Fear And Loathing IN WOODY CREEK

Hunter only drinks when he s awake, Bubba.
Prince of Gonzo he calls himself, Doctor Gonzo , Doctor of Journalism , Outlaw Journalist , Doc , The Duke . Born Hunter Stockton Thompson in Louisville, Kentucky in 1939, he is the rock star of the written word. Any moment, the legendary Rolling Stone journalist could make his entrance into the Woody Creek Tavern, Pitkin County, Colorado. The appointment was for five o clock in the afternoon. Considering his reputation, five in the morning would have been more logical. It is now about six o clock and the sun is sinking behind the Rocky Mountains bathing the area around the Tavern in a chill and cheerless light.
Word has it that Thompson is burned out. That, battle weary, he s given up on the Gonzo cause. Gonzo comes from the French-Canadian word gonzeaux which means something along the lines of shining path. Hunter Thompson is that path; the only fully fledged grand master of Gonzo. His Gonzo style is often confused with New Journalism, made famous by Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese. But that is quite inaccurate. Wolfe and the like attack the truth with the techniques of the novelist. They lose themselves in the minds of their subjects. Thompson loses himself in his own mind, and traces only his own madcap, hallucinatory journey through the many events in his stories. It s essentially a what if , as P. J. O Rourke, another Rolling Stone celebrity, quoted Thompson.
The style evolved in 1970 when Thompson failed to meet a deadline and in blind panic sent in his notes instead. They were greeted with cheers. The article The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent And Depraved appeared in Scanlan s Monthly in June. An inflammatory story, apparently written at one sitting, it covers the horse race, the failure of the American Dream and, of course, Richard Nixon. Because Gonzo is not just a style of journalism; it is a battle for the preservation of Freedom and the American Dream. The Gonzo cause. And that is inextricably bound up with politics.
The basis for this political involvement was formed in 1968. A year earlier Thompson had published Hell s Angels: The Strange And Terrible Saga Of The Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs , and the book had caused considerable upheaval. Editors of the most famous magazines were queueing up to hire him. In 1968 the magazine Pageant gave him an assignment to write a piece about Nixon s political resurrection. (Nobody expected him to return to the political arena after his defeat by Kennedy in 1960.) Thompson could respect Nixon for his insider s knowledge of football but nothing else. The pageant article, Presenting: The Richard Nixon Doll , unleashed a war of words on Thompson s part that would persist even after Nixon s death.
The radical politicisation of Thompson hardened one month after the Nixon article appeared, when the journalist attended the infamous Democratic Convention in Chicago, in August of 1968.
A pitched battle between police and anti-Vietnam demonstrators broke out outside the convention hall. Amid the flailing of Billy Chubby, Thompson fell through a glass door and was injured. Weeks later, he still couldn t speak about the incident without bursting into tears: his faith in politics had been irrevocably damaged. He realised the futility of national politics and decides, from that moment on, to concentrate solely on his own home ground: what had been personal became political. I went to the Democratic Convention as a journalist, and returned a raving beast, he announced.
It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place, The Doc wrote a quarter of a century later in He Was A Crook , the obituary he penned for Nixon from Woody Creek upon the man s descent into hell. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American . . . that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.
It came as no surprise for the regulars at the Woody Creek Tavern to hear that, as the San Francisco Examiner recently reported, the former president himself gave instructions to break into Democrat headquarters. Thompson had long since made clear that Watergate didn t just happen to Nixon, but that he was its source, the instigator behind the whole affair. The Tavern is Thompson s home base. It is a wooden construction that wouldn t look out of place in a road-movie. Outside, above the door, a stuffed wild boar replete with yellow spectacles and decorated with coloured lights, inspects the clientele. Next door is the post office and apart from that there s no more to Woody Creek than a few substantial remote wooden houses and a trailer camp. The Tavern is Woody Creek. It s a ten-minute drive to the airfield serving the fashionable ski-resort Aspen, frequented mostly by private jets.
