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| With apologies to the 1961 American musical romantic drama directed by Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins |
Reply by Paul Clark (aka motomynd)
Growing up in conservative, play-it-safe, southwest Virginia, I read all I could about anyone and anyplace tinged with excitement. By the time I turned 14 I had read just about everything Ernest Hemingway had written and knew his was the life I wanted to live. A couple of years later I came across a newly noteworthy writer, Hunter S. Thompson, and his 1967 book, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, and I decided that maybe somewhere in between the lives of Hemingway and Thompson was exactly the life for me.
By my early 20s I was selling insurance, running my own contracting business, and writing very little – most of it local and regional news/feature pieces that were so boring to write I put them under a pen name so no one would blame me for their boredom. By my mid-20s I was doing a bit of major market “stringer” work in New York, Miami, etc., and was actually starting to find a market for what I considered my “voice.”
And that got me the break that could make me famous: A chance to go on a somewhat questionable trip to Central America, documenting the efforts of a murky volunteer group claiming that they were delivering bibles and medical supplies and trying to find out what was really going on in the region, politically. When I was given a fake passport for the trip and the explanation that “only amateurs get multiple passports in the same name,” I knew this was it: move over Hemingway and Thompson, I’m on my way!
A very few weeks later, after the trip had gone about as badly as any sane person might have expected, I wound up in the Florida Keys – right in the middle of the Mariel Boat Lift. And in the midst of that chaos, a friend of the friend who had sent me on the disastrous Central America trip, needed a favor. Amidst all the insanity of the boat lift, there was one guy who was basically ruining the life of this friend of a friend: “some writer who calls himself Hunter Thompson. Could you go talk to him and try to calm things a bit?”
So here I am, a short, sort of slight-built guy supposedly not from the U.S., going to “talk some sense into” a guy who came to fame for living with the Hell’s Angels and actually living to write a book about the experience. And I’m attempting to bring this calm to the midst of a siege of utter lawlessness that America may not have seen since Tombstone, Arizona, in the 1880s. Of course, there is the other half of me in this equation: the star-struck 20-something fan of Thompson, who has always wished I could meet him. Part of me is supposed to stare him down, the other part wants to ask for an autograph: this should go smoothly.
I don’t manage smoothly, starting with his asking “Are you sure you’re from Canada? You sound like you are from Virginia, or maybe North Carolina.” Thompson was born in Kentucky, so he apparently picked up the accent immediately, even with a bunch of “ehs?” thrown in, along with some clumsy French and informed chitchat about how cool Canada is compared to America. With smooth down the drain, I go for effective, and I apparently manage that, at least. Over the next few days, things calm, everyone seems happy, and I’m back to my real life in Virginia.
A decade or so later, a college-age friend asks me to accompany her to hear a speaker at a regional university. “It’s a writer named Hunter Thompson,” she says. “Have you heard of him?” Dramatic pause here to stress I am stunned and speechless…“Well, yes,” I finally manage to say. “I read some of his books when I was a teen.” And a couple of evenings later, off we go.
After Thompson’s very entertaining performance, my friend wants to have a book autographed. Thinking it has been nearly 10 years, what could be the harm, I buy a book and join her in line.
Have you ever had the uncomfortable feeling that someone is looking at you and thinking, “I know this guy,” even though you have a completely different hairstyle (the ‘fro was long gone by then) and years have passed since you met? Well, that’s the feeling I got when I was still six people back in line, and I was with a very attractive college-age female who should have drawn Thompson’s full focus.
My friend gets her autograph, I present my book, and Thompson says: “Do you ever actually spend any time in Canada?” Then he signs the book “To my friend from southern Canada.” This from a man who, by this stage, was supposedly so brain-addled from booze and drugs he could no longer effectively write. And that is how I got to know Hunter S. Thompson.
| Copyright © 2020 by Chuck Smythe, Paul Clark |
He was one of my favored writer. Rolling Stone carried a lot of his stuff. Fear and loathing on the campaign trail was one of his best, for me, it could be because I hated Nixon. Enjoyed the read, Paul.
ReplyDeleteInteresting how differently people react. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" convinced me that Thompson was scum, largely because of antics like wrecking a hotel room. I did enjoy "Hell's Angels", though. And The White Whale inspired me to name my 4x4 The Blue Whale.
DeleteThanks, Ed. Other than stumbling upon and being wowed by 'Hell's Angels' as a teen, I never read that much of Thompson's work because I never could sort out with certainty if I was reading an entertaining but distorted semi-factual account, fictional non-fiction, or maybe just something from a daydream/drug fueled imagination run amok. Looking back, I'm not sure why that mattered, but at the time it just seemed that I, as a reader, had a right to know if I was reading a supposed news story or a novel. Did you have any such thoughts about Thompson and the 'gonzo' style of 'journalism' he founded?
DeleteChuck, your comment reminds me of how polarizing Thompson was to so many people, and how in many cases someone could love one of his works and hate another. I don't know if he ever made a decision based in how he thought others might react, so he was at least a lesson in living fearlessly.
