The Daily Stoic - Timothy Denevi on Hunter S Thompson and the Art of Journalism (Part 1)

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

Ryan speaks with assistant professor and MFA program at George Mason University, Timothy Denevi on mastery in learning the entire playbook so that you can throw it away, How the information makes us blind to the facts, Fundamentally journalism is a form of lying and an act of aggression and his book Freak Kingdom · Hunter S. Thompson's Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I told this story before, but the first Airbnb I stayed in was 15 years ago. I was looking for places to live when I wanted to be a writer and we stayed at this house, I think outside Phoenix. And then when I bought my first house here in Austin, I would rent it out when South by Southwest or F-1 or all these events. My wife and I would go out of town and we'd rent it and it helped pay for the mortgage

and it supported me while I was a writer. You've probably had the same experience. You stayed in an Airbnb and thought, this is doable, maybe I could rent my place on Airbnb. and it's really that simple. You can start with a spare room or you can rent your whole place when you're away. You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. Maybe you set up a home office during the pandemic and now you don't need it because you're back at work. Maybe you're traveling to see friends and family for the holidays. While your way, your home could be an

Airbnb. Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home could be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. And it sounds like a wind farm powering homes across the country. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future, working today to ensure tomorrow is on. And bridge, life takes energy. Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic.

Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by The Ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time.

Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I've said this a bunch of times, but my way of understanding what's happening in the world now is usually to go back in time, right? We can learn a ton from reading the Stoics. Mark Serelyis writes meditations in the midst of a plague. What he saw, what he learns from how people behave

and that can shape and inform how we're to behave in the middle of the pandemic, that we were going through, for instance. I've raved about a couple books that have really helped me speaking of pandemics. I've raved about the great influenza. Raved about Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here. And more recently, I read this book by Timothy Deniviv,

that's called Freak Kingdom, Hunter S. Thompson's manic 10-year crusade against American fascism. Hunter S. Thompson is one of the great writers of all time. Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or two books we carry in the Pated Porch, which I read when I was falling in love with reading as a high school and college student. And he's always been a fascinating character.

He has this outsized reputation as this drinker, party, or crazy person. But he was also, as today's guest explains, working journalist, a masterful journalist, someone who deeply understood human nature, and was very clear about what was happening in the world around him. In fact, fear and loathing in Las Vegas, people don't realize there's a book about the American dream. It's not a book about getting obliterated.

It's why is he getting obliterated? It's a response to the despair. There's this amazing scene where he looks out over Las Vegas and he says, you can see the high watermark of the 60s, which has come receding down into the emptiness and the materialism, the temptation of a town like Las Vegas. All of which is to say, when I read this book, I was blown away because it was explaining so much of what I felt like was happening in the world, but also about human nature, right? The epigraph in fear and loathing Las Vegas is he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

That's a quote from Samuel Johnson that Thompson picks up on and is clearly motivated by, it clearly explains what he's doing and it explains so much of what people are doing now. So when I read this book, I loved it, and I reached out to Tim and asked him if he wanted to come on the podcast. He's a great writer, he's a assistant professor at George Mason. He's got his MFA from the University of Iowa, awesome writer. You gotta read this book. We had a really long two hour in-person conversation.

So I'll bring you part two later in the week. But for now, here is my conversation with Timothy Dennevieve, and check out his new book. Well, I love your book. Thank you. Yeah. That's nice to hear to say,

I always especially appreciate it when a fellow Westerner, you know, enjoys, enjoys. Where are you from? I'm Los Gatos, but my family's from Sacramento. Oh, really? Italian, yeah. We're all from the other side of the river. Where in Sacramento? So my mom says we're my grandfather's, or great-grandfather's house was. I think it was the other side of the, so I'm running about Joan Diddy announced. Other side of the tracks of her house. And I gotta go back and figure out like East Western all that.

But you know, that's, well, I lived there a little bit as a child too, you know, before coming back to the San Jose area where my family is now. You want some Joan Diddy interview? Yes. This is her table. Did you get it in the, oh my God.

Where do you think it was at the Franklin Avenue house? Or do you think she, because she took everything everywhere, you know, she took a piano. Yeah. It sounds like this is beautiful. Yeah, you got to get that cup off that. Exactly right. She would tell me to do that.

Yeah, there's a coaster. Do you want it? No, I got the table and I've seen pictures of a different dining room table that these chairs are at. Oh wow. But I've never seen a picture of her at the table. So I don't know where it was in her house. She always took that for me. She went to Brentwood after Malibu and Malibu was after Franklin Avenue. Right. And then I have her chair, like it was like a writing chair, and I have that, that's what I sit out every day.

That's amazing. You want to see it when we go? I do definitely. Yes. I desperately wanted the desk, which was like a piece of Sacramento history also, it was like from her family. It's $60,000, similar to a lot of money for a desk. A lot of money for a desk. I agree with you on that end.

I think my wife would have killed me and so would the bank. Yeah, I'm, as a Sacramento, when I weirdly didn't have a relationship with John Didient. Like, I don't think I knew she was from Sacramento and I weirdly didn't have a relationship with John Didian. Like, I don't think I knew she was from Sacramento until, I mean, I guess I vaguely understood it in some of the books, but at like, at no point growing up in Sacramento,

was it ever discussed that one of the greatest writers of the 20th century was from that town? You're exactly right. It wasn't until you know, even the 2010s Yeah, she finally began to be identified in kind of a proud way. Yeah, like before that She was derogatory about and protective of it Yeah, and the city you know with Thompson They've done the same thing. It was later when the city began to celebrate her Like Halloween will begin to celebrate him, but you're right.

I didn't. I knew her, but I always identified her with Los Angeles. Interesting. Yeah. And then the other writer that I am slightly more fanboyish about than Didian is John Fonte. I just read brotherhood of the great. Oh, really?

