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November 28, 2007

Don’t Think Twice. It’s All Right.

Hi. It’s chilly and windy here in the Bronx. The colored leaves are off the trees and carpeting the pavement —  perfect for kicking through.  

For those of you in Austin or Dallas who want to get together, I’ll be there next week. Beatriz Terraza and Juli McCallaugh from the Writers Garret’s Community and Mentorship Program (CAMP) are inviting everyone out for a special Gonzo holiday potluck and open house on Tuesday, December 4th at 6 p.m. at Paperbacks Plus in Dallas. For more info or to RSVP, call (214) 828-1715
On Thursday Dec 6th, I’ll be in Austin. At Follett’s Bookstore at 4pm.  I have friends and family to see too.  So, I’m really looking forward to both signings. I’m not sure if I’ll be in Houston or not. I am finishing the HST Selected Interview Manuscript and final essays for this semester, and by god! the Woody Creeker is almost finished too. The layout is finished, and it’s going to the printer on Friday. Thank god for friends and family.

But with the other deadlines, I don’t  know if I can pack it all in and make it to Houston. I have my Uncle Bo who lives there that I want to see and some other dear friends I used to work for. Maybe I can rent a car and drive down. I’ll keep you posted if I can have an impromptu get-together – signing somewhere. We’ll see.

 I’ve been clearing my head and shedding off some of the holiday excess with a daily run in the park. I highly recommend it at this time of year, especially if you’re stressed. I’ve been adding lots of great albumns to my ipod to jog to that I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have gotten the 8gig nano.  Oh Well.  Don’t think twice… It’s all right.


On that note, today’s HST wisdom is simple: It comes from one of my notebooks. As you know, I constantly wrote down all sorts of things that Hunter did and said. One of my entries reads:


“I’ve been plagiarizing my whole life. It’s called learning.” — HST


Anyway, I’m going to bed early tonight b/c I’m tired and the 100 year-old pipes are being repaired tomorrow in this gothic Bronx Building. So, I’ll be outa here early I hope.
Until next time, your sleepy friend,
Anita Thompson

November 25, 2007

Admirable Peculiarity

 

 

 

Driver, drive faster and make a good run

Down the Springfield Line under the shining sun.

 

 

Fly like the aeroplane, don’t pull up short

Till you brake for Grand Central Station, New York.

 

 

For there in the middle of that waiting hall

Should be standing the one that I love best of all.

 

 

If he’s not there to meet me when I get to town,

I’ll stand on the pavement with tears rolling down.

 

 

For he is the one that I love to look on,

The acme of kindness and perfection.

 

 

He presses my hand and he says he loves me

Which I find an admirable peculiarity.

 

 

The woods are bright green on both sides of the line;

The trees have their loves though they’re different from mine.

 

 

But the poor fat old banker in the sun-parlour car

Has no one to love him except his cigar.

 

 

If I were the head of the Church or the State

I’d powder my nose and just tell them to wait.

 

For love’s more important and powerful than

Even a priest or a politician.

 

–W. H. Auden, Calypso (from W.H. Auden Selected Poems, Edited by Edward Mendelson)

 

Hi from NY. I barely managed to fit into the doorway of my apartment after having gained 10 pounds in 1 holiday week at Owl Farm. Weird. Above is a random poem that jumped out at me on the plane ride back from Colorado. You may  know Hunter loved Auden’s work. Normally, I find Auden’s poems very hard to understand, or to “get.”  But one of my professors is the executor of Auden’s estate, and his lectures are so unusually good and engaging (he manages to make us laugh out loud even during lectures about Frankenstein, for example). So, I’m making an extra effort to read and understand more of his work.  Anyway, the above is just a sweet poem, with the intriguing title Calypso. The holidays can crush the millions of us who have lost a loved one. But, if we’re smart, we recognize that we did indeed have a loved one to lose, and that is the blessing. Why am I being so sentimental? I have no idea. Maybe it’s Auden, maybe it’s being back in this city where everyone seems to be making out with a lover on the street?

Maybe I’m just procrastinating on a project I’m late on. I don’t know….

