January 2020 Auction Ends Thursday, January 30th, 5pm Pacific
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 1/30/2020
Hunter S. Thompson typed letter signed ''HST'' in type, with Thompson circling his initials and also making a few hand-edits. Dated April 7 (1964), Thompson writes to his friend Paul Semonin from Glen Ellen, California, with interesting content on a ''race war'', Malcolm X, his own racism, journalism, and his ten-day old son. Letter, which appeared in ''Proud Highway'', reads in part, ''...the only way to attempt journalism is to assume you know nothing at the start, and then only write what you find evidence to support -- along with the evidence, so neither the editor nor the reader is forced to take your word for it...''
Thompson was referencing an article Semonin wrote on the Civil Rights movement, and continues, ''...it should be interesting to toss your ideas around in the SF [San Francisco] Freedom Movement and see what happens. I am not too worried about being rejected for my whiteness, although I do in all truth think the idea of a Negro Nationalist party in this country is madness, because there are too many people in this country just waiting for an excuse to act like the racists they are. Hell, I have a strain of it myself, and the only thing that has brought me around this far is the fact that every time I've seen a black-white confrontation I've had to admit the negroes were Right. Once it turns into power-politics the negro loses his leverage on my conscience. Malcomn [sic] X amuses me and I bear him no malice at this time, but when he starts carrying a gun and talking about blowing my head off, there the dialogue ends. If this is what you see in the making, I think we are all in for a bad time. Malcom [X] X is a black Goldwater, and apparently just as dense.
Anyway, I not have a son named Juan. Ten days old. Not a cent in the house and no cents coming in. I am seriously considering work as a laborer...Beyond that, I am deep in the grip of of [sic] a professional collapse that worries me to the extent that I cannot do any work to cure it. A failure of concentration, as it were, and a consequent plunge into debt and desperation. It has been going on ever since I got back from SA [South America], and the cure is nowwhere [sic] to be seen. That is the dullness on my knife, and not any lack of Marxist theory books. Frankly, I would welcome a race war, just to put a bit of zip in things. I am seriously considering a move to L.A. (Los Angeles)...Your Dylan records will come when my cheques arrive. Yeah. I am immobile, incoherent and not without a sense of the waters closing over my head. In short, I am down and out. HST''.
Single page letter measures 8.5'' x 11''. Folds, else near fine. Accompanied by an autograph letter signed by Thompson's wife, Sandy Conklin Thompson, announcing the birth of their son, Juan Fitzgerald Thompson, and expressing her and Hunter Thompson's love for him.
Hunter S. Thompson Letter From 1964 Regarding Politics, Racism & the Birth of His Son -- ''...Malcom [sic] X is a black Goldwater, and apparently just as dense...I now have a son named Juan...''
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