Because it's about Roseville. Yeah. His wife's family was from Roseville I've never seen another writer capture the Northern Italian experience the Northern Italian immigrant experience better than him have you read any of the other ones no I'm going to read uh uh the in the dust I asked the dust I have to have the story on the great novels of all time crazy story or treat you to talk about um but he has a bunch, maybe 1933 was a bad year, the road to Los Angeles.

He has a couple books about his journey. He's seen as an LA writer, but he's from Colorado. And so it's just a weird, it's such an interesting snapshot to America, we have the Italian American experience, Colorado, to LA, the Northern California. But as someone who loved books, I just think what would have done to me earlier to know that there were people who did this

in the place that I was from. Sacramento is not a literary or artistic city in its own self-recogning. So that, it wasn't until I went to UC Riverside, it wasn't until I got to Riverside that I met Susan Strait, the novelist, and she was the first professor I met on campus because she taught this honors seminar

that we had to take in the summer before we started. And like, they assigned us to read her book. And I was like, a person wrote this. Like from where I'm from. Yeah. But I wasn't, no, I wasn't. Like, a person wrote this. Like from where I'm from. Yeah, but I was a person wrote this about the place that they're from and that place is not New York or Paris or London. This is a this is a writer writing about an off the map place Riverside in the Empire

and is doing it at a high level and then it's just is her job. And that way all these light bulbs went off from it. I love it. William, Saroyan. Yeah. Saroyan wrote about the Central Valley. Like I just, when I read him, something in Honolulu, I was like, you can write about the Bay Area. You know, not the San Francisco or the LA type Noir story,

but just about where we're from and the physicality of it. Yes. And that thing can shape you. And if it's interesting to you, you can make it interesting to the reader, listener, whatever. Yeah, Fonte, I'll tell you about Ask the Dust. So Fonte, I did this piece about this a couple of years ago,

but so Fonte, he writes Ask the Dust, it's supposed to be his breakthrough novel. And he publishes it with a small publisher called Stackpole and Sons. Comes out like 33, something like that. Anyways, is it 33? I forget what year it comes out. Maybe later, maybe it's like 38. I'm just 38.

And that same year, Stackpole, which was also, was more of a military publisher. They did a lot of books of military history. They published an unauthorized edition of mine comp, Hitler being then, like, it'd be like, if Putin had written a book, and they felt like people should read it. And they also felt like, fuck Putin, no royalties for you.

So they translate in English and they don't It's not an authorized addition. Oh, uh HMH how mifflin still publisher today had the rights they and Hitler's Lira agency and Hitler himself Sue stack pull and sons and win in federal court sue stack pull and sons and win in federal court. Inforthing, like the murderers, Victorias, copyright in America. And the legend, it's true and not true, but the legend is, Acidus sells out of its first printing,

or is selling through its first printing in a good clip. It would have been a huge book. This distracts the publisher, sucks up its marketing budget, which they spend on legal fees, which they then lose. And asked the dust is then forgotten until 1970, whatever, when Charles Bukowski discovers the loan surviving copy in the Los Angeles Public Library.

Wow. I did not know that story. It's incredible. The book is so good. Is that what you would recommend for someone who'd read Brotherhood of the Grape and is looking for something to read by Fonte? I think so.

It's definitely his magnum opus. His short stories are good. He wrote this book full of life, which was his most popular book. It wasn't a popular book, but it gets turned into a big movie that basically pays for everything. That's, he bit, once, so basically what happened is once asked the desk is destroyed.

He's sort of heartbroken and then just becomes a well-paid, but little-known screenwriter. He has a nice house in Malibu paid for by movies that were never made and was a frustrated novelist and sort of a drunk and a torture dude as a result of this experience. And he writes a cup, he wrote one more bandini novel before asked the dust for getting what it's called. I've read all of them. And then after, after, and this is way nerdy, or then people brought up to, but after Bukowski rediscoveres, asks the dust as Fonte is dying of diabetes, they're like chopping off his legs in the hospital.

Blind, he dictates to his wife the sequel dreams from Bunker Hill. How's that? Because that's done. It's not done written out. He told his wife. Yeah. The novel. It was really good. It's really good. I think you would like 1933 was a bad year because it's about it's about Fonte as a kid. It's if the youth Italian American experience. But as the dust is fascinating in that. basically the premise of as the dust is our Turbian Dini a delusional narcissistic aspiring writer who you can't help but relate to as a writer Falls in love with this Mexican girl who works at a diner in bunker Hill and She's racist towards him and he's racist towards her and like you don't like

She's racist towards him and he's racist towards her and like you don't like You don't think of like the American racism experience is primarily a black way Story as we understand it. I feel like and then so to see two characters get it from two angles that are less Disgust and the interplay between each other is fascinating Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, because he has this self-hatred and she has this self-hatred and then they're in this sort of abusive toxic relationship which is sort of metaphorical for the toxic relationship that every aspiring artist has with Los Angeles.

And I don't think I understood how colorism worked within the Italian immigrant community too. Yeah. The one generation earlier, darker Italians. And you're ashamed of that. The one generation next. I don't think I understood how colorism worked within the Italian immigrant community, too. Yeah. The one generation earlier, darker Italians. Yeah. And you're ashamed of that. The one generation next.

And I think we map on our own kind of, you know, general American experience. Yeah. A lot of that gets lost. So that sounds fascinating that it was interplayed out between both of them. Well, and there's also, I think this is in Brotherhood of the Great. There's a new world, old world, in it, which I saw my grandfather was an immigrant from Yugoslavia and my grandmother's from Germany.

And so, but she sort of assimilated and he, he was more like, yeah, making wine in his basement kind of a guy. And you know what I mean? And like, I could see how it played out for my, like, I've talked about this before, but my parents, my mom didn't, doesn't identify as anything but an American,

because she's white and, you know, was born here, whereas for him, he was an immigrant, right? And so I think in Fonte, to have parents from Italy and that, like, who came, his parents would have been born probably in the 1800s, to come to America, like, there's this, you know, fauntae loves baseball. And so obviously in the black American experience, it's different because you're stamped with this thing, passing is so much harder.

