Southern Star, Walter Kaegi, editor. Various columns and articles 1947-1949

"Robert Vomited. On October 2, 1947 Walter Kaegi's dog Robert E. Lee vomited in Kaegi's house, in his mother and father's bedroom. He vomited on the rug. Walter's father had to clean up the mess. Afterwards the dog was put out of the house."

The Royal Gazette Weekly (Bermuda)

They Hoped to Reach Spain But Are Stranded in Bermuda; Trip of Americans

Left Virgin Islands Three Weeks Ago; 7/10/60, p. 10

(interviews strongly suggest the article was written by HST. But the article actually appears to have been written by a Royal Gazette staff writer)

"It's a queer place to be stranded. When I think of all the people back in the States who would really enjoy being stranded in Bermuda for a while, I really can't take our plight very seriously."

Aspen Times

Only Serious People Can Laugh; 10/8/70, p. 12-A

"We have come too far to back off now; the experiment that began last year with the Joe Edwards Campaign is coming together, and this time Aspen is ready for it - not only for a new kind of sheriff, but for a whole new style of government, the kind fo thing Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he talked about 'democracy.'"

Boston Globe

Memoirs of a Wretched Weekend in Washington; 2/23/69, pp. 6-11

No Paranoia / Mecham; 1/27/88, p. 19

Robertson May Put Fat on Fire; 2/17/88, p. 17

"The main difference between them is that Jesse doesn't think he will be president, but he believes he ought to be, and Robertson knows in his barren little hearth that the last thing in the world he really ought to be is president of the United States, but he has a quivering suspicion that he might be."

A Blaze of Gibberish on Bush; 3/24/88, p. 15

"George Bush was a mean crook from Texas. He had no friends and nobody in Washington wanted to be seen with him on the streets at night. There was something queasy about him, they said - a sense of something grown back into itself, like a dead animal."

Wearing the McGovern Tatoo; 3/30/88, p. 19

"But McGovern's people, and I am one of them, still wear that brief and brutal experience like a tatoo that looks better every year."

"Give the 'trickle-down' people a taste of what is really trickling down. Let them wallow in their own greed mess., and in 1992 we will take over by default, and the Greedheads will flee into the swamps, leaving their sons to pay their debts and their daughters to remember them as fat green snakes coiled tightly around their arms forever."

"Politics ain't all just a game for fixers and lawyers and thieves. Every once in a while it can take you for a ride like one of those big 12-cylinder Jaguars that will scare your passengers into a coma."

Sorting out the Weird Ones; 5/25/88, p. 19

"Most journalists will tell you that they strive, above all else, to be objective, to be responsible, to tell it like it is and some of them actually do that, every once in a while. It is a hard trick, and objective journalism is usually just another word for what Tim Crouse described in his classic, 'The Boys on the Bus,' as 'pack journalism' where even the best and the brightest in our business would rather be safe than sorry."

Chicago Tribune

California's Big Sur Lures Tourists to Solitude; 3/26/61, p. VI-6

"There are more wild boars than poets here, but the poets make more noise - and they have an advantage when it comes to getting published."

"Those who come from the cities, hoping to join a merry band of hard drinking exiles from an over organized society are soon disappointed. The exiles are hard to locate, and even harder to drink with."

"It's cougars in the mountains and sharks in the sea, and hundreds of seals on a rocky beach below the highway, sounding for all the world like a Shriners' convention in full swing."

Renfro Valley (Sunday Tribune); 2/18/62

The Distant Drummer Obituary of Lionel Olay, The Ultimate Free Lancer; 1967

"I suspect Lionel died pretty much as he lived: as a free lance writer hustler, grass-runner and general free spirit."

Editor & Publisher

"Situations Wanted - Correspondents"; weekly, 1/6/62 through 2/3/62

"SOUTH AMERICA - Politics, travel, features. No hack work. Young, good experience, contacts. Advise needs, rates. Box 969, Editor & Publisher."

Eglin Air Force Base Command Courier

The Spectator Weekly sports column and sports articles; 8/3/56 - 8/15/57

National Observer

'Leery Optimism' at Home for Kennedy Visitor; 6/24/62, p. 11

(on President Valencia of Colombia)

Nobody Is Neutral Under Aruba's Hot Sun; 7/16/62, p. 14

"...it is necessary to drink in the tropics, 'to keep the system in balance.' And besides, there is not much else to do."

A Footloose American in a Smugglers' Den; 8/6/62, p. 13

(smuggling from Aruba to Colombia, w/photos by HST)

"Here was a white man with 12 Yankee dollars in his pocket and more than $500 worth of camera gear slung over his shoulders, hauling a typewriter, grinning, sweating, no hope of speaking the language, no place to stay - and somehow they were going to have to deal with me."

