Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Thompson's style was his own, but I liked Fred Crews's comment about
the influence of Hemingway and Miller on Mailer. Miller's looser,
more fantastical style prevailed over Hemingway's stripped down
prose. Thompson obviously admired Hemingway, but his prose began to
look more like Miller's. 

I should have mentioned Tom Wolfe in that list above. He was an
immediate influence, not a hero as such. Thompson didn't try to
imitate his style, but Wolfe modeled a kind of journalism that
Thompson was eager to pursue.
Of course, both also wrote about the San Francisco counterculture
and Las Vegas. 
  

    
I mentioned HST's generosity above. Hunter loaned his tapes of the
Hell's Angels party at La Honda to Wolfe for the "Electric Kool-Aid
Acid Test" and trusted him with them -- he didn't have copies. 
  

    
I learned a lot about Algren, who wrote for Ramparts and even did a
New Journalism-type story on the Kentucky Derby for Sports
Illustrated. According to his biographer, "Much of what happened in
the story is either fictitious or greatly exaggerated, and the
subject--the Derby--is less important than the narrator's character
and impressions." Sound familiar?

No imitation or plagiarism here, however. Sports Illustrated never
ran the piece. They also rejected HST's piece about Las Vegas, which
suggests they were determined to stay on brand. George Plimpton was
pretty much the outer limit, I guess. Unless I'm forgetting
something, which someone will certainly catch. 
  

    
Yes, Thompson's decision to share those tape recordings with Wolfe
was generous. BTW, according to Wenner, he wasn't competitive with
his RS colleagues. He wasn't in the office much, but his influence
there was palpable. Lots of Hunter wannabes, according to Sarah
Lazin. 
  

    
This is great stuff.
  

    
This is a note I made a week or two ago while or after reading
Savage Journey:

Thompson had some literary influences who he said influenced him.
Scott Fitzgerald (claimed in a letter that he retyped "The Great
Gatsby" to learn the rhythm of storytelling), Kerouac (for road
adventure), maybe Jack London, Menckin, lawyer/lexicographer Samuel
Johnson, and definately one of my favorite authors, Joseph Conrad, a
Pole who didn't even learn English until after the age of 21 years,
when he joined the English Navy. Peter, you say a few times that he
really did want to be a novelist like some of his heroes. 

In his self-written third-person bio for NORML's Advisory Board,
<https://norml.org/hunter-s-thompson/> (<-- WORTH READING), he
mentions several novels -- The Rum Diary, which was in press at the
time, and three other books:

>> [quote] There are two extremely rare books, Screwjack and Mistah
Leary…He Dead which make up his limited edition work. His long lost
novel, The Rum Diary is expected to be released in October 1998. A
more legendary unseen book is Polo is my Life, which was due in
March 1998, but was suddenly cancelled. [end quote] <<

For those who haven't yet read Savage Journey, maybe you could tell
us a little more about the other books when you have a chance?
  

    
Screwjack is a short book (64 pages) of three stories. It was
published in a limited run and later put out by Simon & Schuster,
who handled HST's later work. I won't rehearse the details, which
are easy to find online, but the new work at that time was thin, and
Thompson's audience was large. His publisher was doing what it could
to keep the franchise alive. There were commercial reasons to do so,
but you get the feeling that it was also a gift to Thompson, who by
that time was depending on royalties for his income.   

"Mistah Leary, He Dead" is a eulogy for Timothy Leary printed on a
single folded sheet. To Jack's point above, the title echoes Conrad.


"Polo Is My Life" was another project that never made it across the
finish line, though Rolling Stone ran a short story by that title.
According to an interview Thompson gave, "It's about the manager of
a sex theater who's forced to leave and flee to the mountains. He
falls in love and gets in even more trouble than he was in the sex
theater in San Francisco." The protagonist wants to escape with his
lover, but she says polo is her life. ("Who would take care of my
ponies?")

That story is based on time spent at the O'Farrell Theatre, where
Thompson befriended the Mitchell brothers. And that period began as
a story assignment for Playboy about feminist porn. That article
never appeared. Nor did the novel for Random House called The Night
Manager. (That's what Thompson called himself at the theater.) 

I should also mention Thompson's first unpublished novel, "Prince
Jellyfish." He was shopping that around in the early 1960s. An
excerpt appears in "Songs of the Doomed," if memory serves. 

He also wrote "The Rum Diary" in the 1960s. Random House passed on
it, but Simon & Schuster published it in the late 1990s when the
edited letters and film version of FLLV also came out. That flurry
put HST back in the spotlight despite the decline in his output. 

So HST never really made it as a novelist, but as William Kennedy
said, his best fiction is disguised as journalism. 
  

    
I must not have been paying attention. When did HST become "Dr."?
  

    
I think it was while he was in California. It was a mail-order deal.
Doctor of divinity. He never finished college. Audited a few classes
at Columbia. 
  

    

He was signing articles for Rolling Stone that way (when not as Raoul
Duke) as early as 1970. The title was reportedly based on the Doctor of
Divinity diploma he purchased from the Universal Life Church for 25
bucks in the late 60s.
  

    

Slip!
  

    
He explains it here: <https://norml.org/hunter-s-thompson/>.
Specifically, it was a mail order Doctor of Divinity degree from
"Reverend" Kirby J. Hensley's Universal Life Church. I had one too.

Two slips!
  

    
(I thought they'd ordain you for $25, but it cost $40 for a DD.)
  

    
Something like that. I don't recall the pricing exactly.
  

