Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (77 page)

All of which is a little presumptuous of me, I grant, but I have started thinking tough again and I may even get back to doing something worthwhile sometime soon. The California move has been postponed a week or so, due to overwhelming poverty. I haven't paid my January rent or my December bill at the Woody Creek store, and I can't leave until I do.
The Reporter
has another piece which could pay the tab, but they're in no hurry to pay and I can't move until they do. I have turned into a fuck-off as far as this journalism is concerned—one of these woodsy types who talks a good article but never writes it. I only write when finances pressure me into it, and not a hell of a lot then. I agree with you that it's a shitty life—which is really what you said—but I don't agree with your remedies. Age 40 is a bit too early to seek out the rocking chair and start trying to pull the wool over your own eyes. Let's face it—it's the tension of life that keeps the light in a man's eyes, and keeps the foam in his nuts. It's really the only thing you can't afford to lose.

Probably this all sounds a bit incoherent to your jaded ears, and even to mine at this hour of the night. Old Crow has a hand in here; we just had the ranch-neighbor and his wife down for dinner. I think it should be talked out in one of those big hot tubs at Hot Springs. Disregard my date of February 8—10 and wait for a cable saying exactly when the move will begin. I'll send it to your current address and will expect your presence at the appointed time. Bring a rifle along and we'll pop a pig or two. I have every reason to believe you need a rest.

HST

January 31, 1964
Woody Creek

Dear Bobo—

I have dug into Frantz Fanon and I think he is a dead ringer for the real thing. If that's what you were trying to say all summer, I suggest you take some lessons in elementary English expression. If I were Fanon, I wouldn't want you on my side. Your relationship to him seems very much like your own concept of the American “liberal.” I don't think Fanon needs Sartre either; I guess it's nice to have a little left-wing respectability on your side now and then, but Sartre is an eloquent windbag and I'd rather take my business straight. I am only about a third of the way into it but I already have a strong scent. I'll call him a liar and a fool now and then, but there's no denying that mean, high sound of a two-legged boarbuster.

Between Fanon and Bob Dylan I think the blood is moving in my brain again. Dylan is a goddamn phenomenon, pure gold, and mean as a snake.
If you get U.S. records over there, listen to his “Masters of War” sometime. I just got the record on credit from Peggy Clifford.

My credit is strained to the limit and today was my last legal one in this house. From now on, I am a squatter. I owe $550 that has to be paid before I leave.
The Reporter
may or may not send funds; I am sweating it out. If they don't, I am up to my balls in scalding crisis. The
Observer
is down on me for a fang-job I did on Congress; they bounced it savagely, so I sent it to
The Rptr
. Now I am doing one on the pending Aspen Mtn. strike.
⁸
D.R.C. Brown is holding the line, along with Paul Nitze and the other fatbellies—but the patrol people seem ready to hit the streets.
⁹
Union songs are now heard in the Dipsy-Doodle and elsewhere. “The Talkin' Union.” With a little humor and local color, I can probably pass it off on the
Observer
.

I stick by my original comment on Aspen; living here has stunted my wit. Elk meat is fixing my bowels. The move looms at any time, but not until money comes. The tension is ugly. Sandy is in the eighth month. The old story. If I don't lose the scent I may do something worthwhile sometime soon. Prospects for the spring include a run out to Hawaii to fetch Hudson's boat. He'd probably like to have you along if you don't bring Sartre. Fanon would be OK; unless you think his ass might burn a hole in the deck. Returning to this country has crippled my spirit; it is easier to be an American abroad. The past dies hard, and not always for good reason. The mood of the country reminds me of that headline in the
New Leader
when Bosch was run out of Santo Domingo—“The Return of the Syndicate.”
¹⁰
My position at this time is “deal around me.” Send word.