DeleteNeil, the media--and just about all levels of law enforcement--were all over the boat lift for a few weeks. Then they all moved on to the next flavor of the week, as they always do.
DeleteGlad you were clueless and camped in Acadia and doing something important with your life. Hanging upside down and being beaten with a stick like a piñata was infinitely less fun than camping.
As to your question about my trip to Central America, I'm not up to date on international statutes of limitation and extradition law, and I can't afford to hire someone who is expert in such, so I will reply in my best purposely vague Hunter Thompsonesque fashion. In no particular order, here are some pieces: a guy who supposedly worked for the state department but who was apparently former CIA, questioning under extreme duress, lives saved and beatings avoided thanks to actually knowing the words to 'O Canada' and disavowing any knowledge of anything American, one survivor had a cheekbone and jaw fractured by the butt of a rifle and another was so emotionally damaged he moved to Africa shortly after the trip and (except for a tent) never slept under a roof again, some people actually got to see the beautiful bird known as the quetzal up close in the wild, sometimes a misspent youth that teaches you how to hotwire a jeep is not so misspent after all.
Wow, what a story. The Mariel Boat-lift I vaguely remember. Did the News media whitewash the whole thing?
ReplyDeleteAnd Trump complains about today's refugee's.
I would like to hear that story of Paul's trip to Central America with the fake Canadian passport. I completely missed Hunter Thompson. Sounds crazy. What was he doing to Paul's friend?
What was I doing in 1980? Trying to run an architecture firm and raise a family. Camped in Acadia for two weeks that summer. Clueless.
Doonesbury the comic strip had a character who looked and acted like Hunter Thompson they captured him very well. Crazy, in an entertaining way. I also, liked Lenny Bruce, Chuck, it's all about the way we looked at the world, I guess. https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury
ReplyDeleteEd, I remember that "Doonesbury" comic strip (done by a Yalie a few years behind me, by the way: Garry Trudeau), and I can actually picture Trudeau's rendering of Thompson, with the long cigarette holder. And I read at least one of Thompson's books myself, one of the Fear and Loathing books, I think, or maybe excerpts in Rolling Stone or wherever. I enjoyed his writing, but I don't think it "affected" me one way or the other. Neil was "camped in Acadia"; I was working diligently and with concentration 40 hours a week doing technical writing and editing and training, and managing a home with a wife and two bright children.
DeleteI was a great Doonsbury fan in those days, so knew Uncle Duke very well. I don't think Trudeau liked him any better than I, but certainly made him the center of a lot of fun stories. One had him as the captain of Trump's yacht, the one with the gold faucets that he was afraid to sail in. At one point Uncle Duke's ante for a poker game was a gold faucet removed with a pipe wrench. I particularly enjoyed this, since Trump's poisonous pride in those faucets were my first clue that he is trash.
DeleteI encountered Kesey at the only Dead concert I ever attended, in Eugene. The Merry Pranksters were on stage half the evening. I couldn't fully appreciate it: we'd driven out from Colorado in a cocaine-fueled twenty hours, then went to the concert on two hours sleep. Also, one Deadhead thing was to constantly light matches in the audience, and the U.W. fieldhouse was a firetrap.
I missed the Mariel boatlift altogether, and wondered why. Turns out that I spent that time fresh back from the South Pole, too busy trying to reconstruct my life to read the news.
An interesting list of writers you've read, Paul. Naturally, most of the names I have to drop are scientists and mountaineers rather than writers.
Chuck, you have the roots of at least three 'Side Stories' in your post, or maybe three or four feature stories. 1) What was the content/context of your encounter with Kesey at the Dead concert? 2) What kind of tales emerge from a cocaine-fueled 20-hour road trip? 3) What is it like to visit the South Pole? 4) What names of mountaineers can you drop, and what stories go with them? Please tell us more!
DeleteKesey: I passed through Eugene on a climbing trip to the North Cascades. I got no chance to speak to Kesey, being just another freak in a stadium full. Just watched him on stage for a couple of hours. Sadly, that's the only stadium concert I ever attended.
DeleteNo tales emerged from that road trip, thank god. We got to Oregon safely.
Mountaineers: depends on how famous we're talking about. Gerry Roach, David Roberts, Tom Hornbein are the ones I knew best. Tales...Well, there was the time Gerry ran out of food while weathering a storm in the Wrangells, the time David hid out for his life in a forbidden funeral cave... Nah. I can't tell other people's stories. Read their books.
The South Pole: too much to say about that. Maybe I'll try to concoct a column.
Chuck, when it comes to mountaineers, those are three epic names to drop. Did you actually climb with them? Yes, please "concoct a column" about the South Pole.
DeleteI only met Hornbein once, at lunch in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. We did have an interesting hour or so talking about his famous book.
DeleteI got to know Roberts 1) because his father founded the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where I spent most of my career, and 2) Once as chairman of the Colorado Mountain Club I invited him to do our big annual annual slide show.
