May 2019 Auction Ends Thursday, May 30th, 5pm Pacific
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/30/2019
Epic typed letter signed by Hunter S. Thompson, spanning four pages with excerpted parts published in "Proud Highway". Thompson writes to Paul Semonin on 21 January 1962 from New York City, just after leaving Louisville, Kentucky where he worked on "Rum Diary".
Full of creative insights, revealing Thompson's unique way of viewing society, letter reads in small part, "Dear Bigwind -- Your last letter, as you must realize in retrospect, contained a lot more smoke than fire. Your last few letters, for that matter, have been extremely wordy without saying much of anything. Although I still have a great deal of confidence in you, I would feel less than honest if I failed to warn you against the danger of taking yourself too seriously. It can do a man in. Especially when it comes to dealing with a watchdog like me, who is armed with other, earlier, sharper, less inflated letters from a man who once saw the world through the quick mean eyes of a sketchmaster…the tone of that letter by itself was enough to put me off of all things European…You must be playing a hell of a lot of bridge over there. No wonder you want to come home. Wherever in hell that is. But you'll have to pardon me for not having the faintest idea what the fuck a trump card is……except that it sounds big and bad……
I, of course, am in New York, the homeland of the uprooted. America's marketplace. And no one with a grain of sense would go to a public market to seek a place to live. Except the sick, and the tortured, and those who think that everything you see in a market was growed there. Nothing grows in a market except the wads of those who buy and sell. No greenery. For that, you move out, and on, find a bit of space.
For that, I propose to move in, to the biggest outest place I can find on the map -- South America. Yeah. I sense a massive grapple there, a tree unfelled, a fucking giant as it were, and when it falls there will be enough noise to shake even Noel Coward out of his seat at the UN. (Think) Lift him like an overripe toadstool with no weight at all and the consistency of silly putty. Ziff. No more.
I see the last frontier down there -- the last decent frontier anyway. Granting that Africa may be another, I feel a real difference in the way a man could deal with it. Nothing less than a .44 Magnum in Africa and don't even worry about the language barrier. Who needs it? Let those crazy niggers cut up a few more people and toss the pieces to a few more crowds and I'll be ready to join just about any team that wants to go in after them. Somewhere along the line almost any human can go past the point where he can expect the right to anything except a big slug in the belly and a quick crowded grave.
Seems funny saying that and listening to Leadbelly at the same time. Another nigger singing about 'Mean Ole Frisco.' Ah, we have branded ourselves with those singing niggers and their ghosts will outlive us all. Nonetheless, we are born in that shadow and not without a lot of good things too, so I'd like to think it balances out. And it will, but not if we stay in the market or anywhere near it…
Why don't you try Russia? That would be a real place to know. Who the shit cares whether Englland [sic] sinks or swims? Or France or Spain or Italy, for that matter. If they make it at all, it will be like a big housing project in the middle of a bigger and meaner city. Germany, of course, still retains the power and the ironical position to do us all in. How this came to be will remain one of the great curiosities of our history. If they get the bomb they could be at least as dangerous as the red chinks with the same weapon. May god forgive the man who signs it over to them. And somebody will…
As for other Louisville notes. I finished the book once and got so depressed by it that I have not been able to work on it since. Not that it is busted -- or that I am about to be, as you reckoned -- but that I am just becoming aware that a man must literally squeeze his own balls to write a good book. Squeeze till it hurts and then some, because, despite your kind remarks -- and I appreciated them -- the half book I showed you was not worth much. It was cluttered and slow and loose and trite and temporal and not nearly as big and burly a thing as I set out to write -- and that I am setting out once again to write. I hope to finish it before leaving for the South. Maybe I will. If not, I probably will never finish it…
Davison [Thompson's younger brother] was good. I gave him a shotgun for Christmas and after that he did nothing but shoot. Now he is a nut. Mac [John Macauley Smith] was ok…I suspect him of a very inoffensive type of dilletantism that sometimes makes me nervous…he is missing something that [Donald] Cooke very definitely has -- a kind of gutsy desperation at the very bottom of his soul. A man can sympathize with that and never mention it at all. A great wanting for something big and rumored to be just around the corner or just over the horizon or someplace that not many people have gone. You know -- 'My heart has followed all my days, something I cannot name'… I doubt that a man has to go to Europe, or anywhere, for that matter, to understand the important things about this country. Maybe he has to go to Europe to be prodded into articulating them, or before they seem worth talking about, but I think we have enough space and perspective over here so a man can step off into a corner and get a pretty good view. And if he has reason enough to think about what he sees, ti might be that he can leave Europe alone. I say this because none of what you say about that place sounds new to me. I have a feeling that I've heard or read it all sometime before…If I'm right on this, I can get away with letting you do my learning for me, and then pumping you…await further word from you. For god's sake keep your next one unfogged by the lingo of the bridge table. Those images are foreign to me and when I read one that is underlined I feel that I"m missing the very core of what you say. If you must speak in swirls, use the argo of the damned -- I can understand that. Buenos dinga, [signed] H". Four page letter on four sheets measures 8.5" x 11". Mild toning and folds, overall very good condition. With much more content on Thompson's personal relationships, and also world politics.
Hunter Thompson 4pp. Letter Signed -- ''you'll have to pardon me for not having the faintest idea what the fuck a trump card is'' & ''a man must literally squeeze his own balls to write a good book''
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