Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (71 page)

Why don't you run an editorial about this vicious thing? The consumer is already oppressed, badgered and deluded in every conceivable way, and the idea of having to cope with legalized price-fixing on a vast scale is almost too much to bear.

I trust you will follow the dubious progress of this bill, and see that no Colorado congressman's vote goes unnoticed.

Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson

Trading jobs with his “old jousting friend” Lionel Olay, Thompson levied a harsh critique of comic Lenny Bruce
.

September 20, 1963
Box 7
Woody Creek, Colorado

Dear Lionel:

Thanks for the good advice to stay poverty-stricken until I can come through with a nice, esoteric little novel that won't make any money. I'm trying Kesey's book
¹⁵
now; it's good, I guess, but so what? Books like that are like water when you want whiskey. Fuck 'em.

I'll file the advice, of course, but in the meantime, what kind of money would
Cavalier
pay me for a short story or two? Better than
Rogue?
And how about a lewd article or two? Maybe a crotch-eye view of Aspen. I need money NOW.

And who should I write to? What editor handles fiction? I am learning fast and hard that a good contact is half the ballgame. Nobody knows what's good and what's not; the shits are killing us, as little Norman [Mailer] once said, and the only thing that depresses me more than dealing with an editor is arguing with a vicious cop. Mentally, it's the same league, the soft and the hard of it.

Your thing on Lenny Bruce was a lot better than Aldous Huxley. Not so pretentious; it rang true. Even so, I think Bruce should be locked up, if for no other reason than to get him out of the way so a better man can carry the ball. I don't like the idea of my right to free speech riding on the fate of a flea-bitten punk like Bruce. It's like you said about the Faulkner quote I had: “A writer don't rob his mother to write articles for the
Rogue.
” Bruce is a phony, but I could forgive him even that if he were funny. The best thing about your piece is that you resisted the common temptation to bracket him with Patrick Henry. My reaction is, “Move on, Jack, don't block the aisles.”

OK, put me onto the big money—or any money at all. And when I'm famous I'll buy you a drink. About two years.

Greedily—HST

In a lengthly letter to the
Saturday Review,
Thompson offered his wisdom on Latin American affairs, garnered from wandering around the continent and living in Brazil
.

October 14, 1963
Woody Creek, Colorado

Editor
SATURDAY REVIEW
25 W. 45
NYC 36

Dear Sir:

Two articles in your October 12 issue on “The Americas” deserve a bit of comment. Probably others do, too, but be that as it may; I refer here to “News and Latin America,” by Bernard Collier, and “What's Happening to Journalism Education?” by John Tebbel.

The two are related, in that current journalism education is at least vaguely linked to our news coverage of Latin America. The subject interests me because I recently returned from a year and a half of traveling all over the South American continent as a free-lance journalist.

Collier's piece, for one thing, reflects a nearly perfect case of tunnel vision on the subject of the Latin American press. He discusses, with one or two half-relevant side-comments, two newspapers in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and concludes from his “study” that they are the only “exceptional” newspapers in Latin America, obviously no more than the best of a bad lot.

The fact that Collier did his research in Buenos Aires—which most of the foreign-based U.S. correspondents deserted years ago—is a good indication of just how far behind the times he is. Apparently he has never been to Brazil, which ten years ago eclipsed Argentina as the most significant nation on the continent, and which has at least three newspapers as good as any trio the U.S. can offer. According to a recent survey of the world press,
O Estado de São Paulo
, one of Brazil's most influential papers, covered more of that year's
significant
news stories than any other paper in the world—including
The New York Times
. In Rio de Janeiro,
Jornal do Brasil
and
Correio de Manha
ride herd on the government in a freewheeling fashion that would scare most U.S. editors into early retirement. If President Kennedy thinks the New York
Herald Tribune
gave him a rough time, he should thank his lucky stars that he never had to deal with the Brazilian press.

Collier says the Latin American press is guilty of “a dismal lack of analytical reporting on government affairs, both in time of crisis and during relative peace.” He also says, “It is common for a newspaper merely to reprint a government communique in full, without pertinent comment, no matter how severely the subject of the message affects the country's people.”

This is pure balderdash, and one of the best examples of what happens when a “Latin American correspondent” tries to cover his beat from New York. (If the
Trib
has stationed Collier in Latin America, it has happened since I left last spring.) Has Collier ever come across
El Tiempo
or
El Espectador
in Bogotá, or read the fire and brimstone commentaries of the Ecuadoran columnist who calls himself “Juan Sin Cielo”? And if he has ever been in Rio, did he ever get far enough away from the Hotel Excelsior Bar to lay hands on a copy of the afternoon
O Globo
and read some of the brutally anti-government editorials?

It would not be unjust to ask, in fact, just where in hell he has been—except Buenos Aires for some earthy talk with some of the bitter, old-line malcontents who like nothing better than getting hold of a gringo journalist and explaining why, among other things, they have put all their money in Swiss banks.

Which brings us now to Tebbel's lament that “research” is strangling the hopes for “professional training” in our schools of journalism. Perhaps your linking of the two articles was intentional—because Collier's wretched failure
to deal with his theme would appear to be proof of Tebbel's thesis that journalism needs people who can cut the ever-toughening mustard.

It may be, however, that Tebbel has missed the point altogether; that it hardly matters how much emphasis is placed on research in our journalism schools—because if the whole idea of research were dropped tomorrow, there is no indication that the schools would turn out the sort of journalists capable of handling subjects like Latin America. A lot of people will tell you that the most important thing a man learns in Journalism School is to studiously avoid such low-pay areas as news work, and to aim instead for positions in related sectors like public relations, advertising and administration. Such critics are not necessarily “myopic,” as Tebbel implies; they may be closer to the root of the problem than he is.

