Hunter S. Thompson Books

He wrote to the Church of Scientology regarding Tom Cruise’s ass sweat. Ask yourself, is this someone you want to get to know? I guess it depends on what he wanted to do with Tom’s exudation. Better he keeps that to himself.

Edaurdo Jones, a strange chap who writes, or maybe a strange writer who happens to be a chap. He is a regular contributer to D.S. Wills’ Beatdom and that was enough to grab my interest. Wills doesn’t print just whatever comes his way, he’s a stickler for the readable and interesting.

Edaurdo will be representing Beatdom at this years Whitman and the Beats conference in NYC. D.S. Wills wrote a paper on Whitman that appeared in issue 1 of Beatdom, he was invited to go and read the piece at the conference but due to a schedule conflict he could not make it so he asked Edaurdo to go in his place. A high honor for Mr Jones. I’ll be looking out for that on youtube.

I have read most of Jones’ work, he refers to himself as The Voice of the Doomed. He told me.. “That voice of the doomed thing actually came from this guy named Fin I met at at a bar I used to be a regular at, we had struck up a conversation about writing and I showed him my stuff, he in turn read it and said Jesus you’re the fucking voice of the doomed telling this horrible story’s about people who are heading to straight to hell in a hand basket. I liked it and used it.”

At first glance at his work you’d probably say he is the voice of the doomed. There is more to him than that though. Caustic tone and rotten language aside there is a passion there. I get a feeling of sentiment in his words, he will not agree with this but hey, I dont know what to tell him.

He mentioned to me before that Hunter Thompson was a huge influence. His thoughts on this are particularly relevant here considering the Gonzo Journalism emulation piece posted a couple of weeks ago.  He told me..

Hunter is a huge inspiration to me more than any other author. He taught me how to say fuck the rules and write what you feel. The first time I ever picked up his stuff I couldn’t put it down. No one ever made me hang on every word the way he does. Before I found him I never realized you could write about things from your point of view and not in a non bias manner. It’s very obvious my style is heavily HST based but I feel I’ve made it my own. I consider it a sin for Gonzo to die with him, but I also consider it a sin to just out right bite it the way a lot of people do. Styles are meant to progress like Picasso said “bad artists copy Great artists steal.”

You can make up your own mind about his work, by hitting Beatdom and getting the fine magazine here. Also head for his Facebook fan page .

He agreed to do quick Q+A with me. I had planned to get more out of him but due to time constraints on my side I had to keep it to a moderate amount of questions. I do hope to revisit this when he comes back from the Whitman conference.               Beware: Some rotten language follows.

MF. It is clear by your writing that Hunter S. Thompson is an influence. Clearly though you have a turn of phrase that is your own. If you had never read anything by HST do you think your writing style would be any different?

EJ. This is a good question. Yes it is clear the good Doctor has had quite the impact on me. If I’d never read anything by him my style might have turned out a little differently. Content wise it would be the same though. The drugs the madness etc etc. I started out first connecting with Mark Twain at a young age. I think I read Huckleberry Finn about five times cover to cover in the fifth grade. Which in return caused me to run away from home about five times. Not for any reason in particular. My life wasn’t bad at home or anything, I just wanted that adventure. Once High School rolled around I was forced to read the Great Gatsby. I didn’t exactly fall in love with that one the way Hunter did at the time, but I can appreciate it’s rhythms now. I’ve since read it as an adult during a stay I did at Rikers Island in NYC. I appreciated it much more as an adult than I did as teen. The year after I read Gatsby the required reading was Hemmingway, then Kerouac. So I think I started out down the same path influence wise as HST did. Hunter just showed me more than any one else rules are made to broken. Tossing your self right into the thick of things, my love of the run on sentence and so forth. I write in my own voice. So much in fact the people who actually know me who read my stuff are always like Jesus I swear to God I can hear you telling this story in my head as I read this. I think that’s the biggest relation I have to HST when it comes to my writing. The use of my own voice. So I guess if I never found Hunter I may not have realized you could actually write the way you talk. My stuff would probably be a little more boring and not as much from the heart otherwise.

MF. Do you have a routine for writing or is it a case of when and where you can?

EJ. A routine, Jesus no that’s the part that’s a curse I just get ideas and then try and get them down as quick as I can. I used to just carry around scraps of paper with me and was known as the crazy guy always pulling wads of paper out of his pockets and jaunting down notes. I couldn’t really be carrying around a pocket recorder in the line of work I was in. I’d probably have ended up dead out of suspicion I was an informant. So when things come I just write. It’s actually quite horrible because it keep me awake most nights I can’t sleep until it’s all out of me. So I average between 3-5 hours a night.

