{"id":112682,"date":"2017-07-18T15:28:05","date_gmt":"2017-07-18T19:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=112682"},"modified":"2017-07-18T18:51:46","modified_gmt":"2017-07-18T22:51:46","slug":"hunter-s-thompson-origins-of-his-fear-and-loathing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/18\/hunter-s-thompson-origins-of-his-fear-and-loathing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Origins of Hunter S. Thompson\u2019s Loathing and Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Hunter S. Thompson, Self Portrait, in Striped Chair<\/em>, ca. 1960.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hunter Stockton Thompson began writing about politics in the early sixties\u00a0while working as a roving freelance contributor,\u00a0in South America<\/a>,\u00a0for the Dow Jones\u2013owned newspaper the National Observer.\u00a0<\/em>\u201cDemocracy Dies in Peru, but Few Seem to Mourn Its Passing\u201d is\u00a0one of the more than a dozen pieces he\u2019d eventually publish on South American politics, but a specific moment, in 1964, at the Republican National Convention in San Francisco, seems to have crystalized his broader political perspective.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the time, Thompson was just twenty-six; he was living with his wife, Sandy, and infant son, Juan, fifty miles north of the city, near Sonoma. Months earlier, he\u2019d moved to California to serve as the Observer<\/em>\u2019s West Coast correspondent, and throughout that spring and early summer he\u2019d written multiple articles on \u201clocal color\u201d: who-what-when-where-why travel pieces stripped of political content by his fastidious editors.\u00a0At the Republican National Convention, scheduled for the second week of July at the Cow Palace\u2014a Works Progress\u2013era arena on San Francisco\u2019s southern border that had originally been built to host livestock competitions\u2014Thompson\u2019s assignment was that of a stringer: each day he needed to gather quotes from Republican politicians that his editors, who would do all the actual writing, could include in their standard recaps.<\/p>\n

With the help of his old friend T. Floyd Smith, who, that week, happened to be working for the Pinkerton Agency, the private firm in charge of convention security, Thompson gained\u00a0access to the entire Cow Palace: he found himself in the caucus room for Barry Goldwater, that year\u2019s presidential nominee; he visited VIP receptions stocked with free alcohol and food\u2014all he had to do was flash Smith\u2019s badge.<\/p>\n

Goldwater\u2019s acceptance speech was scheduled for Thursday evening; by that\u00a0point, Thompson had been awake for two straight nights. He\u2019d recently started taking a daily dosage of Dexedrine\u2014an amphetamine-based stimulant similar in its chemical makeup to Adderall\u2014\u201cprescribed\u201d to him by another close friend. In the months before the convention, Thompson had begun to rely on the drug in professional situations; Dexedrine, in its effects, allowed him to stay up the entire night, with energy and focus, a perfect supplement to\u00a0the convention\u2019s frenetic environment.<\/p>\n

That Thursday, Thompson used his Pinkerton credentials to make his way to\u00a0the convention floor, a space reserved for Republican delegates and off-limits to the press. Goldwater was scheduled\u00a0to go on just after nine\u00a0P.M.<\/small>, preceded by\u00a0former vice president Richard Nixon, who, in the wake of John F. Kennedy\u2019s brutal murder in Dallas the year before, had returned<\/a> from the political wilderness<\/a> to once again seek the spotlight.<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t a politician in the country Thompson despised more. Nixon had made a career out of capitalizing on the basest and most destructive impulses in the national character\u2014bigotry, selfishness, and small-mindedness\u2014all the while painting himself, in the most garish of strokes, as just another humble civil servant acting out of love for God and country. Nixon seemed a man capable of anything so long as it got him what he wanted\u2014more power\u2014and now, the youthful Thompson, exhausted from four straight days of convention coverage, found himself watching the spectacle of Nixon\u2019s reemergence from only a few dozen feet away.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I\u2019m just a simple soldier in the ranks,\u201d Nixon intoned<\/a> from the podium. It was the same hokey shtick he\u2019d been using for years, most notably during his 1952 \u201cCheckers<\/a>\u201d speech, and once again the audience seemed to love\u00a0it. For Thompson, it must\u2019ve been uncanny to see\u00a0Richard Nixon live: it\u00a0was to witness his sole talent at work: namely, the\u00a0ability to convince people who know<\/em> he\u2019s lying that they should trust him anyway.<\/p>\n