And so these are all themes that I, of course, missed when I read Pasadena's, like 20. But now I think about it a bit. I'm Rob Briden, and welcome to my podcast, Briden and. We are now in our third series. Among those still to come is some Michael Paling, the comedy duo Egg and Robbie Williams. The list goes on. So do sit back and enjoy. Brighten and on Amazon Music, Wondery Plus,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone leaves the legacy. I like Mr Gorbatov. We can do business together. For some, the shadow falls across decades, even centuries. It is unacceptable to have figures like roads glorified. But it also changes. Reputations are reexamined by new generations who may not like what they find.

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The name of Napoleon still rings out in the pattern of the guides who thrive on the tourist trade. Binge and tyre seasons of legacy add free on Amazon Music. All listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. But there are also so many things I missed growing up in California that are in a world soap away. I've got to look at it now and understand its tensions that when you're a kid you sense something, maybe a little off, or people may be struggling or angry or resentful within different communities within different cities. But I think it's hard to even remember

that post-war space and even that in between the war space, that like, from what they wrote about and that really defined LA and San Francisco and we just kind of got trickled down, you know, all these years and generations later. Well, my parents spent a lot of time in Sausalito and I was growing up, they had this little boat that we would go to. And so that we take us out and we would go to a

Kangel Island. And like, Ellis Island is a is a integral part of the New York of New York's understanding of itself and its identity and thus America. The idea that there was an immigration hub on the west coast of the United States totally lost. California doesn't see it like California feels like the end of the line, not like the beginning of the entry point into America. Yeah, and the DiMaggio story, you know, like they're all fishermen, they're all more than Italian and the climate so similar in Northern California, you know, until their whole family migrated out there. My De Nevy family too, kind of at the same time. And it's such a strange thing to be so far away from where they were

to still be trying to practice the same family skills, fishing, and within an environment that's similar but so radically different. When I think Fonte's father and then the character in the book is like a brick layer. There's a stone mason. So it's an old world stone mason technique that it's like you would have seen those houses, you know, that generation of people built. And that's their sort of version of the American dream. The other one that I guys, I write about Harvey Milk in the book I'm doing now.

Like, and I read this interesting biography and many spins of big time talking about why San Francisco was a gay hub. And I just thought it what? Like these things are just degeneracy. They exist. Yeah, and he's talking about how actually it was to send to boys to Europe or to send boys to the Pacific

in World War II, they would take them from all over the country and then put them on trains and get them there. And then the ones who they realized were gay, they did not allow onto the ships. You know that this is basically like an echo. These are, this is the refuge of discriminatory navy policies. And you just what? I didn't even think about that. And you realize that these little decisions

start just the genesis of a community. And then, like, yeah, I ended up in Sacramento because there was a big Slovenian community in San Francisco. So my grandfather came over from Europe and lands on the East Coast and just makes his way towards his people and then somehow I end up in Sacramento. And did he end up in Sacramento because of the fucking Donner part? I know. So she would have been looking at us as the new people.

She's like a seventh generation or something. Yeah, and I think she always was seeing out ahead of her in an interesting way. You know, my family would be looking up towards her. You know, it would be on the other side of the tracks would be trying to be more white after coming over as Italians. And she knew all the communities there. But she, I think from a young age, her gaze was outward, you know, toward New York, toward other places.

And then I mean, the Donald Party such a horrific story. What a creation myth for your family. That you're one of the ones that survived, like, you know, and all of that. Well, and then by the time I grew up in Sacramento, I don't know about you, but like all the, as this happened in basically all the American cities, this is also what dreams of Bunker Hill and Fountains writing about like, you don't think, when you think downtown Los Angeles, you don't think big Victorian mansions,

which is what was Bunker Hill gets raised and it becomes these skyscrapers. And to think like when I was a kid, the houses in the 40s or the 30s, like the blocks of houses that the people like did and grew up in, that was all an abandoned downtown. Like that was not safe, not nice.

Everyone who had money, the dream would be to move to the suburbs. Yes. And I grew up in a nice suburb of Sacramento. And that was like where the athletes lived. Everyone was trying to get out. Whereas to Didian, the whole center of gravity would have been these areas that by the time these other generations are here, it's like, you're not even getting the language of it

and the symbolism was because the dream has moved from a big house downtown to a big house, big track house in the suburb. Like Auburn or someone like that, I was saying, and we forget the way that the floods worked as you know, on that town, to have that higher ground downtown. You know, meant that that house would be there,

right, 30 or 40, and we don't realize 70 years why that survived the floods, it's the best real estate. And that's where they built that big Victorian mansion. And you know, and now we're just playing in an adult baseball tournament, recreational father-son tournament,

actually with the Italians. And we played a Sacramento team. So I'm playing first base, and I was asking, what's the flood situation like now? And he said, really, since 86, they haven't had, or it's not happening in the same way. So the entire logic of the city, and what do I think about Relic? I think of something that exists now,

where it's narrative no longer makes sense in the present. Well, Sacramento is a weird town in the sense that it's a river town, but it's a river town, but it's a river town from San Francisco. Like, you don't go, oh, the people went around South America, landed in San Francisco and then took boats from San Francisco to Sacramento. The whole, none of that sentence makes any sense to you.

For the gold rush, like that's when this was happening. So none of that makes any sense anymore. And so yeah, growing up where I, like it's not how I read Didian that I really understood Sacramento as a river place. My only memory of the, like two, one was river rafting, you know, in the summer, sometimes you do.