MF. I have found for the most part that fans of the good Doctor remember their first experience of how they came to read his work. What was yours?

EJ. Ah, The first time. I was rummaging through my stepfathers belongings in my mothers attic looking for Playboys which is kind of ironic I think, but it wasn’t in Playboy that I found him. He very well have may have been in one up there but I’ve never read Playboy for the articles. It was in this box of books he had. I found the Campaign trail, along with 1984, Animal Farm, Catch 22, A scanner Darkly, and On The Road. After reading every other book in the box I read the Campaign Trail out of sheer boredom and needing something to read since I was grounded and couldn’t leave the house for entire semester because of poor grades. I chose to read it last because the Goddamn font in that book is so small. I’ve always been a political junky since a young age so I just fell in love with his stuff. The Rum Diary is what really did it though. I’d been out on a meth and LSD filled bender and had no where to go early one morning in Columbus Ohio and decided I needed to get out of the cold so I went in a local library and figured I’d just read for a few hours it was right after the Vegas film came out, so I intended on reading that but all they had was the Rum Diary. I remember reading the line and forgive me if I miss quote it but, “I’d been living off my wits and balls alone for nearly ten years now.” I just felt an instant connection after that I just sought out by hook or by crook every thing he ever wrote.

MF. You were born and raised in Kerouac country. Any influence on your work from Kerouac?

EJ. Kerouac- Good old Jack. I think I have a little bit of Jack in me. Don’t ever tell Wills this but I find Kerouac a tad bit boring. He’s a phenomenal writer, but very long winded. It’s like reading poetry one long stream of conscious thought. You can tell he was a speed freak just by reading his stuff. I tend to do that here and there sometimes I can be flowery and poetic like Jack and I suppose it’s him I get it from.

MF. You write for Beatdom, how did that come about?

EJ. How did I end up writing for that rag? Well I’d have to thank Hunter S. Thompson for that. I met David S. Wills in the HST group on Myspace. After some heated debates with other members on the discussion boards we made a kind of strange friendship. I had no clue what the hell Beatdom was exactly at first I just thought it was his screen name. But after some messages back and forth we both discovered that the other was a writer and he asked to see some of my stuff so I sent him Sushi along with Terrorist Performance Art, and a couple other things and well the rest is history.

MF. One of the great things about being a writer is the freedom it offers RE multiple jobs . As other opportunities arise will you continue to write for Beatdom?

EJ.  That fucking asshole Wills can take that rag of his and stuff it straight up his ass! All joking aside I’ll write for Beatdom as long as it’s in existence. It’s where I got my start. Plus Wills puts so much passion and energy into, and he does it for all the right reasons. He just really wants to show the world some of the best writers in the world are people you never heard of and not the giants of what I’d like to call “POP” literature.

MF. I have said somewhere before (I cant remember where) that Beatdom will become a huge force in the literary community. Do you agree and why?

EJ. You mean it’s already not? I think Beatdom could change the world. It’s letting people hear voices they never may have gotten the chance to hear if not for Beatdom. For instance Joshua Chase is a name to remember for future reference. This guy writes about life in this great style I like to call blue collar poetry. No flowery soliloquies or metaphors so deep you’d need to have a masters in English to decipher. Just great really raw stuff straight from the gut. Honestly I don’t no where Wills finds a lot of these people or how he even has time to write anything of his own with how much of his time he puts into just gathering the best voices he can find for every issue. So as far as it becoming a huge force, I’d like to coin a phrase from you and say “I see it becoming the proverbial Juggernaut of the new literary world.”

MF. That is right, I did say that. Now I remember.

MF. I believe the Beat Generation and its ilk is slowly changing (all be it small changes) with the times. Do you agree and is it a good thing?

EJ. Changing no, I’d like to say evolving. You see,and Beatdom is a prime example of this. Styles are made to progress. Just like Twain influenced Hemingway and he did Kerouac and then it went on to Thompson an individual style is built on firm foundation of something. There is no greater master than the one whose students surpass them. Like Picasso said Bad artists copy, While great artists steal. So every great stole something from the previous generation and then put their twist on it to make it their own. It’s an art just like painting techniques are all the same it’s just how you apply them differently than the next man is what makes great art. So I just think the torch is now being handed down to the next generations voices that could shape the world. After all words are the instrument in which worlds are shaped and destroyed.

