"A Healthy Contempt for Journalism as a Profession"

I believe my first introduction to the work of the late Hunter S. Thompson came via a dog-eared paperback copy of his perennial classic, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” which was handed to me by my grade school chum Walter just prior to my departure on a three-week bicycle trek across the verdant expanse of Massachusetts. Walt put the book in my hand as if he was handing me a loaded weapon (which, in a way, he sorta was) with a look on his face that seemed to say, “you’re finally ready!” For some people, it was their first viewing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” For others, it was the first few amplified barre chords off The Ramones. For Walter (and millions like him), it was “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

I’m actually not as “gonzo” about Thompson’s writing (sorry) as some others. I loved “Fear & Loathing…” and his book on the Hell’s Angels, but I can’t say I’ve read too much of his stuff beyond that. But I know people who can recite chapter & verse of Thompson’s thorny prose and have lovingly-detailed tattoos of Ralph Steadman’s iconic illustrations for “Fear & Loathing.” For all his myriad eccentricities, Thompson commands – even from the grave – an army of acolytes.

In any case, my good friend and former colleague “Hot Johnny” Flowers has been following my vocational trajectory of late and sent along something that he thought might put a bit of a spring in my step. Composed sometime prior to his elevation to a veritable deity of counterculture, check out this cover letter Hunter S. Thompson penned and sent for a newspaper gig in 1958. As my dad noted, it’s “not exactly the kind of pitch that would work today, however, is it?”

Comments

[kemp]

perhaps you and I should speak one day re: HST's time in Louisville growing up with Kemp Sr.

[jon abbey]

do you know he worked on the copy desk at Time as a young 'un? from his Wikipedia page:

"During this time he worked briefly for Time, as a copy boy for $51 a week. While working, he used a typewriter to copy F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms in order to learn about the writing styles of the authors. In 1959, Time fired him for insubordination."

[Tim]

Hi Alex,

I was never a Thompson fan beyond 'Las Vegas' either, but 'The Proud Highway' his collected letters from I think his late teens to the finish of 'Hell's Angels' is well worth reading. Too bad the drugs and the belief in his own legend did him in . . . and no, I don't think there'd be much place for a guy like him in today's newspaper world.

I wonder how he'd gotten along at the Vancouver Sun? Or late 50's Vancouver? I lived there in the early 80's and it was still a dour, oh so British place. The city of which Malcolm Lowry (of 'Under the Volcano' fame) wrote 'prick the skin of the inhabitants and the Union Jack flows out instead of bllood'.

T.