- 224
Thompson, Hunter S.
Estimate
7,000 - 10,000 USD
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Description
- ink and paper
Archive of correspondence to Richard Elman, containing: Postcard TLS ("Hunter") with holograph additions, San Francisco, 27 February [1965]; ALS ("HST") on lined notebook paper, San Francisco, 3 March, 1965 ; TLS ("Hunter") 2pp. with holograph additions, San Francisco, 20 April 1965; TLS ("HST") 2pp. San Francisco, 11 May 1965; TLS ("Hunter") 2pp. with holograph additions, San Francisco, 21 May 1965; TLS ("HST") 1p. with holograph correction, San Francisco, 22 May 1965; few crease folds to "Wahlen & McCartt letterhead stationery, corner torn from notebook leaf not affecting text; Postcard ALS ("Whitey"), San Francisco, [postmarked 9 August 1966]; Postcard typed ("Mr. Greaseball"), San Francisco, 30 September [1965]; Postcard ALS ("H"), Woody Creek, Colorado, 29 March [1967]. Together 9 items.
"All my life my heart has sought a thing I cannot name." A philiosophical Hunter Thompson in the months before his first book, on Lyndon Johnson, struggling to be published and the infamous Hell's Angels.
Critic and author Richard Elman was instrumental in the birth of Thompson's career (though he later professed to regret it). The introduction through a mutual friend led Thompson to take Elman on a hair-raising Harley ride around Central Park in 1964. Over a drink afterwards, Thompson showed Elman pages from his experiences with the already notorious Bay Area motrocycle club, The Hell's Angels, in the hope that Elman's connections could help him find a publisher. Elman was suitably impressed with the subject and style (few but Thompson would imagine allowing the bikers into their home for instance, the 318 Parnassus St. he gives as an address here) and passed copies onto his friend Carey McWilliams at The Nation. (At the early point of this correspondence, Thompson first mentions in passing "a nervous funk for McWilliams to send me $100 for that motorcycle piece.") The magazine finally published Thompson's extreme first-person journalism in the 17 May 1965 issue leading to a contract with Random House and his first "non-fiction novel" Hell's Angels issued the following year. While awaiting publication, Thompson relates to Elman the usual writer's woes of rent overdue, rejection and general ennui, but gives advice on the latter "when I get badly screwed up over something I get a bottle of good booze and some ice and one of my three or four favorite novels, then retreat to my room and read it off. ..."
The later scathing political commentary that Thompson became famous for is present ("As for Lyndon... I wrote him more than a month ago, calling him a crazy vicious old man... the letter was full of profane howls and the general tone was that of a man ready to give up his citizenship.") but more serious are details in response to Elman's queries on the Angels. He describes how some are employed ("menial-mechanical-transient type stuff") and how only in "S.F." would a motorcycle cop go to a gang to customize his bike.
His tale of the Angels roughing up an obnoxious, Jaguar XKE-driving drunk who knocked over one of their cycles elicits almost an excuse from the author on their behalf, an example of the rather non-judgmental tone that helped lead to his book's success, "As I see it, the H.A. are definitely Physically mean, but not Gut Mean. There is nothing neurotic or twisted about their attitudes. Except they deal in colorful, violent extremes. (Of course I say this now and within a few days I might be stomped by the bastards...)" Indeed, Thompson was stomped eventually, well after the book's publication, for calling an Angel out as a wife beater.
Elman's support of Thompson didn't end with his referral to his eventual publisher, he gave a very positive review to the book in The New Republic calling it "a Rimbaud delirium of spirit to which of course only the rarest geniuses can come close."
Material relating to Thompson's early career, particularly of such depth, is rare on the market. All unpublished, not in The Fear and Loathing Letters, Volume I: The Proud Highway.
"All my life my heart has sought a thing I cannot name." A philiosophical Hunter Thompson in the months before his first book, on Lyndon Johnson, struggling to be published and the infamous Hell's Angels.
Critic and author Richard Elman was instrumental in the birth of Thompson's career (though he later professed to regret it). The introduction through a mutual friend led Thompson to take Elman on a hair-raising Harley ride around Central Park in 1964. Over a drink afterwards, Thompson showed Elman pages from his experiences with the already notorious Bay Area motrocycle club, The Hell's Angels, in the hope that Elman's connections could help him find a publisher. Elman was suitably impressed with the subject and style (few but Thompson would imagine allowing the bikers into their home for instance, the 318 Parnassus St. he gives as an address here) and passed copies onto his friend Carey McWilliams at The Nation. (At the early point of this correspondence, Thompson first mentions in passing "a nervous funk for McWilliams to send me $100 for that motorcycle piece.") The magazine finally published Thompson's extreme first-person journalism in the 17 May 1965 issue leading to a contract with Random House and his first "non-fiction novel" Hell's Angels issued the following year. While awaiting publication, Thompson relates to Elman the usual writer's woes of rent overdue, rejection and general ennui, but gives advice on the latter "when I get badly screwed up over something I get a bottle of good booze and some ice and one of my three or four favorite novels, then retreat to my room and read it off. ..."
The later scathing political commentary that Thompson became famous for is present ("As for Lyndon... I wrote him more than a month ago, calling him a crazy vicious old man... the letter was full of profane howls and the general tone was that of a man ready to give up his citizenship.") but more serious are details in response to Elman's queries on the Angels. He describes how some are employed ("menial-mechanical-transient type stuff") and how only in "S.F." would a motorcycle cop go to a gang to customize his bike.
His tale of the Angels roughing up an obnoxious, Jaguar XKE-driving drunk who knocked over one of their cycles elicits almost an excuse from the author on their behalf, an example of the rather non-judgmental tone that helped lead to his book's success, "As I see it, the H.A. are definitely Physically mean, but not Gut Mean. There is nothing neurotic or twisted about their attitudes. Except they deal in colorful, violent extremes. (Of course I say this now and within a few days I might be stomped by the bastards...)" Indeed, Thompson was stomped eventually, well after the book's publication, for calling an Angel out as a wife beater.
Elman's support of Thompson didn't end with his referral to his eventual publisher, he gave a very positive review to the book in The New Republic calling it "a Rimbaud delirium of spirit to which of course only the rarest geniuses can come close."
Material relating to Thompson's early career, particularly of such depth, is rare on the market. All unpublished, not in The Fear and Loathing Letters, Volume I: The Proud Highway.
Literature
See Elman, Name Dropping (Albany, 1998), pp. 133-135