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Hunter S. Thompson Autograph Letter

Currency:USD Category:Memorabilia Start Price:1,200.00 USD Estimated At:1,600.00 - 2,400.00 USD
Hunter S. Thompson Autograph Letter
Hunter S. Thompson lengthy letter spanning three full pages, single-spaced, written to his friend Paul Semonin. Sick with dysentery, Thompson writes from Lima, Peru on 4 August (1962), with in-depth analysis about the culture and politics of South America, and depressed about his own personal condition, not being able to speak the language or get on with the locals. In very small part, letter reads, ''...since leaving Colombia, which is a good country in a lot of ways, I have been getting steadily more depressed until I am seriously beginning to wonder if my personality is being undermined. As a matter of fact, every place I have been except Cali, Colombia has been a pure dull hell and full of so many nagging discomforts that I am temped at times to write this continent off as a lost cause. Lima is the worst so far; I have done nothing but sit in my hotel room...I have spoken to no one except the AP man in four days. Perhaps I should say I have talked to no one; there is a lot of talking [he crosses out talking and handwrites 'speaking'] done here but it means absolutely nothing. In a way that makes it an easy place to write about, because all you have to do is line up all the facts, note how they refute everything you are told, and simply ignore all the shit people ram in your ears. And the facts line up very simply. They made a show of having free elections here, a queer won, the army didn't like it and the army took over. The fact that the army and the bankers are still very much on speaking terms sort of speaks for itself. The only ones who think democracy is going to work here are the people in Washington...''



they are throwing rocks at the window again; it is driving me into a black rage but in my weakened condition I dare not go into the street and tackle a packs of thugs...It is an old saw to say that I now understand a lot more about the US, but it is not simply that I have got away from it geographically but in a lot of other ways as well...people down here have not the faintest idea what I'm talking about. If they have a sense of humor it focuses not on the ridiculous or even the improbable, but on the sadistic. Frankly I have seen no evidence of any sense of humor at all; I have heard them laugh but of course the language cuts me off there and the only time I am sure what they are laughing at is when I see them baiting some beggar much like a pack of children will bait another and laugh like hell all the while. I am beginning to think that my coming here is like an Abolitionist going to the Old South and trying to communicate with the people there...



Frankly, I don't like the bastards. Nor do I like the Americans I've met down here because they go to extremes to ape the locals, explaining that 'it is the only way to get along in business.' Naturally, the only americans down here are businessmen. Occasional reformers, but they don't last...All in all it has been like being in jail and I think I am beginning to crack under the strain. I note a wailing, paranoid tone in my letters, a complete lack of anything like vitality or a decent feeling for life...I am so goddamn wracked by dysentery and several other heinous diseases that for the past three days I have not been able to leave the hotel due to a constant vomiting, shitting and dizziness. I finally hauled my ass to a doctor and spent all day in a clinic getting tested, jabbed, poked and all the other tests that rotten specimens are given. The report will come on Tuesday and I fear it. Meanwhile I am trying to write a story on Peruvian politics but it is rough going when I cannot think clearly. And with rocks clattering off the windows. I hear a woman's voice in the hall now & it nearly breaks me down with lust. Having my sex life cut off is probably the worst of it. Or was until recently, anyway, when I was cut off drink indefinitely...I retain a mad faith that Rio is better, primarily because I have heard it is bad from people who would not know a good thing if they swallowed it...I have begun to have a great belief in the effect of climate on personality...'' Signed ''H'' in type, with Thompson circling his initial. Three pages on three sheets measure 8.5'' x 11.5''. Some toning and brittleness to pages, overall very good condition.