Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (84 page)

1965

SAN FRANCISCO IN THE WEIRD YEARS … PLUNGED INTO POVERTY, RAMMED THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS … FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL TO DRUG RIOTS, HELL'S ANGELS, FREE SPEECH, KEN KESEY, TOTAL VIOLENCE, TOM WOLFE, LSD 25, AND THE ELEGANT MADNESS OF ALLEN GINSBERG …

California, Labor Day weekend … early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Frisco, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur … The Menace is loose again, the Hell's Angels, the hundred-carat headline, running fast and loud on the early morning freeway, low in the saddle, nobody smiles, jamming crazy through traffic and ninety miles an hour down the center stripe, missing by inches … like Genghis Khan on an iron horse, a monster steed with a fiery anus, flat out through the eye of a beer can and up your daughter's leg with no quarter asked and none given; show the squares some class, give em a whiff of those kicks they'll never know … Ah, these righteous dudes, they love to screw it on …

 

 

Just returned to San Francisco from a holiday train trek east, Thompson lodged a polite request with his landlord, who would now also be his new neighbor
.

January 11, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco

Dear Mr. Moon Fay Ng—

I understand from Mr. Westbrook in 320 that you are planning to move into 318A. If this is true, could I respectfully urge you to consider the possibility of laying down rugs in that apartment? The simple noise of a person walking comes through the floor like the pounding of a hammer and—by reverse conduction—the noise of my electric typewriter is likely to be extremely unsettling to anyone trying to sleep in the back two rooms at night. We have had this problem before. It is a lack of insulation against noise. Given the construction of the building there is no real cure for it, but rugs between apartments are a big help.

My difficulty at the moment is that I am working desperately to finish a book that was due before Christmas. It will take several more weeks but will be finished before February 1. Due to my schedule I work all night, every night at the typewriter—and I normally sleep during the day. My young son also sleeps each afternoon, but last week when there was activity in 318A neither one of us could sleep. I'm sure you don't mean to be noisy and I apologize for mentioning this subject, but from past experience I can say for sure that neither I nor anyone else could live in peace in 318 unless something is done about the noise transmission problem. For instance, it is now 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday and I have been up all night, writing the book. This happens to be an unusual day and I won't try to sleep until later, but if I tried to sleep now—as I normally do—it would be impossible due to the noise upstairs. There is nothing unusual about the noise. I am sure it is only normal—just as my typewriter is normal—but
in this building normal noise seems to travel a long way. It has all the makings of a very nervous situation that I would like to avoid, if possible. Since I moved here there have been two different families in 318A and I assure you the noise from upstairs was very severe in both cases. Just as it is now, in connection with your preparation for moving in. It is not so much a problem for Mr. Westbrook, because he works a normal 8-hour day and goes to bed early at night. But I recall when the Spanish-speaking family was in 318A Mr. Westbrook said he could not get any sleep on weekends.

Again let me say how sorry I am to have to mention this, but I think it is better for you to know. Even if I were to move out of the lower apartment you would have the same problem with the next tenant. The only unusual thing at the moment is my work schedule, which requires me to type all night for the next several weeks and try to sleep during the day. If I can be of any help in working out any solution, please let me know. Sincerely—

Hunter S. Thompson

January 28, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco

Editor

Transatlantic Review

33 Ennismore Garden

London SW7, England

Dear Sir:

I have been informed that you are holding a short story contest for writers under thirty. My entry, “Hit Him Again, Jack,” is enclosed. I fully expect to win this contest and receive funds from you in the future. I am 27 years old and have published only one story, although I earn my living as a roving correspondent for the
National Observer
and am, as it were, a journalist of the first rank. I'm not sure just what you publish, besides stories, but if you think we can get together for any further business, by all means let me know. I am actively seeking new markets for both journalism and fiction. At present my situation is desperate; I urge you to be quick with the funds.

Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson

Tired of writing for the
National Observer
and
The Reporter,
Thompson began cultivating a working relationship with
The Nation.

January 29, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco

Dear Mr. McWilliams:

After a long and rambling illness I am back in the tomb. Kentucky was a Wolfean nightmare and New York was a goatdance. I got there after you left for California, and left just before you got back. Which is probably just as well; after ten days in fifth gear I was not in any shape to seek assignments. Rather than hang around and see you, I fled, sparing you what surely would have been a shock. The only way I can handle New York is to live there; it is a disastrous place to visit.

And so much for that. I have a few ideas out here, none of which strike the sort of sparks I need right now, but I'm not sure whether that's the fault of the ideas or my money situation. I am long past the point of simple poverty, and well into a state of hysterical destitution. The wolves have eaten my door.

On the basis of my recent journey, the most obvious piece I see right now is a thing I'd call “Go East, Young Man, Go East.” The final collapse of the myth of San Francisco. I've been toying with this for a few months, but this week's uproar over the threatened collapse of the Actor's Workshop has put the thing in a quick little package that I think would make a good piece. I'm sure you know about Irving and Blau going to the Lincoln Center. This would have been shocking enough by itself, but a lad named Jeremy Ets-Hokin (the old man of the San Francisco Arts Commission) has seized the occasion to mount another attack on the city's stagnant cultural scene, his second blast in as many months. None of what he's saying is new, but the odd thing about the affair is that even people like Herb Caen are finally admitting that San Francisco is losing its cultural guts.

