A Life in Letters

Hunter S. Thompson is a fictional character. Isn't he? He's always seemed that way to me. I mean, I saw Where the Buffalo Roam. I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels. It was all made up, right? You can't do a shopping list of narcotics and cover a sporting event, or spend a year living with the Hell's Angels and still be functional enough to write a book about them, can you? Not a book based on fact anyway, right? Well, if you read the letters of the guy who supposedly did all these things, letters the guy sent to his friends and even his own mother, not to mention famous celebrities and newspaper editors, you'd know, wouldn't you? I mean, you'd have at least some sense of what was fact and what was fantasy, right? Well, I've read the letters and I still think the guy is a fictional character.

It seems to me the point in reading a famous writer's correspondence is to see the real person, to open a window to his or her soul. Certainly that's what you get in reading the correspondence between Nabokov and Edmund Wilson, or the letters of Keats, or Rachel Carson. But with Hunter S. Thompson you her more of what you have in the novels and essays - outrageously bad behavior, brilliant humor, sarcasm, and a kind of bent intellectual patriotism. (And don't get me wrong, the letters are entertaining as hell, all 600 pages of them.) But it is still nearly impossible to know the man behind the letters.

Part of the reason for this is that the letters are part of Thompson's conscious literary ouput. From his early twenties on, Thompson has kept carbon copies of every letter he's ever written. And he's written a lot of letters - for this hefty volume, according to the preface, fifteen letters were left out for each letter included. They are not intended for his mother or hisfriends or for the bill collectors who constantly harassed him, they are for us. And that's what makes them frustrating.

Take this one dated August 28, 1958, which is addressed to his mother. It was written while Thompson was in the Air Force in Florida. Most of it details Thompson's rough relationship with the military and his efforts to get himself honorably discharged. Toward the end he fills his mother in on his social life:

As for other incidentals, my social life has been made far more pleasant by the acquisition of Xanadu (Thompson's nickname for his bachelor pad) and an attachment to a young lass named Sally Williams. The attachment has led to several rather strained and hectic situations - due to the fact that Sally is a Colonel's daughter and the mother of a four year old boy. If I get my discharge, she may come to stay with me for a while at Xanadu. It will definitely be different.

I can't imagine another young man of twenty-one, in 1958 no less, proudly telling his mother about his new playboy apartment and the swinging divorce he's been seeing, who happens to be a Colonel's daughter. It just seems kind of, I don't know, off. I mean, every young bachelor is goint to write this kind of letter to his old high school buddies, but to Mom? It's as though Thompson was precocious enough at twenty-one to know what his station would be in American letters and he's now in dress rehearsal for itk, only he forgets (or more likely chooses not) to take off his costume when he goes home. And while we're on the subject, what did mom have to say about all this? I'd love to read a letter or two from her, but her letters, sadly, are not included.

One of my favorite letters in the whole book is one Thompson wrote to the Ahanaeum Lierary Association at his old high school in 1957. Thompson was excommunicated from the association after being convicted of robbery while still in school. A few years later he was surprisingly reinstated, at which point Thompson wrote a letter of thanks. The first part of the letter seems very sincere, with Thompson heaping gratitude on those who voted him back in. (Douglas Brinkley, editor of The Proud Highway, indicates that Thompson truly did enjoy and respect his membership in Athenaeum.) Thompson writes, "Needless to say, I am deeply grateful to each and every one of you... and hope I will be able to thank you in person the next time I get home." But toward the end of the letter, for no apparent reason, Thompson begins refuting claims that might be made against him by a former schoolmate who he met up with in Panama City.

If it is implied that my conduct was anything but exemplary, that too will be an untruth. The fact of the matter is that Ethridge was thrown out of a respectable bar for using profane language and that Colgan was intent on destroying every known truth. Both posed as soldiers of fortune and barely missed being rolled forr all they were worth. Unfortunately, I became ill shortly after midnight and fell asleep; whereupon they robbed me of most of my money and otherwise treated me rudely.

The more Thompson tries to defentd himself, the more he implicates himself - does he expect that his pals from high school will believe that he, Hunter S. Thompson, fell asleep in the middle of a drinking orgy? To me the letter is a slap in the fact to the Atheneaum Literary Association - they've reinstated him because he's now an upstanding citrizen who's joind the Air Force, and he's showing them he's still a depraved pary animal. And yet his gratefulness for being reinstated contains not an ounce of sarcasm. So it's hard to get a handle on the letter's actual intent, other than to entertain us, the third pary readers.

The collection covers the years up until Thompson achieved his first big literary success with the publication of Hell's Angels, so the letters written during his days as an actual celebrity won't come until the second volume is published. But these letters are well worth reading precisely because they were written from a place of obscurity. They paint a wonderful picture of a starving writer, moving from place to place, falling in and out of love (the letters to his various girlfriends do actually sound sincere) and trying to break into publication by any means necessary. And what is truly amazing is Thompson's absolute confidence in himself, even in the bleakest of time. He read William Styron's first novel Lie Down in Darkness and immediately wrote Styron asking him to recommend a literary agent (which Styron did, amazingly). Thompson's confidence stretched to the point that many times he wrote to nespapers asking for jobs, and along with his request included caustic criticisms of the newspaper in question and journalism in general. Needless to say, jobs were hard to come by for him.

In the end you get a sense from Thompson that in almost everything he writes he's just kidding around. But the kidding around never seems to drop away completely, so you begin to wonder if that kidding voice is the real Thompson, a jester without morals or ethics whose only loyalty is to the joke. (I suppose this would make him the literary equivalent of Andy Kaufman). But if the letters (and therefore Thompson's life) do represent one of the world's great practical jokes, then what kind of person is it who chooses to completely hide himself behind a wall of humorous and outlandish behavior? It's just not something an intelligent, three-dimensional human would really do. Which brings me back to my original assertion: Hunter S. Thompson is a ficitonal character.

Back to the Capitola Book Cafe Home Page

---

©1995 Capitola Book Café
<bookcafe@cruzio.com>
last updated: November 1, 1998