Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
January 17, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Herr Editor:
Wonderful … yes … that’s the way I feel … back in Aspen … Heil, heil! Many times, while traveling, I raised my stein to sing the Aspen anthem … “Roll Me Over. …” Indeed, we all know that one. They know it in Detroit, and in East St. Louis, too. In East Oakland and Whittier they said I had a certain kind of class … and I said, “Why not? I’m from Aspen.”
How fine it is to be back! And how wonderful to see that Herr Barnard, the Bürgermeister [Aspen mayor Bugsy Barnard], has finally done my thing … and none too soon. If more people realized how many Communists there are in Aspen, and how well-organized they are, we could burn them all out in nine hours. Bring them to me, at the furnace in Lenado. My summer ashes are settled and well-raked; I took the beads and flutes to Spanish Fork, where I traded them for cheap gas. Heil, heil!
I have a list of Reds, and I know where they live. There are exactly 644 known Communists in Aspen. All but 14 have burned their cards since Herr Barnard began his investigation. Of these 14, two are on the police force, one dispenses drugs at Carl’s Pharmacy, three run a printing press in the Paragon cellar, one is in the roofing and siding racket at Snowmass, four sell dope while posing as ski instructors, and the other three live in a pumpkin near Ashcroft.
What I say is true. I have a list, which was sent to me from California by Judge Crater.
(Now … for the second phase of my memorandum, after a two-week delay. I was called to Washington, yes. … For an event of massive importance, a Medical First. … Heil! The first chief executive to grow from a dropped pile. I witnessed it all: the dropping, the growth—atavistic reversions and surgical victories—yes, and finally the Big Day, which I attempted to witness, but was driven off the parade route by a hail of garbage. Those schwein will pay, and pay dearly. We have ways. …)
Ah, but I digress. Indeed, I took a trip, a brief vacation from the cheap unprincipled haggling that passes for news in this soldout valley. The Boss has been told about the dealing here, and his creature, Herr Hickel, has been instructed to study our methods and apply them, on a cost-efficient basis, to the mindless rape of almost everything else.
No other city in the nation can claim to represent both the vanguard and the rearguard of human endeavor. Nowhere else is the tax-structure so advanced and so flexible that the validity of any tax depends on the willingness of elected officials to settle all complaints on a civic-payoff basis. We are on the verge of establishing a really mind-staggering precedent in this area. I think it’s wonderful—a tax is valid if the litigant can be bought off cheap, but otherwise—if the geek can hold out long enough—it may be unconstitutional. What better way to spread the Aspen Spirit?
Only one … lunatic slurs on the ancient political affiliations of those who challenge local tax law. By the Mayor, no less … “Sorry, Bub, we have orders to cut your legs off; Hizzoner says you’re a Red.” Heil! … Meanwhile, the District Attorney is having his neighbor arrested on drug charges, as a final solution to the water-rights problem. And Carl’s Pharmacy pays for an ad showing a phalanx of employees giving the Black Power salute. … And ski-freaks in Washington talk about a Playboy Club on top of the Hotel Jerome. … “Yes, it’s a wonderful idea; of course I wouldn’t go there anymore, but …”
Herr Barnard has told us all this in prophecy. I recall sitting at a gathering at the [Aspen] Institute sometime in the fall—a seminar, of sorts, on the “Future of Aspen,” and the Mayor spoke up on the subject of sewage. The sewer system, he said, is approaching its “Hydraulic Limit,” which is the point where the sewage starts flowing back to the point of origin—a reversal in the pipes.
Obviously, that Limit has come and gone. We are now awash in our own waste. … And humor fails in the long shadow of that reality. Aspen is now Disneyland in the Snow, and to me that has a fine familiar ring: thirty years ago, in my time, we called it the Thousand Year Reich. … And we did a lot of building.
TO LYNNE STRUGNELL:
Thompson responded to a bizarre letter from Lynne Strugnell of Villa de la Rosa Aurora, in Belize City, British Honduras. Addressing him as “Dear Hunter,” the fan suggested she would beat him up if he objected to her use of “some of your stuff from that groovy book ya wrote on Hell’s Angels.”
January 33 [sic], 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Miss Strugnell …
It’s hard for me to cope with the wretched excess of your notion that you might have the prerogative of addressing me, in print, on a first-name basis. I regard it as just another stinking, evil indication of the moral and ethical rot that is driving us all to bad acid.
Beyond that, the magic sound of your address compels me to write and advise you that under no circumstances and in no way in no form or otherwise do you have my permission to reprint my book or any part of it for monetary gain, profit or in any other style except as might elevate me in the public consciousness of Belize City or any contiguous unincorporated part of that area.
Beware…I have more lawyers and agents than I could possibly tell you about. Tracking you down in Honduras would be no problem for them; they are a gang of treacherous monsters without mercy even for me, the doomed client. Regarding your own problems, I suggest you go to the Ambassador and confess.
