Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (72 page)

Well, Lionel, a chap named Donleavy has just written a book. He never made it to Beverly Glen, or even
Esquire
, but he can write the balls off of every punk who did—including me. The
Observer
sent me a review copy yesterday and I read it straight through. Real tough. I believe in people again.
The Ginger Man
grew up and got human. Now that you've taken personal journalism about as far as it can go, why don't you read
Singular Man
and then get back to the real work? It'll be out November 7. You can date your shame from that day on. And me too. I'm not dumping on you, old sport—just giving the needle. I just wish to shit I had somebody within 500 miles capable of giving me one. It took Donleavy's book to make me see what a fog I've been in.

I'll send your pal Fredrick Birmingham
¹⁹
of
Cavalier
a ripping segment of my Rum Diary—but only after
Playboy
has bounced it. I read his shitty book. And after he goes pale from reading it, I'll send it on to
Nugget
, where Seymour Krim rejects things. Christ, the punks are hiring everybody they can't bury. And a lot of those they could bury. Later for them.

When are you going to move to the Garden of Allah? Are you digging my good, wasted journalism in the
Observer?
I just did a piece on Big Sur; gave you a condescending mention. When the money gets low, I can always come up with one on Big Sur. But my new gimmick is book reviews—$75 a crack, with my own choice of books. One a week keeps me in beer and bullets. I know that's not in your league, but somehow it don't turn me green. I had a taste of the big time in Rio, à la the recent dung-jobs on our press corps in Saigon. And no thanks. I got fat and stupid. In a few hours it'll be 4:00 a.m. and I'll be up and out on the road to the big mountain to get an elk. My other rifle is sleeping here on the couch. He has no talent and doesn't know Grant Street from West Fourth, but he doesn't seem any poorer for it. Outside on the gravel road I can hear jeeps going up the hill; one of those drunken shits will probably shoot me tomorrow. Eight have been killed so far, and the season is 7 days old today. I wear a fluorescent orange vest. One man shot his sister-in-law at 15 yards. Said he thought she was a bear. Yeah. He was fined $100. Jesus. Tired of your wife? Take her on a Colorado hunting trip.

Your questions. I am living in a very comfortable 5-room house with a Disposall about ten miles out of Aspen. Sandy is pregnant and I have a 7-month-old Doberman. I am living off of the Dow-Jones Company, doing book reviews and articles of any sort at all. They want me to go back to South America. I have a .44 Magnum. I am living here because I needed a home. Currently I am jousting for one about 60 miles north of San Francisco on Jack London's mountain. I need rest, Lionel. You don't seem to grasp that since leaving Big Sur I have dug La Paz and Quito. I have caught the clap in Bogotá and paid for the cure in Lima. I have run amok in Cuzco and been arrested in Rio. I have lugged a shoulder-holstered pistol through Buenos Aires and Asunción. I have argued with whores in Montevideo. And then I went back to Louisville and got married in a marriage parlor with a neon sign by a justice of the peace who talked like Elmer Fudd.

Talk about come-downs.

What the fuck have you done except get rich? Answer that one.

Come visit and bring Beverly and the wolf. Sandy says hello to Beverly and balls to that pompous bastard Lionel.

Bingo:
HST

Harrington was Thompson's “secret” girlfriend in San Francisco
.

November 3, 1963
Woody Creek, Colorado

Dear Daryl:

Nagging guilt has finally won over procrastination, and for whatever it's worth, here is communication or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.

I suppose you are down there playing shepherdess & I'm curious to know what it's like. I'm sorry I didn't write you in Europe, but the summer was vicious and I haven't had an address until now, much less a moment of peace or rest. I got married, as you suggested, and now Sandy is pregnant. I have a new Doberman, nephew of my other one, and probably a better dog. I also have a car and a nice little house some 10 miles out of Aspen. I also have a Disposall.

All of which is very nice, and I trust you are well, too. You've undoubtedly met some “nice young man” who will bring home the bacon—or sit
home and summon it, like me—and, god willing, we will all be spared the hemorrhoids and the clap. Grow old peacefully.