Inside there s a pleasantly decadent atmosphere. You re conspicuous wearing anything other than a lumberjack shirt and cap. Both men and women walk around in cowboy boots and all the regulars appear to have accepted postponement of their own American Dream. Comfort is to be found in the whining country music continually blaring out of the loudspeakers. And in the booze, of course. The walls are filled with newspaper cuttings and photographs, paintings of Wild-West scenes, an enormous stuffed shark, pictures of legendary baseball players and postcards from every corner of the world. At the back there s a pool table. From one end of the ceiling to the other there s a string from which hang hundreds of little pink pigs. At the bar, folk speculate amusedly about how long The Doc has to go in this far from perfect existence, the wildest stories circulating concerning his liver and nose cartilage.
And stories about Thompson are what keep the Tavern running: dozens of Doc-heads visit this structure every year, hoping to catch a glimpse of their hero, mostly in vain. There s even a Doc-corner decorated with pieces of text from Rolling Stone, the rock magazine that published many of his searches for the Dream and assorted articles from the local press and dozens of snapshots. The corner is dominated by a famous 1987 Annie Liebovitz photo of Thompson aboard a Harley Davidson even though, to set himself apart from the Hell s Angels he chronicled so powerfully 20 years earlier, The Doc actually rides a BSA.
The Doc is notoriously difficult to approach as two reporters from the English magazine Loaded found out. They were expecting to spend a pleasant evening with the man, but once he d sprayed them with green paint they soon gave up on the idea. At the bar in the Tavern they swear he s quite prepared to shoot trespassers on his property. Even the dog belonging to his neighbour, Jimmy Ibbotson co-founder of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band bears a lengthy scar on its skull. According to Hunter, the white labrador attacked his peacocks, who are very dear to him. Ibbotson s dog bears its scar with dignity and doesn t bother the peacocks any more.
There s a commotion in the Tavern as Thompson comes in. People raise hands and clenched fists as a greeting. He returns the welcome, stands for a moment soaking up the attention triumphantly and then strides over to his corner. His movements seem exaggeratedly controlled, like those of an old man. His clothing sets him apart from the rest of the clientele: a silver coloured jacket with insignia, fingerless gloves, a glass of gin in one hand, cigarette holder in the other and the famous Confederate cavalry hat on his head, the style he s been wearing since junior school. Readers of Garry Trudeau s comic strip Doonesbury will recognise him immediately. Doonesbury is modelled on The Doc short trousers, knee-length socks, cigarette holder and to the great annoyance of The Doc he doesn t receive one cent for it. Meanwhile, whole generations are growing up thinking that Thompson is imitating a comic strip character.
He graciously accepts our gift a bottle of Chivas which we bought at Airport Liquors, on the road to Woody Creek where The Doc s preferences are well known. Are you visiting The Doc? Say hi from us. I won t wrap it, he knows what it is anyway. Thompson pushes the bottle to the side of the table and raises a hand to place an order. Beer. He was once at a table with former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern and his wife and ordered two margaritas, a glass of wine and a bottle of beer. When the waiter remarked that he d ordered four drinks for three people, Thompson said: Bring me the goddamned drinks! I don t know what these bastards want.
Thompson searches through his pockets, looking for a lighter. Smoking in the bar is not allowed, he tells us, but for him they make an exception. He has brought some marijuana with him and puts it on the table.
These guys could be cops, Thompson yells at the assembled customers. He laughs, producing only a hoarse rattle.
What are you up to these days?
Polo. I m a sportsman, you know. I m busy writing a book: Polo is my Life.
It s about sex and treachery. Betrayal. One hundred percent fiction. All Gonzo inspiration.
And your other books, some 75% fiction?
He laughs. Mutters unintelligibly. None of his novels (Prince Jellyfish; The Rum Diary; The Silk Road) has ever been published. Parts of them have been included in his collected works Songs Of The Damned and The Great Shark Hunt.