MF. Tell me about The Green Monstar radio show. Are you part of it? What is it about?

EJ. Well Green Monstar is an upcoming force in the music industry in the United States. He also happens to be a childhood friend of mine. He came up rough and after some involvement with gangs drugs and the prison system he decided to put all his energy into his passion which is music and use his life as an example to show people the ills of that life style and to promote change. He’s a very talented guy and he’s getting his own show on musicfeen.com. So he asked me to be the shows head writer. Basically I’m an idea man like for sketches and bits and stuff. It’s going to basically be the Hip Hop cultures version of shock radio. It’s videotaped and broadcast via the web so you can see what’s going on during the show. We’re planning on really pushing the envelope with this.

MF. Did you really write to The Church of Scientology RE Tom Cruise’s ass sweat?

EJ. Yes I did write that letter they still haven’t got back to me. Nor have the people at Hasbro about the adult line of transformers. Although the people at General Mills did write a fabulous reply in response to my request for the Cap’n’s naval records.

MF. Have you a novel or a book of any sort brewing inside you?

EJ. Yes I’ve had one brewing forever. Actually everything I’ve had published in Beatdom is from a collection of short stories I’ve been working on since about 2006. So the stuff in Beatdom is about four years old. But my issue six piece is brand new and I think I’ve evolved i style much more and it’s now truly my own. So this piece is going to be something really special for me to share. So yeah, I’m trying to talk that prick Wills into picking up a collection of shorts for City Of Recovery Press to publish in the near future.

The magazines we get today like Time or Newsweek although have a history they are largely mainstream. They give us the usual lo-down on what is going on in the world but not much more.  Peter Richardson sheds some light on how it used be done with his book about Ramparts magazine A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America.

Ramparts was founded by Edward M. Keating in 1962 with a focus on catholic matters. I use the phrase “catholic matters” but maybe a description from books introduction might give you a better idea of what Ramparts was about. It described itself as a “forum for the mature American Catholic” focusing on “those positive principles of Hellenic-Christian tradition which have shaped and sustained our civilization for the past two thousand years” It Sounds pretty staunch doesn’t it? But it wasn’t long before the magazine took a sharp turn to the left; it became a radical muckraker that by all accounts turned the art of journalism on its head and gave it a good shake.

I first heard of Ramparts through Scanlans magazine and their common denominator Warren Hinckle; and because of my huge interest in Scanlans I was delighted to get a peek at A Bomb in Every Issue so soon.

So what about it? Well after reading the book I’ve realized that magazines like Ramparts and Scanlans for that matter deserve some consideration for their contribution to a new, no nonsense style of journalism and gutsy political reporting.  Publications with guile are thin on the ground these days.

Richardson gives a detailed account of the 13 year life of Ramparts and its most contentious stories. I had heard of Ramparts but never knew much about it’s history, but after reading A Bomb in Every issue I found just how important Ramparts was in the progression of journalism; and reporting issues that some folks would have preferred were buried. For example, it was the first to publish a conspiracy theory surrounding the assassination of JFK. Another point of interest was it’s publication of Che Guevara’s diaries. It also boasted a long list of contributors including Cesar Chavez, Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky and many more.

The Hunter S. Thompson connection with Ramparts and of course Warren Hinckle is as you’d expect an entertaining one, as Richardson told me “The HST material in the book is brief but memorable: a fantastical visit to the Ramparts office, where Hinckle’s pet monkey got into his pills; the Chicago lunacy in 1968; and the Ramparts Wall Posters, an idea HST lifted for his campaign in Colorado.” The HST material in the book is small and not a huge selling point (nor was it intended to be) but it doesn’t need it, there’s plenty of other material to make this book stand on its own.

The bottom line is this. For anyone who’s interested in journalism and it’s transformation over the years; this book is a must read. It shows us the mettlesome attitude Ramparts had in its approach to spreading news, popular or not. As a fan of journalism I hope this book does well and reaches future writers of any ilk. It will bring to the fore a type of journalism that sadly is not as prominent as it should be in this day and age.

MF.. How did the writing of this book come about?