But I remember a couple times that my childhood, a whale would swim up as the American river, and you'd be like, what, that doesn't make sense. How could a whale get from the ocean to here, and then how could the river be deep, because you were so disconnected from water, like I didn't live anywhere near there,

that wasn't, you know, the purpose of that had gone. The only time I would see it would be like on TV when they were showing that bridge and during a king's game or something. You know what I mean? Like it's just the yeah the the the reason the city exists is no longer why the city exists. Yes, but everything that represents that original reason yes continues in our present without the explanations that we might have understood you know 40, 50, 70 years ago. So one more author since you mentioned Auburn, Ambrose Beers, who I thought a lot about as I was reading your book, Ambrose Beers being, I think,

and Hunter Estompton, both being two authors that I think are proof of the idea that what is it like a cynic is a is a spurned idealist, you know, he lived in Auburn for a long time. I didn't find that out until later, but but the I see was a San Francisco guy. He was, but that that that when I think of Hunter S. Thompson, I was thinking of of Amose Beers in that my understanding of Hunter S. Thompson is the wild partying Hunter S. Thompson. I didn't until I read your book get my sense of him as the sort of political idealist who basically has his heart broken over and over again and then just decides ironically to do what he talks about in fear and loathing, which is making a beast of yourself to get rid of the pain of being a man.

Yeah. You know, and I think that, again, probably with you too, we got the trickle down effect of the 1960s. Growing up, many of our teachers may have been at San Francisco State. Yeah. You know, we're on the West Coast barricades during all of that University of California upheaval Just the political upheaval of the 60s and I hadn't understood in that way either Yeah, so it took me a while to kind of get back into his writing when I was in my 20s and trying to be a writer myself

Yeah, and seeing just how diligent and careful he was which is not what we think of when we hear him, into as a journalist, as a journalist, like a lot of my students, I T-Trading will try to start at Hunter Thompson. You know, and they have to understand he took 15 years as a serious journalist playing the game, learning how to do the investigative reporting, and the lead paragraph, you know, general journalistic writing before he then responded against it and found his own form. Yeah, it's like you watch Patrick Mahomes and you see him throwing these sideways past the scrambling and doing it. And you don't realize that's not him not learning the playbook. That's having him, that's him having learned the playbook and played in the system for since he was a kid all the way up, and then there is this element of mastery where you get to throw it away and improvise

and exist on instinct and intuition. And yeah, if you see Hunter S. Thompson or other writers as unorganized and stream of consciousness and undisciplined, you're missing all of the discipline and order that built them up into the point where they could either do that on purpose

or be so talented that they could get away with it. Yeah, I mean creativity, I used to think it was the blank page and then it was something, but it really is that response to a system, you know, and seeing what other people don't when they look at that. And I mean, the home's coming from a baseball background, a lot of quarterbacks do, but how rare that he can implement that kind of off balance, you know, response. And I love that show an Netflix because the creativity of the camera angle close to them where you see the decision making.

I mean, that reminds me when I think of writing creativity, again, it's not going from nothing to something, just looking at what already is there and trying to see what other people don't and create something new from that. Yes, and you have to have the core mastery of language and word choice and res, all the ingredients that then can come together in a new way, but yeah, you don't see Hunterist Thompson as trying at all.

And that is a sign of mastery, I think, but yeah, he was so good first, and he learned all the basics first, and then he threw away everything else. Yeah, and I think that's hard to do too, because it's a risk. Sure. You know, he wasn't doing it.

The artistic explanation can be like, well, I had to do this. I would have been in no other place. You know, like art is that expression of, you know, not being able to conform to whatever. But with Thompson, he needed to make money as a journalist and so he's still as someone using the first person, having political opinions, using a more hybridized space,

using found information within his text. He was taking a risk and at the time there happened to be publications that found it thrilling and he had a method to that, man, a careful method, but he may not have made the money he was trying to make and be able to support his family by choosing not to write the standard objective, you know, reportage story.

Yeah, and also there's a certain survivorship bias, right? You know these writers by their handful of big pieces and you don't see, but they published, and it's there in the archives, just a bunch of boring articles about regular events in the news, right? Like, like, and then ultimately, once they become so successful, they could stop doing those things.

Yeah. And keep them out of their collections when they put them together later. Yeah, but it's like, you know, Didian was writing like a weekly column for like look magazine or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, like, and probably 85% of them are totally

unremarkable, uninteresting, indistinguishable from the other crap that was stream published by other people at that time. And then it's like to go to your baseball metaphor, it's like there's a lot of misses, there's a lot of singles, and then you remember the person for a couple of key homeruns or grand slams or pinch know pinch big moments but there's thousands of that bats between those two things. That's exactly right and they often I think of Didian and Thompson,

I think of Thompson with Kentucky Derby, his decade into Prave, which is what began to sit him apart and our kind of cultural conversation, one of the things. And then Didian with slouching towards Bethlehem, she had no idea if she'd gotten that right when she went for like a month to San Francisco and she had the cinematic kind of narration. And then with those really beautiful asaistic parts that came in like, you know, cold spring and San Francisco in 1967, neither of them thought like I made it.

Those are the pieces that are gonna, you know, suddenly rise to the top of the national conversation. They weren't sure. And both in a kind of fascinating way, did so. Even their big hits or home runs at the time, they weren't sure. And both in a kind of fascinating way, did so even their big hits or home runs at the time, they weren't sure that they'd done them the way they hoped. And I, it's also hard to separate how big they were in the moment.

They were big writers. And the fact that for the next 40 years, those books sold 50 to 150,000 copies of whatever it is, right? Like that new non, that new nonfiction classic section at every bookstore, it's not that the books were ever the Da Vinci code or some massive pop sensation, it was more just that they stuck around

and they were rediscovered by generation after generation after generation and that there's and and actually it would take a while for it to really have the resonance that it did yes because you don't see it as a coming of age classic until multiple generations have come of age to it exactly and I think they were both really good at looking how the media was talking about an event like hippies or Hell's Angels and seeing when they saw that up close what was going on, how wrong the media narrative and time or life or look was. And that last today in a really nice way, I think. Yeah, you don't see them as contrarians, but effectively both Hell's Angels in Crannable Book

and Didian's couple books of essays there were really counter programming not not weirdly like like counter programming to popular culture, but hell's angel. She's just understanding why they're popular. Exactly. And Didian is, it's like Didian's inner sacramento in, is going like, these people don't know the answer. There's a five year old on acid. Like somebody helped these children. Yeah.