"There is nothing to do but drink, and after 50 hours of it I began to lose hope. The end seemed to be nowhere in sight; and it is bad enough to drink Scotch all day in any climate, but to come to the tropics and start belting it down for three hours each morning before breakfast can bring on a general failure of health. In the mornings we had Scotch and arm wrestling; in the afternoons, Scotch and dominoes."

Democracy Dies in Peru, But Few Seem to Mourn Its Passing; 8/27/62, p. 16

(Aftermath of Peruvian election w/photos by HST)

"The 'death of democracy' has not left much of a vacuum in Peru. It was more like the death of somebody's old uncle, whose name had been familiar in the household for years. But he died where he had always lived, in some far-off town the family never quite got around to visiting - although they had always meant to, or at least that's what they said."

How Democracy is Nudged Ahead in Ecuador; 9/17/62, p. 13

Ballots in Brazil Will Measure the Allure of Leftist Nationalism; 10/1/62, p. 4

Operation Triangular: Bolivia's Fate Rides With It; 10/15/62; p. 13

Uruguay Goes to Polls, With Economy Sagging; 11/19/62, p. 14

Chatty Letters During a Journey from Aruba to Rio; 12/31/62, p. 14

(correspondence, with HST sometimes begging for money, between HST and his editor)

"Ah, it is noon now, check-out time, and I can hear the clang of the cash register across the patio as they rack up another $7 to Senor Thompson, the gringo with the messy room."

"First, I want to assure you I exist. This is at present 171 pounds of me - down from 189 in Aruba - and just about the same weight in luggage spread out around this room."

"I blew in yesterday in unholy shape. This awful spate of pain and sickness puts the fear of God in a man. The latest was the sting of a poison insect in Cuzco, paralyzing my leg as if I'd been hit by a 50-pound sting-ray. Anyway, after two visits to the clinic, much cortisone, many infrared lamps, and the inevitable drink-prohibiting antibiotics I was at least able to walk with a cane fashioned out of one of the legs of my camera tripod. That is the state I am in now. I hobble around La Paz like a vet from the Indian wars averaging about 100 yards an hour on the flats and more like a turtle on the hills."

Troubled Brazil Holds Key Vote; 1/7/63, pp. 1, 10

It's a Dictatorship, but Few Seem to Care Enough to Stay and Fight; 1/28/63,p.17 (Paraguay's upcoming election)

Brazilian Soldiers Stage a Raid in Revenge; 2/11/63, p. 13

"The basic problem is hardly unique to Brazil: Where civil authority is weak and often corrupt, the military gets power by default."

Leftist Trend and Empty Treasury Plague the Latin American Giant; 3/11/63, p. 11

(Economy post-election in Brazil)

A Never-Never Land High Above the Sea (Bolivia); 4/15/63, p. 11

Election Watched as Barometer of Continent's Anti-Democratic Trend; 5/20/63, p.12

A Time for Sittin', Laughin', and Reverie; 6/3/63, p. 16

(folk festival in Covington, Kentucky)

He Haunts the Ruins of His Once-Great Empire (Inca Indians in Peru); 6/10/63, p. 13

"When the cold Andean dusk comes sown on Cuzco, the waiters hurry to shut the venetian blinds in the lounge of the big hotel in the middle of town. They do it because the Indians come up on the stone porch and stare at the people inside. It tends to make tourists uncomfortable, so the blinds are pulled. The tall, oak-paneled room immediately seems more cheerful."

Kelso Looks Just Like Any $1,307,000 Horse...A Day with a Champion; 7/15/63, pp. 1, 7

"Going out to Belmont to see Kelso is like going to Washington to see the President."

"After spending a morning with an animal that can, and does, earn $35,000 a minute, you keep your foot on the brake as you drive past the barns and stable to the gate and the Hempstead Turnpike."

When the Thumb Was a Ticket to Adventures on the Highway...The Extinct Hitchhiker; 7/22/63, p. 12

"At age 22 I set what I insist is the all-time record for distance hitchhiking in Bermuda shorts: 3,700 miles in three weeks. But now I am washed up as a hitchhiker, finished, a has-been. I have lost that cherubic charm that went too far in the old days; I am too big and too mean-looking to stand out on a sunlit highway and hope for the best. And besides that, I can't get near the speedway for fear of arrest and harassment."

Where are the Writing Talents of Yesteryear?; 8/5/63, p. 17

(HST as literary critic on current novelists as listed in Esquire)

"One page, for instance, contained a list of what 'every American writer of importance is working on at this point in our literary history.' After reading that page, it's hard to argue with the rumor that fiction is becoming passe, that the novel is dead as an art form, and that the short story is on its last legs. Running down the list, the only reasonable comment is 'Who cares?'"