HST

February 1, 1964
Woody Creek, Colorado

Dear Mr. Martin:

In the course of my African outburst the other night (January 26, letter of) I referred to Frantz Fanon as part of the group of European expatriates gathered in Africa to form the revolution, or what Sartre called “The Third
World.” Fanon is very much a part of that group, but he is not European. The best information I can get in Woody Creek is that he is a West Indian, and presumably black.
¹¹

The reason I mention it is that I am now dealing with his book,
The Damned
, only recently published in English in 1963. The original edition was published in 1961 and titled
The Damned of the Earth
, or, more accurately,
Les Damnes de la Terre
. I think the new English edition would be a good thing to review.

The introduction, by Jean-Paul Sartre, has become required reading for those who wonder about the future of Africa. Its thesis—which is also the thesis of Fanon's text—runs like this: There can be no compromise with the black (or brown or yellow) people of this earth except on their terms. What the white man fails to understand is that the native is not just revolting against a handful of arrogant settlers, but against the entire system of values those settlers represent. Hence, there is no sense talking to excolonial peoples in terms of Western Values (specifically, the doctrine of Humanism) that have never really taken hold.

Anyway, I trust you see what I'm getting at. If the Sartre-Fanon thesis proves out, it will be at the expense of our efforts to cultivate democratic political systems in the “emerging nations.” That, of course, would be the first thing to go out the window. Witness Ghana today. The thesis also calls into question our ideas of The Democratic Left forming pro-Western caretaker governments to bring the natives around. According to Sartre and Fanon, these people are regarded as ideological lackeys and could not possibly succeed.

We are both aware of Sartre's political coloration, and Fanon is, if anything, more dogmatic. But the thesis is real, and it doesn't exist in a vacuum. For nearly a year I have maintained a running debt with some contacts at the Institute for African Studies in Ghana (mainly Europeans, but one American) and I have come from a point where I dismissed them all as “book-store Marxists” to another point, now, where I take their ideas quite seriously. I don't like them, but too much of what they say makes sense when I read the newspapers.

Well, this is too long a letter for a simple thing like a book review query. The nut of it is that I think the Fanon book is worth doing and I think I could do a good job on it. When is another matter. Right now I am half mad with tension; every morning I go to the P.O. to seek notice of incoming funds—and every afternoon I watch the road for signs of my landlord. If you are going to use that Denver piece, I urge you to send a money-message at once so I can shift into fleeing gear. My lease ran out yesterday;
I am now a squatter. The oil for my furnace is running out and I can't afford more. My subscription to the
Denver Post
is running out, and, rotten paper that it is, I'd hate to lose my last contact with the outside world. And my wife grows fatter by the hour; I think it will be a Mongolian idiot. The fat is in the fire. HST

TO DWIGHT MARTIN,
THE REPORTER:

With Sandy eight months pregnant, Thompson rented a U-Haul trailer and they drove twelve hundred miles across “rotten snow” to Glen Ellen, California, fifty miles north of San Francisco. His plan was to earn money by writing articles on the American West for the
National Observer
and
The Reporter.

February 21, 1964
Owl House
9400 Bennett Valley Rd.
Glen Ellen, California

Dear Mr. Martin:

Greetings from the New World, the Brazil of America, the land of cheap wine and the 10-cent cantaloupe. I arrived, pulling my trailer, and was denied entrance to the house I was planning to live in. The fellow had changed his mind. Changed his mind. So I now live in a sort of Okie shack, paying a savage rent, and spend most of my day in a deep ugly funk, plotting vengeance. Vengeance.

At any rate, I have built a desk out of an old door, and am now ready. My first act, after admitting the loss of my Denver hotel receipt, was to make out a foggy justification for that $200 you sent. Let me know if this isn't sufficient, and I'll do something more. $35 a day ain't hard to justify.

Enclosed are two poems. The poet runs a private graveyard a few miles from here and stopped by the other day when he heard I kept pistols. I wiped him out, mainly because he was unnerved by the awful roar of my .44 Magnum. It was like William Tell going against a bazooka. “Yeah,” I said, “I have a gun or two.” And I unveiled this frightening thing that will shoot through a motor block, and opened up a tree with it. He carried a .22, which he fanned like Billy the Kid. But we patched it up and then he produced his poetry, which I told him I'd send along to Madison Avenue, where they need poetry. I sort of like the stuff, especially from a grave-keeper, and thought I'd give you a look at it. Rest assured I made no commitments. But it may grab you. If not, send it back. The guy can afford rejections; he has a job.