Right. She's not going, oh, look at these hippies with their long hair. She actually understanding them and disposing and arguing against them and judging them for different reasons. But, but it's resonating ultimately, ultimately they're both indictments of American culture in that time. And the promise, I mean, that's why even when I'm working on the Diddy and stuff now reading her lot, I still am always remembering, you know, it's in fear and I think Thompson's, it's the wave speech, but the failure of the 60s,

just that sense that your inevitable energy would prevail and that you'd win and that the movement would naturally reach its goals, but without the hard daily application, such change demands. And that the other side, the mean and militaristic forces wouldn't in their power and planning defeat you and your idealism in that. And I think both saw the promise and the failures on a tactical level of the counterculture

movement in the 1960s in a really clear manner. I think about that, Hunter and Stompson speech all the time, for people who haven't read Fear and Loving Las Vegas, maybe you see the movie, you think it's this book about debauchery and partying and craziness. When really it's this sort of elegy and sad meditation on the failure of all the idealism of the 60s, he says you look outside your hotel room in Las Vegas and you see the high water mark of the 1960s, you know the death of Martin Luther King, the assassination of Robert F Kennedy, both Kennedys. You see, and he's like, this is where it peaked, and now we're here in Las Vegas, doing what we do.

And so there's some irony that the book would become popular and people would be doing the Las Vegas version, not the, hey, change is really hard. Political organization is really hard. Political organization is really hard. Good meets against implacable evil. And even if you win the cultural battle, if you don't mop up the other stuff, it doesn't stick.

And he's making a beast of himself in sort of the depressing realization that, yeah. The bad guys won. Yeah, you know, in that, that, I think we still see it today. I mean, many of them are gone, but so many of those key players when they were young then are still fighting the same battles. In their 70s and 80s now.

I mean, I for a long time thought it was a new conversation based on the 60s, many of our political arguments now. But the more I read about it, maybe I'm just getting older. The more I realize it's the same conversation we've really been having. Yeah. And it's depressing and heartening and scary, but we've really been fighting those same battles. You know, and it's, what makes me crazy is when the younger generation now in their 20s or whatever

don't really through their lack of reading or because TikTok can't capture it. Again, I'm sending very old. Don't realize how that conversation has evolved but is still continuing. It's weird given those two books which are elements of the failures of the 60s. Culturally we took this lesson from those that changes brought about by organizing marching and writing music and art. And that's fundamentally not what the Civil Rights Movement was or how it worked. And uniquely, the Civil Rights Movement was centered around marching because marching was illegal. Right? They only got together in groups and marched because it was illegal and then they would

clash with the police and the police would show how bankrupt their authority was and the mask would slip, right? Well, marching for the most part is not illegal anymore. And so the idea that you just have to get a large group of people together and that will send a message to the people in power, Kennedy was on the side of the civil rights march for the most part. And even he looks at the march on Washington and just sort of like, okay,

that doesn't solve the legislative issue that we have. The civil rights movement worked because fundamentally it ultimately changed public opinion by the overreaction to the entrenched interests. But like, yeah, we took this message from it because ultimately they did prevail in the long run to a degree that like, hey, the way to bring about changes to change your profile picture on social media, to sign a petition, right, to call your representatives, which isn't it at all. I agree. And I love when Thompson writes about the 60s and with protests, he said, you know, the powers that be at first, they had to respond to it. I love when Thompson writes about the 60s and with protests, he said, you know, the powers

that be at first, they had to respond to it. It was a legal to march, bull corner, whether they want to turn out the police chief, he had to respond to that act. And he, as a person in power, could have his power at least undermined or even taken away from him by the end of the 60s and the start of the 70s. Thompson writes about how Nixon doesn't care how many people march. It's like you're marching. It's not going to change my position. the 60s and the start of the 70s, Thompson writes about how Nixon doesn't care how many people march. It's like they're marching.

It's not going to change my position. And that terrifies Thompson because then he realizes one, like in Chicago, you can just see, you know, daily on the other side, just be the shit out of the protesters. Right. Or two, you can't affect national change like that as a group anymore. It has to be more on the community or local level. And for him, it was a shock as he believed that too. And the people get together.

Yes. And if people go in the right direction, you know, their energy will prevail. And by, you know, 68 into 72, you just his realization that, oh my god, they're insulated from that. The people in power, it doesn't matter. That's not going to work on them. Well, also, I feel like you captured this well in the book. Hunter Assamson has this sort of big picture realization. And then he has a small picture realization of just running for local office. And he sees how big the system is, how hard it is to win, even though like, I wouldn't go for Ernest Thompson, he's a great person. But I think he gets this point. He gets, he, he,

unlike a lot of cultural critics, artists, writers, organizers has has actual first-hand experience in how entrenched interests protect their power, protect themselves, push away potential disruptors, co-opt potential organizers or change agents. And so he has this sense of, oh, okay. So he understands what Nixon's doing at the local and the national level. And the Nixon figures are doing at the local and the national level and the Nixon like figures are doing at the level. And so it really is kind of just a stu-understanding of what's happening, rooted in his understanding of history, psychology, local politics, whatever, that again is masked by the fact that he has his reputation of being a wild man badass when there's really not just a stoop, cultural commentary, but like very

relevant and modern information that Black Lives Matter could use or whatever your group is. Yeah. And what I think is fascinating too is when it comes to a successful politician, one of the skills is to be a good vote counter. And that's in the Senate to know how many you have, whether that's when you're running for Speaker, to know how many you have before you do it, Bobby Kennedy, when he was his brother's like, you know, right, hand man was a great vote counter, you know, at the nomination process, Thompson and Aspen, when he was running for Mary at his friends, you know, running