Otherwise … thanks for the good letter. I’ve received a mountain of weird garbage about that book, so a human communication is a welcome thing. As far as I’m concerned, you can do anything you want with the book—or anything short of re-selling it in any way. What do you have in mind? I can’t think of any way you could hang me up in Honduras, but I’m sure you could find a few without much effort. My legal problems on that book are still mounting up—no end to them, no hope.
And to hell with all that. The official world is crazier and meaner than we know. I just got back from Nixon’s inauguration and my head is still jangled from seeing it. Ah … The Horror. Yes …President Nixon … It’s easier to be fair with the Angels than with that freak.
Well … good luck with whatever you’re doing. Quote me as much as you want, but for christ’s sake be careful about selling whatever you’re doing. You could complicate both of our lives by getting greedy. Like I say, there’s not much you can do in Honduras that would make waves up here.
OK, thanks again for the good words. It’s nice to make contact now and then … especially from the Villa de la Rosa Aurora. Yeah, that’s tough. What the hell is it?
Hunter S. Thompson
*** oh yeah … your handwriting indicates that you’re crazy and wound up backwards. Selah.
TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
For the first time, Thompson reveals why he felt the need to create his alter ego “Raoul Duke.”
February 11, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Jim …
[Aspen photographer] Cheri Hiser tells me you didn’t see a book in those Haight-Ashbury photos. … And, in all truth, I didn’t, either. But I hate to see a collection like that just turn yellow in the drawer, particularly since it’s the first honest photo-view of the “hippie” scene I’ve ever laid eyes on. All the other stuff is a reflection of various put-ons—snapshots from the Great Love-In, etc., Yippie press-agent work. But that girl seemed to get into the thing so far that they could look straight at her and never see the camera. … Or maybe not the person behind the camera.
Anyway, it suddenly reminds me of all those Hell’s Angels photos of mine—all that work and even the stomping, just to get a few wall decorations. I finally got the color stuff back from Ballantine, but I never did see the black & white; the last I heard of it, Chris Cerf3 had taken it somewhere.
Remember these things when the bell tolls for thee. Tomorrow, for instance, I will mark the 10th anniversary of my discharge from the Air Force by going back to an AF base to do an article on test pilots. I told them I’d be back someday. Ten years ago those pigs made me spend a week painting a latrine, over
Yeah. … Which means I’m taking off for Los Angeles and Edwards AFB in a few hours. I’ll be there (at the Continental Hotel after a few days at the base) until Feb 23 or so. I’ll also be drifting around the East LA barrio with my Brown Power man, Oscar Acosta. There’s a good article—and even a book—in that action, but Paul Jacobs4 is the only person who seems to believe it. The Mexican gig, right now, is about five years behind the Black bandwagon. Oscar is the lawyer for the Brown Berets and those people. I once sent his novel to Margaret [Harrell], but she didn’t seem to think it measured up. And probably she was right—but Oscar could do a book on the Brown Power business. I won’t mention this again until it’s time to say “I told you so.”
Well, all I meant to write here was a note about those photos. Cheri said she mentioned her astrology book to you, and I guess I should apologize for that. …I told her I wouldn’t involve myself in that kind of rude hype, and I didn’t. But, like Mr. Nixon says, The Business of America Is Business. Or … When Nothing Else Works, Try the Stars. …
As for progress, all I can say is that I’m learning more than ever. This past year, on paper, has been a total loss and a prelude to bankruptcy…. But if I should drop out of the sky in a big jet plane one of these days, you can come to my funeral with a clear conscience. My sporadic jokes about Random House “paying for my education” are really quite serious. You can write it off as a Charitable Enterprise, or an Educational Experiment. I have learned a hell of a lot in the past year…. And I might even get a good book out of it.
We’ll soon see, I guess. I find myself slipping more and more into the role of my pseudonymonous (?) foil, Raoul Duke, who no longer understands what his journalism is all about. I am still working, for instance, on that goddamned NRA article—which now seems like a nerve center of some kind, touching on every other question or problem that plagues us. The notion of “Gun Control” spreads out, like some kind of malignant ganglia, to almost every story that sounds big right now.
Frightening, eh? And I guess I’d better get back to it, in the few hours I have left. I am sitting in the middle of about 20 stacks of ms. paper, all dealing with guns, crime, murder, madness, fascism, bullshit … and Law. Jesus, the freaking goddamn law! The gun problem, for instance, has led me into a detailed grappling with Anthony Lewis’ Gideon’s Trumpet,5 one of the best things I’ve read in 10 years. It’s a genuine classic.
And so much for that, too. One of these days I’ll explain how an allegedly talented writer can produce five pages a day for a solid year and finish with nothing at all. That, too, will be a genuine classic.
Ciao,
Hunter
TO HIRAM ANDERSON, EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE:
Thompson had agreed to provide the final draft of his Pageant article on test pilots to his press contact at Edwards Air Force Base for prepublication review.
February 25, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Mr. Anderson …
Sorry, as usual, to be late checking in. I was late finishing the test pilot article, and consequently I’m late getting this copy to you. But what the hell …if I were seriously concerned about time I should have stayed in the Air Force, right? Curtis LeMay6 would have known how to capitalize on my talents … just as he did on his own. Selah.
