Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (52 page)

You got the nod for several reasons, primarily because I was free-lancing in Puerto Rico last year when your rancid bombshell was reprinted in the
San Juan Star
. In it, you said “an American Somerset Maugham” could do a colorful novel on present-day P.R. Although I hesitate to bill myself as an American Maugham, I'm about nine-tenths through a novel that was just getting underway when your article appeared. Ever since then I've been using it as a morale-booster; whenever I think I'm being a little rough on the Puerto Ricans I read the article again and I know I still have leeway. At any rate, the thing was a classic and, in the vicious days that followed its publication, I made a mental note to get hold of you if I ever needed anyone to run interference for my novel.

That's overstating it a bit, because all I really need is a few names—say, three decent editors at publishing houses not dedicated to cookbooks, boozy memoirs, or the rib-tickling humors of children and animals. As you probably know, I could waste a year submitting this book to people who would brush it off like dandruff. This is what I want to avoid. You might tell me to get an agent, but my experience with agents has been unbelievably bad. I've managed to sell enough on my own to keep from getting a job, but agents treat me like the son of Judas.

I'm enclosing some excerpts from The Rum Diary. I hope you like them at least well enough to steer me to a likely publisher. God knows it's difficult enough to write a book without having to face, in total ignorance, those vultures on Madison Avenue. I don't care who publishes the book, as long as they put it between covers and give me enough money to pay the rent. As it is, my rent is $15 a month, but I'm being evicted on October 27, so it will probably go up considerably.

For the record, the manuscript of The Rum Diary is half-finished in the final draft. I have submitted it once, to an agent who found the characters “uninteresting.” Maybe they are; maybe the book is hopeless, but I'd like to try a few editors before I give up. If you could send me a few names, I'd certainly appreciate it.

Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson
Manor House
Big Sur, California

October 19, 1961
Big Sur

Well, McGarr, I know you want to hear about the high life in Big Sur, so I want you to sit back with whatever mass of meat and pulp you must have in your hands at the moment and hear about things as they are. First, I have been evicted—and, second, I have rejected the eviction
in toto
. I know this will give you pleasure.

The article came out in
Rogue
and Mrs. Murphy saw it as a vicious exposé of her property—hence, an eviction notice some 20 hours later. I have pondered this notice for some three weeks and now see that my only course is to sit on my ass and type until they can muster enough sheriffs to carry me off. I only wish this letter could find you as it might have before the days of your Mental Fatness, so I could invite you out for the fun. I have good reason to expect that the next month or two will not be devoid of entertainment.

My eviction date is October 27, six days from now, and tomorrow I will make a new batch of beer that will not be bottled for ten days, nor drinkable for fifteen. I intend to drink that batch in this room, and perhaps even swill the next batch before they do me in. Because they
will
do me in, McGarr, just as they'll do you in—or perhaps I should say, “they would have done you in”—and finish us all off in a blaze of shit and oppression. In the
words of Mr. Mailer, “the shits are killing us,” but I think Mailer has lost faith in the battle—the dirty fun of losing, as it were, the loose clean feeling of not giving a roaring fuck about winning or losing or anything else. Mailer has learned to take himself seriously, and any man who does that is fair game for the shits.

You've done it yourself, McGarr, and it's made you duller, more posed and all too obvious. Somewhere behind that, I think, lurks the half-wild shadow of an original man. I hope so, anyway. Because when you lose that, you're through.

Your theories about my life here are just about what I expected, so I won't waste much time on them. Suffice it to say that you're right about my sadism having free rein in Big Sur. So much so, in fact, that I can get it out of my system with no trouble at all. Now, instead of dissipating my energy in a stupid search for excitement, I can flash it off with two hours in the hills and approach the rest of my day in a rested frame of mind. If this makes me “sick,” so be it. Terms like that one have just about lost their meaning anyway, except for people who think a word is a fact.

As I said in my last letter, Semonin was here and I enclose a relic of his visit. You should see him soon and I want you to show him this photo and see what he says. I will write him as soon as I know he's in Spain. Those trips have a way of going off in strange directions. Your talk of Europe makes the place sound horribly trite, so trite in fact that I have just about given up any interest I might have had in making the trip. I see Europe as a crowded museum, a quaint showcase for a world no longer up to par. My best to the Germans, god damn their cheap militant hearts. If it comes to war and bombs and that business, I only hope I can get a few Germans in my sights. I sense a decency about the Russians, but the Germans strike me as a race of two-legged sharks—clever, efficient and dangerously stupid.