And so much for all that. I recall my inept bumbling in New York and wonder at it. Not that I've ever prided myself on being a skilled lecher or even a semi-skilled communicator, but what a complete goddamn power failure that one turned out to be. You put too much pressure on a person, I think. I knew exactly what I wanted to say—or at least I thought I did—but in that kind of hyped-up atmosphere I would have felt like I was making a speech. Maybe after two weeks the air would have cleared, but I'm not sure. You've always thrown me into a bit of a stall. Maybe it's because we've always been rushed, usually due to my chaotic scheduling, and I've always had the feeling that whatever I had to say I had better say Right Now, and it had better be damn good. And don't remind me that I've almost always brought the pressure on myself, and that you generally had good reason to expect more from me than what I offered.

Probably I've never convinced you that my interest in you is anything more than a sort of off-beat lechery. Even now, at a distance of several thousand miles and safe from your jack-hammer interrogation, I resist a wavering impulse to try and write it down. I could offer hints and write cleverly in the bargain, but that would be sort of cheap. Maybe I can write it sometime in a story and you can read it there and come a little closer to knowing. Or maybe you do know, but insist on having me say it. That's what I like to think, but then that's an easy way for me to duck out. Now and then I remember that day when you were sick and I stopped by to say hardly anything and sit on the bed and look out the window at San Francisco. That was a good day, and one of the few times I didn't feel compelled to say “meaningful things.” It seemed like we were doing okay without any bullshit dialogue. But of course there was no hurry then, and I wasn't trying to juggle you with the rest of my life like I usually am.

Why don't you write and say a few things and if you give me any openings I'll try to push on. I don't want to bother you or plague you with old questions and buried answers, but I hate to think that I've barged into your life as often as I have without your knowing why. And if you don't know, then I'd like to be able to tell you, but I am not real good along those lines. But at this distance I won't be able to duck the whole thing and lapse into conventional lechery as a stopgap.

The enclosed, by the way, is something off of a Big Sur beach that I've had since then.
²⁰
Tonight I added the leather and thought it was okay.
Stare at it long enough and it develops all manner of meaning. At least it does for me. Hang it on a peg somewhere, or get it wet and hold it in the sun. Worthless as it is, it ain't a bad thing to have.

Conventionally,
HST

November 5, 1963
Woody Creek

Cliff—

How about a short (5 or 6 takes) essay-type thing on the difference between hunting with shotguns and rifles? Not technical. This may sound like nothing to you, but among hunters it is a deep-seated controversy. Rifle hunters, for the most part, are a meaner, tougher breed, and they scorn shotgunners as dilettantes or drugstore cowboys.

Shotgunners, on the other hand, claim a great subtlety in bird-hunting, a vague aesthetic that no coarse meat-hunter can ever know. The shotgun man is likely to think of himself as a country squire—if only for the moment. Shotgunning is definitely the status side of the fence, but I suspect it is that way because the image-makers know that rifle hunting is doomed east of the Mississippi. That's quite a few people who would rather hunt with shotguns than not hunt at all—and only a small percentage of them can afford long, expensive hunting trips to the West.

Needless to say, I mean to give the needle to the shotgun tribe. The other day I read where 10 million of them are now taking the field for the annual kill. That's a lot of potential controversy. A good-natured needle should stir up several good replies. Of the
Observer
readers who hunt, I'd say 49 out of 50 are shotgunners.

My point, with tongue halfway in cheek, is that shotgunning is a hunting surrogate for tired old men and flabby young ones. Maybe you have somebody on the staff who cares to join the argument & thus give both sides in print. (And I can supply a foto of myself with a wild boar; my antagonist, by firing some 200 pellets at once, can maybe bring down a duck or a rabbit to show.) Anyway, I'm going to do the thing, either for you or one of the sporting mags. Let me know if you want it; if so, I'll keep it mild. If not, I'll step up the velocity and aim at one of the hunting books.

The Vance Bourjaily
²¹
review will be in the mail tomorrow. The Colorado hunting madness piece will come next week. Let me know if you've changed your mind about wanting it.

Regards,
HST

Semonin, now a self-proclaimed Marxist, was enrolled in graduate school in Accra, Ghana
.

November 6, 1963
Woody Creek

Paul—

I think this [“Nkrumah Hailed as Messiah” AP clip] bears out Joseph Conrad's contention that “we live amid romantic ruins pervaded by rats.” Or another, by Doctor Bloor: “You can't dupe all the people all the time—except when they're niggers.” (Dear Mail Inspector: I am just quoting; don't put no trouble on Mister Semonin; he's harmless.)