My contention is that it never had any—not since 1945 at any rate, or maybe 1950, when New York finally established itself as the capital of the world. Since then, San Francisco's personality has gone from neurotic to paranoid to what now looks like the first stages of a catatonic fit. The simple fact of New York has brought San Francisco to its knees. There was also the shock of LA's new music center, which, coupled with the Lincoln Center raid, had the effect of lowering the boom on even the local mythmongers. They had learned to live with the fact of New York, but the idea
of a cultural challenge from LA was beyond the pale. Now Ets-Hokin says San Francisco is “on par with Salinas,” which is not so bad a joke as it seems at a glance.

Anyway, all that merely gives me a peg to roll off on my own feelings about New York: the fact that it is no longer just the axis of American culture, but is rapidly becoming a refuge and even a culture of its own. The only consistent line of advice I got in New York concerned the necessity of my moving there at once. “No free-lance writer can make a living outside of New York,” they said, and in some perverse way I was glad to hear it, because it seemed to explain the condition of poverty that I've cultivated for a year and a half in the boondocks, first in Colorado and then here.

The bulk of the piece would have to be based on my own experiences both here and in New York, with perhaps a slice of LA tossed in on the side. The finished product would promote a lively dialogue. I'm thinking it out as I go along, so the idea might seem a bit ragged in embryo, but I imagine the subject has crossed your mind more than once during your travels out here. Dick Elman
¹
tells me you're an old California hand anyway, so I think you know pretty well what I'm after here. In a nut, I plan to finish a novel in San Francisco, then move back to New York, and I think my reasons might be interesting—not so much because they're mine, but for all the general wisdom they might contain.

I think, in fact, that I'll query to
Playboy
—for the money that might be in it—and see if they might want a piece along these lines. If so, I could do one for you, then use it as a guide for a longer, hairier piece for the college market. Just thinking here; bear with me.

Another possibility right now is [Governor] Pat Brown's new budget proposals, entailing stiff increases in just about every kind of state tax. Another tax plan, proposed by an Assemblyman named Petris, would bring about such vast reductions in property taxes—while boosting sales and other regressive-type levies—that it might be construed as another sign of California's drift toward the Right. But, as usual, there are enough inconsistencies in the thing to make any quick generalities impossible. For the moment, at least; the Petris plan was just announced this morning. Lumping them both together, however, the one generality that does emerge concerns the apparently widespread realization that California is coming to a new era, that the Boom is nearly over, and now the bills are coming in. The American Nightmare, as it were, the after-effects of free enterprise.

But that's a pretty damn big piece and I'd rather wait a while on it, at least until the lines are drawn on some tangible issues. If it interests you in the future, let me know.

Another idea, less than ten minutes old; my wife just got back from her first night as a telephone solicitor for a famous dance studio. Her job is to find prospects for the lessons, but not negroes. She has her sales pitch, word for word on the wall in front of her, but the moment she suspects she's contacted a negro she has to back off, squelch the pitch and ad lib out of the contact. There are 12 women calling, four hours a night, and they each start with 100 names & phone numbers, but no idea of who's on the other end. No different from any other phone pitch, but here we have this racial thing to queer the routine and inject high social drama. Sally Snodgrass, fired from Kelly Girls for not wearing proper deodorant, drifts into part-time work as a dance studio solicitor. She has her instructions: SELL, but not to coons. She makes her first 30 calls, and no dice. By the 55th call she is desperate, fearing a night of failure, perhaps dismissal. Then, on the 61st call, a voice responds: “Yeah baby, tell me more.…” Her eyes light up, and she rambles into the spiel; her job is saved, she can sell. The man agrees to come down to the studio for an interview, but just then Sally tenses. A nigger in the woodpile, this man is a coon … or is he? How does a young girl know, how can she be sure? Will Sally make the sale and chance the ultimate disaster—a coon showing up at the studio—or will she somehow ascertain the pigment, then do her duty and queer her only sale?

Indeed. Tomorrow night my wife will find out exactly how she's supposed to know when a coon is on the line. Maybe they have some fool-proof test, like GI sentries during the war (Nazis can't say W, coons can't say G, or is it R?). A good solicitor can ferret out the pigment in 10 seconds, they say, but the trouble is that any good solicitor won't be doing part-time work for that dance studio. What happens when a coon shows up? How do they handle him? Has it ever happened? Why not, for that matter, set it up? I could have my wife set up interviews for me and a negro together, then we'd get the action first-hand. How much would you pay for a thing like this? I like the idea. But you'll have to be quick because my wife won't last very long in this slot, probably not more than a week or so—let's say February 5. So be quick with the word if you think we should deal with this thing.

That's about it for now. This is a hell of a long letter. I started off to do a few paragraphs, but this is the first time in a while that I've done any queries for anyone but the
Observer
and I'm not used to being interested. Anyway, send word, and, again, sorry to have missed you in New York.

Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson