So there is no rational way to explain, now, just how strange and profoundly unsettled I feel at the prospect of living to be forty years old—under any circumstances; but certainly not with a wife, a son, my own valley/ fortress in the Rockies, and the genuinely rotten task of lashing together a book of my own writings….
Which is weird, folks, so try to bear with me. I might have some trouble making a case for the bedrock-strangeness of things like having a home and a family and somehow managing to live past the age of thirty…. Because a lot of people have done those things and survived a lot longer than I have, for good or ill; but the factor that queers my equation is the one about living ten years longer than anybody would have bet on, in a free-falling high-speed limbo I was never prepared for, and to look back on it now and realize that I got paid real money all that time for just wandering around in the world and writing about whatever got in my way…. And now to have to sit down here in this goddamn soundproof dungeon that I built for myself 8000 feet above sea-level, and labor through pounds and pounds and pounds of my own “works,” trying to figure out which pound or two should go into The Book, a huge tome with my own picture on both front and back covers….
Well, this almost-perfect vision of Hell on Earth is my present to those knee-crawling scumbags at Time magazine, where I once had a job and was considered a Promising Young Man. But that was a long time ago—and when they found out what I really was, they fired me.
Right: “Hit the bricks, fella, you’re not our type….” And now they refuse to admit it. I have a letter from the Time personnel department—addressed to the editors of Playboy (who inquired)—saying I was a wonderful person and did my work well…. Which bothers me: First, because it’s a flat-out lie, and Second, because I had to work very hard to get fired from Time, and the fact that I finally succeeded remains a point of personal pride, especially when I think what might have become of me if I’d failed.
We all have our private nightmares, and that is one of mine: That I might still be working for Time—still robbing the company of everything I could carry out of the building; still grappling with half-naked, half-drunk Vassar girls on [managing editor] Henry Grunwald’s leather couch when we had to work late on deadline nights; and still telling myself that “next week” I’d go out and find some kind of work I didn’t have to apologize for…. The man who hired me said I was an “editorial trainee,” but after a week on the job I understood that I was really a Copyboy, and the only “editorial training” I got on the job was seeing what happened to the “articles” I carried from the writers’ cubicles to the editors’ cubicles, and then back again to the writers.
The “editing” was often so massive and humiliating that I felt personally embarrassed when I had to take it back to the writers—because I knew that they knew that I’d read the stuff coming and going; and I still remember the glazed look in the eyes of good writers like John McPhee and John Skow when I had to bring that butchered copy back to them.
Ah … but what the hell? Some of us survived, and in retrospect I see my year at Time as a sort of personal introduction to Applied or maybe Reversed Darwinism, and on the whole it was not a bad gig. In addition to subsidizing my first year of work/life in the Big City—living in the Village, beginning a first novel and running amok in every conceivable direction—my job at Time also forced me into daily confrontation with the world of big-time, “prestige” journalism that I soon understood was not what I wanted to be a success at, in this life … and that is a very valuable thing to be sure of, at the age of twenty-one.
So I am grateful to Time Inc. for that, if nothing else. They gave me shelter, money, time to think, and a whole rainbow of Manhattan-style fringe-benefits at a time in my life when those things were all I really needed. There were also a few lasting friendships—including George Love, the long-suffering Production Supervisor who felt far worse about firing me than I felt about being fired; and Tom Vanderschmidt, now an editor of Sports Illustrated, whose ill-fated idea of sending me to Las Vegas to cover the “Mint 400” resulted in total disaster for Tom and the magazine; but for me it was an accidental ticket on one of the most bizarre roller-coaster rides in twentieth-century journalism.
What began as a $250 assignment to write a photo-caption for Sports Illustrated ended some two years later as a book titled Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas—which, despite a long history of financial failure on all fronts, remains my personal favorite among all the things I’ve written. And it is still the lonely cornerstone of everything that has since become genuinely and puzzlingly infamous as “Gonzo Journalism.”