for positions in the city council, he was an excellent vote counter. And he knew how many votes were out there. Yeah. He knew how many he needed to get. So he writes about it, often comically, he often dramatizes his bill, Wilderman. Sure. So well. Yeah. You know, but he's writing about that now at a desk, you know, days, weeks, months later, and the him on the page, you know, the him that's kind of a buffoon or acting or being excessive, you know, that him was also the one that understood when to challenge and when to pull back and how to move against an Aspen, an elite like powerful group that wanted and eventually would succeed in, you know, developing

the scorchest place just so they can make more and more and more money. Now the billionaires, my friends and Aspen savor placed the millionaires. But back then, you know, and he was another favorite writer of mine is James Salter. And so he was an Aspen resident and worked with Thompson. On that, I mean, he's a lot like Fonte where he's spent a period of his life writing screenplays. Nobody, you know, made movies from but made enough money off it. And he told me he regretted that more than anything because a book is something that lasts. Yeah, it's a technology. Did you get

to meet James Alter? Yeah, I spent a book is something that lasts. You know, it's a technology. Did you get a meet James Alter? Yeah, I spent a lot of time with him. It was really nice in 2014. Yeah, he's another incredible novelist that I guess you wouldn't make anymore in sort of a figure of the 20th century where he's got this, I mean, he's one of the great fighter pilot, like a great fighter pilot.

Like not like he was in the arm, or like in the air, but like was in the wheat fighter pilot, like a top gun level fighter pilot. Not like he was in the army or like in the air, but like was in the wheat fighter pilot, like a top gun level fighter pilot. And so he has this kind of first love, which is that, and the second love, which is writing. And yeah, his novels are incredible. I mean, that gets to mastery too. He shut down two migs in Korea. Yeah, he was a professional. He was a pilot. They would go, always remember how he writes about going to Morocco to do target practice, where they trail this giant target and shoot with paint. I mean, just the daily level of practice and skill it takes to not crash a jet, or to be able to shoot another jet down, is still mind blowing. And he and his writing, I think, communicates that beautifully, but he was also ended up in Aspen. And a completely different person than Thompson

was still trying to make the immediate control your immediate surroundings and politics better. And I've worked with them. Yeah, so I've gotten to know a number of fighter pilots because my books have sort of made their way through the military. And starting to get the sense that, oh, like a Navy SEAL fighter pilot, author, actor, hedge fund trader, that these are all kind of these elite professions that are more the same than they are different.

The level of mastery, self-control, sort of compulsion, the ambition required, they're all speaking a language or on a wavelength that they understand and sort of like recognizes like do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I

mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I

do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I do mean? Do you know what right. Also not super appreciated. Kind of after his death was maybe rediscovered a little bit. Yeah, like a writer's writer, but I think again, we get one version. Yeah. You know, he's writing about sex. You know, he's writing about New York. I mean, I think he wrote about fighting, about fighter pilots, about flying better than anybody on the red. But he was also, right when Joan Didian was, you know, living on Franklin Avenue.

He was friends with Roman and at Plansky and Sharon Tate, you know, you would stay with them when you go to do treatments. He was part of that world too. And I think that gets lost also when we talk about him. He's a writer's writer. He taught at the workshop in Iowa. His sentences are beautiful, but I think for someone to last, it has to go beyond just that craft.

He has to have been, I think, he captured something. Now, we're still trying to figure out about what the post-war America was like. And it could be his white Jewish background and experience, but even beyond that, I think it was coming out of the army that shared sense of skill and mastery and then falling out and like so many people in the 1960s,

not knowing where to go or what to do. He didn't want to be a businessman in that sense. He didn't want to, you know, live the life of many of the people that he saw around him, but he still struggled and wasn't sure. Yeah, you get this sense. He goes to West Point. It's this culture that he loves. This sort of discipline, order, structure, old world values, and the virtues. And then to leave the army and be in the sixth you're like who are these people right like what is this about I think that's also what makes Tom Wolf's writing so good is Tom Wolf is clearly a character from the

generation before but then he's writing about Kim Keezy and you know like he's writing about they're they're a part of it, but they're apart from it and since they The reason they're not in it is what makes them able to write about it, right? Like they're so they're they're kind of outsider. So they're able to make fun of it and they see it differently um and and then that so you have to have just a Just slightly different vision than everyone else in your time or to have just a, just slightly different vision than everyone else in your time, or you are just a part of them,

you're just participating in the culture rather than documenting the culture. Exactly. I think the hardest thing in writing is to understand what's necessary from what's not and what you're trying to compose. And that little bit of an outsider's perspective can help so much.

You know, what can, what's something only I could say about this, as opposed to what is everyone else think about this? You have to have this, you know, his take on astronauts is different, his take on, you know, the Mary Prankster's is different, like, and the same, same goes, like nobody else would have saw the hell's angels, the way that Hunter S. Thompson saw them, which is both sort of more heroic in some ways than people anticipated and then also much darker, and same with Dideon, everyone else would have been going to Woodstock, and here she is just talking about this is horrible.

Yeah. I mean, Los Angeles in 68, did a lot of research into Bobby Kennedy's death. You know, that last week, I mean, James Baldwin was there, trying to write a screenplay for Malcolm X, Dideon was there. You know, all these writers, I think that as a Westerner, we, I don't know what, how you feel, but San Francisco's kind of the city, it's the culture.

You know, it's the physical capital for me, you know, sorry, second, I don't know, but it's the physical capital of California, but at that time, so much of the nation, not through the Hollywood sense, but the cultural sense was, I thought, I think now being defined by that Los Angeles space and seen so many writers from all over the world were there when everything was going on and think of James Baldwin, I mean, when Martin Luther King was killed, he was there and Bob Kennedy was killed, he was there, he had gone on to Palm Springs to try to get

the screenplay done, you know, on Malcolm X. And I think all in their different ways, and from their different perspectives of brilliance, we're feeling something that had always been unraveling and was now on the surface or was breaking and wrong. And we were kind of getting these fragmented point of views from everyone about what was happening, the larger sense in America. Right, yeah, the center will not hold. The center of the system is going,

and they're sort of both sensing this stuff's not working, it's not adding up. And then California kind of being this island, which people don't see it as that, but this kind of island from the rest of America is sort of maybe spending them a little bit and allowing them to see it differently, I don't know. I think you're right.

