Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (33 page)

C
UDDEBACKVILLE
, N
EW
Y
ORK
(June 12)—All organizations except the American Legion were banned in this lovely little mountain burg today, as the reaction to the Supreme Court's Barrenblatt decision swept through these hills like a tormented hurricane. Immediately after the ban was announced, twenty-seven members of the local 4-H Club received the bastinado on the village green.

The newly elected Burgerchief, a forty-seven-year-old rummy with the unlikely name of Benito Kampf, stood on a gas pump in the center of town today, and told a baffled gathering of the burg's ninety-one citizens that “the pinkos are about to get what's comin' to 'em!” Kampf's thundering oration was punctuated by bloodthirsty screams and hoarse shouts of “kill them pinkos!” from a black-shirted band of Legionnaires who stood in a half-circle behind him. The Legionnaires had roused the citizens out of bed at four in the morning with cane whips and cold water.

The twenty-seven 4-H Clubbers were given the bastinado several hours later. They had protested Kampf's decree that they purchase and eat, within one week, all the surplus eggs produced by local chickenfarmers during the past two months.

The local school-teacher took the bastinado with the agricultural group. She had protested Kampf's decision to oversee the school's curriculum for the coming year. Later in the day she was flogged again when a copy of
The Reporter
magazine was found in her home.

“The pinkos are on the run,” said Kampf in a latenight interview. “I have nothing to fear, but fear itself.”

TO ROBERT D. BALLOU, VIKING PRESS:

Thompson had sent a query about his novel, “Prince Jellyfish,” to Ballou at Viking Press. The editor, in what reads like a form letter, invited him to submit the manuscript.

June 17, 1959
Cuddebackville
New York

Sir,

Many thanks for your prompt reply to my letter concerning unsolicited manuscripts, capital gains, and such. For some reason, your letter made me feel more like a writer and less like an unemployed journalist. And that is important.

It will be several weeks, possibly months, before I'll have enough confidence in my manuscript to let you read it. Last week I read two fairly recent first novels—
Acrobat Admits
(Harold Grossman), and
After Long Silence
(Robert Gutwillig)—and saw enough mistakes to make me look long and hard at mine. Although I'm already sure the Thompson effort will be better than those two, I'm looking forward to the day that I can say it will be better than
Lie Down in Darkness.
When that day comes, I will put my manuscript in a box and send it to you.

So, until then, I remain,

Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson

TO RUST HILLS,
ESQUIRE:

To Thompson's embarrassment, Hill's very polite rejection letter arrived just as this vitriolic missive went out. A year earlier, Thompson had sat in on a literature course Hills taught at the New School for Social Research; a month earlier he had sent the
Esquire
fiction editor one of his short stories.

June 20, 1959
Cuddebackville
New York

Rust Hills

Esquire

488 Madison Avenue

New York City 22

Goddammit, Hills, I don't think there's an excuse in the world for you people holding onto my manuscript this long. It's been over a month,
now, and I've heard no news at all. For all I know, it might never have gotten to you.

If it has, however, I think you might do well to remember that, although you don't in any way depend on me now, there may come a day when you will. You might be in a position to take these stories lightly, now, but it just happens that I depend on them for rent and food money. I have no job, no salary, and my landlord is a down-to-earth bastard. As long as
Esquire
holds onto my story, I don't know where I stand. As I said before, for all I know it didn't even get to you.

Now I'm not foolish enough to expect you to actually buy the thing, but as long as I don't even know where it is, I feel completely helpless. The landlord is in my driveway every morning, asking about the three-weeks-overdue rent money, and all I can say is that I expect a check any day. I don't, of course, but you don't say things like that to your landlord.

So I ask you, in all sincerity, to either send me a check or send me the manuscript so I can get it into the mail again. And if you didn't ever receive it, please let me know immediately. Things have come to a pretty bad pass, here, and it doesn't help to have my potential income farmed out to Madison Avenue.

I don't mean to be rude, here, and I'm sorry if I sound that way. It's just that things are getting a little hectic. And the story, incidentally, is called “The Cotton Candy Heart.”

Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson

TO RUST HILLS,
ESQUIRE:

Undaunted by Hills's rejection of “The Cotton Candy Heart,” Thompson then sent him “The Almost Working Artist,” a Henry Milleresque homage to the creative souls who toil at their crafts in garrets.

June 25, 1959
Cuddebackville
New York

Hills:

Your comments on “The Cotton Candy Heart” were appreciated, but a little puzzling. Your conclusion that it was “romantic” and “slick” indicated either a perfunctory reading on your part, or an excess of subtlety on mine. As I tried to point out with the title and with the comparison to the Coca-Cola ad, the story was not a maudlin grasp at some fading thread of personal nostalgia, but a slightly rueful commentary on the essential
phoniness of the kind of nostalgia I was writing about. You know, the grass is always greener.…

My inquiry as to the whereabouts of the manuscript was mailed the day before I received your comments. My apologies for bothering you, but I was seriously beginning to wonder if it might have been lost somewhere along the way.

