Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (83 page)

I was ready to hoot at you for apparently believing that your news from
La Monde
gave you an inside track on U.S. politics. But maybe you don't carry your delusions quite that far. Sorry. Anyway, your comments on what happened here are essentially correct, and hardly novel. Mailer is miles ahead of you, saying that in some secret, half-perverted way he hoped Goldwater might win—if only to bring about another confrontation. Peggy Clifford reports a shade of this from Aspen, and before Mailer's piece appeared. I don't know whom she overheard, or where, but when she said it I remember thinking, “Yeah, why not set the bastards up for a
real
fall?”

But there was an element of that in my thinking all the way from beginning to end. I recall standing on the floor of the convention when GW made his acceptance speech and actually feeling afraid because I was the only person not clapping and shouting. And I was thinking, God damn you nazi bastards I really hope you win it, because letting your kind of human garbage flood the system is about the only way to really clean it out. Another four years of Ike would have brought on a national collapse, but one year of Goldwater would have produced a revolution.

That's my anarchist talking. But as a good, god-fearing, one hundred percent liberal American with nice common sense and a normal share of cowardice I would have voted for Johnson if I'd been eligible to vote. Which I wasn't and that makes me happy. But I honestly think now that I wish GW had won. Maybe if we ever talk on this thing I can give you some ideas on your “violence in America” piece. Or maybe I already have. But I see your boys in the Congo are learning quick. And I had to
laugh at your idea that the Algerians are shocked by “brutality photos” out of Vietnam. Just like I'd be shocked by a photo of a dead dog. What kind of stuff are you smoking, boy? Do you know what fucking country you're in? Did you see any photos out of Algeria in those eight years? What in hell are you talking about? You seem to imply they are all gentle children with no eye for reality at all. I wonder how many people you deal with over there know Mr. Ford is giving you $6,000 a year to study them and write about their problems.

I suppose I should explain here that none of what I say implies a loss of faith in your brain or balls, but I can't help but get excited when you throw that kind of hash at me. And when I talk with an ugly tongue I am talking to your political ear, hoping you can differentiate between a personal attack and a rhetorical judo match.

And that, I guess, is the problem. You seem at times to have lost that split-level vision you used to have, that thing that Hemingway called a “built-in, fool-proof shit detector,” which he claimed was the most important thing any artist could have. But what is art, really, but a good instinct for staying alive in your own alley? And maybe that's not important. Maybe I'd be better off writing tracts for some Marxist-oriented union, or free-booze movement. At least I'd have drifted off to some kind of frustrated sell-out like a university cubicle, to pass their useless bitterness on to younger, less frightened souls.

Right now I suppose I am as pessimistic about your future as you seem to be about mine. I think we both know they are beating the bush for us in this country—subtly right now, but soon there won't be any need for subtlety. “The System,” “They,” “The Establishment,” “The Power Structure,” call it what you will. It is all these fucks who smile on the TV screen, and when you talk about “the enemy” and say you're going to get them, jesus, I wonder. Who's going to get whom?

Well, I've got to get off this thing or I won't be able to afford the postage to mail it. I appreciate more of what you say than I let on here, but you seem more interested in an argument than anything else and I just can't see much sense in wracking my mind all this time just to knock you off balance for the next round. We are talking about different worlds. I envy your situation in that you seem to be comfortably lock-stepped with a consistent viewpoint, and for that very same reason I can't take your talk as seriously as I could if I knew you were forging it yourself. You keep saying you have “found” something, and maybe you have, but if you're really that hip I wonder why it doesn't come across in what you say and write. Frankly, I take a lot of what you say on a faith that comes from knowing you, and not because of what actually comes across. I'm sure you're honest, and god
knows, your facts are right most of the time (or maybe it's just your negative opinions that I agree with), but I wish you could tell me something more than to subscribe to the
Liberator
and get across the Bay and join the Free Speech Movement. I am snatching around for tools and you offer me cookies. This is a tougher world than that, and the biggest enemy of all is the face on the clock.

