Passing the Baton

Daniel Defoe --> Joseph Conrad --> Ernest Hemingway --> [Graham Greene] --> Hunter S Thompson.

I remembered that continuum earlier this evening when paging through one of my all-time favorite collection of letters, Hunter S Thompson's The Proud Highway.

Here is part of a letter he wrote to the love of his life when he was in San Francisco, looking for a job, age 23:

Dear Princess,

Today marked a turning point in the great San Francisco job hunt; it has become all too obvious that I am not going to get a decent job in this city before January [the letter was written at the end of October]. If you want an explanation, ask for it in your next letter. If not, just live with it.

Monday I'll ride my thumb south -- Carmel, Monterey, Big Sur, and maybe all the way to Los Angeles. Whatever happens will be all right. I do not care and have no plans. All I want to do is get out on the coast and see the California everybody talks about . I'll go as far as the rides take me, sleep on the beach (sleeping bag), and beg, if necessary, for food. Your $15 is my fortune, and god knows where it will get me, but it will be a break from this wretched frustration -- and nothing would be more welcome.

I have taken as many interviews as any thinking man can tolerate....Now I understand the Golden Gate suicides; I understand the drunks and the whores and the dull hedonists who fill the bars and the sad Telegraph Hill apartments. The city is merely an extension of Alcatraz; once  you get here there's no way to go except backward, and the kind of people who flee to San Francisco don't have the guts or the time to start over again....drinking can dull the pain of disappointment and frustration -- and then, if it still hurts, you jump.

But I'm just going to amble on out. When the money runs out I'll come back and look for a job as a parking lot attendant...Right now, I want only two things -- you, and time to write. ... We already have the big thing, and the rest is trivia. Only three more weeks; save your yanqui dollars; they may make a difference.

Love, H

The tone of the letter reminds me of Henry Miller when he, too, was struggling, but in Paris, not San Francisco.

In 1967, Hunter wrote his first novel, Hell's Angels, and the rest is history as they say. 

Note: Daniel Defoe was about 60 years old when he wrote Robinson Crusoe and had spent time in prison prior to that.