Now for news—Maxine had a wreck and had 100 stitches in her head. I haven't seen her; the word comes from Clancy, who has been evicted from his San Francisco hovel. That's about all the news I can think of. Maxine is going east, she says, presumably for ever. God only knows what will become of her; I'd rather not ponder it.

That's about the ballgame, McGarr. I'll be here until they root me out. Send a few words of abuse when you get a chance. I am thinking of sailing to Hawaii and a hunting trip to Vancouver, then Mexico and South America. Chile may have what it takes, whatever in hell that may be. I'm beginning to wonder. What does it take? I guess some of us will find out. And I leave you with that.

Curiously, HST

TO WILLIAM J. KENNEDY
:

With tensions in Big Sur running high, Thompson retreated to Louisville while Sandy headed to New York to earn some holiday money. Thompson, still trying to find a home for “The Rum Diary,” offered Kennedy some tips on the world of New York publishing
.

October 21, 1961
Big Sur, California

Willie—got your card yesterday & was taken aback by the arrow on the front, pointing to “our apartment.” Whose apartment? Have you moved back to Chinatown? I guess it's not too odd, considering your San Juan background. Who are you stringing for down there?

Anyway, don't send any books to Big Sur. Hang onto them until I give a new word. I have been evicted. The old lady who owns this place didn't like her mention in
Rogue
. As of now it looks like we'll be moving east in about ten days. Sandy is heading to New York to work, and me to Louisville to finish the book. It's been going badly for a month or so; I'm writing more and saying less. The agent refused it, saying the characters were “uninteresting.” There's no dealing with that kind of criticism—it's about the last thing I expected. “A perfectly acceptable novel,” he added, “but.…” And so we beat on, boats against the current.…

Hope you are having better luck with yours. Viking is a decent outfit, I think, but a tough nut to crack. I might suggest to you a lady editor at a press called Appleton-Century-Crofts—Bobs Pinkerton—who found it within herself to treat my last book as if it was something I'd worked on, rather than something I'd clipped out of a magazine and submitted as an afterthought. She sent a reader's report, plus a long letter of her own. Then she answered some questions and offered to look at the book again if and when I got it straightened out. I never even finished the thing, of course, so I can't wrap this up with a happy ending. But it's a thought.

A rumor has reached me—to get off on another subject—that the editorship of the
Tortola Times
is up for grabs. Could you check this for me? I don't even know who to write. With your vast contacts in the Carib press, I thought you might know somebody over there. The paper is a farce, as I recall, but just the kind of thing I'd like if they paid even a minimum salary. If you can find out anything, write me at the Louisville address. Louisville is my Albany.

I'm assuming that this letter will reach you via San Juan. Have you finished the book? If so, what now? If you get any offers not lucrative or prestigious enough for your tastes, keep in mind that I'll be looking for employment, assignments, paid travel, etc. as of about January 1. I've now
added photography to my list of skills—those
Rogue
photos were mine—and can tackle just about anything with a little zip to it.

Speaking of zip, Semonin should be in Tangier about now. He was here for a week, a fine week full of drinking and shooting, and we passed the time in a frenzy of incestuous criticism. He's about 150 pages into a novel, a laborious tormented document that needs a lot of work and relaxation to make it edible. Of course my tastes are narrow, so this is just an opinion.

Anyway, let me hear from you, and hang on to the books. When my plans begin to gel, I'll send word. Or maybe they'll never gel, maybe I'll never be anywhere long enough for you to send the books to me. Time and luck will tell.

Hello to Dana and kudos to the children. Balls to everybody else.

HST

November 10, 1961
Louisville, Kentucky

Eleanor—

Ah yes, around and around we go, forever seeking the lost axis, the big Equalizer that Santa Claus took with him when he died. And now, lo and behold, I crouch in the bowels of the Highlands, seeking something, mostly waiting, thinking, killing time, procrastinating, drinking instant coffee by the gallon, reading and re-reading my half-born book and wondering now and then if I will ever write anything but the occasional bright word of the horny traveler. Five good pages in a 15-page story might not win the pennant, but it's a hardnose average and I'll buy it any day. On the other hand, 10 good pages in 200 (with 100 to go) is twice as many good pages as five, but as an average it sucks wind. I guess the moral is pretty obvious—write short-shorts—and that'll do for a while, but every now and then a man needs to launch a real wadbuster and that's about the way I'm feeling. You can hit the target all day with a .22, but when you want to knock a motor-block off its mounts you move in close with a .44 Magnum. Yeah.

Christ, the mail just came and that bastard Ed the mailman
²⁵
whacked me with a bill for $76 for the month of October. It's about twice what I owe, at best, but god only knows how I can dispute it, with him holding all the figures. This fucking debt is driving me nuts—every time I turn around somebody is dunning me for something. If I don't make some money soon I'm going to start stealing it. This bill has ruined my day.