Yeah, I guess that's more rhetoric. But I'll have to wrap up now if I want to get this to you before December 15. I felt a hell of a lot better when I started this than I do now. We are not accomplishing much in this correspondence because our current frames of reference are so different. Yet I hope you keep sending your bullshit, if only because it smacks my brain. I just wish to hell you could convince me you are on to something real, instead of just another theoretical escape hatch from the Big Business, which is all too mean and private for your kind of public panaceas.

There is, in all, too much talk about this sort of thing. We are not going to solve the mad riddle by mounting long attacks on each other. Your comments on my pose have about as much effect as if I talked about your pose, and neither of them matters a rat's ass. The main effect your attacks have on me is a quick, verbal anger that is obviously dead end. If you could just mix in a few specifics—that photo of you with the Ghana geisha was worth five pages of your political foam—we could handle this thing a lot better. I see no hope but to deal with you in person. I believe that's what you're hiding over there. My wisdom is too mean for you. Come back and pop a kid or two, then tell the world what it needs. Or wants. You are living right now in real luxury—and consequently, not with it. You are no more in tune with realities in America than in Algeria. You are a privileged specimen. Which is not at all bad while it lasts, but don't kid yourself into thinking you're a representative creature.

Nor am I, certainly, but then I know it. And when you tell me to get off to Berkeley for the sit-ins I say no thanks I think I'll go out to the beach and run in the fog and try to stay human in the smell of my own sweat. In a world like this I want to stay as tough as possible and I've never derived much strength from sitting in a mob and chanting in unison. Which is not to say the Berkeley mobs aren't right. They are. Joan Baez is over there telling them so. And if I thought they were as serious as they are noisy, I might even pitch in. And so much for that. Send word and your new address. I am on the verge of a boom-out. Dakar sounds good. Maybe Rio too.

As usual—HST

McWilliams, editor of
The Nation,
had written to Thompson praising his articles in the
National Observer.
Thompson's response marked the beginning of a fruitful relationship
.

December 18, 1964
318 Parnassus
San Francisco

Dear Mr. McWilliams:

Thanks for your note; I think you are the only person in New York who reads the
Observer
—or maybe just the only one who admits it.

At any rate, I've been meaning to write you for several weeks, ever since Gene McGarr at NETV [National Educational Television] made the suggestion. Ever since the GOP convention the
Observer
has taken great pains to keep me doing harmless, nonpolitical stories and I am now casting around for other founts of cash. So your note was timely, as well as encouraging.

It is also a fact that I am leaving for the East on Monday. One of the stories I'll do en route is a sort of “Saturday night in the Kentucky mountains” thing, which might also be a chance to get an Appalachia piece for you. By the time I've spent 65 hours on the train to Louisville I should be full of wild ideas, so if a Kentucky mountain piece of any kind interests you, send word at once: 2437 Ransdell Ave., Louisville. I'll be there until just before January 1, then on to New York to stay with McGarr at 245 W. 104th. If I don't hear from you in Kentucky I'll give a ring in New York; maybe you'll have time for a beer and some talk. Whatever comes of it, I like the idea of doing a thing or two for you. San Francisco is my base at the moment, but I'm not sure how long that's going to be the case. New York always puts the itch in me and I'm just as likely to keep on going towards Dakar as I am to come back here and stagnate in this goddamn fog.

The Berkeley Free Speech Movement is another good possibility, but not until after the holidays. Then I think we'll get more action.
The New Republic
's piece this week was pretty thin.

Anyway, we'll come up with something.

Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson

 

Thompson took this photo when he spent a day with Marlon Brando in Oregon discussing Native American rights
.
(P
HOTO BY
H
UNTER
S. T
HOMPSON; COURTESY OF
HST C
OLLECTION
)

Spider
magazine was the newsletter of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement
.
(C
OURTESY OF
HST C
OLLECTION
)

Carey McWilliams of
The Nation.
(C
OURTESY OF
MST C
OLLECTION
)