What in the hell is happening with the Denver piece? I am beginning to think you bought me off, and will have none of it. To make things worse, I can't find my carbon. Life has become a goat dance. Something will have to be done with that piece, however. If necessary, I will go back to Denver, much as I hate the idea. At any rate, let's have some communication on it. I will get a phone as soon as I can afford the $50 deposit. In the meantime, call me c/o Lou Ambler, Glen Ellen. That's next door to the shack. Address is the above.

On Monday I mean to contact Gene Burdick
¹²
about a “fish-in” scheduled in Washington on March 3. Burdick, [Marlon] Brando, J[ames] Baldwin and P[aul] Newman. Something to do with Indians being denied fishing rights on the Columbia River. Christ knows what it means. I guess it is a natural news story for the
Observer
, and maybe a possible commentary for you. But I can't say for sure till afterwards.

The Red chink
¹³
was elected to Congress yesterday, and should give me a good peg for the San Francisco story. Or profile, as it were. I have never quite understood what you mean by that term. Seems to me like a book-length subject, even in Woody Creek. But maybe not. Was the Louisville piece a “political profile”?

I could tell you a lot of other things I am working on, but it would be a bag of lies. The fact is that I am spending all my energies on living from day to day without the credit I enjoyed in Woody Creek. On Monday I will take my antique Luger to a San Francisco pawnshop. Once I establish credit, I may be able to function. A man needs credit. Especially when he has no money.

Despite the unholy chaos of the moment, I sense a leveling out in the near future. I am near the action, or at least near enough. A comeback looms. My only advice at this time is, never marry your mistress; it causes damage to the brain tissues, and puts a crick in the hump.

As for future work, I believe it is up in the air. No sense telling you what I'm going to send, because I don't know. It depends on the humours. But I will send something. And let's get something made of that Denver business. I'd rather not have it hanging over my head, because there's too much fresh stuff out here. Send word.

In all sincerity, from the crude
new desk of
Hunter S. Thompson

Boyle, a renowned Bay Area writer and activist, had struck up a friendship with Thompson at a Native American rally in Tacoma, Washington. They would correspond regularly for a number of years
.

March 7, 1964
Owl House
9400 Bennett Valley Rd.
Glen Ellen, California

Dear Mrs. Boyle:

Thanks for sending the Styron Report
¹⁴
; I read it and actually considered, for the first time, that perhaps I might drop the habit. Which really shouldn't be too hard, with a pipe and cigars in reserve. Odd, how language can convince a man, where reason fails entirely. I am not sure what Styron is up to these days—a lecture on smoking seems a far cry from
Lie Down in Darkness
—and I'd definitely appreciate a chance to talk to him if he comes out this way. Has he turned against drink, too? I am trying to recall that quote from the bible at the front of LD [
Lie Down in Darkness
]; my copy is in Louisville, but I have another on order at the Aspen Book Store. The question would seem to be: Is life so valuable that we should give up flirting with death in order to hang around? I'm not sure.

At any rate, I hope we can sit down with a bit of the Tulamore Dew sometime soon, and ponder these things. I didn't mean to be flip up there in Tacoma,
¹⁵
but you had a sporting look about you and I couldn't resist a little buggery. It was, after all, a real bad show & needed a spot of something. A man never stoops so low as when he rises to the challenge of internal politics. Selah.

OK, and thanks again for the report (commentary). Right after I started this letter my neighbor came down and asked us to visit with him for the purpose of celebrating his recent acquisition of $12,000 from television.
¹⁶
It gives a man paws. I am still unnerved by the thing. It begins to look like the plumbers shall inherit the earth.

If you find yourself in the midtown area on some afternoon, give me a ring at
The Wall St. Journal
. It's not as bad as it sounds; I am there about 3
days a week, only in the afternoons.
¹⁷
The rest of the time I work for
The Reporter
, which gives at least the appearance of a balance.