From behind the bar an enormous redneck walks menacingly towards us and asks Thompson with no uncertain insistence not to smoke. He ostentatiously takes a few more draws on the cigarette and puts it out.
This is a personal thing. I can smoke here. It s not against the law. Smiling, he fishes a scorched black hash-pipe from his jacket pocket and a lump of hash as big as a ping-pong ball. Thompson doesn t speak, he issues grunts. Staccato. It sounds like offended muttering.
I have to hurry. Bob can be here any minute. Well, blowing in this place is no fun. I don t have trouble with Bob and I want to keep it that way. He is a great human being, just doing his job. Well, I do mine. Sometimes that is difficult but he is alright. Although he is out of place in the law enforcement industry. Did you guys meet our sheriff Bob Braudis? One time he let Ted Bundy escape, you know, the serial killer.
As it happened, we had indeed met Braudis, bumping into him a few nights earlier at Howling Wolf, the R&B bar in Aspen. The next day, at his office, the chain-smoking Sheriff had told us about the Bundy incident.
He was standing trial for murder here, but went out of the courthouse window on the third floor. We spent a week tracking him down and just by sheer luck we recaptured him. I guided him, I spent days and days with him. In this jail and in court, as a guard. I was a rookie then, but I was fast, I could run. He never tried to get away from me. Then we brought him to Glenwood Springs jail from where he escaped to Florida and killed a bunch of college girls down there.
Braudis is a liberal in the real sense of the word. We are losing the war on drugs. Because it takes essential liberty away from people, for temporary security, but you never get it back. I believe in legislation and that addiction should be treated as a medical problem. I think cocaine is probably a bad drug, just as alcohol is. Cannabis is a good drug. At least, I don t think anybody will steal from his grandma for a gram of hash. Overnight crime would vanish if you would say: hey, come and get it. In Colorado, smoking marijuana is a petty offense. I would write a ticket, $25 or so. But I don t have undercover agents, he grins.
When I came to Aspen, 27 years ago, the image of Aspen was that of the cocaine capital of the world. But the image never matched the substance of Aspen. There was less cocaine consumed and slid here than in one night in Harlem. And you knew who was doing the cocaine. That was the moviestar, The Doctor, the lawyer. It was the blitz factor that was consuming the cocaine here. I used it in the 70s, all my friends did and at some point I didn t like it either. If it isn t fun, why do it? But I have a lot of friends that did get on that train to hell.
He raised himself from his chair, crossed to a filing cabinet and picked up a statuette.
Hunter gave this to me when I was elected sheriff a third time. The statuette is made of porcelain and represents a wounded St. Sebastian with grey hair and a beard, wearing a white and gold coloured loin cloth and a pink headband, leaning on crutches and assisted by two black and white dogs who are licking his wounds. There s a life-size Sheriff s badge on his chest and the base carries the inscription, Happy Birthday Bubba, re-elect Braudis, he suffers for our sins.
In most of Thompson s stories and articles he invokes a certain Bubba , a person who stands for all Doc-heads, readers and fellow fighters for the Gonzo cause. Bubba looks sadly on, just like Thompson, as the American Dream is slowly but surely dismembered. And neither Bubba nor the verbal violence that Thompson brings to bear in his reports can do a thing about it.
Bubba is Bob Braudis, and he s a man who plays an important role in Thompson s life and work. He s been Sheriff of Pitkin County (Aspen and surrounding area) since 1984. He was around in 1970 when the leader of the Freak Power Party, Hunter S. Thompson, made his bid for the title.
Thompson fought his campaign from the Jerome Bar, the oldest bar in Aspen where even now the Freak Power Party s election poster still has pride of place above the bar. It shows a giant sheriff s star enclosing the party s insignia a clenched fist with a thumb on both sides which later became the Gonzo insignia. Thompson s manifesto urged that the town s name be changed from Aspen to Fat City, in an attempt to prevent the whole valley from falling into the hands of property-speculators and greed-heads.
