Quite possibly the first time Hunter used the phrase “Fear and Loathing” was November 22 1963 when he wrote a letter to his friend William Kennedy. It was the same day JFK was assassinated. Now that phrase has become synonymous with Hunter S. Thompson’s work. This is a small part of the letter.
November 22, 1963. Woody Creek.
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.
I suppose you will say the rotten murder has no meaning for a true writer of fiction, and the “real artists” in the “little magazines” are above such temporal things. I wish I could agree, but in fact I think that what happened today is far more meaningful than the entire contents of the “little magazines” for the past 20 years. And the next 20, if we get that far.
He was so correct on every issue that he addressed. After Kennedy was murdered by his own people, the age of good times began to deminish into what we have to live for nowadays, which is nothing worth living for…