    
I can definitely see the Henry Miller influence on HST now that you
call it out.  A quick google turned up this scanned article from
1961 by HST on Big Sur and Miller: 
https://totallygonzo.org/gonzowriting/rare-articles/
  

    
The better biographies quote Thompson on the subject of his
influences. Those names also come up in interviews. I wanted to go
deeper, and Miller was part of that effort, but the main point is
that HST was a serious reader, and he served a long apprenticeship
before the Gonzo stuff emerged. 

He also struggled over that invention, which is why I open the book
with the long, anxious letter to his editor. He had so many literary
voices ringing in his head--another one was Frederick Exley, author
of "A Fan's Notes"--and he couldn't figure out how to achieve the
blend of journalism and fiction that he had in mind. And when he
does invent Gonzo, he thinks it's a brutal failure. 

That's not the kind of stuff that draws the fanboys to HST, but I
think that approach confers something that he wanted and earned,
even if he didn't live up to his full potential.    
  

    
The one influence that seems surprising to me is Fitzgerald. But
that probably says more about me as a reader than anything else --
I've always found Fitzgerald's prose to be excruciatingly unlively
and boring, and HST's is anything but.

HST's initial agonizing over the "brutal failure" of the gonzo style
is particularly in light of the degree to which it became the basis
of his entire persona, and something that he ultimately couldn't
really escape.

As a quote from William Stephenson you include late fairly late in
the book has it, he became "an author who knew he had become trapped
by his own brand."
  

    
Yes, Fitzgerald was very important. BTW, he also was trapped by his
Jazz Age brand during the Great Depression.

In many ways, HST's trap was freely chosen. He could have moved on,
and some colleagues advised him to do so. It was easy and lucrative
not to. If I received $20k a pop to play Raoul Duke at campus
appearances, I would probably stick with it, too. But he certainly
wasn't growing as a writer. There was no third act, nothing like
Didion's grief work, for example. I think it was Jack Shafer who
wondered about one of HST's later works, written in his 60s. Why was
he imitating himself instead of really trying to size up his own
life and times? 

The other comparison I had in mind was Jack London. He was a
literary celebrity, too, and he told his editor that his persona was
his most valuable literary asset. That doesn't mean it was
contrived. He said he would stop writing before he abandoned that
persona. (He didn't use that word.) 
  

    
Thanking you, Peter!
I received both books with their kind inscriptions on Wednesday and
I have been diving into _Savage Journey_ since then.
Let's start with the HST opening quote which is: 
"All this stuff avoids coming to the point that matters, which is
what I turn out. Funny, I almost never get questioned about
writing."
This quote is revealing and illuminating since it highlights what we
are talking about, right now which is how his brand has overtaken
and overshadowed what is important here, his writing. 
For me, it was always about the writing since my early, initial
exposure via Rolling Stone to his work. He finds it funny that in
1987, looking back that in his appearances almost no one asks him
about his process, his influences or how he manages to come up with
his insights on the larger, cultural and uniquely American issues at
play in the early 60s and 70s. 
I confess that had I ever seen him in-person, back then, I am not
sure that I would have had the wherewithal to ask him about his
writing. I am pretty sure I would have hung back and let others in
the room have their questions answered. 
I am reminded of a "debate" I witnessed in the early 80s billed as
an encounter between G. Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary in Boulder,
Colorado. (I was living in Denver, at the time) I had a question for
them both so I stood in line but I did not make it to the podium
before questions were cut off. Several days later, I was changing
flights in Atlanta and I recognized G. Gordon Liddy, walking along
the concourse. So I stopped him, introduced myself and said I was
there at the debate previously and had a question that I did not get
to ask that day. So I proceeded to ask my question and he graciously
answered it. We shook hands and parted ways.
So maybe, had I seen HST in-person, I would have the temerity to ask
him about his writing as opposed to fan-boy questions about his
persona, his drug use or whatever. I’ll never know.
Am enjoying my read immensely so thanking you, Peter for writing
_Savage Journey_.
  

    
Thanks, Alex. Yes, that opening quote is very useful, at least for
my project! 

I go back and forth on speaking up in public forums. You probably
know that the Mitchell brothers made a documentary film about HST,
and it shows him fielding questions. At that time (the Reagan era),
the competition was for who could convert a cynical political take
into question form. Then it was up to HST to respond. I think he was
right that people were hoping to see Raoul Duke in action. 
  

    
This discussion was scheduled to end tomorrow, April 5. Thanks to
Peter, Gary, and all who've contributed. While Inkwell discussions
are a two week commitment for authors and conversation leaders, this
topic will remain open and conversation can continue past the "best
by" date.

Reminder that the public link for the conversation is
<https://bit.ly/HST-SavageJourney>. Link for the book is
<https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520304925/savage-journey>. Link to
join the WELL, for those who are interested in joining an online
community and more of these kinds of conversations, is
<https://www.well.com/join/>.
  

    
Thanks, all, it was a pleasure. If you haven't had enough by now,
I'll be at the Bay Area Book Festival, and there may be something in
The Washington Post soon (?) about the book. If I remember, I'll
post it here. If not, you can find that and related matter on my FB
page or my blog/scrapbook, peterrichardson.blogspot.com.
  

    
Thanks again, Peter!
  

    
I'll be looking for the WashPost review Peter. Or is it going to be
a profile of the author? I could see that.
  

    
Could be a bit of both. Apparently the story is due today. Might be
part of a package on the 1972 election, with a related piece about
Woodward & Bernstein. The only date I've heard, not firm, is April
17.