Once he was in office, Thompson promised, he would reserve a number of days in the week for psychedelic experiments . His opponent, Carroll Whitmire, had crew-cut hair, like all the all-American-boys. Thompson therefore decided to shave his head completely bald in order to be able to refer to Whitmire as my long-haired opponent in debate.
Remarkably, Thompson s high-octane campaign brought him to within 500 votes of victory. Mercifully, he returned to journalism, but remains active in local politics it is Thompson who is credited with being almost single-handedly responsible for the fact that the planned extension of the local airfield has been postponed for more than 25 years. Thompson quotes Dostoevsky on the subject: Democracy is the art of controlling your environment.
We have to have a decent sheriff, Thompson continues in the Tavern. For the environment. Environment is more than just grass. The Doc repeats that Braudis doesn t really belong in the law enforcement industry. When the Cold War ended and the Russians suddenly looked like big pussies and empty balloons, they had to create a new enemy. If not, the defence industry would go down. The defence industry was fun, right? Who would believe that the Russians are a threat? But the prison thing, it s an industry. The defence industry was the reason for the Cold War; the law enforcement industry is the reason for the war on crime. Dangerous. When budgets are cut, you never see law enforcement get cut. In this country more people are in jail than in any other country in the world. Soon everybody ll be in prison.
Braudis had said the same thing. The Gonzo cause for me is freedom from control, intellectual freedom. Enlightenment. Give somebody a little power and he will become a nazi. The United States are heading that way: the United States of Control.
On Tuesday morning, 7th November 1995, Pitkin County police officer Dan Glidden was not impressed by the intimidating attitude that driver Hunter S. Thompson appears to have picked up from his peacocks. At the junction of Cemetery Lane in the village he told Thompson to pull over. The Doc had been to a demonstration against expanding the airfield, had stayed on at the Double Diamond bar and set off for home in good spirits.
Glidden thought he was dealing with a drunken driver. According to him the automobile was weaving its way forward, at least six inches onto the wrong side of the road. After an on-the-spot breath-test he accuses Thompson of driving under the influence of alcohol. He gives him a ticket. Thompson would hear from him. There would be a court case.
The public hearings concerning Glidden s rigid behaviour took place recently in the Pitkin County Court House and within one week there was nothing left of the officer s previously shining reputation. He was said to have stopped Thompson without cause and to be engaged in a family feud with the Thompsons which was started in 1970 by his father Fred Glidden. Glidden was also accused of perjury. He was reduced from arresting officer to defendant by an extremely irritated Thompson and a dream team of, in total, five lawyers under the leadership of Gonzo lawyer Gerald Goldstein. They tore into his past and reputation like hyenas.
It turned out that while the young Dan was away fighting for his country in Vietnam in 1970, his father was waging a publicity hate-campaign against the candidate sheriff of the Freak Power Party, Hunter S. Thompson. That was when Dan developed his feelings of hatred towards Thompson, so the Dream Team stated. It was just a matter of time (25 years) before Glidden would make his move. Glidden was even in on a conspiracy purely to harass The Doc. To support this theory The Doc called in the assistance of his friend Paul Levine, owner of the Howling Wolf, who testified that a police officer in his bar said that the whole force hated Hunter to the core.
The final installment of this soap opera has been postponed till March this year. Thompson s top lawyer is too busy at the moment with a murder case, and that works out fine for the journalist.
The last time he was tried here was in 1990. Porno-producer and Playboy centerfold Gail Palmer-Slater accused him of sexual intimidation. In February of that year she went to see The Doc as many had done before her to ask for the film rights to Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. As an introduction she sent him a kinky fitness video, Shape Up For Sensational Sex and a hand-written note: Sex is a dirty business, but somebody s got to do it. We could have a real good time.
