Description: Epic three-page typed letter by Hunter S. Thompson, with numerous handwritten comments, edits and annotations throughout, referencing suicide ("the only logical human act"), Hitler ("a hero until he f*ed up"), Eisenhower, President Johnson, Ronald Reagan, Nixon, Marx, anarchists, F. Scott Fitzgerald and much more. Writing from his home at 318 Parnassus Street in San Francisco, Thompson writes to his childhood friend Paul Semonin on 15 November 1964. Letter was published in "Proud Highway", although the handwritten portions were excluded, with some of those changing the context of Thompson's thoughts. Letter reads in part, "…Since I always read my mail at breakfast I can never afford to take it very seriously -- like the newspapers -- until I am fully awake later in the day or even later in the week…I am now prepared to read your tome again -- in hopes of finding some thread of muscle or continuity…something to indicate you have not been flipped by a rising wave of spleen. I said that. Yeah, I know. Plagarism. Like Baldwin using your phoney Marx quote and not crediting marx. As I recall, he used it to describe Fitzgerald. The idea is pure bullshit, in any case, because it makes suicide the only logical human act. Or, shooting from another angle: who decides when a 'situation' requires illusions? who originates the demand to renounce them? And what, for that matter, is an illusion? I know you feel qualified on all these counts, but you might have trouble mounting a true consensus without the help of a loaded pistol…" Thompson then goes into detail about the political climate in Bolivia, describing Bolivian labor leader Juan Lechin: "He then emerged, looking and smelling somewhat like Ronald Reagan, and mingled with the mob like an oily Lyndon Johnson. After waiting with the other peasants for an hour and a half, I felt a sense of real gratitude when the prick finally deigned to speak with us. This man makes Nixon seem on par with Pope John." He then writes favorably about anarchy, "…I am at home with anarchists anywhere. A true anarchist is the only man who can afford to relax in this world; his vision is clear and true, his aims are simple, and his appetites are tiny compared to the various packs of jackals who make up the opposition. His only problem is that he can't afford to be right, so most anarchists end up lying in the name of some 'necessary evil.' The most important political breakthrough of the past five centuries will come when some desperate half-mad truth-seeker learns how to justify his instinct to anarchy. It has to come, because it's the only possible reconciliation between a man's best instincts and his worst realities." Thompson then discusses the political climate in Chile before writing, "The press has turned itself to Johnson's interests -- pocketbook issues, as it were. Things like excise taxes on lipstick, and medicare. Johnson doesn't know Chile from chili, and doesn't give a damn either. I think we are in for the final slide; eight years of it, unless he dies. [handwritten] And maybe even then. That 'brain of your manhood'' is a good line; where did you steal it?…I look forward to talking to you on whatever distant day you finally realize you were put down in this muck for a very short time, and only once, and that nobody -- despite the advertisements -- has whipped up the dish you know you want to taste. I don't imagine you're far from the time when you'll begin to get the fear that you'll die hungry, but perhaps right now between Mr. Marx and Mr. Ford they are still teasing your taste buds, and you don't know it yet. You are the Gatsby of the Marxist Left, old sport; he had this silk shirts and you have Tomorrow's Gospel, and I hope we're still able to talk like human beings when you find out that his Green Light was a hell of a lot more than a slack rich girl from Louisville. Your idea that maybe next year I'll be wise enough to absorb the wisdom of your friends is so petulant and patronizing that I don't see any sense in talking about it. I'd enclose Mailer's piece on the GOP convention -- primarily for his commends on Baldwin -- but the postage would be too much and you'd probably forget who sent it anyway. In some small way Mailer has come back from the dead. The depth and decency of his dispair [sic] makes Baldwin sound like a crotchety fag reading somebody else's poetry… just for your own information, I get my irony and two-fistedness from a general shortness of cash, my apocalyptic vision from booze and desperate naivete, and my sense of tragedy from Nancy Fitzhugh [one of Thompson's ex-girlfriends, a "doomed lover" from Louisville]. And my money -- like yours -- comes from people who don't take me seriously… You ask me what I mean when I say all systems are against me. I mean exactly that. Any organization is necessarily a pyramid -- the few controlling the many -- and every system requires an organization, much as you might hate to admit it…You call yourself an 'optimist,' but everything you say is hung with the grey drapery of what strikes me as a vengeful and masochistic pessimism. My feeling is that a man is born with decent instincts (and f* this idea of original sin) which are steadily pressured and perverted every day of his life until he is either driven mad or turns into a vicious insensitive monster. The trick is to keep your feet in the shitrain, and any man who can do that deserves whatever ego he has left. I agree with you entirely that the U.S. is a root-rotten structure, menaced from without by justified resentment and butressed [sic] from within by moneyed fear… Your bullshit about 'who is the enemy in SF' makes me wonder, and your bloated rhetoric makes mine seem like cold hard logic. 'The enemy,' the f*ing silly enemy, is the same right here as he is over there. The enemy is any man who is willing to take the necessary steps to protect his own [handwritten] short-term interests -- now or later, often never admitting it even to himself, rarely understanding his own implications, and always a little too human for any mortal censure except in the name of fate or expediency. Hitler was a hero until he f*ed up. So was Kruschev [sic]. And good old Ike was such a hero, for two terms, that he was finally permitted to lay a golden egg, named Nixon, who came very near being king…" Thompson then handwrites several sentences, concluding with the humorous line, "do you worry about being so predictable? (whoops)". Three page letter on three separate sheets measures 8.5" x 11". Near fine condition.PAYMENTSWe accept PayPal and Credit cards via Paypal. Please provide a daytime phone number to be used in case of any shipping difficulties. 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Location: Los Angeles, California
End Time: 2024-01-16T18:42:59.000Z
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