Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Also, this came up for me on my Facebook feed today, and I'd love to
have you talk about it!

"I forgot that P.J. O'Rourke was part of an HST oral biography
published by "Stop Smiling: The Magazine for High-Minded Lowlifes."
That came out in 2005 and remains a favorite for me. He regarded
Thompson as a poet whose politics could be safely ignored."
  

    
Jennifer (NOTW) uses a Tar Guard to this day and has used one for
years..Tar Guard used to advertise that this was the same one that
HST used..FWIW
Jennifer would agree with Juan that there is no telling how much tar
these little beauties have saved her from ingesting..
  

    
One more thought about drugs and alcohol. Someone I know well read
my book and brought his extensive AA experience to bear on it. He
saw a connection between HST's alcoholism and his style, especially
the invective. That angle didn't fit my project or skill set, but
maybe someone here (or elsewhere) can do something with it. 

That issue of Stop Smiling is a treasure. Lots about publishing
(Grove Press, City Lights, Harold Ross, etc.), plus a meaty article
about HST with quotes from his friends and colleagues, including his
editors. 

O'Rourke, of course, also wrote for Rolling Stone. He said he bonded
with HST over their mutual love of reading. By then, O'Rourke's
politics were libertarian/conservative. He liked to make fun of
humorless liberals. That became his media niche, and he stuck with
it even after George W. Bush and Donald Trump did their damage. He
didn't actually vote for Trump in 2016. "I am endorsing Hillary, and
all her lies and all her empty promises," he said on NPR. "She's
wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal
parameters." So even as he repudiated Trump, he was still getting
his shots in at Hillary. 

In Stop Smiling, O'Rourke says that HST's politics were silly. He
was a poet, and we shouldn't look to poets for political wisdom. I
wouldn't say Thompson was a deep political thinker. It was more
visceral for him, more personal. But when it came to the major
political figures he wrote about, there's not much he would have to
retract, given the way the cookie has crumbled over the last five
decades. His commentary was hyperbolic, but much of it turned out to
be prophetic. 

In the Facebook thread you mention, I was wondering whether we could
say the same about O'Rourke. He was clever and funny, and I gather
he was a good person, but it matters who or what you satirize, and I
don't think he was on the right side of history. 

It's worth noting, I think, that when O'Rourke pooh-poohed
Thompson's politics, the United States, under the leadership of
George W. Bush, was destroying Iraq. HST predicted that the day
after the 9/11 attack.   
  

    
I'd like to share some of that here.

The ESPN column Thompson filed on Sept 12, 2001, wasn't a political
piece, really, nor was it particularly clairvoyant. It was horror, a
Naked Lunch,* an extended moment of lucid revulsion.

>> [quote] The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along
with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any
other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with
somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for
the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by
religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It
will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and
no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden may be a primitive
"figurehead" -- or even dead, for all we know -- but whoever put
those All-American jet planes loaded with All-American fuel into the
Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and
accuracy. The second one was a dead-on bullseye. Straight into the
middle of the skyscraper....

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or
what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe
Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once.
Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or
the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where
to look for them. [end quote] <<

"Fear and Loathing in America" Sept. 12, 2001
<https://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story?id=1250751>, last visited
Mar. 27, 2022.

*"naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end
of every fork." (Jack Kerouac).
  

    
Maybe I'm giving HST too much credit, but I didn't think it was
obvious we would target Iraq at that point. We had to gin up a lot
of bad intelligence before that could happen. 

The article suggests, but doesn't really explore, the media's role
in what was to come. I don't get the feeling he thinks the media
will rise to the challenge. During his prime, he might have done
more with that.
  

    
On 9/12/01, Iraq was a likely US target in that Saddam Hussein was
believed to have been behind the April 1993 assassination attempt on
George H.W. Bush in Kuwait, and Bush fils wanted to get him some
payback. So maybe you're giving HST just the credit he is due. It
was lucidity, not clairvoyance.
  

    
>a connection between HST's alcoholism and his style...

Could you say more about this?  Was it just the lack of inhibition
or something else they meant?
  

    
In 1979 I went back to college after some years away. In the spring
of that year somebody used some money from our student activity fees
to hire HST to come and talk to us.

The talk was in a conference room that was about two thirds full,
with thirty or forty people. Thompson walked in the main door and
through the audience while playing with a football. He'd throw it a
few feet in the air, spinning vertically, and catch it. He was
wearing a nice-looking suit in a gray tropical fabric, a dress shirt
open at the neck, and white Converse All Stars.

Someone introduced him. He said he didn't have a speech, he'd take
questions. He was calm, pleasant, and soft-spoken. The question I
remember is "What do you think of Garry Trudeau and his Duke
character?" His answer: "If I ever meet that guy I'll rip his lungs
out."
  

    
Hah!
  

    
Ha!!
  

    
The online Doonesbury had a re-run recently of a Duke series ...
basically amoral ... and working for Donald Trump.

<https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2022/02/28>
  

    
The lung-ripping reference sounds like "Werewolves of London." As it
turns out, Warren Zevon was a friend, and HST dedicated his last
book to him (and George Plimpton). In light of Chuck's note, I would
only add that I'd like to meet his tailor.

I'm not sure I can do justice to the AA-themed conversation. My
friend said that the excoriation of others, which was a Thompson
speciality, would quickly prompt a demand that Thompson examine his
own shit. "He would get his sheets pulled down FAST," my friend
said. Perhaps other tendencies could also be identified in the
writing. Impulsivity? Narcissism? Grandiosity? It's easy to
overgeneralize along these lines,  especially when it comes to
literary analysis, but as I say, there might be something there.  
  