For his part Thompson stated that Palmer-Slater had asked for his help in setting up a mail-order sex-toys company. After a few drinks and clouds of coke (according to Palmer-Slater) she refused to get into the jacuzzi with Thompson, at which point he allegedly grabbed her breasts. Palmer-Slater filed a complaint and that was just what the district attorney was looking for, seizing this perfect opportunity to get at the outlaw journalist. He s a madman who s going to go off the rails one day and seriously injure somebody. This is our chance to stop him, the district attorney announced in the local press.
Five days after the incident, seven of the DA s staff turned Thompson s house inside out. The result was hardly worth it less than one gram of coke, 39 hits of acid, some marijuana, dynamite and a lot of blasting caps but on top of the charges against him it would have been enough to put The Doc away for a long time. However, from the moment that Gonzo lawyer Goldstein and his assistants entered the ring, the Palmer-Slater case turned completely upside down. Hordes of journalists and Doc-heads camped out outside the doors of the Pitkin County Court House. Just like Glidden s, Palmer-Slater s reputation was shot to pieces. Presenting Thompson s case as the one that went right to the heart of the right to privacy, his legal team won hands-down. Palmer-Slater suddenly dropped the charges and, due to lack of evidence, the case was dismissed.
As Thompson left the court building wearing his holster, arms raised in triumph, making the V for victory sign he was greeted warmly by a posse of scantily clad porn-stars, a gift from a number of rival porno-producers. They carried placards with texts such as: When the going gets weird, the weird GO TO JAIL! , paraphrasing Thompson himself who said: When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro . From the steps of the court house Thompson fired shots just above the heads of the crowd.
The whole affair cost The Doc $150,000 altogether, which he paid for with the aid of the Hunter S. Thompson Legal Defense Fund. Various Doc-heads made donations, feeling that the fund s advertisement text applied to all of them too: Beware. Today The Doctor, Tomorrow: You . A few months after the dismissal, Goldstein filed a damages claim for $22 million. That claim has not as yet been granted.
So what really happened on the night?
She came on to me, backed me into this corner right here, Thompson told a journalist from the Village Voice. The broad was a sloppy drunk, I mean drooling, reeling and bumping into things. Could I have hit her in the tit? I suppose so. But if I did, neither one of us noticed it at the time.
The Woody Creek Tavern seems to be filling up suddenly. Jimmy Ibbotson and his dog have come along. Thompson strokes the animal absent-mindedly over its scar, grins at Ibbotson and orders another drink.
Random House is putting out a book of letters, to be published I think this year, Thompson is explaining. To people way back, early. They go back a long time, from 1955, when I was some berserk kid. Nobody was prepared for the letters that I had. For no reason I saved them all. I didn t care much. Until my son and a bunch of strangers read my letters in front of me. Until 68, they were ordinary letters, after that I started to write politically. 7,000 pages were delivered to Random House. That was after the first cut. They have pictures at Random House, like this high, three, four feet. Maybe three or four volumes, I don t know yet. Insane.
The Duke turns to other matters, once more. He wants to fill the hash-pipe, but notices the sheriff. There s Bob. Shit. It s too much for the pipe.
The fuss is extraordinarily awkward, touching. As Braudis comes into the Tavern and does the rounds, shaking hands, Thompson slips past him out of the door. Braudis sees him from the corner of his eye but looks the other way. He knows better than anybody what he doesn t want to see: Thompson has lived up to his reputation faultlessly so far.
Thompson sits huddled in his jeep and smokes the pipe at his leisure, looking out at the wild boar with the yellow spectacles. Braudis glances out at the jeep, sees wisps of smoke coming out of the opened windows and says: Hunter has been in the booking room, but he never spent the night and I doubt that he ever will. There are some misconceptions about Hunter. He only drinks when he s awake, but he doesn t get drunk. I ve been there with him. In a three-hour-period I drink way more than he does. Over 24 hours he ll drink way more. He is a professional drinker but he never loses his equilibrium, he s always centred. He is a very intelligent man, doing what he is good at. Writing and drinking.