Gerry is another matter. I've known him since the 60's, and have done a little casual peak-bagging with him. He taught me to train for mountain running, so I have him to thank for dumping polio.
A decade ago I was all set to go to Nepal with him - and then blew my ACL getting stupid on skis. So, alas, I've never done a serious climb with him.
The Ice is certainly worth a whole column. With pictures. I have lots of Kodachrome, and don't own a slide scanner. Any cheap ideas?
"The Ice" certainly sounds like a column. As for scanning slides: I bought a pro scanner close to 20 years ago and (with help) have archived thousands of images with it, but it is a time-consuming and tedious chore. If I was only going to can a few images I would look for a local lab or scanning service. You could write many great columns and spend countless pleasant hours outdoors in the time it would probably take you to master a scanner, much less use it to scan even a small quantity of slides. If you do invest time and/or money in scanning, I would save all as TIF files originally (so all data and detail is retained) and convert to JPEG as needed.
DeleteDude. "You knew Hunter S. Thompson?" "We're not worthy!" I was eating up Thompson's stuff at the same time Ken Kesey was writing "The Merry Pranksters" and the like. I picked up "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in about 1974 and I was hooked. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was like my Bible in college, a Weltgeist of alienation and wondrous promise, like a stoned, cosmic-humor view of an entirely different world. Such as the scene where Thompson and Raul are driving down an alley in the Caddy convertible (Great Red Shark) at about eighty straight at a glass storefront, and " a bunch of clearly psychotic people were running around in front of the store...". Of course, those "clearly psychotic" people were running from a speeding Caddy heading directly at them with apparently nowhere to go, but Thompson just didn't SEE it that way...
ReplyDeleteRoger, your comments create one of the most entertaining book reviews I think I have ever read. If I had not read 'fear & loathing' your comments would make me want to read it.
ReplyDeleteKen Kesey, another great of the period! Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteKenneth Elton Kesey (September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist, and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.
Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in 1957. He began writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1960 following the completion of a graduate fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University; the novel was an immediate commercial and critical success when published two years later. During this period, Kesey participated in government studies involving hallucinogenic drugs (including mescaline and LSD) to supplement his income.
Following the publication of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, he moved to nearby La Honda, California, and began hosting happenings with former colleagues from Stanford, miscellaneous bohemian and literary figures (most notably Neal Cassady), and other friends collectively known as the Merry Pranksters; these parties, known as Acid Tests, integrated the consumption of LSD with multimedia performances. He mentored the Grateful Dead (the de facto "house band" of the Acid Tests) throughout their incipience and continued to exert a profound influence upon the group throughout their long career. Sometimes a Great Notion—an epic account of the vicissitudes of an Oregon logging family that aspired to the modernist grandeur of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha saga—was a commercial success that polarized critics and readers upon its release in 1964, although Kesey regarded the novel as his magnum opus.
Chuck, were you aware of Kesey’s birth state? Colorado, I of course mean.
DeleteNo, Morris, I didn't know Kesey was from Colorado. And from La Junta, of all places! An Hispanic farm town a long way from anywhere. No wonder he was a little twisted. I did think, though, that Cuckoo's Nest was one of the better novels I've ever read - and that the film of Sometimes a Great Notion was a very raw take on my father's youth.
DeletePaul, what about Kesey? Did you meet him too?
ReplyDeleteMorris, short answer: no, never met Kesey. Your question, however, made me ponder: How many writers have I met? Let me stress, accent is on "met" not "know" or "know well" because, despite working professionally as a writer and photographer for 35 years, I never actually enjoyed hanging out with writers and photographers.
ReplyDeleteHere's a list of writers who I have met that come readily to mind:
*Annie Dillard, who won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek' which was set in my hometown
*Richard Leakey, son of famous paleontologists Louis and Mary Leakey, and has written countless highly regarded books, such as 'The Sixth Extinction' and 'Human Origins'
*Charles Kuralt, famous for his 'On the Road' TV broadcasts in the Walter Cronkite era, he also wrote a book 'Life on the Road' along with many others
*Bernard "Lefty" Kreh, one of the greatest fly fishers and fly fishing innovators, and in particular a pioneer in saltwater flyfishing. His 1974 book 'Fly Fishing in Salt Water' is still considered the 'bible' for aspiring salt water fly fishers
*Jimmy Buffet, most of us know him for his music, but he is also author of several good reads such as 'A Pirate Looks at Fifty' and 'Where is Joe Merchant?'
*Ken Englade, lifetime journalist and author of 'Beyond Reason' which told the story of a societal double murder in a small town about 30 minutes from where I grew up. If I remember correctly, thanks to a sprint to a helicopter through soldiers and others blocking his path, he was the last journalist out of Saigon before it fell to the North Vietnamese
Thanks so much, Paul, for taking the time to think back and recount the names and situations of these writers whom you've met. 'preciate it!
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