Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (34 page)

But wouldn't it be nice? You being here, I mean. I'm smiling; you smile, too. I'm not drunk, either. Not at all. Haven't had so much as a glass of beer in three days. I'm just happy. I don't know why, exactly, but it must be the idea of you being here in bed … yes, that would make me very happy indeed.

Smile!

And not just bed, either. I'd enjoy having you here all the time. I'd enjoy just looking at you. By the way, can you cook anything? I am hungry, now, and I must go make a tuna fish sandwich. I live on tuna fish and peanut butter and bread and milk.

I'm looking at your picture as I write this, and trying to imagine your answers and your reactions. I'm enjoying them.

I have one smiling picture and one very solemn picture. I switch back and forth, depending on what kind of reaction I expect.

This is a very strange letter and I haven't answered many of your questions, but I've had a good time.

The answer to one of your questions, though, is that I'm in love with all of you except the part I don't like. That's the part of you that's like all the other girls I see. The part of you that thinks everyone—even Hunter—has to settle down sooner or later with a nine to five job and a mortgage on the house and two chrome-covered cars in every garage and a slew of stupid, happy neighbors and nothing to look forward to but eternal manipulation by forces you never took the trouble to understand. That's the part of you I don't like, and the part I'll never like.

When you write again, I want to know the part of
me
that
you
don't like. Or perhaps the part you
do
like … if that's easier.

You also say I haven't told you what I want out of life. In a nutshell, it is this:

I want to be able to support myself (and, barring disaster, my family) as a writer. I want a house somewhere in the West Indies, high on a bluff overlooking the Caribbean Sea. I want enough money for good scotch and good food. I want to be in love with my wife and I want her to be in love with me. That's about it; I don't want many things, but I think the ones I want are important. If you disagree with me, I'd like to hear your point of view.

And while I'm here, let me quote you something else:

^*
that's e. e. cummings, a contemporary poet, of sorts.

That's a pretty dramatic finish, so I think I'll bring this lengthy missive to an end. My situation here is very fluid, and there is still a chance that I will get down that way this summer. I shall let you know what happens. As far as I can tell, right now, things are going to get worse before they get better. I speak, of course, of my own fortunes.

Stay pretty and have faith. I think you and I are fighting a losing battle, here, but then so is everybody else in this lunatic world, and if you were on my side it might take the pain out of losing.

Love, HST

TO WILLIAM J. DORVILLIER,
SAN JUAN STAR:

Determined to find work in the Caribbean, Thompson responded to an ad in
Editor & Publisher
magazine for a sports editor for Puerto Rico's
San Juan Star.
Publisher Dorvillier went on to win the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for his editorials on the separation of church and state.

August 9, 1959
Cuddebackville
New York

William J. Dorvillier

Star Publishing Corp.

Box 9174

Santurce, Puerto Rico

Dear Sir,

I hear you need a sports editor. If true, perhaps we can work something out. The job interests me for two reasons: the Caribbean location, and the fact that it's a new paper. Salary would be entirely secondary, as it definitely would not be here in our great rotarian democracy. My minimum, if I thought you could afford it, would be somewhere around $400 a month. I wouldn't want to set a figure, though, until I found out more about you and the actual conditions of the job. There are some jobs I wouldn't do for two thousand a month, and others I'd be happy to do for two hundred. So let's leave salary for later, shall we?

I speak no Spanish—tolerable French—but would have little trouble picking it up. As for the quality of my work, I'd be either the best or the worst sports editor you could get. I'd make great demands on the photographers, insist on laying out my own pages, write a column that might make some readers strain their intellects, and generally make every effort to produce what I considered the perfect sports section. If you're looking for an easy-going hack, then I am not your man.

At the moment I am unemployed, and will continue to be until I locate a worthwhile job. Having been a sportswriter, sports editor, editorial trainee, and reporter—in that order—I have given up on American journalism. The decline of the American press has long been obvious, and my time is too valuable to waste in an effort to supply the “man in the street” with his daily quota of clichés, gossip, and erotic tripe. There is another concept of journalism, which you may or may not be familiar with. It's engraved on a bronze plaque on the southeast corner of the Times Tower in New York City.
¹¹

In this letter, the clippings, and the résumé, you should have all you need to give you an idea of who I am. If you're interested in me, then I'd like to know something about you, the paper, and the sports editor's job. Right now, though, I must get back to my novel. By the time you get this letter the first section of the book will be at the Viking Press in New York; by the time the paper starts in November, the book will be finished. After that, who knows?

And whatever you decide, please return my clippings.

Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson

return address:

2437 Ransdell Avenue

Louisville 4, Kentucky

TO VIRGINIA THOMPSON
:

After being evicted from his cabin Thompson took up residence in Annie and Fred Schoelkopf's basement apartment in nearby Otisville. The Schoelkopfs took a real shine to Thompson, cooking him nightly meals and providing him with cash to finish “Prince Jellyfish.”