Tebbel might consider a few other problem areas before he takes up the standard of “professionally oriented programs” as the panacea for better and more meaningful journalism in our time. He should consider the case of the
Herald Tribune
, for instance, which only this year decided Latin America was important enough to give one of its staffers the title of “Latin American correspondent.” The man chosen to carry the ball was Bernard Collier—but thus far it appears the
Tribune
would have been better off sticking with the wire services, who at least have men on the scene who read the local papers.

Or consider the case of Ralph McGill,
¹⁶
who regularly bemoans our serious lack of news from Latin America, but who cannot for some reason see his way clear to hire a man to cover that mysterious continent. The
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
even turns down free-lancers who offer to send as many stories as the papers can use.

The sorry state of our Latin America coverage is a real embarrassment to contemporary U.S. newspapers, but it is hard to see how the problem is going to be cured by journalism schools. The first step is to find people who give a damn; this is crucial, and without this sense of mission in young journalists there is not much hope for the whole field.

Second, we may as well admit that wire service coverage of Latin America is next to useless, and that there are not enough competent free-lancers who “happen to be on the spot” to go around. The only alternative, then, is to pay somebody's expenses to go down there and report what he sees. Yes, gentlemen, I know it hurts, but let's face it. And not just anybody. The only man worth sending to Latin America is one who
wants to know
what's going on down there, who's willing to get off the jet-routes and out of the old ruts, and move out where things are happening, instead of sticking
near the “press bars,” where the “inside dope” changes hands, and where the government ministries hand out statements and communiques to correspondents who line up to receive them and dutifully relay their contents back home.

For some people, the job of being a “foreign correspondent” requires little or no effort. I recall one time in Brazil when “the press” had scheduled a cocktail party at the same time that a powerful and controversial politician was holding a press conference. The solution was a pool, a drawing of lots, and the dispatching of the “loser” to cover the conference and report back to the others—some of whom worked for competing news media—on what was said. Needless to say, this is not the way for the American public to gain insights as to the true state of affairs in Latin America.

Tebbel was right in decrying the cult of research in schools of journalism, but he was wrong in not advocating something better. Graduate professional programs are not much good, he says, until the communicator can understand what he communicates. Given this dictum, Collier of the
Herald Tribune
should spend about fifteen more years on the scene in Latin America, then apply for journalism school. And his is only one case.

Special schools of journalism are not the answer. Special—and individual—grants like the Nieman Fellowships and others of the same kind are much closer to what we need. But first there are other things to be learned: the origins and appeal of Marxism should be near the top of the list; the ability to convey in writing the ideas behind a statement such as “Kennedy is a great man, but he's a prisoner of Wall Street and I know the American people would understand me if I could talk to them.”

But mainly we need people who care, who are curious about places and events that are surely going to affect the world their children will live in. Collier's critique of the Latin press is a good example of the kind of reporting we don't need, but there is no indication that Tebbel's campaign to get the “research people” out of journalism schools will give us what we do need—and what we will somehow have to get if we mean to cope with the unpleasant realities that our shortsighted forefathers have left us.

If we cannot produce a generation of journalists—or even a good handful—who care enough about our world and our future to make journalism the great literature it can be, then “professionally oriented programs” are a waste of time. Without at least a hard core of articulate men, convinced that journalism today is perhaps the best means of interpreting and thereby preserving what little progress we have made toward freedom and self-respect over the years
^*
without that tough-minded elite in our press, dedicated to concepts that are sensed and quietly understood, rather than learned in schools—without these men we might as well toss in the towel and admit that ours is a society too interested in
comic strips and TV to consider revolution until it bangs on our front door in the dead of some quiet night when our guard is finally down and we no longer even kid ourselves about being the bearers of a great and decent dream.

Let Mr. Tebbel consider the broader possibilities for a moment, and postpone for a while his academic resentment of research in journalism schools. And let Mr. Collier, in reporting on a continent bogged down in misery and further from hope than most people in this country can possibly understand, at least give credit where credit is due, and not condemn out of ignorance a Brazilian journalist—putting faith in his fellow man to speak his own truth in a Damn You kind of style that “trained professionals” and “technicians” and “specialists” have just about killed in this country.

Cordially,
Hunter S. Thompson

October 25, 1963
Woody Creek (yeah)

OK, Lionel, you're a cute fella with the words but don't step out of your league and start pushing me. You know damn well which half of the ballgame I was talking about. I've never given much worry to the first half; it's the ass-scratching half that makes me wonder now and then. You knew that when you asked.

I write because I read your San Francisco piece tonight. It was damn good; the first time I've ever read any natural prose from you, except in letters, and not always then. As it happens, I have always said San Francisco is the nation's number one gutless city, so it's no surprise that I liked your piece. So maybe it wasn't good at all, but just agreeable.

I understand you live in the same glen with Shelley Berman.
¹⁷
[…] By god I wish I could afford it. Maybe later, eh? When upward mobility comes. Probably Styron will be there first, though, and then Mailer. They
can all live in Mother Herbert's Rooming Lodge: “bring your own stupor drugs; we furnish all else, up to and including hired cocksuckers and electric blankets.” Herbert Gold, prop.
¹⁸
I see you got in your dig at that jellyfish bastard; the moral of that story is never snub anybody who might someday write for the voyeur mags.