Ruby red grapefruit and a Nagra tape recorder

I was desperate and dauntless, with no manuscript in sight. So I showed up uninvited at the Seal Rock Inn, which overlooked the Pacific Ocean at the end of Geary Street in San Francisco. Armed with a case of ruby red grapefruit and ten bottles of Wild Turkey, I also lugged a monster reel-to-reel Nagra tape recorder with an 18-foot cord, and on a tight leash, my loyal dog Pushkin, a shaggy brown poorly trained standard poodle with a propensity for irrational exuberance.

I kicked Hunter’s door with my alligator cowboy boots until it opened a crack. I burst in to find Dr. Thompson in his familiar shorts, sunglasses, and long cigarette holder, stumbling over shattered pieces of furniture in a room that had evidently been the scene of a hurricane or wild encounter group, whichever came first, muttering and growling under his breath in a language I couldn’t yet understand.

We worked line-by-line until it was right

We plugged in the state-of-the-art Nagra recorder, with which he was very impressed, and sat down to talk. In contrast to the bullying tone of his letters, Hunter was gruff but gracious, at least tolerating my company. He poured himself a tumbler of Wild Turkey and began discussing how we could finish the book.

As a result of this surprisingly collaborative spirit, we wound up camped out together at the Seal Rock for the next four days. Without ever leaving the room, we talked, we yelled at each other, we rewrote the articles he’d written during the campaign, and nailed down the conclusion and climax of the book. We worked line-by-line, composing out loud, transcribing and polishing up all the new copy over and over until it was right. I asked him a lot of questions which he answered at length, and then we edited my questions out of the transcript.

The deadline loomed large

Hunter paced up and down with the microphone, scouring and shuffling through the pages and galleys on the floor, the piles of photographs, the bottles and half-finished cartons of take-out. He was frequently upset with Pushkin for scattering his papers and leaving paw prints on the photographs. Hunter later described him in the book as “a huge paranoid poodle, totally out of control when the seals started barking outside, racing around the room howling and whining, leaping up on the bed.”

The deadline loomed large and there was no telling if we would make it or not.

___________________________

Stay tuned for part three, in which disaster is averted but only temporarily.

Jump here to read Guts Ball: Editing Hunter Thompson, part one.

You might also be interested in taking a look at How Hunter Thompson Beat Back His Writer’s Block.

No one had a worse case of writer’s block than Hunter S. Thompson. After the presidential election of November, 1972, his contractual deadline for Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail with Straight Arrow, the book division of Rolling stone, had come and gone with no manuscript delivery.

As Hunter’s editor, it was my job to get the finished book to the printer on time so we could beat Teddy White’s The Making of the President to market with our own Rolling Stone, Straight Arrow Books, Gonzo version of the epic election.

So after tracking Hunter from Woody Creek to San Francisco, I finally loaded up my car with a large Nagra reel-to-reel tape recorder and headed out to the Seal Rock Inn where the Prince of Gonzo was hunkered down.

We turned on the tape and talked — for 48 hours

He wasn’t exactly glad to see me but was impressed with the Nagra, so we turned it on and started talking. We edited his dispatches to Rolling Stone for the prior eight months, and recorded new material, pacing with a hand held mike trailing a long wire, the reels going around so slowly as they did. I asked him questions. He responded. Every few hours, members of the Straight Arrow Staff came out and hustled away the tapes for transcription. This went on for more than 48 hours.

Transcripts began to appear. We edited them standing up, still taping, interviewing, arguing, lunging around the room, tripping over each other. Here’s a photo of us going at it.

We edited the transcripts by hand. Taped and transcribed again. We finally patched the final manuscript together and met our deadline with the printer. We made it to the stores before Theodore White and The New York Times called Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail one of the “notable” books of the year. It’s still in print today, 35 years later.

We handled Hunter’s writer’s block the same way when producing The Great Shark Hunt and The Curse of Lono. By then the hyperbolic Gonzo mythology was in place, Doonesbury ran every day in the comic strips, and the reality was becoming no different than the legend.

Could this work for you?

It’s hard to write. It’s unrealistic to expect that it should just flow out in a beautiful finality. Writing is rewriting. Every serious writer knows that.

But if you have a friendly interviewer, transcriber, editor and tough-love fellow traveler, then talking into a voice recorder may be a way for you to work through a bout of writer’s block too.

Look here for Part One of this series: Guts Ball: Editing Hunter Thompson

The first time I met Hunter Thompson he handed me a quiver of four-foot roman candles and said “Hold this.”

I did and he lit them.

We were in Palm Springs, standing poolside at an ultra private estate, there for a Rolling Stone Magazine board meeting. Hunter had just secretly spiked the fruit punch with LSD. I don’t remember much about the rest except that it was supposed to be some kind of bonding ritual set up by our editor-in-chief Jann Wenner because Hunter and I were about to do a book together.

Hunter hated editors

Hunter had had bad experiences getting rejected, lied to, his work eviscerated or twisted to shreds by what he described as dirt bag imbecile hacks posing and preening as publishing pundits. So by the time I became his book editor for Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972, he treated me at first like some kind of capitalist henchman or worse, a sleazy highway patrolman who had pulled him over for speeding, and wanted to put him in jail for thirty days.

But by August of 1972, he couldn’t avoid me.

We had to be first and best on the market

Straight Arrow, the books division of Rolling Stone, had a contract with Hunter to expand his irregular series of articles on the Nixon vs McGovern presidential campaign into a book that would trump Theodore White’s best-selling series on The Making of the President. We were determined to be first and best on the market that campaign season. Us, the underdog lefty radical youth culture paper of record. Our version of democracy at work.

So when Hunter went into a tailspin after Nixon’s victory and appeared paralyzed, unable to write any more, I sent him a letter — no email in those days — suggesting we get together face-to-face and see if I could help him finish the book.

“Your hair will be cotton-white”

“I’ve never been much of a Christian, Alan,” he fired back in a handwritten red streaked epistle, “but I’m Christian enough to warn you that if you come anywhere near me, your hair will be cotton-white by Groundhog Day. A lot of people in publishing have knee-calluses, but not many can say what it’s like to scrape scar-tissue off the bottom-side of their hip-bones – so you might be a pioneer, of sorts, in that field.”

Not exactly a welcoming attitude. But we had a deadline to meet.

Stay tuned for part two.