"I think Bruce should be locked up, if for no other reason than to get him out of the way so a better man can carry the ball. I don't like the idea of my right to free speech riding on the fate of a flea-bitten punk like Bruce."

--Hunter S. Thompson, on September 20, 1963, in a letter to magazine editor, and "old jousting friend," Lionel Olay, criticizing a recent piece he published on on Lenny Bruce.

November 19, 1963
Box 7
Woody Creek, Colorado

Postmaster General
Washington, D.C.

Sir:

I would appreciate knowing if you mean to continue the stupid, vicious "Zip Code" system, instituted by your predecessor. If so, I would also appreciate an explanation of same. Is it, in fact, any more or less than governmental harassment dreamed up by an anti-social pervert?

Also, will my letters continue to reach their destination without bearing such codes? I have no way of finding out the wretched numbers for any address I might write to, and no intention of using such numbers even if they were made available.

I voted for Kennedy in the last election, but the first time one of my letters comes back to me for lack of a "Zip code," he can count on one less vote in 1964.

Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson

November 22, 1963
Woody Creek

To William J. Kennedy: [No Relation to JFK]

I am tired enough to sleep here in this chair, but I have to be in town at 8:30 when Western Union opens, so what the hell. Besides, I am afraid to sleep for fear of what I might learn when I wake up. There is no human being within 500 miles to whom I can communicate anything -- much less the fear and loathing that is on me after today's murder. God knows I might go mad for lack of talk. I have become like a psychotic sphinx -- I want to kill because I can't talk.

[...]

We now enter the era of the shitrain, President Johnson and the hardening of the arteries. Neither your children or mine will ever be able to grasp what Gatsby was after [...] The killing has put me in a state of shock. The rage is trebled. I was not prepared at this time for the death of hope, but here it is. Ignore it at your peril.

[...]

Fiction is dead. mailer is an antique curiosity. The stakes are now too high and the time too short. What, O what, does Eudora Welty have to say? Fuck that crowd. The only hope now is to swing hard with the right hand, while hanging onto sanity with the left. Politics will become a cockfight and reason will go by the boards. There will have to be somebody to carry the flag.

My concept of the new novel would have fit this situation, but now I see no hope for getting it done if, indeed, an publishing houses survive the Nazi scramble that is sure to come. How could we have known, or even guessed? I think we have come to the point.

Send word, if you still exist--

HST

"Let us hope that the whores of evil no longer loiter on the doorsteps of your path beckoning you into the brothel of despair, and that hereinafter you may present them with the most rigid manifestations of a firm and manly will. Ad astra per aspera."

--Jack Kerouac, from a letter to William S. Burroughs