At any rate, here is another one, “The Almost Working Artist.” Perhaps I should point out that it is not an account of the artist's compassion for the downtrodden working man, but a reminder to all those who take art for granted that Picasso was not always a millionaire, and that loneliness and uncertainty are as common to artists and other “world beaters” as they are to shit-shovelers and ribbon clerks.

In saying that, I place the “burden of proof,” so to speak, on my own shoulders. Nevertheless, that's the point I'm trying to make; and if the story doesn't make it, I can always write it again. In the meantime, however, if you know of anyone who wants to hire a neo-literary mountain hermit, please let me know. And I am, incidentally, being forced to sell my Jaguar. If you know of anyone who'd like to buy a 1951 Mark VII, mine is available for $900 or best offer.

Leaving you with my problems, I remain,

psychopathically,
Hunter S. Thompson

TO ANN FRICK
:

Frick had written “Hunty” a five-page reconciliation letter professing her love amid a barrage of questions that had been weighing on her mind.

June 26, 1959
Cuddebackville
New York

Dear Ann,

Yes, once in a while I smile for a picture. See enclosed. It was taken for a passport.

It is now four o'clock in the morning in Cuddebackville, New York. The two general stores are closed, the church is dark, and aheavy mist hangs over the Neversink River. It is raining, and has been for two weeks. The mountains are green and the roads are forever damp. Cuddebackville
lies in a valley at the foot of the Otisville mountain. The mist is thick in the valley tonight, and the road up the mountain is dark and empty.

Far out on the Oakland Valley road, some two-and-a-half miles from town, a black Jaguar sits in a driveway beside a cabin high above the road. A light burns in the cabin, perhaps the only light in Cuddebackville. Inside, a man sits before a typewriter, drinking iced tea and smoking a cigarette. He has been writing since eight in the evening, and he has just finished the third chapter of a novel. He has been writing almost constantly for several weeks. Within a month, he should have enough of the book finished to take it to New York, where one of the editors of the Viking Press (publishers) has agreed to read it.

That's why he hasn't written the sparkling-eyed girl in Tallahassee about his work: because he's doing nothing but writing, and what is there to say about that?

And so, Ann my girl, there you have it. I am writing. And if—when you ask if I've had any success—you mean monetary success, the answer is no. This week, as a matter of fact, three of my stories came back to me in the mail—with nice little rejection slips attached to all three.

Sad? Hopeless? Well, perhaps it is. Before we assume that, though, I'd like to quote you one or two little things I came across recently:

^*
that's Ernest Hemingway, and from 1919 to 1927 is eight years.

^*
that's Scott Fitzgerald. He wrote a few things back around the twenties.

So you see, my love, yew can't never tell. There is some that makes it, and some that don't. I just happen to think I'm going to make it. I couldn't afford to think otherwise.

At the rate of three rejections a week, I should catch up with Fitzgerald in thirty-six weeks. And that will still give me about six years before I catch up with Hemingway. If I get this novel published, however, I'll be ahead of them both. And, oh lordy, won't that be fun. So have faith, yew cute li'l ol' dark-eyed thing. They ain't throwin' dirt on my coffin yet.

So now we go on to the next question: what part of you attracts me? Well, Ann, I don't think you phrased that question any too decently, so I'll try to answer it the way I think you meant it. If I answered it the way you wrote it, I don't think you'd write me anymore.

Hmmnnnnnn … that ain't so easy. It would be much easier to answer it the way you wrote it. But no, I'm too high-minded for that sort if thing.

I would be foolish to deny, however, that there is a very definite physical attraction. And I think that's just fine; I wouldn't have it any other way.

There's more, of course, but I've never really thought about it. I only know that you're the only girl I've run across since I was about sixteen who's had any lasting effect on me. It's been about three years, now, and I still haven't managed to bump you out of my mind. And I
have
tried. Lord! Three years! Does it seem that long to you?

Are you aware, by the way, that on February 5, 1957, I was addressing you in letters as “Cheri,” and calling you “emotionally stubborn”? And are you also aware that on September 25, 1956, you were giving me a very familiar line that ran something like this: “About this weekend. I've got quite a lot to do and I'm going to be pretty busy.…” A very familiar phrase, that. You went on to say, however, that you “could go out Saturday afternoon or Saturday night,” but that “probably Saturday night would be best.”

I don't remember exactly what happened, that weekend, but I'm sure it must have been frustrating.

Are you still as pretty as you were, by the way? Why don't you send me another picture? Please stay pretty. It's very important to me that you be pretty. I'm serious.

I'm in such a fine mood now, that if I close my eyes I can almost see you here in the cabin. If you were here I'd take you immediately to bed. Depraved, but true, I'm afraid. Here I'm going to frustrate myself again; damn, I can't stand it.