January 2020 Auction Ends Thursday, January 30th, 5pm Pacific
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 1/30/2020
Sensational Hunter S. Thompson letter, written 11 March 1964, with content on ''Cassius X'', aka Muhammad Ali, his theory of the ''maverick'', the ''establishment'', Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Richard Nixon, President Johnson and Presidential politics in the United States, with Thompson revealing that he'd vote for ''Bobby Kennedy out of spite, but not much else'' after the death of John F. Kennedy. Thompson writes to his friend Paul Semonin, who lived in Ghana at the time, from the ''Owl House'', his home in Glen Ellen, California. Lengthy letter, whihc appeared in ''Proud Highway'', reads in part, ''Dear Doctor Strangelove: Your mail is increasingly incoherent...Your fear of Cassius X puzzles me? You never explained it. Granted, he is a creature of the syndicate, but so was Liston...And for shit's sake stop calling me a 'liberal.' I gave up calling you a Communist a long time ago, and the least you can do is return the favor. I might remind you that I now maintain an office at the Wall Street Journal...I am still writing for the White Negro press, alias The Reporter, and am considering a spot with the Saturday Evening Post...
You seem to be drifting further and further from mean reality. I sympathize with your general aims, but I think you have hooked up with the wrong crowd for the action. Your eagerness to pick a fight no longer interests me. I think you are talking to yourself for the sake of an echo. It has taken me a while to get a grip after my fat-headed success in L.A., but now I figure I am much closer to the front than you are. I have, in fact, infiltrated the Dow-Jones company, which none of us would ever have dreamed of doing, and have in the space of two weeks delivered a series of telling shocks...But you are over there trading back-slaps with people who never considered disagreeing with you. What you should do is get out and have a run or two at the establishment; it is a mean and dirty outfit, like going against the Packers when you are out of shape. I go from Indians to Negroes to Defense money to Cubans to the population pox -- and by jesus those bastards have a hand in everywhere. I have come to the point where I see no difference between functioning Fascism and functioning Captialism [sic], or, for that matter, functioning Communism.
Your whole theory has only one flaw -- you seem to have lost faith in the maverick, the man who can be convinced and thereby throw the switch on those both above and below him. He is a creation of this culture, the wise peasant, a man with a salary and enough leisure to ponder the alternatives, an enemy or an ally depending on what reaches him. But an essentially decent person. They beat hell out of Nixon here in California two years ago, and they are about to stomp Goldwater. The only thing they lack is something to vote for, instead of against. But Kennedy was killed, so now we sit in a limbo where the decent man has a variety of things to vote against, but nothing to vote for. As for me, I see no hope of taking any position in the coming campaign. Johnson is a punk, but look at the others. Punks to the last man. I'd vote for Bobby Kennedy out of spite, but not much else...''
With much more content, including Kwame Nkrumah, African politics, and taking his friend to task for not living in ''the dirty reality of the world we all have to live in once our scholarships run out.'' He continues, ''And when you push out this way, I mean to have a better bed that I showed you in Big Sur -- no meat hanging over it, and no blood dropping on the face...I'll send a Dylan record within a week or so. When are you coming back? And what for? Joan Baez is so far ahead of you that you'll be 40 before you catch up, and even then you'll have to learn to sing like a nightingale...HST'', with Thompson circling his initials. Two page letter on two sheets measures 8.5'' x 11''. Folds, otherwise near fine condition.
Hunter Thompson 1964 Letter on ''Cassius X'', JFK & More -- ''...Kennedy was killed, so now we sit in a limbo where the decent man has a variety of things to vote against, but nothing to vote for...''
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