PR..I suppose it started when I was researching my previous book, a biography of Carey McWilliams. Your readers might remember him as the Nation editor who put HST onto the Hell’s Angels story. Some of McWilliams’s younger colleagues at The Nation also wrote for Ramparts. One was Gene Marine, who lives here in Berkeley. I interviewed him for the McWilliams book, and later I heard him give a talk on the history of KPFA, the first listener-supported American radio station. KPFA is also here in Berkeley, and Gene started working there in 1950, the year after it was founded. And while he was talking about his experience there, I realized I was aware of at least two books on the history of KPFA, but I had never come across a book on Ramparts magazine. After Gene’s talk, I surveyed the people in the room to see if they knew of any. They didn’t, so I decided to get to work.

Once I got into it, I discovered that I had a personal stake in the story, even though Ramparts folded for good when I was a teenager. I was born in Berkeley three years before Ramparts was founded, and as I began to consider the magazine’s influence, I realized that we born into the same social world. More important, it helped shape that world. So I started to see my research on the magazine as a kind of reconstruction of that milieu. In that sense, I had a personal interest in the story that was quite direct.

MF.. I have to say I am a big fan of the Ramparts / Scanlans style of reporting. From what I can see there is nothing like it around now. Do you think some day that the “muckraking” ilk will catch on and more importantly survive?

PR.. That’s a great question, one that many people here are asking now that U.S. newspapers are in big trouble. There are a few bright spots. One is the kind of reporting that Lowell Bergman and others are doing at Frontline, a PBS documentary series. Lowell was a Ramparts fan and contributor. He also co-founded the Center for Investigative Reporting and teaches journalism at Berkeley. He would say, I think, that Ramparts-style reporting can happen, but that it will be more collaborative. Essentially, investigative reporters at places like CIR and Pro Publica will discover stories and then push them out across media platforms: print, radio, television, etc.

Another bright spot, or perhaps a flicker at this point, is the prospect that bloggers will step into the breach. I just returned from Netroots Nation, the annual conference of political bloggers. Esther Kaplan of the Nation Institute ran a session on muckraking–how to obtain court documents, corporate disclosures, tax filings, etc. The room was packed with people eager to learn those skills.

Will those bloggers replace the political reporters at the Washington Post? I’m not sure, but don’t forget, when Ramparts came along, the staff was mostly a bunch of people in their 20s, far from the centers of power, who didn’t have much experience in journalism. But like these bloggers, they were smart and spirited and willing to note that the emperor had no clothes when the corporate media couldn’t quite bring themselves to say that out loud. When I asked Warren Hinckle why Ramparts was so successful, he said, “Probably because the rest of the press was so shitty.” So you never know where that muckraking energy and talent will come from.

MF.. You probably did lots of interesting interviews during your research for this project, who was the most interesting person you interviewed? I’m guessing Hinckle even though it only lasted an hour.

PR.. Yes, my conversation with Warren was fun. A lot of these folks are fascinating and have led extraordinary lives, so it’s hard to pick out one person. But I conclude the book with descriptions of my interviews with David Horowitz, Robert Scheer, and Warren, partly because they were three of the most important figures in the magazine’s history, and partly because those interviews illustrated the stark contrasts in their personal styles. David was serious, punctual, confessional. He frequently checked his BlackBerry for messages from his wife while we chatted over lunch near Malibu. Bob was harder to catch but open-handed, voluble, and generous with his time once I planted myself in his Berkeley living room.

My journalist friends laughed when I told them I couldn’t run down Warren. One friend finally told me that he could have a half dozen bartenders call him when Warren entered their establishments. Then he would call me, and I could rush over there. I finally caught up with Warren at a book show in Los Angeles: or rather, at the convention center bar. Of the three guys, he seemed the least interested in posterity, but he was willing to chat and enjoy an adult beverage or two before we toddled back to the exhibit hall.

By the way, I had similar difficulty lining up an interview with HST while I was working on the McWilliams book. His son Juan finally emailed me some advice, which included hourly calls starting at midnight. But I never did get through.

MF.. The book seems to be pretty well balanced. Is there much that didn’t make it into the book that you’d have liked to have there?

PR.. Yes, I tried to sort through the evidence and offer an evenhanded account of what was a very tumultuous experience. For that, I was praised (privately) by some folks who probably can’t agree on very much at this point. That was gratifying. I didn’t withhold much aside from a few uncorroborated stories. In some cases, I included tall tales but clearly labeled them as such. I did that because in some ways, the legends are “truer than true.” That is, they say something true about the magazine and the people even if the facts are wrong. HST fans will know what I mean, I think, and I wanted to give readers a taste of that.