Thompson enjoys every inch of the road that takes him back to home ground: Owl Farm, his house in the hills. He drives flat out, braking at the last possible moment, using the verge as a continuation of the road. In short the style of driving he propagated in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Before we know it we ve passed through the gate to Owl Farm. Thompson summons us to stick to the rules and points to the battle-scarred gun-mount in front of the house. All around lie dozens of empty shells. On the vast lawn around the house a satellite dish lies abandoned where it blew off the roof. There is also a number of bullet riddled barrels.
Here the sportsman practices his famous shotgun art, of which he is the only exponent: shooting at posters and paintings, preferably representing people he hates. It all began when he ordered an enormous pile of J. Edgar Hoover posters and used them as targets, shortly after his arrival at Owl Farm. If it doesn t explode, it s not art, is a well known saying of his. Doc-heads will pay $10,000 for a shotgun piece. In the shed adjacent stands the Great Red Shark. The view is heavenly: mountains and valleys.
With ill-concealed pride Thompson shows us the way to the peacock pen: it s a glass partitioned outer room of his house, the floor covered in straw, and on this are two wooden cages. A few peacocks are woken from their lethargy, one even spreads its tail feathers. Home at last, The Doc shouts at them. Sleep tight.
Together with the ever-present Bubba we step into the house. Braudis can remember the time there was a note on the door saying, Good morning, I ve shut myself in the nuts and am unable to come to the door this time for reasons too strange to explain except in crude medical terminology. So therefore, stay away from this door until noon. Do not knock on this door or any other. Do not attempt any form of entry until noon. Thank you. Please wake me at two pm. Best wishes, Hunter S. Thompson.
Welcome to Owl Farm, Thompson says, once inside. He commences with a routine tour and the first thing we notice is a framed pair of gold-painted boxing gloves. According to the inscription they are the gloves Mohammed Ali wore in the fight for the World Heavyweight Championship against Joe Frazier on 8th March 1971 in Las Vegas. The Doc, who has interviewed Ali in typically uproarious circumstances for full details see The Great Shark Hunt is a big fan of The Champ, not least because, like Thompson, Cassius Clay was also born in Louisville.
The interior of Thompson s house is reminiscent of the style of the seventies: dark brown, bits and pieces everywhere, hippie-chic. Braudis settles on the sofa, switches on a wide screen tv and zaps straight into an NBA match. It s as if he lives here. Bubba: That s true, more or less. My second wife kicked me out. He takes a deep breath and says: You never know. We may get back together again, we may not. From that moment on, he only has eyes for the match.
In our efforts to keep up with Hunter we almost knock over the skeleton of a buffalo. A cloth is draped over it and a spear stuck into the middle. Next to that a small table with a twisted cactus upon which a wajang puppet is harpooned. Along the window, which looks out onto the peacocks is a row of LPs. Thompson always plays music when he s writing. Loud. Two enormous loudspeakers bear silent witness. The Doc wrote Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas on dexedrine, to the rhythm of the songs of J.J. Cale and The Rolling Stones Beggar s Banquet. Two locals, singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band s front man Jimmy Ibbotson, claim to have an agreement with Thompson to write a gigantic hit with him. But up till now it hasn t happened. When Buffett was on the Late Show with David Letterman he dragged it up. Hunter had recorded an interview on the show before Buffett, but undoubtedly for reasons too strange for words, the segment was never broadcast.
A side-room of about 25 square metres is an organised disaster area, a merger between a natural history museum and a sport school. From a dartboard Nixon s mug looks out, there s a Mickey Mouse shot through with bullet-holes, stuffed pheasants, a fox, another skeleton, an Indian headdress, an FBI cap, polo-gear, the head of a bison and, in amongst all this, The Doc s keep-fit apparatus. I am a sportsman, you know, he explains.