Nixon concluded the speech by gesturing theatrically. \u201cDown this corridor will walk a man into the pages of history,\u201d he said. \u201cHe is the man who earned and proudly carries the title of Mr. Conservative, and he is the man who after the greatest campaign in history will be Mr. President. Barry Goldwater!\u201d\u00a0As the silver-haired senator from Arizona strode to\u00a0the podium to accept his party\u2019s nomination\u2014as the band struck up \u201cGlory, Glory Hallelujah\u201d and thousands of balloons cascaded down\u2014these two very different political animals basked onstage together, hand in hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to thank my friend Dick Nixon,\u201d Goldwater said. He slid on his heavy black reading glasses. In\u00a0a calm, deliberate tone, he proceeded to enumerate the specifics of an ideology that, to Thompson, felt dangerously out of touch\u2014and quite possibly apocalyptic. The speech<\/a>, more than forty minutes long, was heavy on terms like \u201cliberty\u201d and \u201claw and order\u201d and \u201csecurity\u201d that alluded to his more controversial positions without stating them directly. Halfway through, he seemed to throw a jab in Nixon\u2019s direction: \u201cSmall men,\u201d he said, \u201cseeking great wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the real surprise<\/a> came just as his speech\u00a0appeared to be winding down. Goldwater, after a brief silence, glanced at the podium, his jaw jutting sharply. Then, gazing out on the 1,308 delegates<\/a> below, he said, pausing every couple words, \u201cI would remind you \u2026\u00a0that extremism \u2026 in defense of liberty \u2026\u00a0is no vice.\u201d\u00a0In the next instant, Thompson found himself at the epicenter of the most primal expression<\/a> of political fervor he would ever witness. The delegates howled and cheered, their voices buttressed by innumerable noisemakers, trumpets, klaxons, and cowbells. Thompson watched people in the rows ahead of him bang their bodies against their chairs, their chairs against the floor, and the floor rumbled against their countless stomping feet.<\/p>\n

Later that night, Thompson left the Cow Palace and crossed the six miles back to downtown San Francisco with thousands of other attendees. He\u2019d pushed himself too hard; the crash was coming: in a few hours, he\u2019d descend into a state of drunken dissolution.\u00a0<\/em>Still, that moment on the floor was one he\u2019d never forget. \u201cWhen GW made his acceptance speech,\u201d he explained In a letter to his friend Paul Semonin a few months afterward, he admits to \u201cactually feeling afraid because I was the only person not clapping and shouting. And I was thinking, God damn you nazi bastards I really hope you win it, because letting your kind of human garbage flood the system is about the only way to really clean it out. Another four years of Ike would have brought on a national collapse, but one year of Goldwater would have produced a revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight years later, reporting from the site of another convention\u2014the 1972 Republican one in Miami\u2014he\u2019d write,<\/p>\n

Then it came to me. Yes. In 1964, at the Goldwater convention in San Francisco, when poor Barry unloaded that fateful line about \u201cExtremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, etc\u2026. \u201d I was on the floor of the Cow Palace when he laid that one on the crowd, and I remember feeling genuinely frightened at the violent reaction it provoked. The Goldwater delegates went completely amok for fifteen or twenty minutes. He hadn\u2019t even finished the sentence before they were on their feet, cheering wildly. Then, as the human thunder kept building, they mounted their metal chairs and began howling, shaking their fists at Huntley and Brinkley up in the NBC booth\u2014 and finally they began picking up those chairs with both hands and bashing them against chairs other delegates were still standing on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 1964, Thompson\u2019s artistic relationship with Richard Nixon was just getting started. Over the next decade, as he continued to follow and write about the astonishing career of a person whose character he ascertained from the start, he\u2019d find himself attending and participating in some of the most momentous events of the postwar era\u2014from the 1968 conventions to the 1972 primary and Nixon\u2019s inauguration, about which he\u2019d compose his most pertinent work, the book-length essay Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail \u201972<\/em>, and through the\u00a0Watergate hearings:<\/p>\n

The slow-rising central horror of \u201cWatergate\u201d is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If we\u2019ve learned anything in the time since, it\u2019s that political crooks come and go. Thompson remains compelling as a political journalist because his approach\u2014based on a unique combination of effort, participation, and insight\u2014reflected the breakneck pace of the events he covered.\u00a0It would exact a heavy personal price in return, but it was a sacrifice he was willing to make, a point worth considering every day\u2014especially today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Timothy Denevi<\/a> is the author of <\/em>Hyper<\/a> and the forthcoming <\/em>Electric Snake, a narrative of Hunter S. Thompson\u2019s life and work during the years spanning John F. Kennedy\u2019s assassination and Richard Nixon\u2019s resignation. You can follow him on Twitter at @timdenevi<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Hunter Stockton Thompson began writing about politics in the early sixties\u00a0while working as a roving freelance contributor,\u00a0in South America,\u00a0for the Dow Jones\u2013owned newspaper the National Observer.\u00a0\u201cDemocracy Dies in Peru, but Few Seem to Mourn Its Passing\u201d is\u00a0one of the more than a dozen pieces he\u2019d eventually publish on South American politics, but a specific […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1198,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1189],"tags":[276,24178,29612,2861,5466,188,23289,22754,6850,93,17597],"class_list":["post-112682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-politics","tag-1960s","tag-barry-goldwater","tag-fear-and-loathing-on-the-campaign-trail-72","tag-history","tag-hunter-s-thompson","tag-journalism","tag-r-n-c-republican-national-convention","tag-republican-national-convention","tag-richard-nixon","tag-san-francisco","tag-speeches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Origins of Hunter S. 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