And we forget today, how long it took news to get to California. It took the New York Times delivered in the same easy way in the 60s. You didn't get the same newscasts at the same time before satellites in the late 60s. You had to play in the event like it's election day, we're going to set a satellite up or you know I'm taking a Hawaii and then across the country. But California was a long way. It was much further from the East Coast. Yeah. You know in terms of the way communication and information worked in the 1960s than it is now. Yeah, right.

And even, yeah, the California connection to why I think it's kind of forgotten. And just that, yeah, California is looking, I think America tends to look towards Europe, but California, there's this understanding of the East being a part of it, right? And even like all this stuff about the China lobby and all this stuff back then, there was just this, people were like, no, the center of gravity is this way, and you're missing, you're totally missing the picture. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. And it sounds like a renewable natural gas bus replacing conventional fleets. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future, working

today to ensure tomorrow is on. And bridge, life takes energy. Hey, it's Guy Razz here, the host of How I Built This, a podcast that gives you a front receipt to how some of the biggest products were built, and the innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists behind them. Every week I speak to someone new, stories like Justin Wilverton, a lawyer who just wanted a healthy alternative to ice cream, so he created Halo Top in his quesanard, or Todd Graves who grew his fried chicken restaurant, Raising Cains, into one of the most successful fast food

chains in the US. All of these great conversations can help you learn how to think big, take risks, and navigate crises in life and work from people who've done all of that and more. Follow how I built this on the Wondering app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to how I built this early and add free right now on Wondering Plus. And it was great because then writers, I mean, one thing I missed today, it's silica's for the well-but-long form, great long form pieces. You're not doing something that's so topical, it has to come out the next day in the New

York Times. These writers could do this great long form work. Right, you're not getting it down to Washington on the train to take cover this event, you're having to think about what it means and what it represents. And even the times like Hollywood operates on such a different timeline than every other bit of media because movie takes so long to get made. So yeah, you're just operating on a slightly longer view. And I think that gives, that's something we missed today, the ability not just to mull over it, but creatively try it different avenues and aspects formally that we began to see,

you know, and they didn't, when you're not working on such a topical issue, you can take more chances sometimes, you know, just rush. Do you think what James Salter and and Hanna Rastamson, what's interesting about both of them, Hunter S. Thompson obviously much more so almost at the point of character. But these were both really talented people who also have these sort of like secret lives or addictions or compulsions. And so that's what's fascinating about Hunter S. Thompson

is he's this sort of critic of the excesses of American culture and the ambitions and the egos and the insatiability of someone like Nixon, as if he himself is not hooked on a different drop. Exactly. And with James Holt, I mean, as a bisexual man, coming out of the military, that was something that he wasn't writing a memoir about. In 1960, he was writing about sex.

He was writing about differences in power. And he was writing about the danger of it, but also the beauty and rush of it too. And I think it was so informed that writing by the thing that he couldn't necessarily write about and be as old. I think Thompson's not, the way Thompson does it, I think a lot of it goes back to his Louisville experience too, feeling it as an outsider there, things you have to be quiet about. You're not part of the family structure there, the families

that run Louisville then, that could get you out of trouble. If you get in it, you have to be more circumspect. We think of him as this author that will say anything or do anything, but he understood the power structures around him and was always looking for ways to indict them. And I think relying on his own issues with alcohol addiction, with, and fetamine, seeing in these insatiable politicians, like you said, what he's thinking about a lot in his own life on an everyday way. Well, the big fallacy of Hunter's Thompson is that he's this disruptive center of attention, life of the party guy, which he isn't as writing,

but you're not getting press passes and traveling on the presidential plane or in the motor, he's obviously in the event, some exceptions, much more low-key and self-control and blending into the background, or he wouldn't be able to observe the things that he's exactly. And I think a good chunk of his writing is like what he wished he had said, or what he could have said, what needed to be said, and not what he was literally able to do as a journalist.

Exactly. He's trying to be invisible. A good comparison, I think, today, and there's not that many, but is a Jordan Clepper from the Daily Show. You'll see in moments when he's at January 6th or CPAC, the funny interactions, where he's more, and he's inserting himself more, but I'll write it, I write about CPAC and some of these other right-wing events.

He is spending 90% of the time listening, nodding his head, you know, he's not arguing back, he's doing the grunt work to get all the perspectives and information he can before some of those moments will come up. And Thompson, I bet at those scenes when he was reporting from the presidential primaries, you know, when he was, you know, sent to do a job, he was invisible like that, 90, 95, 98% of the time, too. Until he got to famous to be later. It's funny you brought that up, right? Because we're talking about Hunter's Thompson being a guy that sort of throws out the rules, but it's based on an understanding mastery. I think

when people see Jordan Klepper, you think he's just walking around, owning people, owning people, making fun of them to their face. Actually, the art of what he does, it's first off, he's probably not doing it 90% of the time. You're only seeing a snippet of what it gets filmed. And the art of what he's doing

is you're not even noticing that you're being owned and made it to be a fool. But that, yeah, just the sheer amount of those events that he's been to over the years, he knows how to blend in, he knows how to sense who the people are. And it's only for 12 seconds on camera that it gets wild. And then he's probably out before you even notice it.