"The problem with writers today is that the concept of 'par' appears to be extinct, and the grading is all on the curve. Which is small solace to those who see literature as something more important than a small-minded struggle for position in a hierarchy that doesn't mean a thing to anybody except those who are trapped in it."

"It is the poor echo of some half-wit myth about Scott Fitzgerald, that he would rush home from a wild party with a head full of gin and write page after page of his best prose. Anybody who has ever tried that method knows better."

Why Anti-Gringo Winds Often Blow South of the Border; 8/19/63, p. 18

An Aussie Paul Bunyan Shows Our Loggers How; 9/2/63, p. 12

(Pacific Coast Loggers Championship in Quincey, California)

Executives Crank Open Philosophy's Windows; 9/9/63, p. 13

(on Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies in Aspen, Colorado)

One of the Darkest Documents Ever Put Down is "The Red Lances"; 10/7/63, p. 19

(rev of book by Arturo Uslar Pietri)

Can Brazil Hold Out Until the Next Election; 10/28/63, p. 13

Donleavy Proves His Lunatic Humor Is Original; 11/11/63, p. 17

(rev of J.P. Donleavy's "Singular Man")

"Reading Mr. Donleavy is no longer like being dragged into a beer-brawl in some violent Irish pub - but more like sitting down to an evening of good whisky and mad laughter in a rare conversation somewhere on the edge of reality."

The Crow, a Novelist, and a Hunt; Man in Search of His Primitive Self; (rev Bourjaily's "The Unnatural Enemy") 12/2/63, p. 17

"In any outdoor magazine you can find many examples of hunters who write, but not many writers hunt."

What the Miners Lost in Taking an Irishman (kidnapping of USIS' Tom Martin by Bolivian tin-miners); 12/16/63, p. 4

When Buck Fever Hits Larkspur's Slopes; 12/16/63, p. 13

(deer and elk hunting in Colorado, dateline Woody Creek)

"With all of these novices running loose, it came as a bit of a surprise that during the 20 days of 'the season,' though 146,000 deer went to meet their maker along with some 16,000 elk, only 6 hunters were shot and killed out of a possible 250,000."

"But I went anyway, and - except for opening day - it was almost as safe and pleasant as off-season poaching."

"Most hunters shoot the .30-06, .270, .308, or the .30-30. The first three are considered 'high-powered.' They shoot bullets so damaging that they are outlawed in wartime."

And Now a Proletariat on Aspen's Ski Slopes; 2/10/64, p. 12

(Aspen ski patrol strike brings on Federal arbitration)

"Ski bums are a breed like sports-car fanatics or surfing nuts, and a high degree of social consciousness is not one of their prominent traits. About the only time they really seem involved with life is when they put on the skis, or hear about a good party."

The Catch is Limited in Indians' 'Fish-in'; 3/9/64, p. 13

(Marlon Brando/Washington State indians)

Dr. Pflaum Looks at the Latins, But His View is Tired and Foggy; 3/9/64, p. 19 (rev of "Arena of Decision")

"The table of contents is a masterpiece, but from there on the book gets steadily worse."

When The Beatniks Were Social Lions; 4/20/64, pp. 1, 14

"What remains are the people who were involved; most of them are still around, looking back with humor and affection on the uproar they caused, and drifting by a variety of routes toward debt, parenthood and middle age."

Brazilian's Fable of a Phony Carries the Touch of Mark Twain; 4/20/64, p. 17

(rev of Jorge Amado's "Home Is the Sailor")

"An inept translator can cripple a writer's style, and sometimes the process works the other way. Here Harriet de Onis has brought Mr. Amado's prose off without a scratch; his book is as Brazilian as the samba."

Golding Tries 'Lord of the Flies' Formula Again, But It Falls Short

(rev of "The Spire"); 4/27/64, p. 16

"If he feels, as he seems to, that there is still hope for man if the 'grown-ups' or the 'wise priests' will only take the reins, then it might be interesting to see these father figures in some sort of recognizable contemporary garb, so we will at least know whom to salute."

What Lured Hemingway to Ketchum?; 5/25/64, pp. 1, 13

"But Hemingway himself never seemed to discover in what way he was being 'destroyed,' and so he never understood how to avoid it."

"Today we have Mailer, Jones, and Styron, three potentially great writers bogged down in what seems to be a crisis of convictions brought on, like Hemingway's, by the mean nature of a world that will not stand still long enough for them to see it clear as a whole."

"Ketchum was Hemingway's Big Two Hearted River, and he wrote his own epitaph in the story of the same name, just as Scott Fitzgerald had written his epitaph in a book called The Great Gatsby. Neither man understood the vibrations of a world that had shaken them off their thrones, but of the two, Fitzgerald showed more resilience."