    
But you also wrote, in refutation of critics and wannabe Gonzo
journalists, "Equating Thompson's style with his appetites is the
surest way to misunderstand it. ... Despite the hopes of wannabe
journalists, there was no shortcut, pharmaceutical or otherwise, to
Thompson's success." I recall Dylan Thomas candidly confessing
somewhere that he did not, could not, write while drinking. The fact
that Thompson *could* write with a bottomless glass of Wild Turkey
next to his typewriter was a testament to dextroamphetamine as an
analeptic to ethanol; difficult to balance consistently, as Didion
and Mailer might could attest also. Chemicals can inspire but they
also impair.
  

    
Exactly right, Jack. I would make a similar point about his editors.
He got a lot of help, especially after FLLV, but the best editorial
talent in the world couldn't create a Gonzo masterpiece. 
  

    
You know, FLLV was inspired imagination. The DRUG STASH in the TRUNK
(ether was a nice touch) was particularly inspired ("two bags of
grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high
powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a
whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers,
laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of
Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls [amyl nitrate]").
Apparently Acosta really did have a .357 magnum, but that's neither
here nor there anymore. A lot of people carry a .357 these days for
their own goddam reasons.

But it's unfortunate that some people can't even try to distinguish
fiction from fact. In Rolling Stone issue #100 or #101, the Grateful
Dead interviews, Jerry Garcia recounted spacey kids approaching him
to say, "I heard you do acid every day, so I've been doing acid
every day ever since." I guess it can be pretty dismal to be
confronted by your own hyperbole by innocents who took it as gospel.
Kids'll do that sometimes.

Ralph Steadman titled his Thompson memoir, "THE JOKE IS OVER." I
say, "Live it or live with it."
  

    
The reference to Acosta and his .357 reminds me to mention his place
in all this. In addition to making those trips to Vegas, Acosta
lured HST to Los Angeles to cover the Chicano movement and
especially the death of journalist Ruben Salazar. Which means he
made a direct contribution to two important Thompson stories. So
direct, in fact, that Acosta figured HST owed him money, especially
for FLLV. 

Their correspondence over that claim became very sharp, but it
didn't destroy their friendship. HST helped Acosta get two of
Acosta's books published by Rolling Stone's book operation, so that
friendship was mutually beneficial. Abby Aguirre wrote a fine piece
for The New Yorker about their relationship, and I responded in a
piece for the Los Angeles Review of Books.  
  

    
Link to the Aguirre piece in The New Yorker:
<https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/what-fear-and-loathing-in-las-vega
s-owes-to-oscar-acosta>
  

    
> a pint of raw ether

When I was in college (71-75) our crew of rogues and vagabonds were
sporadically into ether for a year or so.  Probably inspired second
hand by FLLV.  It was one helluva an interesting drug when applied
correctly.  I wonder if HST ever actually did it? 
  

    
Thanks, Jon. And here's my comment on Abby's piece. 

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/strange-rumblings-the-prickly-but-producti
ve-friendship-between-hunter-thompson-and-oscar-acosta/

I contacted Abby privately and was impressed by her knowledge of
both men and their work. Much of her original draft was cut, so some
of that expertise wasn't reflected in the published version.  

Hard to say about the ether. I don't recall any direct references in
his correspondence. Of course, HST also mentions adrenochrome in
FLLV.  
  

    
Through a mutual friend, I once spent an evening with Richard Boyle
and Dr. Rock, the models for the characters of the same names in
Oliver Stone's "Salvador" (though the movie's Dr. Rock role had an
admixture from another real-life character). Like Acosta Dr. Rock
was bitter that Stone hadn't paid him for using him as a model for
Jim Belushi's character.
  

    
That sounds like an interesting evening! A friend of mine, Craig
Pyes, crossed paths with Boyle in El Salvador. 
  

    
One thing that seems clear to me from reading the book is that,
although HST was certainly an innovative writer with a very
distinctive voice, he's not without precedent in certain ways, and
that his style (or his overall approach) does have some antecedents
both in journalism and in literature. And, importantly, in the
overlap between the two.

Could you tell us about that a bit?
  

    
Good point, Gary. I wanted to present HST as a rare talent with many
heroes and precursors, not to mention skilled collaborators. 

Jack London and George Orwell were doing participatory reporting
long before the New Journalism. Thompson adopted London's model of
authorship, which was to post up far from literary capitals, mix
journalism and fiction, and convert his adventures into bestselling
works. Orwell's work blurred the lines between journalism, memoir,
and fiction. 

Henry Miller was an inspiration. So were Hemingway, Fitzgerald,
Twain, and Nelson Algren. Mailer was a big influence. HST's project
also owes something to Kerouac, though I hesitate to call him a
hero. 

It would take a while to show exactly how each of these writers--and
others, including Conrad--shaped Thompson's body of work. But I
think the best way to understand HST's work and achievement is to
put him in that company. Not all of his heroes were American, but I
think his work was deep in the American grain. 

He also benefited enormously from skilled collaborators, especially
Steadman, but that list also has to include McWilliams, Hinckle, and
Wenner. For me, considering his influences and collaborators doesn't
make him less original or unique; rather, it shows how seriously he
took his project. For the casual reader, that's easy to overlook. 
  

    
Some of the pieces Jimmy Breslin wrote when he and Mailer made their
runs for public office were hilarious.
  

    
<karish> slipped.

Two quick comments:

I was struck by his reference to Kerouac as "an ass, a mystic boob
with intellectual myopia."

And the whole interaction with Nelson Algren about using big swaths
of A Walk on The Wild Side in his Hell's Angels book is fascinating
in this regard.

The whole issue of originality vs.
derivation/borrowing/quoting/plagiarising has always been of
interest to me, across a wide range of 20th century writing.