 

Until next time, your friend,

Anita Thompson

p.s. here is a good review from a reviewer, Ray Young, who seemed to acutally read both recent books about Hunter: The one I love and the one I hate:  http://home.comcast.net/~flickhead/GonzoBooks.html

November 22, 2007

Green Tea Eggnog — Chivas Turkey

Well, Happy Thanksgiving…It seemed appropriate to add some eggnog to my green tea when I saw the Television this morning. Jesus.  I was interested to see the fate of the protesters in front of Macy’s that Amy Goodman talked about last night on Democracy Now. They were going to be in front of Macy’s today to remind people that George Bush’s idea that to solve our problems is to “shop” is not the solution at all—despite all the “fabulous discounts” that are being offered in the famous American Shopping place.  When I turned the TV on, the first thing I saw was a huge balloon of Ronald McDonald floating above thousands of onlookers at the “Macy’s Parade.”  The NBC newscasters said “And now we see the McDonald’s float car with the golden arches as windshields. Above hovered an oversized Ronald “With a hand outstretched to all those in need.”

Hmmm? Maybe I need some rum in my egg nog.

Anyway, writers-in-residence Andrew Travers and Jonathan Bastian and our beloved cowboy Andy Hall and I are cooking here and also going to the Stranahan’s for dinner. Some of us eat tofu turkeys, some eat the bird – I did manage to bake a range free Turkey that Andrew brought home last night. I stuffed it with Hunter’s favorite stuffing and even poured some Chivas on it for good measure. After the Stranahan’s we’ll be going for drinks at the Sue and Jennifer Craig’s garden house up the road.  I wonder what the protesters in New York are going to do.

As I watch the parade, The New York Dance Institute was actually pretty good. But now, I see a float by a company called “Hess,” with a modernized version  of the Brooklyn Bridge with a model truck proudly gleaming with word “gasoline” on the side. This is too weird. It’s time turn it to Fox for the Packer’s game.

Today’s wisdom comes from Kingdom of Fear.  Hunter, in 2002 talked about life after the end of the American Century:

Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and fell only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their freedom to live for the mess of pottage hey have been conned into believing will be from fear.
Ho ho ho. Let’s not get carried away here. Freedom was yesterday in this country. Its value has been discounted.  The only freedom we truly crave today is freedom from Dumbness.  Nothing else matters.

 –Hunter S. Thompson, 2002, Kingdom of Fear.

 

Happy Thanksgiving. Your friend,

Anita Thompson

 

p.s. update as Dallas kills the New York Jets, I’d like to report that the Chivas is perfect not just for eggnog and Turkey, it works perfectly for vegetarian stuffing too.  As you saute the celery and walnuts before adding the bread, splash in a huge Hunter splash of Chivas and watch the action… It’s a lovely stuffing… Enjoy!

 

 

 

November 19, 2007

Loose Lips

OK. It is 24 hours later now, and we are not getting much information about the Five Ws of this thing. 

The numbers out of the Pentagon are baffling, as if Military Censorship has already been imposed on the media. It is ominous. The only news on TV comes from weeping victims and ignorant speculators.

The lid is on. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Don’t say anything that might give aid to The Enemy.

— Hunter S. Thompson 24 hours after the strike on Sept. 11th. , Hey Rube

As I prepare for a paper about Politics and Empire for class (jesus, the more I read, the more I realize how ignorant I am on the subject). One of the books I selected for the paper helps explain why it’s so hard to get any information about casualties caused by our military. I want to share this with you b/c it resonates with so many of Hunter’s warnings. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, National Editor of The Washington Post, in 2006, published Imperial Life in the Emerald City, about the little America that was created inside the walls of the gated community as the home of American personnel stationed in Iraq after we invaded. The Green Zone featured movie theatres, swimming pools, Chinese restaurants, illicit pornography vendors, pork at every meal…The cafeteria was all about meeting American needs for high-calorie, high-fat comfort food". The Green Zone is where the US officials giving information to the Pentagon about the progress of the war lived.

 Mr. Chandresekaran visited, but lived outside the Green Zone, and tells the tale of the dramatic difference between what was reported, and what was real. One description of  a day after some suicide bombings took place in Baghdad (it was/is a regular occurrence outside the green zone), but nobody inside the green zone knew much, or cared, about these frequent events and the growing insugency. If they did, they certainly didn’t talk about it, Food was important, inforamtion was not:

Inside the Green Zone, the concern wasn’t that too little information was being disseminated; it was that too many secrets were at risk.  World  War II –era posters urging vigilance were tacked up in the palace.  One depicted the hand of Uncle Sam muzzling a fedora-clad man, QUIET! LOOSE TALK CAN COST LIVES, the poster warned.  Another showed a cocker spaniel resting head dejectedly on the chair of a dead soldier.  Below it were the words…BECAUSE SOMEBODY TALKED.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life In The Emerald City