This is what you have been waiting for, the big moment, he announces. We are about to invade the kitchen. The crisis centre. It turns out to be a veritable junk shop filled with political paraphernalia, badges, convention stickers, the Stars & Stripes, bundles of papers piled high, folders and photographs of politicians. The walls are completely covered with newspaper cuttings, letters, congratulations on Thompson Day (18th July), a large film poster of a grinning Bill Murray with shotgun Murray played Thompson in the film Where The Buffalo Roam in 1980, with music by Neil Young and a series of photographs of a typewriter being given the shotgun treatment.
Thompson moves straight over to the spot where, hovering between despair and euphoria, he has spent decades of his life. Here on a stool in the corner between the sink and a raised wooden surface that passes for a breakfast bar in other households, he writes his masterpieces.
Get me a drink! he hollers. His glass is empty. Deborah Fuller appears from nowhere, 15 years his secretary, manager, caretaker and sounding-board, she manages his correspondence and attempts to keep his deadlines. She takes a couple of Molsons out of one of the two refrigerators. The larger of the two is filled completely with blue half-litre bottles.
When The Great Shark Hunt came out in 1979 The Doc was already a living legend. But then it seemed to go quiet at Owl Farm. The Doc missed a few deadlines and the story went around that he d abandoned the Gonzo cause, that he wasn t up to it any more. But with Generation Of Swine. Gonzo Papers Vol. 2: Tales Of Shame And Degradation In The 80s (1988) and Songs Of The Doomed. Gonzo Papers Vol.3: More Notes On The Death Of The American Dream (1990), Thompson showed that he was still keeping a watchful eye on his own backyard and the rest of America. And what he saw does not please him at all. As far as the eye can see, yuppies, greed, lies and deceit. It filled him with fear, and yes, loathing.
The Gonzo style is now back where it started. The tens of thousands of words he once needed to calm the war that was being waged in his head, have been decimated to core texts and drawings on fax paper. Just like the notes he sent to Pageant in 1970. Gonzo in its purest form. Beside him the fax rattles and spews continually. At the most impossible hours he files attacks and advice to the White House, his neighbours or to the brother of Ted Turner (CNN). His contacts are still good, his statements razor sharp. His latest book Better Than Sex: Confessions Of A Political Junkie, Gonzo Papers 4 (1994) is a collection of these faxes, many of which appeared in Rolling Stone and The San Francisco Examiner.
Suddenly he stands up from his seat. I need to fax to invite people. Do you realize that technically this year is the 25th anniversary of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas? The Modern Library of the Classic American Literature series did the book. We will have a big celebration. Kind of a big rumble. The guestlist for the party is gonna be a real problem. Who is into rock n roll? Stanley will be there, the one who gave me all the acid. And the desk clerk, no, the manager of the Mint Hotel that weekend. We need people like that. where the hell is everybody? He paces anxiously to and fro, possessed by the idea of getting all the major and minor characters from his works together for the ultimate Gonzo party in the Rockies.
Jack Nicholson will come, he lives around the corner; Keith Richards for sure, all the Stones should be there, even Brian Jones; Mohammed Ali and Kurt Cobain. And people nobody ever heard of. Nixon of all people, next to Cobain, that would be nice. You know, we may have a problem here, the deadlist may be longer than the guestlist. Let s not forget Jerry Garcia, Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac. And, of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Maybe I ll just set out a row of empty chairs, out of respect. Then Laurence Sterne (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, 1759) can come along too. Gonzo goes back a long way man.
Somewhat calmed down he retreats to his stool, next to the fax. Gonzo stems from a tradition of hundreds of years. It started in England, with Henry Fielding for instance, who wrote one of the first novels in the 17th century (The History Of Tom Jones, A Foundling). Writers like Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos and Henry Miller are all part of that tradition. Whether you name it Plato or Gonzo, it is journalism. Follow the story.
Read this. He lays out a passage from Better Than Sex in front of us: Nixon was so aggressively evil that he almost glowed at night. He gave no mercy and expected none. He was fun. I got along with him better than I do with Bill Clinton.