MF..I’d like to know your opinion on how politics is reported today compared to the Ramparts era. Is the media too soft on the subject?

PR..I think the corporate media is, yes. I’m concerned about the future of journalism but agree with many critics that the mainstream media has brought many of its problems on itself. For example, Big Media missed what are arguably the two biggest stories of the last decade–the deceptively packaged invasion of Iraq and the housing bubble–by a mile. When the mainstream media missed the Vietnam story in the 1960s, Ramparts stepped in and forced them to pick up their game.

What’s needed for vibrant investigative journalism, I think, is a media ecology that includes savvy fringe outfits and larger news organizations that those smaller outlets can play off each other. That’s what Ramparts did with the New York Times, to each organization’s benefit. But the larger outlets don’t have to be newspapers.

MF.. You have got some high praise from Douglas Brinkley amongst others, that must feel good.

PR..Yes, that was a pleasant surprise. I ingested all the HST letters, which Doug edited, so I thought he might be interested in this book. Adam Hochschild and Richard Parker, who co-founded Mother Jones along with Paul Jacobs, also contributed blurbs. Ditto for Lowell Bergman, who rarely blurbs books, I gather. Eve Pell and Todd Gitlin, both of whom wrote for and about Ramparts, also helped out. So I was very lucky in that department.

Adam and Jann Wenner, by the way, were very generous with their time. Both worked at Ramparts, and both founded magazines that extended its work. Jann became aware of HST while he was working at Ramparts, and of course Hinckle first paired HST with Ralph Steadman at Scanlan’s, the magazine he published after he left Ramparts. So I think it’s fair to say that without Ramparts, we might not have gotten Gonzo journalism.

MF.. I’d like you to share some thoughts on Hunter Thompson’s work. Whats your favorite HST book? And some thoughts on Gonzo Journalism if you don’t mind.

PR..I teach Hell’s Angels in my class at San Francisco State University. The students really like it, and it offers a unique take on the theme of that course, which focuses on utopian and dystopian representations of California culture. I got a huge kick out of HST’s edited letters, which I relished as much as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Weirdly, the letters might be my favorite body of HST work, though of course they would be negligible without his other achievements.

It took enormous discipline to restrict my discussions of HST in this book and the previous one on McWilliams. Once you let HST into the story, it’s hard to prevent him from dominating it. Time and again, I found myself scouring his books and letters when I probably should have been reading something else.

I’m also a big fan of the books and films about HST. I guess I would pick out Outlaw Journalist and Gonzo, both the Alex Gibney film and the oral biography by Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour. If there weren’t so many excellent works about HST already out there, I might be tempted to add to that literature. Not that there won’t be more contributions in the future, I’m sure.

****************************************************************************************************

Peter’s site is at http://peterrichardson.blogspot.com/ there is a lot of interesting reading there. Also you can buy the book at amazon.com. Many thanks to Peter for taking the time to answer my questions.

–© Martin Flynn hstbooks 2009.

Peter Richardson teaches California Culture at San Francisco State University. He is editorial director at polipointpress, which publishes trade books on politics and current affairs. He wrote the book American Prophet: The Life and Works of Carey McWilliams, who was (for those who don’t know) the man responsible for getting Hunter to write a Hell’s Angels piece for The Nation, the piece later ended up as Hunter’s first published book. Now Richardson has written a book called A Bomb in Every Issue about Ramparts magazine which was edited by Warren Hinckle who later on was behind Scanlans Magazine as Peter explains below. Peter also told me “The HST material in the book is brief but memorable: a fantastical visit to the Ramparts office, where Hinckle’s pet monkey got into his pills; the Chicago lunacy in 1968; and the Ramparts Wall Posters, an idea HST lifted for his campaign in Colorado.”

I’ll be reading the book over the weekend and doing a review of the book and an interview with Peter. I have the feeling this book will be a must read for any staunch HST fan. Peter sent me a few words about the book and the Ramparts connection (below.) So until the review and interview (hopefully Tuesday at the latest) enjoy. Peter’s site is at http://peterrichardson.blogspot.com/

Although HST never published any signed pieces in Ramparts magazine, he later called it “the crossroads of my world in San Francisco.”  It’s easy to see why. Ramparts’ editor, Warren Hinckle, eventually paired HST with illustrator Ralph Steadman at Scanlan’s and thereby helped launch Gonzo journalism.  And another Ramparts staffer, Jann Wenner, published HST in Rolling Stone after Scanlan’s went down in flames after eight issues.

