claims to be shocked by their existence. The generation represented by the editors of Time has lived so long in a world full of celluloid outlaws hustling toothpaste and hair oil that it is no longer capable of confronting the real thing. For twenty years they have sat with their children and watched yesterday’s outlaws raise hell with yesterday’s world … and now they are bringing up children who think Jesse James is a television character. This is a generation that went to war for Mom, God and Apple Butter, the American Way of Life. When they came back, they crowned Eisenhower and then retired to the giddy comfort of their TV parlors, to cultivate the subtleties of American history as seen by Hollywood.
–Hunter S. Thompson,
Hell’s Angels (published 1966)
TO JOAN BAEZ:
Thompson had met Baez in 1960 while living in Big Sur. The folk singer was starting a “school for nonviolence” in the Carmel Valley.
January 19, 1966
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dear Joanie—
After nearly a year writing a book about the Hell’s Angels I am tired of violence and am seriously considering a try at your school. Could you send me a bulletin, brochure, etc.? On the matter of tuition I think we can probably work something out: in exchange for some peace at your place I’ll put you onto the Angels. They represent a massive potential for many things. Ginsberg has softened them up a bit, but I think you’d fare a lot better. In the meantime, please send me all pertinent information and a valid application blank. Sandy is asleep, but if she were awake she’d say hello, so consider it said.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO LYNDON JOHNSON:
January 26, 1966
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Lyndon Johnson
White House
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. Johnson:
Now that somebody outside the Administration has finally come up with a workable “middle-way” solution to the Vietnam disaster, I feel it is only reasonable for me to withd
raw my former advocacy of total withdrawal and urge you to go along with the “holding strategy” proposals by Gen. Gavin1 and Walter Lippmann. This would at least give us a chance to pull in our horns and get the feel of things.
If, however, you are still goaded by your advisors to an all-or-nothing choice, I would have to stick with total withdrawal. I say this to emphasize that I have not in any way come around to your own point of view; but as a reasonably intelligent human being I think I have the sense to see that a controlled compromise is better than a total loss. I am not at all confident that you feel the same way, but the least I can do is write a five-cent letter and hope it will have some effect.
You can probably disregard all these letters—including any from Gavin, Ridgway2 and Lippman—without endangering your position for 1968. But you will have hell on your hands keeping the door open for Humphrey in 1972, and by then every one of today’s draftees will be voting.
I suppose this comes under the heading of a “dissenting letter,” and I understand you turn all of these over to the FBI. But if wanting to avoid an Asian war makes me a subversive, then you have my address and you can put me in the file with Eisenhower and MacArthur.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO PAUL SEMONIN:
Semonin was now a regular contributor to The Nation.
February 9, 1966
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Paul—
Midnight again. No time to think about human contacts. Thanks immensely for the draft on Chase Manhattan Bank. How does it feel to be a running dog of capitalism? I refuse to believe you have any grip on reality until you stop chasing nymphets from Louisville. [ … ] Get yourself a sturdy wench who is dedicated to class struggle.
Save the high boy for me. I plan to make the swing before April unless they deliberately prevent it. My ambition now is to ride the bike to the NCAA basketball finals and then load up on LSD for all four games. I’m looking for a Kentucky-Duke final, which should generate real hysteria even without acid.
Sorry about the note to Sara [Blackburn], but these bastards won’t answer my nice letters so I have to snap now and then. Significantly, I have no idea what sort of action you’re referring to about Sara doing “everything she could.” What happened? What couldn’t she prevent? I can only assume that Pantheon was forced to reject The Rum Diary. But what’s this about “hardback rights … turning her flank”?
Pantheon is a hardcover house. It’s precisely this kind of splintered wisdom that’s driving me wild. The last I heard, Pantheon was set to publish The Rum Diary. As far as I know they have both manuscripts. I have none. If the fuckers won’t tell me anything I have no choice but to write vicious letters. From this distance there is literally nothing else I can do. Somebody wrote the other day and said they saw an article of mine in some magazine that I’ve never even heard of. Meanwhile I have to borrow money to pay the rent. It’s maddening.
Today I got word that the bike engine is shot—in addition to $200–$300 worth of chassis damage. Apparently the accelerator jammed on full throttle while I was unconscious and burned out a main bearing. Another $200, minimum.
If it looks from your end like I won’t make it by April, don’t be polite about bugging me for the $200. I tend to put debts out of mind unless goaded. By the way it looks now I’ll have to get there, just to find out what’s happening on the money front. [ … ] I’ve never turned down $100 a day for anything, and never would. Tell Cooke to read Going Away before he starts any labor reporting ([it’s by] Clancy Sigal). OK for now. I’ll save the grant queries until I can get there and zero in. I’m still certain that something terrible is going to happen and this Hell’s Angels book will go down the tube somehow.
Hunter S. Thompson
TO NELSON ALGREN:
Thompson greatly admired Nelson Algren, the Chicago-based novelist.
February 10, 1966
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dear Mr. Algren—
I am about finished with a book that is supposedly about the Hell’s Angels. The motorcycle gentlemen. And for some reason I find that I’ve injected a large part of the opening to A Walk on the Wild Side into my own manuscript. This kind of snuck up on me. I’d intended to take off on your Linkhorn bit, relating it to the wave of bastard types who settled in California after the war.