On top of that, I left a box full of my life's work in Glenwood Springs—all my stories, articles, photos, letters, everything I've ever written is in that box and it's about 4 days overdue by RR Express. If they've lost it I think that will just about do the trick, I'll just give up and get a job.

Well, enough of that. It's raining in the Highlands, a stiff pounding on the roof outside my window. First rain I've seen since April. Memo went to meet her maker and I am now in her room, with Agar on the bed and a big rack of pistols and whips and clubs on the wall, a big vat of beer working on the radiator and a whole shelf full of bullet-making equipment. I got that big .357 Magnum that Joel was selling, the one you saw when you went into town with us. Now it hangs useless on the wall beside my head, a dirty black hog-buster and all the hogs 2000 miles away. I may sell the bastard.

Through the empty house floats the voice of Joanie Baez, an eerie sound to my restless ears. I expect to look out the window and see the hills or the ocean—but no dice, only Ransdell Avenue, grey and wet and full of so many ghosts and memories that I get the Fear whenever I go outside. At night, beneath the ageless streetlight, I see Ching and Duke Rice and David Comfort on a red bike with no fenders, Ollie Spencer leaning out the window of that blue Chevy and Pinky beside him like a magpie, Barnes with a cigarette, frogging Ching with malicious glee, a shout, the sound of a bike falling on the curb, then the shallow roar of a Chevy engine as Ollie bucks off up the hill with Barnes on the fender and Ching's hat beside him on the seat.
²⁶
Mean childhood laughter and a bruised arm, streetlights and elm trees and a red bike with no fenders, the taste of a secret pipe on a winter walk, a green sweater with a dirty white C on the chest, no homework and a million lazy tomorrows stretched out like a rubber band that somebody will let go of pretty soon and then it won't be a million at all, but only a few, a rotten withering few before the big hump. And after that, the craziness.

I think I've put my finger on it—the craziness. Over the hump to Crazyville, talk a while, then hurry off, first South, then West, and finally East. God help us—North is all we have left.

I'll crack my spleen if I keep talking like this. You may wonder how I got here. Don't know if you got my quick letter from the train. Anyway, I was evicted because of that article, a friend of Ted Klemens
²⁷
showed up and hauled our traveling gear to San Francisco, Sandy flew East courtesy of papa and is now working in New York for a collection agency, and Agar and I went to Aspen. An alarming queerness in that move—believe it or not, the
only car I could get in San Francisco was going to Aspen. Some woman named Jonas, who came to San Francisco and bought a whole carload of oriental straw goods, all of it delicate, then flew back to Aspen and waited for somebody stupid enough to pay for all the gas it would take to deliver the shit to her door. There, of all people, come I—needing cheap transportation for my gear and my dog, agreeing over the phone to drive this car as far as Aspen for an added bonus of $15 from the agency because they couldn't find anybody else. I had built a huge crate for Agar and when I found all that shit in the car I strapped the crate on top and stuffed it with birdcages, parasols, balsa-wood stools, rice-paper doilies, and took off across the desert at top speed with Agar on the seat beside me and all my gear in the trunk. I moved in a manner that reminded me of the Fat City—with that huge crate on top, the car tended to move in a crabwise fashion whenever I headed into the wind. On a reach, I would leap 3 or 4 feet to the leeward each time I hit a bump. Needless to say, I got about 12 miles to the gallon, even in a Lark. I arrived in Aspen with $2, drunk as a loon, sliding violently in the snow, and found a man named Ivan Abrams. I figured I would find a team of hardnose travelers to take me in for the night, but there was nothing. I fell on Abrams, carrying a gallon of wine, and after a bit of drinking he directed me to Peggy Clifford,
²⁸
who saved the day. She gave me drink, offered me a couch, and took me over to see the Jonas woman, who was drunk and told me to come back tomorrow for my $50 deposit. I was given more drink at that place and finally, upon coming back to Peggy's house to eat, I collapsed in a drunken heap—literally fell apart, disintegrated before her eyes. The next morning, with no time to see the Jonas woman, I fled into Glenwood to get the train. Peggy gave me the money, which I think was yours, and said she would get it back from Jonas. I figured she knew what she was doing and since she didn't seem too eager to have me around for another night, I moved on. No word from her, so I guess things went off well. Had no time even to see your house—I was going to go up with the big pistol and put the Fear in that guy who moved in. You may have trouble on that, but Peggy seems competent enough, so I imagine she'll get the money if it's there to be got. If not, I may head west again after Xmas, and I can stop by and bellow at him until he does something.