Until next time, your friend,

Anita Thompson

P.S. I’ve taken some heat for supporting Hillary. I’ve never hidden the fact that I think she is the best candidate for president. She is the smartest, toughest, and most experienced candidate who will have to handle one of the most unfortunate hand-me-down White Houses in recent history. Yes, I know the amount of money she has taken from Corporations. I know she was on the board of Walmart – a store we boycotted years ago. I know she wavered on the immigration issue. I read Amy Goodman. There is even a rumor that she criticized Hunter’s writing (but most likely his lifestyle) when he interviewed Bill Clinton in 1990. But I made the decision to support and volunteer for Hillary last year and am sticking by it. Hunter was not just my husband, he was also my mentor, and much of my political understanding comes from his teaching.

In a storybook world, I would love to see Dennis Kucinich as the front runner. But in this century, the scene in Washington needs heavyweight experience and courage, and that, is Hillary Clinton.  I said in Wash DC book event, which was aired on the CSPAN that I love Obama, and hope he will be president one day, but for this round, I support Hillary 100%. 

Ideally, I wish she would pull Wesley Clark out of retirement and ask him to run as Vice President. He is a compassionate and realistic war expert and knows how dangerous WWIII would be.  Walter Isaacson would be a good Secretary of State because of his talent for bringing in fresh ideas and success to every institution he enters.

 I’m not, however, the one in charge. But I am indeed paying attention, and paying attention to your emails. But, nope, I’m not budging from Hillary. The system is broken –duh. Look around. Do you have health insurance? How many Iraqis have been killed in our name so we can continue to drive a combustible engine vehicle? Have you seen our school test scores? Have you seen our deficit? Yes, all the Kings Horses and all the Kings men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again. It’s time to bring in all the Queen’s horses and all the Queen’s women (or men.)

I don’t see people lining up to start a Revolution. Do you?  Until we see that indication, we need a strong experienced Democrat in office who will end the war and one who knows how to handle those bastards in Congress.  She can do it, and we can help.

 

 

P.P.S. Oh Dear!! It’s almost midnight here in the Bronx and I had to log back on because I forgot to post the news that I intended to comment on before I got distracted by Baghdad pork and Hillary haters – the velvet underground!  I thought I’d get blunt, and hell, why not vulgar like my gentleman friends. Jann’s nasty book about Hunter is selling like hot cakes.  Yep. We knew it would. Jann has many admirers and journalists who were viciously jealous of Hunter, including our "anonymous" friend Joe Klein who, needed a box of tissues to wipe away all the Vaseline he applied to his nose to please Jann with a "review" that the NYTimes and I.H.Tribune shamefully published. Now that Joe doesn’t have to face Hunter, Joe asserts that Jann was the sole reason for Hunter’s success — That without Rolling Stone, there was nothing — no Hell’s Angles. No Derby, No Polo, No Examiner, No Bush Commentary, no freedom for Lisl…good lord. Clearly, Joe forgot to do his homework. He also assured us, that it was Corey Seymour, not Jann, who contorted the interviews to make Hunter seem like a monster. There there. It’s okay Joe. It all comes out in the wash – including the grease.

 

 

 

 

 

November 15, 2007

Muffins

Hi! I’m back in the Bronx. I received an email from a friend who was in a bad mood and asked if I have any good news to cheer him up with.  I emailed him this section from a play, and realized you too should have it in your library of  ”cheer up quotes.”  I happen to be writing a paper on Oscar Wilde which is due tomorrow by 4pm, so, it was uncanny to be asked for advice regarding cheering up, particularly since it is gloomy as hell and rainy in the Big Apple along with dealing with the loss of yet another memeber of the tribe, Norman Mailer. Doug Brinkley spoke at the small elegant funeral with Doris Kerns Goodwin and said it was a moving and beautiful service with a few friends and family members.  Anyway, as we get ready to see Clinton attacked by Edwards and Obama, here is my email:

NO, I have no good news, but I do have a great Oscar Wilde quote from "The Importance of
Being Earnest."  This summer, when I arrived in this apartment that I am renting from my friend Sue, I was turned on to Oscar Wilde for the first time in my life because there happened to be a book sitting on a shelf with various Wilde stories.  First I read "The Picture of Dorian Gray."  Most recently, for a class, I read Earnest. This following quote is from a scene where Jack and Algernon find out the terrible news they will not be able to marry the women they love because they have been caught in the same lie (both claimed to have the name "Ernest." But alas, by the end of the play, we find out that the truth is actaully being told!)Cecily and Gwendolyn are madly in love with the idea of marrying a character named Ernest. After finding out that their lovers are not named Ernest, the women quite upset over the fact of being lied to, exit, and Algernon and Jack are left sitting in Jack’s garden:

JACK: There is certainly no chance of you marrying Miss Cardew.