Anyway, in accordance with our vague agreement, I’m enclosing a copy of the article. I resent it, of course, and if you hadn’t been so helpful and considerate I would have found some excuse to skip this exercise … but neither you nor anyone else at Edwards gave me any kind of excuse to be vindictive or vengeful in even the smallest way, and if the article itself doesn’t make you or the others entirely happy, I’m sorry. It represents a necessarily incomplete distillation of the impressions I got during my visit … and in fact I can’t see much about it that I’d expect would disturb the kind of hard-nosed, fine-focused pro that test pilots seem to be. I deliberately avoided using technical matter as far as possible, in order to avoid any chance of hassling with an Air Force “truth squad.” There are, however, a handful of possible errors, and if I’ve made any factual mistakes I’ll appreciate hearing from you at your earliest convenience. Matters of opinion, as you noted in one of our conversations, are not subject to censorship. In any case, thanks again for the help.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
Researching “The Death of the American Dream” was not cheap.
March 1, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
STATEMENT
Expenses incurred by Hunter S. Thompson in research on Death of American Dream book/project. … Six days in Los Angeles 2/14–2/19 ’69 not including RT airfare from Aspen, car rental in LA or other expenses in connection with article for Pageant magazine on Air Force test pilots. … All following items pertain to activities in LA proper, not the test pilot research expenses, which I billed to Pageant.
$191.62
….. six days Continental Hotel, LA
21.33
….. books on Calif & LA culture, Pickwick bkshop.
120.00
….. all other expenses including meals, entertainment, tips, cabs, magazines and papers, etc. (except the following item) computed at $20 per day.
50.00
….. special “contribution” to Brown Power firebomb fund, as it were—absolutely necessary for access to this very nervous area of activity in east LA ghetto. This is a difficult item to explain on paper. Selah.
$382.95
…..Total
Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO JIM SILBERMAN, RANDOM HOUSE:
To Thompson’s great relief, Silberman liked his idea of using Raoul Duke’s wild escapades as a fictional thread tying together “The Death of the American Dream.”
March 17, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Jim …
Thanx for the words. You have focused on my root problem in the new book—combining controlled (and formal) journalism with the jangled reality of my day to day thing. That was my original reason for bringing in Raoul Duke—to let me sit back and play reasonable, while he freaks out. Or maybe those roles should be reversed …? Or maybe the whole thing should be done in the tone of the Nixon Inaugural piece. That would be more honest, I guess, but it would leave me without a framework, making the book a series of newsy vignettes … and that doesn’t excite me. Probably the thing to do, for now, is to write a long section with Duke in, just to see how it looks all around …and also to get that $5000. And if Duke doesn’t work, we can take it from there… especially since most of the straight journalism is already written in first-draft form.
Things have gone out of control since I talked to you last. Playboy has sent me off to capture the soul and essence of Jean-Claude Killy, the ski freak, and—as usual—what seemed like a quick & easy thing has turned into a complicated monster. My first encounter with Killy, for instance, was at the Chicago Auto Show—in the goddamn Stockyards Amphitheatre, all those ghosts, with Killy and O. J. Simpson selling Chevrolets in the same big room where Carl Albert7 once peddled Hubert Humphrey … christ, what a nightmare.
Anyway, I’ll be in New Hampshire tomorrow and most of this week (c/o Bill Rollins, Skiers’ Gazette, at “The Outlook” in Waterville, or c/o Bill Cardoso at the Boston Globe Sunday Mag). Let me know if you think it would be a good thing for me to stop through NY on Friday, on my way back home. If you feel like talking, it’s no problem for me to stop in NY … so let me know. Friday is sort of open for me; the only question is which hotel (& which city) I’ll spend the night in. OK for now …
Hunter
TO CAREY McWILLIAMS, THE NATION:
March 24, 1969
Woody Creek, CO
Dear Carey …
G
My situation at the moment is insane—I have an expense account to go almost anywhere I want, for any good reason, but all I am doing is going into debt to the Diners Club. I just got back from New Hampshire and Boston, and the week before it was the Chicago Auto Show—in that same evil Stockyards Amphitheatre. (There’s a possible: Reflections on the Stockyards, Six Months Later, or something like that. I spent two days in that place and was terrified the whole time … many ghosts.)
Before it was LA, where my friend Oscar Acosta told me you’d queried him about a piece on the Chicano action there. As a matter of fact I have it here on my desk; he asked me to look it over before he sent it on. … And I told him the lead was hopeless. He has a good story down there—combining the Felony-Conspiracy backlash with his own personal challenge (in the courts) of the Grand Jury system. Echoes of the latter surfaced briefly in the Sirhan trial, and about a month ago some LA (I think) Assemblyman introduced a bill in Sacramento, virtually identical to Oscar’s brief. His article is a good legal document, but not good journalism. I suspect, now and then, that the best way to tap Oscar’s complex and finely articulate grasp of the Chicano situation would be to send somebody to interview him. … But not me. I’ve been privy to too many accidental confidences in that area to be able to write a straight article without losing at least one friend.