Indeed … But that is too long a leap for me to make right now—in print or any other way. My fall from grace that began with a pink slip from Time so long ago that it seems like another lifetime was violently accelerated in the summer of 1976 when Time devoted a whole page to a harsh and hysterical assault on me and everything I might or might not stand for—written, as it were, by one of those same empty-eyed hacks30 whose cubicle used to be one of my regular pick-up and dump-off points when I was making my daily rounds as a Time copyboy.
There is probably some kind of weird and perhaps even “poetic” justice in a thing like that—but the logic escapes me right now, and I don’t have the time to brood on it; except maybe to fall back on that old and usually accurate piece of folk-wisdom about “knowing a man by his enemies.” Which gives me a definite sense of inner peace and public satisfaction, because the three names that have hovered near the top of my own “enemies list” for the past fifteen years are Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and Time magazine. I have dealt with them all, at close range, and my only regret is that I stomped too softly on the bastards….
The Fear and Loathing in America
Honor Roll
Oscar Acosta
Muhammad Ali
Bob Arum
Tom Beach
Anita Bejmuk
Tom Benton
Sandy Berger
Ed Bradley
Doug Brinkley
David Broder
Pat Buchanan
Jane Buffett
Pat Caddell
Jimmy Carter
John Clancy
Tim Crouse
Louisa Davidson
Morris Dees
Bill Dixon
Donna Dowling
Bob Dylan
Wayne Ewing
Tim Ferris
Flor Flores
Jim Flug
Deborah Fuller
The Gideon Society
Gayle Golding
Gerald Goldstein
Richard Goodwin
Gary Hart
Warren Hinckle
John Holum
Abe Hutt
Doris Kearns
Bobby Kennedy
Lucy Langford
Annie Leibovitz
Frank Mankiewicz
Herbie Mann
Eugene McCarthy
George McGovern
Steve Messina
Lynn Nesbit
Heidi Opheim
P. J. O’Rourke
Tara Parsons
Beth Pearson
George Plimpton
Jeff Posternak
John Prine
Bonnie Raitt
Keith Richards
Curtis Robinson
David Rosenthal
Marysue Rucci
Shelby Sadler
Barbara Shailor
Jim Silberman
Grace Slick
Mike Solheim
Ralph Steadman
George Stranahan
Keith Stroup
George Tobia
Carl Wagner
John Walsh
Jann Wenner
Erica Whittington
Tom Wolfe
Andrew Wylie
Chronological List of Letters
1968
1
Owl Farm—Winter of ’68
5
January 3
To U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy
11
January 3
To Gerald Walker, The New York Times
12
January 5
To Virginia Thompson
14
January 12
To Bernard Shir-Cliff, Ballantine Books
15
January 13
To Robert Craig
17
January 13
18
January 15
To Kelly Varner
18
January 15
To Gerald Walker, The New York Times
20
January 20
To Carey McWilliams, The Nation
20
January 29
To Jim Silberman, Random House
22
January 29
To the Alaska Sleeping Bag Co.
26
January 30
To the Overseas Press Club
27
January 31
To Sue Grafton
27
January 31
From Oscar Acosta
29
February 1
To Dorothy Davidson, American Civil Liberties Union
32
February 5
To Charles Kuralt, CBS News
33
February 8
To Bill, Aspen dentist
34
February 8
To the Alaska Sleeping Bag Co.