ALGERNON: I don’t think there is much likelyhood, Jack, of you and Miss Fairfax being
united.


JACK: Well, that is no business of yours.


ALGERNON: If it was my business, I wouldn’t talk about it. (Begins to eat muffins.) It is
very vulgar to talk about one’s business.  Only people like stockbrokers do that, and
then merely at dinner parties.


JACK: How can you sit there , calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble,
I can’t make out.  You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.


ALGERNON: Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner.  The butter would probably get
on my cuffs. ONe should always eat muffins quite calmly. it is the only way to eat them.
JACK: I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.


ALGERNON: When i am in trouble, eating is the only thing tha consoles me.  indeed. when i
am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intimately will tell you, i refuse
everything except food and drink.  At the present moment i am eating muffins because I am
unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins. (Rising.)


JACK: (Rising.) Well, that is no reason why you should eat them all in that greedy way.
(Takes muffins from Algernon.)


ALGERNON: (Offering Tea cake.) I wish you would have tea-cake instead. I don’t like
tea-cake.


JACK: Good heavens!  I suppose a man amy eat his own muffins in his own garden.


ALGERNON: But you have just said that it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins.


JACK: I said it was perfectly heartless of you, under the circumstances. That is an
entirely diffent thing.


And it goes on, while Gwendolyn and Cecily watch them from inside the house, wondering
why the two men are not coming in to the house after them to fix the problem…

Wonderful play. It will cheer anybody up. So, I suggest you read some Oscar Wilde and eat
a muffin or two…

Cheers, Anita

November 09, 2007

Ralph Had A Speech…

Guess what!? Ralph Steadman just received The Cartoon Trust Lifetime Acheivement Award held in London this week. Congratulations brother!

 "Champagne and fish pie, followed by toffee ice cream, set the tone for a night of occasionally childish humour and anarchic behaviour. Many awards were given, but the evening was underlined by Ralph, upon receiving the Big award said:  ‘I’ve got a speech but f*** the speech. I’m going to sing a song instead.’ He promptly launched into a rallying tune that threatened at any moment to spill into madness, but held on by a thread. His fellow cartoonists stamped their feet and shook with laughter " Check out link here..

The HST Wisdom for today comes from a letter Hunter wrote to Ralph in October of 1980 about their stategy to win the Honolulu Marathon:

…Yeah,  I know what you’re thinking, Ralph. You’re pacing around over there in the war room at the Old Loose Coruse and thinking, "Why me? And why now? Just when I’m getting respectable?"

We are both entered in this event, Ralph, and I feel pretty confident about winning. We will need a bit of training, but not much. 

The main thing will be to run as an entry and set a killer pace for the first three miles.  These body-nazis have been training all year for the supreme effort in this Super Bowl of marathons… 26 miles is a hell of a long way to run, for any reason at all, and all the pros in this field will start slow and pace themselves very carefully for the first 20 miles.

But not us, Ralph.  We will come out of the blocks like human torpedoes and alter the whole nature of the race by sprinting the first three miles shoulder-to-shoulder…

A pace like that will crack their nuts, Ralph…and the rest of the field will be left so far behind that many will be overcome with blind rage and confusion.

— Hunter S. Thompson, The Curse of Lono,

Until next time, your friend,

Anita Thompson

 

November 08, 2007

Oscar Wilde and A Little Lightning

Finally! The Senate gave Bush his first veto overide today! It was for a $23 billion water projects measure affecting locales across the country. The money has not been appropriated, but it’s a first step in assuring protections and projects to improve local damn and water issues around the country. It was 79 to 14, far more than the two-thirds needed to override the veto that President Bush cast last Friday. A little more proof that all politics is local…

 The news put me in a good mood adding to the fact that I’ve been reading more Oscar Wilde for the last few days, which makes anyone giddy. Of course, laughing out loud to "The Importance Of Being Earnest" makes me think of Hunter’s humor and sense of fun. Then I received a phone call from our good friend Tex, the Woody Creeker Poet. He was calling about his poem which is to run in the next issue. His call reminded me of a funny piece Hunter wrote in Generation of Swine about Tex being struck by lightning.  Hunter added to the story in Kingdom of Fear  – and here is a portion of it for today’s HST wisdom, which I feel in my bones:

My friend Tex got hit by lightning one gloomy afternoon in the parking lot of the Woody Creek Tavern.  “It kicked the mortal shit out of me,” he said later.  “It blasted me fifty goddamn feet across the road and over the snow fence.  I was out for forty minutes, and when I woke up I smelled like death.
I was there that day, and I thought a bomb had gone off right in front of me.  I was unconscious for a while, but not for long. When I woke up I was being dragged toward a shiny sky-blue ambulance by two well-meaning medics from the Sheriff’s Office… I twisted out of their grasp and back against and ice machine.  “Okay, boys,” I said calmly, “the Joke is over.  Let’s not get crazy about this.  Give me some air, gentleman.” I croaked.  “I feel a little jangled, but I know it will pass. Get your hands off me, you pigfucker.”

Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear, 2003

 

Until next time, your friend,

Anita Thompson

 

p.s. the first bunurying explaination is in the first act of "The Importance of Being Earnest" you can find here http://www.public.iastate.edu/~spires/Concord/earnest12.html cheers!

 

 

November 06, 2007

Dusting Off

Goodmorning (yes, it’s after noon). I just woke up from deep peaceful sleep filled with the strangest dreams I don’t even remember.  Last night, after drinking Andrew’s pot of coffee, I was up ‘till 3am finishing some essays about Oscar Wilde.  But before I could start, I found the NEED to clean and dust every corner of the kitchen (procrastination? Nah).  I woke up to sparkling nick- nacks and clean counters. Even Hunter’s reading glasses are shining.

Anyway, the weekend was great after recovering from the attacks on Hunter. Jerri Merritt, a good friend, who is a famous criminal defense attorney along with being one of the top bloggers in the country,  wrote a beautiful entry defending Hunter from the attacks of wanna-be writers/reviews re: Jann Wenner’s ugly book about Hunter. She stayed at Owl Farm, in her favorite room overlooking the cottonwood trees in the front yard and the white peaks of the Rockies. She drove back to Denver on Monday under blue Colorado skies in her Jeep cherokee to finish her outline for a lecture in Key West for NORML.

And to you: Thank you so much for your lovely emails of support re: the dust up over Jann’s book. Hunter does indeed have an army of supporters and I’m not worried anymore about stupid attacks on his character. Stacey McCain also defended us, (and is the one who called Jerri to give her the heads up) along with other thoughtful writers around the country.  (with many more bloggers doing the same). History will be the judge of both Hunter and Jann, so I’m not worried.

 My dreams were pretty intense last night, I vaguely remember one of them having to do with the concept of heaven, and another having to do with dusty reading glasses and walking around at night — Very strange. So I woke up thinking about a great piece Hunter wrote in 1988 for Generation of Swine, lamenting the shame and degradation of the 80s, just as Hunter laments the loss of the American Century in Hey Rube. In this piece, he describes what Heaven and Hell would be like. THIS is what he said about Heaven: 
 
Heaven is a bit harder to figure, and there are some things that not even a smart boy can tell you for sure…But I can guess.  Or wonder.  Or maybe just think like a gambler or a fool or some kind of atavistic rock & roll lunatic and make it about 8-1 that Heaven will be a place where the swine will be sorted out at the gate and sent off like rats with huge welts and lumps and puncture wounds all over their bodies – Down the long black chute where ugliness rolls over you every 10 or 16 minutes likes waves of boiling asphalt and poison scum, followed by sergeants and lawyers and crooked cops waving rule books; And where nobody laughs and everybody lies and the days drag by like dead animals and the nights are full of whores and junkies clawing at your windows and tax men jamming writs under your door and the screams of the doomed coming up through the air shaft along with white cockroaches and red stringworms full of AIDS and bursts of foul gas with no sunrise and the morning streets full of preachers begging for money and fondling themselves with gangs of fat young boys trailing after them…  Ah…But we were talking about Heaven…or trying to…but somehow we got back into Hell.
–Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine, 1988
 

Until next time, your friend, sitting in a sparkling kitchen looking out the window to blue skies,

Anita Thompson

 

November 02, 2007

Time To Defend Hunter

Reading the LA times review of Jann Wenner’s book made me realize I need to communicate in more specific terms. The reviewer was too sloppy to understand that Jann never forgave Hunter for leaving Rolling Stone.  Jann convinced nearly all of Hunter’s friends to participate in what would be a "positive" book about Hunter. Then, using a cheap parlor trick, Jann excerpted and paraphrased the negative bits of interviews to weave a tall tale to trash Hunter. 