HST’s first contact with Ramparts proved to be memorable.  After staffer Peter Collier reviewed Hell’s Angels in 1967, he invited HST to stop by the office at 301 Broadway, not far from City Lights bookstore in North Beach.  HST left his rucksack in Hinckle’s office, and the two men left for lunch.  When they returned, they discovered that Hinckle’s pet monkey, Henry Luce, had opened HST’s bag, ingested his pills, and begun racing maniacally around the office.  The deranged Luce was evacuated to the veterinarian’s office to have its stomach pumped.  Thompson was unsympathetic.  “That fucking monkey should be killed—or at least arrested—on general principles,” he wrote Hinckle later.

After HST decamped to Woody Creek, he appeared on Ramparts’ masthead as a contributing editor.  He also joined the magazine’s movable feast in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.  There he encountered the Ramparts Wall Poster, a single full-folio sheet with street news on the front and convention news on the back.  He borrowed that idea wholesale while running for Pitkin County sheriff in 1970.  “And if the Wallposter name rings a bell,” he wrote Hinckle, “…well, I’ll never deny it.”

Later, HST reflected on his links to Hinckle and Ramparts.

“I met [Hinckle] through his magazine, Ramparts.  I met him before Rolling Stone ever existed. Ramparts was a crossroads of my world in San Francisco, a slicker version of The Nation—with glossy covers and such.  Warren had a genius for getting stories that could get placed on the front page of the New York Times.  He had a beautiful eye for what story had a high, weird look to it.  You know, busting the Defense Department—Ramparts was real left, radical.  I paid a lot of attention to them and ending up being a columnist. Ramparts was the scene until some geek withdrew the funding and it collapsed.  Jann Wenner, who founded Rolling Stone, actually worked there in the library—he was a copy boy or something.”

Errors of fact notwithstanding, HST’s remarks are the best proof of Ramparts’ appeal and influence during its heyday.

I’m not going to call this a review; it’s taken the shape of some thoughts on a book. So let’s call it that. Some thoughts on Simone Corday’s 9 ½ Years Behind the Green Door. Many thanks to Simone for taking the time to do this. The lady on the cover of Simone’s book (left) is not Simone. She told me she wanted “an image of a confident, sensual dancer who might work at the Mitchell Brothers or at other strip clubs.” The photos. Black and white is HST with Simone on the left. The color one at the bottom has Art on the left, Simone on the right with some of Art’s and Jim’s kids. The portrait is of Simone herself. If you want to buy the book you can get it here Enjoy.

Simone Corday, MA in English, author and former dancer at the famed Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco. Jim and Artie Mitchell opened O’Farrell Theatre on July 4 1969. It quickly became the place to be in San Francisco for lovers of all things sex. Hunter Thompson called it “The Carnegie Hall of public sex in America.”

I have been looking at old reviews of Simone’s book 9 ½ Years Behind the Green Door. I want to steer clear of the trite first line like “Corday was a stripper, dancer “etc. Why? Because there’s more to ladies of this ilk than meets the eye, at least the ones that I have met over the years. During my time in London in 1986 sleeping rough, I was never short of a coffee or burger – complements of the dancers at a local spit on the floor strip joint. They worked hard, letting the fat, greasy, drunken horde maul them for a few extra quid. Looking back on it, these girls could play the slobs like BB King could play guitar. The girls went home with some cash, and the slobs went home with nothing but lint and a feeble, cholesterol fueled hard-on in their pockets.

On their way home the girls would stop-by my bench /bed with a coffee or something to eat. We’d chat for a while, they’d give me the low-down on their night and I on mine. It killed an hour, I got fed and they got to unwind. They were a special sort of person, strong-willed, compassionate and no nonsense. They made my time in London that bit easier.

In 1981 Simone walked into a world of sex, drugs, debauchery and whatever else that went with the Mitchell Brother territory – in particular Artie Mitchell. She became his long time, long suffering lover – putting up with more than anyone should, but in a misshapen way they became locked in a bond many would envy. Until that is when Artie was brutally murdered by his brother Jim in 1991. And for all intents and purposes got away with it, serving only 3 years in prison.