34
February 9
To Oscar Acosta
35
February 13
To Juan Thompson
37
February 20
From Oscar Acosta
38
February 20
To Bob Semple, The New York Times
41
February 22
To Virginia Thompson
41
February 23
To Sue Grafton
42
February 23
To Oscar Acosta
43
February 26
To Tom Wolfe
43
March 3
To Jim Silberman, Random House
44
March 9
To the Editor, Aspen Times and Aspen News
45
March 25
To Bernard Shir-Cliff, Ballantine Books
46
March 26
To Oscar Acosta
47
March 28
To Ted Sorensen
48
April 3
To Jim Thompson
50
April 6
From Oscar Acosta
52
April 14
To Karen Sampson
53
April 21
To Tom Wolfe
54
April 21
To Larry Shultz
55
April 22
To Oscar Acosta
55
April 24
To Selma Shapiro, Random House
57
April 26
To Bernard Shir-Cliff, Ballantine Books
59
April 29
To Rust Hills, Esquire
60
April 30
To Bud Palmer, KREX-TV
61
May 7
To Jim Bellows, Los Angeles Times
63
May 8
To Virginia Thompson
66
May 9
To Charles Kuralt, CBS News
68
May 10
To Jim Silberman, Random House
69
May 10
From Carol Hoffman
72
May 17
To Stewart Udall, U.S. Secretary of the Interior
73
May 17
To Robert Bone
75
May 20
To Davison Thompson
77
May 24
To Robert Craig
78
May 24
To Jim Bellows, Los Angeles Times
82
May 30
To Jim Thompson
83
May 31
To Carol Hoffman
84
June 6
From Oscar Acosta
85
June 8
To Carol Hoffman
88
June 8
To Margaret Harrell, Random House
89
June 9
To Jim Silberman, Random House
90
June 10
To Nick Ruwe, Nixon Presidential Campaign
93
June 17
To Oscar Acosta
96
June 20
To Charles Kuralt, CBS News
96
June 20
To Jim Silberman, Random House
97
June 20
To Bill Cardoso, The Boston Globe
99
July 7
To Jim Silberman, Random House
100
July 15
To Lynn Nesbit
103
July 19
To Jim Silberman, Random House
109
July 22
From Oscar Acosta
111
August
Chicago—Summer of ’68
112
September 3
To Jim Silberman, Random House
119
September 4
To Warren Hinckle, Ramparts
120
September 9
To Lynn Nesbit
121
September 10
To Selma Shapiro, Random House
123
September 10
To Allard K. Lowenstein
125
September 22
To U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff
127
September 24
To Bud Palmer, General Manager, KREX-TV
128
September 25
To Hughes Rudd, CBS News
129
October 3
To Lawrence Turman, 20th Century Fox
October 16
To Don Erickson, Esquire
135
October 16
To Davison Thompson
136
October 18
To Jane Flint
138
October 18
To Hughes Rudd, CBS News
139
October 21
To Virginia Thompson
141
October 26
To Tom Wolfe
142
November 17
To George Kimball
143
November 17
To Maurice Girodias, Olympia Press
144
November 18
To Ralph Ginzburg, Fact
145
November 26
To the Federal Communications Commission
146
December 16
To Lynn Nesbit
146
December 20
To the General Manager, Dynaco, Inc.
147
December 28
To Perian and Gleason, U.S. Senate
148
December 28
To William J. Kennedy
149
1969
151
January 3
To Oscar Acosta
155
January 17
To the Editor, Aspen Times
157
January 33 [sic]
To Lynne Strugnell
159
February 11
To Jim Silberman, Random House
16
0
February 25
To Hiram Anderson, Edwards Air Force Base
162
March 1
To Jim Silberman, Random House
163
March 17
To Jim Silberman, Random House
163
March 24
To Carey McWilliams, The Nation
164
March 25
To Jim Silberman, Random House
165
April 12
To the Cherokee Institute
166
April 13
To Oscar Acosta
167
April 15
To Jim Silberman, Random House
168
April 17
To Bernard Shir-Cliff, Ballantine Books
169
April 21
To Peter Collier, Ramparts
170
April 25
To Davison Thompson
172
April 27
To Virginia Thompson
173
May 7
To William Murray
174
May 11
To Hughes Rudd, CBS News
175
May 13
To John Wilcock, Los Angeles Free Press
176
May 14
To Bernard Shir-Cliff, Ballantine Books