Whither the Old Copper Capital of the West? To Boom or Bust; 6/1/64, p. 3

(thoughts on the future of Butte, Montana)

The Atmosphere Has Never Been Quite the Same; 6/15/64, p. 1, 16

(awakening campus movement in the U.S., Missoula, Montana)

Why Montana's 'Shanty Irishman' Corrals Votes Year After Year; 6/22/64, p. 12

Living in the Time of Alger, Greeley, Debs; 7/13/64, pp. 1, 16

(dateline: Pierre, South Dakota; men HST's met on the road)

"I had met the tramp digger - sort of a wandering miner - the night before. And because he was broke and I wasn't, I bought him a hotel room so he wouldn't have to sleep in the grass beside the road to Spokane."

"We went down the stairs of the silent hotel and through the lobby where a sleepy desk clerk looked up and wondered, with that bailiff's leer that desk clerks have been cultivating since the beginning of time, just what sort of a journalist I was if it was necessary to have vagrants calling on me at this rude hour on a chill Montana morning."

"These are the boomers, the drifters, the hard travelers, and the tramp diggers who roam the long highways of the West as regularly and as stoically as other men ride the subways of New York City."

"In the dreary dawn of a hobo's breakfast at the Oxford Cafe, that wallet seemed as out of place as a diplomatic pouch or a pair of cashmere levis."

"I returned to the Holiday Inn - where they have a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms - to consider the paradox of a nation that has given so much to those who preach the glories of rugged individualism from the security of countless corporate sinecures, and so little to that diminishing band of yesterday's refugees who still practice it, day by day, in a tough, rootless and sometimes witless style that most of us have long since been weaned away from."

Bagpipes Wail, Cabers Fly as the Clans Gather; 9/14/64, p. 12

"The boy marched as if he were 10 feet tall. His body was slanted back, his chin was tucked in with the flute-like chanter gripped firmly in his teeth, the bag of air was squeezed commandingly under his arm, and his shoulders moved in a way that seemed to lift him along as he played the ancient match. Oddly, there were so many Scots on hand that this proud display and the strange, wailing music that accompanied it seemed entirely natural. In this age of the steady homogenization of cultures, it was a sight to make a man think."

You'd Be Fried Like a Piece of Lean Bacon; 9/28/64, pp. 1, 19

(forest fires in California in late summer, 1964)

People Want Bad Taste...In Everything; 11/2/64, p. 1, 15

(influx of topless joints in North Beach, San Francisco)

"Suddenly my view was blocked by a fat-ribbed waitress in net stockings. 'You ready for a fresh one?' she snapped. I was, and put another dollar on her drink tray. It was Saturday night in North Beach, and business was booming as usual. The air was crisp, the sidewalks were crowded, and the mammary circus was in high gear."

A Surgeon's Fingers Fashion a Literary Career; 12/21/64, p. 17

(Dr. Robert Geiger's struggle to be both a novelist and an M.D.)

London Observer

Fear and loathing at the Palace; 10/4/92, magazine section (on the state of the United Kingdom's Royal Family

New York Times

Hashbury is Capital of Hippies; 5/14/67, p. 28

"'Love' is the password in the Haight-Ashbury, but paranoia is the style. Nobody wants to go to jail."

"Drugs have made formal entertainment obsolete in the Hashbury, but only until someone comes up with something appropriate to the new style of the neighborhood."

"Now, with the coming of the drug culture, even the squarest of the neighborhood old-timers say the streets are safer than they have been for years."

"If there is one quick truism about psychedelic drugs, it is that anyone who tries to write about them without firsthand experience is a fool and a fraud."

Fear and Loathing in the Bunker; 1/1/74, p. 19

"Here was this crafty little ferret going down the pipe right in front of our eyes, and taking the President of the United States along with him."

"The Watergate spectacle was a shock, but the fact of a millionaire President paying less income tax than most construction workers while gasoline costs a dollar in Brooklyn and the threat of mass unemployment by spring tends to personalize Mr. Nixon's failures in a very visceral way."

"When the cold eye of history looks back on Richard Nixon's five years of unrestrained power in the White House, it will show that he had the same effect on conservative/Republican politics as Charles Manson and the Hell's Angels had on hippies and flower power...and the ultimate damage, on both fronts, will prove out to be just about equal."

San Francisco Examiner (HST, Media critic)

Buffalo gores a visitor (memo to editor with ideas for HST's column); 9/23/85

"But never mind that ugliness. I am more concerned now with getting my schedule in order, at least until Groundhog Day. I am, after all, a farmer and my crop has just come in - a brace of snow peacocks, born at 8,000 feet, and the third generation of a huge and virile breed I established some 10 years ago, in the throes of a profound psychotomimetic hubris."

 

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