The point of the book for the most part concentrates on her relationship with Artie and his death; although sex is prevalent it doesn’t take away from the purpose. They were wild in their own different ways, and that mix makes it hard to stop reading. He strikes me as being a cruel man without realising it or meaning to be. With a constant haze of sex and drugs clouding his brain, he comes across as sometimes needy and insecure with sudden flashes of brilliance and confidence. He was a handful to cope with but Simone was prepared to deal with it, and did so for nearly 10 years.

Hunter S. Thompson a friend of the Mitchell brothers drifts in and out of this story. Reading it I can imagine him bounding around with his usual bow-legged gait, doing what he did best – plamasing everyone in sight, looking like he owned the place. He was at O’Farrell to do research for a Playboy article (which was never published.) He was dubbed “Night Manager” A title I‘m sure he relished. He loved being around people, he loved to enjoy himself with the help of whatever substance happened to be around, and where better than O’Farrell Theatre. The Mitchell brothers were responsible for the making of the documentary “The Crazy Never Die.” You can see it here .

Simone told me.. “Hunter hadn’t been satisfied with the Mitchell project, (The Crazy Never Die) and although there are a few copies around, it was never properly released. There had been a lot of problems with the sound. They had filmed it themselves with a skeleton crew, and everyone involved had been drunk or high. Hunter was filmed speaking to large crowds at college campuses, but there was almost no recorded sound. It had been impossible to recapture the dialogue and the questions and reactions of people. The night I was at the filming at Tosca Hunter delivered a hilarious monologue, but it was never recorded.”

For me it’s a nice change to read a book that includes Hunter but is not about him, you get to see another side of him. It’s hard to put a fine point on it, I guess read the book and make up your own mind. Even though Hunter’s presence in the story is a selling point, that doesn’t mean the book can’t stand alone without him. It’s a fascinating and sometimes disturbing account of a unique partnership ending in devastating circumstances, with little justice.

Last month the O’Farrell Theater was in the news again for the wrong reasons.  Jim Mitchell’s son, James Raphael Mitchell, was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend on the second anniversary of his father’s death on July 12, and is now in Marin County Jail.

MF.. Why did you wait so long to publish the book?

SC.. Right after Artie Mitchell was shot to death by his brother Jim in 1991, several journalists tried to get book deals on the Mitchell brothers and two succeeded. As a first-time author, I had trouble finding a publisher, but I also delayed publishing my book because I was afraid of Jim Mitchell. During his prosecution for murder, Jim had considerable financial resources that funded his $1.3 million defense, and he had a lot of support from local politicians and journalists. There was a lot of publicity about the shooting being accidental, about it being an intervention to force Art into rehab that had gone awry. Since I followed the case closely and believed Jim was guilty of pre-meditated murder, I was outspoken against him on TV and in interviews, gave depositions in the insurance case that followed, and I got the message that Jim was not pleased. I was shocked when Jim was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and received only a 6-year sentence, and he was allowed to remain out of jail pending his appeal for 3 ½ years. In 1994 he lost his appeal and was sent to prison. He served 3 years, and was out by 1997. When he unexpectedly died of a heart attack in 2007, I knew it was time to publish.

Because I worked on my book for so long, I made it more concise, and was able to include events that unfolded in more recent years. It went through several revisions, but I always had faith in the book, and felt it was important to tell my story. I wanted to present an authentic, backstage, behind-the-scenes picture of the O’Farrell Theater; what it was like to have a long-term relationship with Artie Mitchell, a legendary outlaw pornographer, player, and family-man with Okie roots; and relate the events that led up to his murder, and the repercussions of his death.

MF.. I know you said you were afraid of Jim but I just want to ask if you lived in fear of him after he was released?

SC.. Until Jim died in 2007, I was never comfortable publishing my book.  When Art’s killing was new until Jim was sent to prison in 1994 I was more worried about Jim, but after he served three years in prison and was older I became less fearful, but still wary.

MF.. The reader gets a great feel of what goes on in a place like O’Farrell and it gives a good insiders view of the sex industry. Is there much about the O’Farrell that didn’t make it to print that perhaps in hindsight you’d have liked to add?

SC.. The O’Farrell had a shadowy, seductive mystique. It really deserves to be a character in its own right. I started out with a draft that was more than 800 pages, and it was tricky to know what to include and what to omit. So many sexy, funny, poignant things happened there every day. My picture of the sex industry comes from my experience at Mitchell Brothers, since I didn’t make films for other adult filmmakers and didn’t dance much at other clubs. I am happy with the end result for this book, although I am tempted to use some of the remaining material in another book.