These people are Linkhorns, no doubt about it. But a Linkhorn on a big Harley is a new kind of animal. Anyway, I figured I’d better warn you and maybe even ask your permission to quote you to the extent that I have. It looks like about a thousand words, all wrapped up in quotes and prominently attributed to both you and your book. (No, it looks more like 500 words, which I could probably steal legally anyway, but I figure it’s better to write and ask.) The stuff is too good to paraphrase, especially now that Linkhorns are making news all over, even running the country.
If you have any objections let me know quick, because the book is already three months overdue and the final deadline is March 1. Random is handling the hardcover. It was scheduled for April, but christ knows when it will come out now. If you don’t get vicious about the quotes I’ll tell them to send you a reviewer’s copy.
I’ve reviewed two of yours for the National Observer—or rather one of yours and Shag Donohue’s tome.3 Donohue seemed to like his, but they wouldn’t print the one I did on [Notes from a] Sea Diary.4 You have got to get over the idea that you have a sense of humor. No, that’s not it. It’s this gag-line stuff. You’re not a comedy writer. Neither was Conrad, but he wrote some very funny stuff. At any rate, I’ve given up book reviewing and the National Observer too.
Let me know if you have any objections to using your Linkhorn description. If I don’t hear from you by March 1 I’ll figure it’s all clear.
Thanks—
Hunter S. Thompson
FROM NELSON ALGREN:
February 16, 1966
Iowa City, Iowa
Mr. Hunter S. Thompson
318 Parnassus
San Francisco, California
Dear Hunter Thompson,
Thanks for asking my advice. It is that using 500 words of anything, without permission, would lay you wide open to the legal department of the copyright owners of that book: i.e.: Farrar Straus & Giroux.
Nor can I say that I find the idea of someone using a part of a book of mine as his own highly appealing. I don’t have the time—nor the loot—to engage in some coast-to-coast legal pursuit. All I’d do would be to advise the publisher of your book that I’d written part of it, that’s all.
Frankly, I can’t see what good stuffing somebody else’s material into your own work could do anybody. It’s always a good idea for a writer to do the best he can with what he has.
Best wishes,
Algren
TO NELSON ALGREN:
Stunned by Algren’s rejection of his request, Thompson fired back, unable to contain his disappointment.
February 19, 1966
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dear Mr. Algren:
Your letter arrived this morning and gave me pause. I don’t want to argue with you about this Linkhorn business, regardless of what I end up doing about it, but even if I change the whole bit I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I ever considered “stuffing” your material into my own work and calling it mine. And as for a writer doing “the best he can with what he has,” maybe you should take another look at the Sea Diary. It seems to me you quoted a few people here and there: Villon, Hemingway, several critics, etc. What kind of special copyright law do you operate under? It must be a real hellbuster if it makes you legally immune to being quoted. It sounds like one of Nixon’s laws.
I normally go out of my way to quote people who threaten to sue me for doing it, and so far I haven’t been nicked for a penny. But I’ll grant that maybe you misunderstood my letter. The tone was pretty sharp and boozy, but if you’ll chec
k line 13 and 14 you’ll see where I said everything I intended to use is “all wrapped up in quotes and prominently attributed to both you and your book.”
Which makes me wonder why you’d threaten to “advise” my publisher that you’d written the stuff. Do you think the fucker is blind? Why would he need letters from you to tell him what is already a part of the manuscript? I’ve quoted dozens of people in the book and most of them will have good reason to want to sue me, but not for plagiarism. When you file your legal papers you’ll be in good company: Time, Newsweek, Nixon, Sen. George Murphy, the Attorney Gen. of Calif., the mayor of Laconia, N.H., the Kiwanis Club and about 200 cops. Hell, I welcome lawsuits. The more the merrier. But I want them to be for the right reasons.
So let’s leave it like this: I’m enclosing (hell, I’ll make it part of the letter) a copy of that section of my manuscript that leads into the Linkhorn bit. It never occurred to me, frankly, that you’d be anything but pleased, or of course I wouldn’t have written. I’m not even sure why I wrote, but I suppose it was because I found myself using more of your Linkhorn description than I planned to when I started. Regardless of what you think, I know damn well that no law prevents me from quoting you. If you want to call it “stealing,” that’s cool, but don’t exclude yourself. I’m also using that “In my own country I am in a far off land …” thing that you stole from Villon. So I guess I’ll see you both in court.
In the meantime, here’s the context in which your Linkhorn description appears, as the text stands now. It begins on page 304 of the typewritten material, so you see I’ve developed a few leads before getting down to the Linkhorn angle. It is not a pillar of my narrative. Anyway, after devoting 300 pages to telling about the Hell’s Angels, I decided to trace them back a ways—to develop their family trees, as it were. On pg. 303 I have a verse of a song that I stole from Woody Guthrie. This theft is clearly noted in the text, the words of the song are in italics (32 words in all) and the title is “Do-Re-Mi.” Immediately following Guthrie’s chorus, the text continues like this: “The song expressed three frustrated sentiments of more than a million Okies, Arkies, and Hillbillies who made the long trek to the Golden State and found it was just another hard dollar.