My mind is addling here. Absolute lack of contact has driven me to whiskey frenzies, characterized by top-volume monologues and midnight shooting. I think Aspen is for people who can't make it in San Francisco & who have enough cash to fail gracefully.

As soon as possible I mean to move on. Without contact of some type I will turn yellow and die. Maybe LA. God knows, it is just about the only place I haven't tried. Right now I am too broke to do anything. My Donleavy review came out today, thus guaranteeing the rent for last month if the check ever comes. I require cash only for stamps and wine; everything else I charge. But now I don't have a dime.

The fucking Reds are putting the pressure on me. The word is out. I have reliable information that the Denver branch of the IJC [International Jewish Conspiracy] is behind this harassment. Those communist shits! I used to blame the Wall Street warlords for my troubles, but now I know better. If it keeps up I'm going to bust up a few marriages and finish my tormentors with a pig instrument.

Your English friend sounds like somebody with pimples who never made the rugby team and masturbated till his brain went soft and he decided to be a socialist Himmler. The fucking English should be kept out
of politics; they've caused enough trouble already. A watery gang of punks with body odor and double-breasted suits.

I now have a vie and pegs on which to hang my callers. The latter include: Durwood Fink, the leading Subud
²²
thinker and a man who could do me some good in the movement if I could tolerate his bullshit; Virgil Blackmonster, the leading Subud economist (after his illegitimate brother, Hayes Blackmonster, who is neo-Subud I think & therefore not quite respectable); Garcia y Vega, a Canadian invert who is giving Subud a try because his friends like it; and Maury D.P.F. Millard, a Swede from New York U who owes us all because he has more Subud spirit than nearly anybody. Maury gets my chair when he comes, and also the coldest beer. He's the neatest guy you ever saw and I even switched to Paxtons because he smokes them.

Well, that about wraps you up, I think. And Himmler, too, for that matter. I believe he's out of his league in this scramble. He should stick with the books, and maybe join the Young Pioneers.

Put in a good word for me with The Messiah. Tell him I'll chant just about anything if there's money and power in it. And you might add that I “do no wrong” either. That would give us something in common, so we could talk easily.

I am rewriting The Rum Diary around the concept of The Rage. Which harks back to my earlier concept of The Nigger.
²³
(Let me know if the word preceding these brackets is XXXXX (whoops)… ah … deleted by the Censor.) Next time I'll brush up on my euphemisms.

I am thinking of dropping in on you. Ponder that until you get the next volley.

Mister Magnum

The
Denver Post
had refused to publish Thompson's September 14 letter to the editor, so he tried again under a pseudonym
.

November 14, 1963
Aspen, Colorado

Editor:

Bring knives and whips. Get the Bastards. If this price-fixing law goes through, Congress should be abolished. And they want more pay. Vote on
nothing all year but a pay raise for themselves and higher prices for everybody else. No tax cut, no civil rights, no foreign aid. They should get the minimum wage. Send them back where they came from with no pay. What good are they? Violence! And that damn zip code. I sic my dogs on the postman. This whole country is going mad.

Helmut Deejen
Aspen, Colorado

Low on funds, Thompson saw to it that the venison was plentiful on his dining table
.

November 18, 1963
Woody Creek, Colorado

Jo:

You ain't pickin' up the meat like I am, Joko. I got so much I need new excuses to go hunting. Like exercise, walking the dog, looking for badger pelts, and that sort of thing. My toolshed is so full of hanging meat that I can't open the door. Today I got caught in a goddamn blizzard about two miles from the house. I couldn't see shit and was stumbling along half dead from cold. Agar was out ahead and apparently ran into a deer hotel. They scattered like ants from an anthill and one stupid fawn tried to run me down with Agar
²⁴
after it. I couldn't see the sights at all but got him solid with a point-shot. I've been practicing with my 12-gauge meatmaster. It was too dark to gut him so I had to carry the bastard all the way to the house and do him on the porch. The blood froze into the snow and I guess it will be there until spring. It adds color to the porch. While I was climbing a fence to get the dead one, a spike buck trotted up to the body, sniffed and trotted off. Agar chased another one so far I thought he was lost, but after a half-hour or so he came back.