Exactly. Yeah, when he guessed those that the day I showed show, he hadn't been on. He read my stuff. That's great. Yeah, he's awesome. That's great. Yeah, but people probably think that's a fun, rock-ass, disruptive, middle finger in your face, gig, and almost certainly to one, get access to the people you need to get access to and then to not be lynched by the mob. Yeah, you have to have a very artful fluid

ability to do that. Yeah, you know, the best and Tom's gonna do this. We think of him as inditing everybody else But he allows people to indict themselves by by speaking what they think is the correct perspective and the audience then sees how far away they are from reality often and what they're saying. And Cleopard does a great job of that. And Thompson talked to everybody. You know, we forget that too. He read everybody. So many, I think, young readers today too, they will see maybe writing they disagree with whether culturally, personally, identity-wise, politically, as being something they don't need to read because they don't agree with it. And only a generation earlier, and even not screwing up, you had to read everybody.

You could take them down and destroy them. You can do whatever you want, but you had to read what you don't agree with. You had to talk to the people at the event who you don't agree with. And listen, and they will reveal their positions as they articulate themselves to you. When you have to be able to do that so you can not get conned. Yes. I was talking about the StackPoansons publishing mine cop. When StackPoansons published their edition, which was the full edition of mine cop,

but HMH's edition had a lot of the real bad stuff taken out. That's partly why Hitler was seeing the way that he was in America. So when HMH publishes their edition of Minecraft, they, one of the guys, sends it to FDR, who recently become president. And FDR, you can see this copy I talked about in the piece there, writes back, I think a letter, maybe in the margins, but he's like, live it, because he had read Mein Kampf in Germany.

Right? Like, he'd actually read it, and he was like, this is not what is actually happening here. It's much worse than you say. So FDR had this understanding of the facts, not just the facts on the ground, but the full unpleasantness of the facts because you engage with the material as opposed to seeing it from far away. And I think you make a good point about 100th Stompson, which is like, 100th Stompson isn't looking at Nixon, let's say, or a governor. It's a governor, no.

Who's the bad one? I'm free. No, no, no, the conservative, the, the, from Arizona. Goldwater. Goldwater. He's, he's looking, he's not looking at those guys, the way some people today look at Trump, which is like, they read about him in an article, they see the tweets, like he knew everyone in the campaign.

He interviewed the candidates, his horror and terror and disgusted them was based on having gotten up close and personal with it and understanding what it is, what it represented and what the full end game was. Which you have to do, you can't pretend it doesn't exist, or just be a whole later than now about it. And so, Frances, you have to know what they're doing,

and more, you have to know how they do it. Yes. You wrote about this, and one of your first books where you talk about medium manipulation, and he would watch, you know, Nixon completely stage or create an event and get the version of Nixon, Nixon wanted to everybody. And he'd watch his entire National Press Pool just report it dutifully and not question, you know, the the artifice of it to begin with.

Then that outraged him, you know, but he had to see Nixon up close and see the presses failure to become anything more than a messaging system for the Nixon that Nixon wanted people to see. And that outraged him. And he was great at kind of articulating how easily that was to do that. Yeah, and so what's disruptive and courageous and brave about Thompson is not that he's saying this to Nixon's face

Which would have gotten quickly kicked out of sale as well, but it's that he's saying the things that everyone else who's watching is thinking But not saying yes and and wandering out. Yes, you know because of their Objectivity or their deadline that they need to make right, but they're being manipulated right and that's what he's trying to do They're manipulated and they are manipulating exactly. It's a symbiotic relationship It it pays off for them. Yeah, well, and he really captured which again you have to be That kind of I was thinking Conrad with language you're just outside of it English, but you're within it. And so I love Joseph Cutterhead's prose as an outsider. I think Thompson has that outsider within the system.

And he didn't want to burn it down, which I think is interesting in the 60s, where you had Oscar Acosta, you know, the civil rights attorney, who was thrown fire bombs? You know, and then you have their letters are great. You know, Thompson's like wants to live within the system. Acosta wants to burn it down. And so Thompson wasn't, you know, radical in that, you know, we also seem to think more radical now. Like you said, he had a more of a conservative small sea strain in him, but he was outraged that his colleagues who he was both a part of

and not would just keep perpetuating what was going on for their own benefit and for the benefit of others. One of the things I thought about from your book more recently, I know the comedian Hassan Minhaj. Yes. He's from Davis. Oh, I did not remember him. It ish kids. But you know, you think fear and loathing in Las Vegas, you go, okay, I understand it's

not literally true because it's the recollections of a person who is obviously not fully there because they're so high. But I think his reputation would be fundamental. 100 Assamson's reputation, the reputation of that book would be fundamentally different. If we said, well, this was actually three trips as you go on the book. And the FBI conference you are at, it happened totally differently. You like sort of go, basically, that book is emotionally true and factually untrue.

Which is sort of the distinction he was making in his comedy that like, look, the large events of this are true and things did happen to me, but I've, you know, anted up the valence here and I've done this here. And people were like, you made it all up. You're, you know, like he the valence here and I've done this here. And people are like, you made it all up. You know, like he took his major hit about and probably lost

a hosting gig with the Daily Show around it. And I'm from my understanding of history and also art. I'm like, what are you people talking about? And it's interesting the way that not only do we, is it unfair, but it's this interesting way that we sort of throw the baby out of the bath water. Now, the sad part where we get, we have to go, actually none of the things, none of the underlying indictments are true either,

which of course could not be further from the truth. Like, everything he's saying is true, his personal relationship with it can be more or less than some spheres, but you're missing what the point of art is. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review

on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke, early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.

Today, hip-hop dominates pop culture, but it wasn't always like that. And to tell the story of how that changed, I want to take you back to a very special year in rap. 88 It was too much good music. The world was on fire. Yeah, yeah. I'm Will Smith. This is Class of 88. My new podcast about the moments, albums, and artists that inspired a sonic revolution, and secured 1988 as one of hip-hop's most important years.

We'll talk to the people who were there, and most of all, we'll bring you some amazing stories. You know what my biggest memory from that tour is? It was your birthday. Yes, and you brought me to Shoday Life Size. Hard work, now. This is Class of 88, the story of a year that changed hip hop. Listen to Class of 88 wherever you get your podcasts.

You can binge the entire series right now on the Amazon Music app or audible.