Hunter wrote more in the last 5 years of his life than he had in the previous 15, along with fighting and winning a beautiful legal battle for Lisl Auman. Hunter believed in the triumph of the human spirit. John Nichols from the Nation has said, and I agree, that some of Hunter’s most savage and inspiring political writing, was in his ESPN columns during the last years of his life. Yes, they were short, insightful and funny.  He inspired thousands of sports lovers to get involved with politics. Simple.

What the L.A. Times reviewer fails to notice is that in addition to Hunter “using” people around him, the truth is that Hunter was surrounded, much of his life, by leeches (many of those leeches grace the pages of the book). It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that many people did TAKE, TAKE, TAKE  from Hunter and gave very little in return. While sitting at his typewriter, Hunter helped many people, especially Jann, make a lot of money. Today is no exception. 

Here is the letter that I wrote to Jann in May, after receiving the manuscript. I had to tell him the book was a FRAUD, and that I would not write a forward or include an interview — which was SCARY, because I felt very much alone. Despite his withering status, Jann is considered "rich and powerful," and I was warned by friends that he would go after me if I refused to be in the book.  Jann offered me a lot of money and ad space in his magazine to include my interview and forward, and implied threats if I didn’t.  In the end, however, the best people to defend Hunter are his readers. 

Jann:
In my refrigerator I have a jar of mayonnaise, two  tangerines, 1/2 carton of soy milk and a few boxes of dried spaghetti. And I also have an overdrawn bank account, $43 in my wallet, and no car. So, I really,  REALLY could use that money! But I need to let you know that I’m sticking with my original decision I made many months ago – that I can not  be a part of [your book] in any shape or form.  I hope you understand.  If readers believe that the bits and pieces of interviews you weaved together tell an accurate story, there is nothing I could possibly write in a 500 word forward to sway them.  Defending him in a forward would be futile. So, I’m out. And yes, let’s part ways.

Rolling Stone [and especially US Weekly] is such a huge success financially… You have accumulated a mass amount of power and wealth over the last 40 years —  Why do you have to use it against Hunter? It would have been so beautiful if you would have used that power to compile, into a book, a bunch of humiliating personal  interviews about someone like Paul Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rice, or Rumsfeld or Armitage or Even Bush. Why Hunter?  You walked around at both memorial services in a constant state of tears and made people trust you to sit down and do interviews with Corey.  I know you and Hunter had some problems over the years… [but] I don’t understand the level of venom employed here. Why?

You couldn’t deny the fact that yes, as soon as he left Rolling Stone, you portray him as an awful beast of a man. But you also couldn’t deny the fact that all these people loved him dearly "all the way to the end".  The reason peopled loved him is because he is one of the rare human beings who is essentially decent, with moments of rotten behavior.

I wish I could appeal to your sense of decency and that you would burn this awful manuscript. It would be the right thing to do. I realize you’re probably laughing at me to even suggest it.  Oh Well.

One of my first nights working with Hunter on a project here in the kitchen was in 1999 on the second letters book. I wrote about it in one of the essay portions of my 3 hour Columbia entrance exam.  On this night,  there were several letters to [and from] you up for consideration…Many people lobbied to include those nasty ones.  Hunter humored them for a while. But he wouldn’t run them in the end.

THAT is why "people loved Hunter all the way to the end." Because no matter how vicious he could be, he was essentially decent in a huge way. And when he did attack people, it was only those who were in a position to defend themselves.

Anyway, I know I’ve pissed you off and it’s probably not the best strategy for me to make an enemy of you. But I love Hunter, and hate to see his friend bash him to pieces… and hope to god that you just go with your heart and reconsider this whole project.  If you want to publish embarrassing interviews about me, so be it.  I’ve learned to deflect cheap shots. Just lay off Hunter, he’s dead.  Won’t you???

Regardless, I wish you some peace and forgiveness in your life.
Sincerely,
Anita

(May 23, 2007)

p.s. for those of you worried about Johnny Depp, although I haven’t spoken to him in a long time,  we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he just trusted Wenner, like everybody else when he allowed the reprint of his "forward."

regarding "oral biography" about Hunter S. Thompson


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