A Self-Reflexive Fantasy/An Expressionist Argument . . . A Trip down the Rabbit Hole . . . Is this the new face of Gonzo? . . . The New Paradigm Shuffle? . . . or Just a Hot New Way of Getting By?

"I have spent half my life trying to get away from journalism, but I am still mired in it - a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world full of misfits and drunkards and failures. A group photo of the top ten journalists in America on any given day would be a monument to human ugliness. It is not a trade that attracts a lot of 'slick' people; none of the Calvin Klein crowd or International jet set types. The sun will set in a blazing red sky to the east of Casablanca before a journalist appears on the cover of People magazine."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine

[E-mail transmission from Fahey to R.U. Sirius]

Subject: 'Fear & Loathing Indeed'

--but fr this place. P.U. Gotta boogie out of Louisiana SOON. Amsterdam was a dream. Just a dream. Where do I begin? OK: Fast notation style: Finished the Smoke piece three days ago - it blisters. Bought 4 pieces of original art, blew my Smoke $$$, but worth it. Got fantastic head from a Peruvian slut. Wow. Got meself into a rave/house music mag in the Netherlands--Basic Groove: gonna be a meaty piece, & photos too! Am in this week's campus newspaper, back at the ranch. A good article; makes me look pretty paranoid, but I probably am. Got a good idea for a full length Fear and Loathing in Amsterdam novel. On which, more later. Smoked the kill hash; ate pure ecstacy (duzn't do much for me any more, but my friends tripped hard); a whammer LSD trip, rivalling anything I've ever been in touch w/; cubensis 3 times, 2 of them hardtrips. Peddled 35 copies of Wisdom's Maw: placed copies in: W.H.Smith (London-based); The Athenaeum Bookshop; The English Bookstore, & Conscious Dreams, a righteous head shop (took 15). Also got on TV. The broadcast was taped tonight (was on a plane home, but have a tape); came on after Philip Glass (the composer). Yup. Pretty neat. I TORE IT UP! Was pretty sure I was gonna lose my mind during days 2-6, but got it pretty well back together. I haven't used drugs like that in years. But FUN. The Red Light District is amazing. Too many sluts, too little money (actually, a 30 minute head job goes for 100 guilders, which is about $65 . . .

"making it hot for them" T. Southern

--tbf

There is almost no way to explain myself here, in the 2500 words alotted me by Smoke. I'm thankful like hell to have the chance to fill up a couple of their expensive pages, but it is a loaded prospect I face herewith. The enormity of the situation came to me on the plane ride over - an uneventful 81/2 hrs. through the sky, a straight shot from Houston, the highlight of which was the Michael Keaton flop, Multiplicity, a disturbing film about a slacker who can't advance his fortunes, no matter how many of himself he clones. I was thumbing through my hardback first-edition copy of The Great Shark Hunt (which I bought for a bargain $17 at some second-hand bookstore in Lafayette, and in which some sad-hearted fucker had written once: "To Nancy, the love of my life, 1979" . . .), culling what last-minute nuggets I could from my brutal Lord and Savior. It is an impossible act to follow, & I am too fundamentally honest to begin yammering about how the world really needs another Gonzo journalist around. The truth is, Hunter S. Thompson is a terrible genius, whose star is about to rise again - soon there will appear a scholarly look at the mad Doktor's Life-Rant, and we will have him to kick around for another twenty or so years of internecine egghead warfare. . . . which could make a decent segue into this Amsterdam piece.

I have been tracking Hunter Thompson since 1983, since on one sunny Santa Barbra afternoon and helplessly stoned on Humboldt, I was allowed to be taken in by his heavy con approach to the literary marketplace. Much can (& will) be said about Thompson's stylistic innovations, his "participatory journalism," yadda yadda - the thing about Thompson, for me, now, a 31-year old unknown novelist, is his understanding that a week on assignment in an exotic foreign locale is virtually always A Ticket To Ride. Open-ended gigs like this come around about as often as the comet Kahoutek. & there is simply no way of anticipating the kinds of connections, for good or ill, or both, that are to be made in the process of earning a heavy nonfiction Sex-&-Drugs legend.

There will be things told in this story that will scotch my reputation permanently in Puritan America. But the shitty truth of it is, Puritan America has never been particularly good to me. & there is also the fact that Hunter Thompson stopped writing serious Gonzo around 1979. The world has seen about nine major music movements since 1979. So maybe there is a need for another Gonzo journalist on the scene. Or maybe I'm just ego-stuffed and deranged. . . .