Clinton has no sense of humour and his wife is even worse, The Doc complains. The author seems to miss his principle enemy, as if when Nixon died a part of him died too. Richard Nixon was the real thing, and I will miss him for the hideous clarity that he brought to my understanding of American politics, he says. He brought out the best in me, all the way to the end, and for that I am grateful to him. He played in a league where Clinton will never be anything but a batboy. With Nixon s regime the death of the American Dream started. Right before my nose. You guys at the other end of the water have to understand that: I was right in the middle, in the belly of the beast.
Richard Nixon cast a long shadow over everything The Doc wrote. Thompson felt personally attacked by all the dirty tricks the thirty seventh president of the United States pulled. Nixon s paranoia became Thompson s. Nixon and his staff attacked the Gonzo cause on all fronts and Thompson had to fight back.
Hidden away on Owl Farm he spent more than 26 years at his most hated opponent s deathbed The Gonzo Papers read like one long stretched out obituary. When the man s final hour actually came Thompson saw all the rats crawl out of their holes one last time. He smoked them out.
Like Bob Dole. Dole wormed his way to the edge of Nixon s grave and in full view of all the cameras uttered such a shameless, selfserving eulogy, that the tears sprang into his own eyes. Thompson saw it and gargled with Dole s diarrhoea in his ultimate farewell to Dicky. He spat out one last total, deep and heartfelt explosion of fear and loathing. Get me the text. I wanna hear it. Deborah runs into the other room and comes back with a poster. It is the text of Thompson s obituary of Nixon, the single most quoted article in almost 30 years of Rolling Stone. Thompson presents it like a painting ready for its shotgun treatment. Read! he roars. Loud and clear.
We are being given the honour of reading his work out loud. Jimmy Buffet, Jimmy Ibbotson and Keith Richards went before us. If they re not here Deborah has to do it, or Bubba. Only when his texts are read out loud can he judge whether it s good or not. It s all to do with the rhythm of the sentences.
He settles down to listen carefully, pours himself another Chivas and says: This is all you have to know about political journalism. I can add nothing to it. Read slowly, so I can hear that funny accent of yours. I want to hear what it sounds like in Amsterdam. The reading commences.
Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together. Nixon laughed when I told him this. Don t worry, he said, I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you.
Hunter starts to clap at these words, as if the tension has fallen from his shoulders. Slow down, slow down, savour the words, feel the rhythm. I want to be sure that they understand me over there in Holland. He waves his arms, conducting us.
You don t even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit. He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.
Do you guys have enough for a story? Let me show you something. Here, you see? The Richard Nixon Library have put me on their black list. The Doc shows us the correspondence between Jann Wenner, publisher and founder of Rolling Stone and John Taylor, director of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace, situated in Yorba Linda, California. Wenner requests formal permission for an interview with Taylor to be conducted by Hunter S. Thompson. Taylor remembers the Nixon obituary. Having worked closely together with the man for 15 years, he refuses outright to meet Thompson. A visit to the library is in order, but shaking hands is out of the question. In his reply Taylor refers to himself as a sporadic Rolling Stone reader . . . I was in high school at the time, reading Rolling Stone and thinking it was cool because Hunter Thompson got to write dirty words. I got over that. Presumably, you have not.
In turn Wenner asked whether they still keep a black list. To which Taylor replied: Thompson s obit did not just contain strong criticism of President Nixon. He called Nixon a political monster , a bastard , an evil bastard , a swine of a man , a jabbering dupe , and scum . He compared him to Hitler. He wrote and you published . . . I do not have an enemies list .
For Taylor that was the end of the matter. But not for Thompson. He d like to visit the library and the adjacent Nixon family grave. It would do him good to walk over the ground under which his arch-enemy lay. Six feet deep. An empty landscape, the ground so poisoned that nothing will ever grow there.
Even today that bastard is still giving me a hard time, says Hunter S. Thompson. n