August 9, 1959
Otisville, New York

Dear Mom,

If my recent letters have been devoid of good and cheerful news, there is a damned good reason. I've been wound up in a series of mild disasters here; nothing serious, but the kind of thing that might drive a less resilient person straight out of his wits. Here's a short rundown:

The car still runs—not safely and just barely—and I think I can get either [Paul] Semonin or Forbes
¹²
to come up here and drive it to New York for me. Once I get it there I can get a little money for it, anyway. It's a hell of a deal, but right now I don't have much choice.

Actually, this all sounds worse than it is. All these things happened in the space of about a week, and it just about un-nerved me. If it hadn't been for Annie and Fred Schoelkopf, god knows what sort of dire fate I'd have come to.

You may not appreciate this—and I know Memo will hate it like hell—but what I'm going to do now is come back to Louisville, shut myself in the back bedroom, and finish this novel. It's about half finished now, and I'm never going to get it done if I have to continue this wild scramble merely to stay alive and eating. I told Viking Press I'd have the first half of it to them by the end of the summer. They haven't by any means promised to publish it, but their interest is the only bright spot in what is now a very bleak immediate future. I will finish the rest of it in Louisville, and then leave. I do not intend to get a job while I'm there, and neither do I intend to cost you any money. I merely want a little peace and quiet so I can get something done.

I will explain more fully when I calm down. Right now it's all I can do to sit here and see these damned typewriter keys.

Love, HST

TO THE NEW YORK DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, DIVISION OF UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
:

Thompson tried using legalistic language to explain to the New York Department of Labor the fickleness of its unemployment insurance policy. His argument drew no response. Shortly after writing this, Thompson, after a brief stay in Virginia Beach, hitchhiked home to Louisville to finish “Prince Jellyfish.”

August 10, 1959
Otisville, New York

New York Department of Labor

Division of Unemployment Insurance

Albany, New York

Gentlemen,

After drawing unemployment insurance for four and a half months, I was recently declared ineligible. The facts of the case are such that only a malicious
cretin could come to such a conclusion. It is my earnest hope that you will investigate this matter and reverse the decision which rendered me ineligible.

Your local office in Middletown handled the case. My social security number is xxx-xx-xxxx; my records are on file in that office.

I shall not attempt, in this letter, to outline the entire history of my case, but the pertinent facts are these:

But as I said before, all this information is available at the Middletown office. I have written to you because I am tired of being told that “work is available.” Of course work is available: and if it's available to me—a newspaper reporter—it's available to every other able-bodied man presently drawing unemployment insurance in Middletown. The primary fact of the case is this: my situation is absolutely unchanged from the way it stood for the first four and a half months of the period since I was employed. All I did was go out and make an attempt to pick up a few extra dollars on a laboring job. The job was too exhausting; it caused my eyes to swell up, put me in close contact with poison ivy (to which I am allergic), and was not
in my line of work in the first place. It seems perfectly ridiculous that I should have been declared ineligible because of this.

I realize, of course, that this situation is absurd. It is the very nadir of slovenly gall for a man to
demand
his unemployment insurance. Nevertheless, this country functions under a system of economics which assumes that close to five percent of the work force will be perpetually unemployed. There are provisions for this, and your office happens to be one of the provisions. I therefore feel entitled to this money, and see no reason why it should be denied me.

In summation, let me say this: if the time ever comes when I find myself collecting unemployment insurance again, you may be damned well certain that I'll make no effort to find myself
any
work of
any
kind. In this case I tried and was consequently declared ineligible for further benefits. And if it makes sense to you that your system should foster reasoning of this kind, then I fail to see that the system itself is anything more than a giant, bureaucratic joke.

I say these things not to malign your office, but to point out to you the faulty reasoning which has brought this case to your attention. If you need any further information from me, I can be reached: c/o Fred Schoelkopf, Otisville, New York.

In closing, I remain,

Very Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson

FROM WILLIAM J. KENNEDY,
SAN JUAN STAR:

The publisher of the
San Juan Star
had his thirty-one-year-old editor—William Kennedy of Albany, New York—respond to Thompson's job inquiry. Kennedy, who had first come to Puerto Rico in 1956, would go on to win the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for his novel
Ironweed.

August 25, 1959
Puerto Rico

Mr. Hunter S. Thompson
2437 Ransdell Avenue
Louisville 4, Kentucky

Dear Mr. Thompson:

After giving careful consideration to your application, we have decided that for several reasons you would not be happy with us.

First, our publisher is a member of Rotary.

Second, your literary accomplishments would not really single you out as “off beat,” since three of our staff members have also finished novels and one is a playwright.