TAPES, DRAMATIC PRESENTATIONS,
ART EXHIBITS, AND MONOGRAPHS
Prince Jellyfish (un-published novel until Songs of the Doomed); 1958/1959
"New Year's Eve in Manhattan. A freezing rain blows through the dark streets. Above the city, far up in the mist and rain, long beams of yellow light sweep in great circles through the black air. They are anchored to the Empire State Building - that great phallic symbol, a monument to the proud dream of potency that is the spirit of New York. And below, in the damp neon labyrinth of the city itself, people hurry: somewhere...everywhere...nowhere...""How old was I when I first walked along this road? Two...? Three...? No older, certainly. A tiny boy in a red jacket and brown corduroy pants...walking along that same sidewalk beside my grandfather - my mother's father, who was once a tiny boy himself - stopping to feed the squirrels, leaving the sidewalk and climbing up that hill, resting at the top on a stone bench, sitting beside my grandfather in the crisp September breeze, while the autumn golfers trudged and slammed along the fairway at the bottom of the hill."
The Rum Diary (unpublished novel until Songs of the Doomed); 1960/1961
"I stared out to sea, watching the sun as it slowly approached the horizon. I felt sorry for Chenault, but a drunken woman is something I've never liked and her witless chatter had been getting on my nerves. If that was the only way to stop her, then he had done a quick and painless job, and the only thing I disliked about it was having to sit there and watch.""No man who has chosen well and wisely will ever credit it to fate; the only real fatalist is a man on his way down the pipe."
"I offered him a drink out of my bottle and made some decent comments about the decor of the place, the relaxed atmosphere and the fine view - but all the while I was talking I had an awful suspicion that I wouldn't recognize him again, even if he appeared a few minutes later, smiling in exactly the same way. I remembered that old saying that 'all niggers look the same,' a foul and callous outlook generally attributed to white trash. But when I looked into that room full of black dancers I saw that it was true - they all looked the same."
Travelin' Lady Sorrels, Rosalie; on Sire (Polydor)
Liner notes by Hunter S. Thompson; 8/71
The Aspen Wallposters Benton, Thomas W., artist.
Eight Wallposters were eventually published; 1970/71
America Steadman, Ralph; Straight Arrow Books, San Francisco.
Introduction by Hunter S. Thompson; 1974"On the way up, I took one of these purple pills, which turned out to be psilocybin I think. They were just about right. I ended up taking two or three a day, for general research purposes...Steadman doesn't get at all into drugs usually - He smokes a little now and then, but he's horrified of anything psychedelic."
"I rely on my medicine to keep totally twisted. Otherwise I couldn't stand this bullshit."
"Photographers don't participate in the story. They all re-act, but very few of them think. Steadman thinks more like a writer; I can communicate with him. He comes to grips with a story sort of the same way I do."
"Corruption in its broadest sense seems to be the thing that shocks him and gets him cranked more than anything else...congenital corruption...on a level far beyond police payoffs or political bribery...deeply corrupt people, performing essentially corrupt actions, in the name of law and order."
To Aspen and Back Clifford, Peggy; St. Martin's Press, New York.
Introduction by Hunter S. Thompson; 1980
Hunter S. Thompson Reads his Songs of the Doomed; Simon & Schuster Audio, New York; 1990
"Reporters who resisted were roughed up by burly advisors wearing bulletproof vests and Owl Farm security (ind). One TV journalist, who (ind) not to be named, said he was taken to a cistern somewhere in the Congo and forced to strip naked while standing knee deep in ice cold water rushing out to an underground river. For many hours, he said, he was tormented by drunken lawyers and knocked by what appeared to be naked women.""'All my life, my heart has sought that thing I cannot name.' I remember that line from a long forgotten poem, I don't remember who wrote that. Probably T.S. Eliot, or Art Linkletter."
On the Bus: The Complete Guide to the Legendary Trip of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and the Birth of the Counterculture Perry, Paul; Thunder's Mouth Press, New York.
Foreword by HST; 1991"Acid use was covering the Bay Area like a fog, engulfing people who normally would not have exposed themselves to a drug that dissected their egos like LSD." - Perry
"I was opposed to the weekend foray in LaHonda. When we left the Angel hangout I told Kesey, 'You motherfucking, crazy bastard, you'll pay for this from Maine to here.' I was opposed to it. Maybe, in fact, I felt responsible. - HST
"So I happened to have a foot in both camps, and what I did, basically, was act as a social director mixing a little Hell's Angel with a little Prankster to see what you came up with - for fun, of course, but I was also acting in my own interest because I wanted to have something interesting to write about. To do this safely, well, you got to have control; my control ran out early on." HST
Aspen Art Gallery; Mary Grasso, owner;
12-piece exhibit of HST art; 11/91
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas stage production, New Crime Productions, At the Gallery, Chicago.
Co-director with Steve Pink and Producer John Cusack.With Jeremy Pivan as Dr. Gonzo and Bill Cusack. Adapted by Lou Stein.
(adaptation first presented in London, 1982); 11/4/91-1/4/92
Soundbites From the Counter Culture (Atlantic)
Selections on the issue of free speech from HST, Burroughs,
Henry Rollins, Jim Carroll, Biafra and others; 1990