April 2019 Auction Ends Thursday, April 25th, 5pm Pacific
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 4/25/2019
Hunter S. Thompson letter signed ''HST'', dated 21 May 1961 from Big Sur. Writing to his friend Paul Semonin, letter reads in small part, ''Your recent salutation ('dear Pa') was somewhat ill-timed, since I picked it up upon our return from Tiajuana [sic], a place that all potential papas should know about. At any rate, to be greeted with a thing like that caused my mouth to twist in a strange way. / My financial situation, as a result of that trip, is also twisted in a strange way...Now that we have dealt with matters of the groin -- but we never really finish -- perhaps we should get on to the grease and grits of life...In Tiajuana [sic] I bought a switchblade knife for 70cents, one of the finest purchases I have made in many months...I think perhaps our doom and fate and special torture is to sit and watch everyone else go under -- and then to sit and see which of us will go down first...As far as your book is concerned, it sounds good -- good enough, in fact, that the only advice I can offer is to count on it falling through...My shallow experience is: when you count on things, they go boom -- and when you forget about them they sometimes work...Yes, the Big Sur thing was all lies. The Trib cut my last two paragraphs but they ran full steam in the Chi. Trib and I got letters from people asking me how to get jobs and house in Big Sur. Naturally I shit on them, as befits a writer of means...We are eating home-shot venison here and stalking the hills for a rumored 600 lb. wild boar that will feed us all for months...Yeah, [signed] HST''. He adds a large handwritten note, ''What happened to my negatives?'', referring to photo negatives that Thompson had sent Semonin of their road trip to California. Two page letter on a single sheet measures 8.5'' x 11''. Folds, uniform toning and dampstaining along edge, overall very good condition.
Hunter S. Thompson Letter Signed From 1961 -- Thompson Writes of His Girlfriend Getting an Abortion, ''...upon our return from Tiajuana, a place that all potential papas should know about...''
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