MF.. Did you find it upsetting or maybe even therapeutic rehashing the past when putting the book together?

SC.. During the first couple of years after Artie was killed and all the dreadful court proceedings took place, working on my book helped save my sanity. I didn’t find the process of writing my own story upsetting—at the time a lot of inaccurate news stories and Jim’s murder trial played out in the press and on T.V., and these were very upsetting. I had kept a journal, with some written portions and about 50 audio journal tapes, so I had the details of the events of the years I was writing about. I did have to insert my reflections on the events, and organize and shape the material. As time went on, I could look at the ingredients of the book less as painful and more as material to tell my story.

MF.. Do you think there would have been hope for Art and his addiction if he was still around?

SC.. Art was a notorious hard-drinker and consumer of substances. But I believe that he could have detoxed had he not been murdered. He had a great deal to live for, including six children he loved dearly—his youngest was only 8 when Art was killed. His doing PR for the O’Farrell for 20 years, in that atmosphere of constant partying, contributed to his substance problems. He hadn’t bottomed out, in part because he had a good income and wasn’t in danger of losing a job. In the last year of his life, Art was getting sicker from alcoholism, but he hadn’t had a serious health scare yet where he was afraid of dying–nothing that would make him willing to be hospitalized and get treatment. Had he lived, I think that was coming within the following months.

MF.. What do you think Art would have said about you publishing the book?

SC.. I think Art would have liked the authenticity of the book, and would have enjoyed his voice coming through. And although I wrote about some of his very bad behavior, he would have been proud that the book showed that he had a positive side and was loved.

MF.. You became friends with Hunter, and you knew his work before you met him. Was he what you expected? Did you have any preconceived ideas about him?

SC.. I was astonished to meet Hunter in November 1984. No one at the O’Farrell had told me that he was arriving. Hunter and his beautiful, petite girlfriend Maria were watching the show from the tech booth high above the stage when I ran into them. I had read his books, and knew he had a phenomenal talent for satire and getting to the truth while entering into his stories, but I never thought about what Hunter the person would be like. He was unpretentious, incisive, very curious about the phenomenon of the O’Farrell and the performer-audience interaction that was taking place, and the efforts then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein was making to close down the place.

One of my shows was an imitation of the mayor, and Hunter got a kick out of that. He was at least 6’3”, handsome, balding, with a gangly gait, often with a cigarette in a holder, jutting at a rakish angle from his mouth. He was respectful of the dancers, and kind to me. I was very flattered that he enjoyed my theme shows and told me he thought of my gorilla show as “the rape of innocence by pornography.”

The next summer a photographer was sent by Vanity Fair—they were planning to do a series of photos of people smoking, and Hunter was on their list. Hunter asked me and another dancer to pose for the photo in the O’Farrell dressing room. This picture is included in the book Gonzo, by Hunter Thompson, the collection of Hunter’s photos and memorabilia (Ammo Books). I was lucky to get permission from the photographer Michael Nichols’s representatives, to print it in my book.

When I was fired for 3 months prior to the filming of Behind the Green Door, the Sequel, Hunter wrote a memo praising my shows and calling me the “spirit of the O’Farrell.” I was touched. Although Hunter hung out with Art and Jim and partied with them, Hunter held himself apart, and preserved his journalistic integrity. For about 2 1/2 years, Hunter alternated making extended visits to the San Francisco area with leaving for a few months at a time. Beginning in 1986, he was writing weekly columns for the San Francisco Examiner (that later were collected in his book Generation of Swine), and it seemed a struggle to meet his deadlines. I spent a day with Hunter and Maria when he was working on a column on the Meese Commission report on porn, and he included part of my interview.

After Hunter got an advance to write a novel on the O’Farrell, Art and Jim began referring to him affectionately as the “Night Manager,” but Hunter thought of himself as more of a consultant, and provided them with that great line Mitchell Brothers still displays on their marquee, calling the theater “the Carnegie Hall of public sex in America.”

It would have been challenging for Hunter to write a book on the Mitchells and on the O’Farrell. Since his forte was satire, he must have found ample material around the place. But I don’t think Art or Jim would have been happy with a gonzo depiction of themselves, even though they understood it would have brought them fabulous, lasting publicity. They did begin filming their only non-sex movie, The Crazy Never Die, with Hunter in 1987—but there were problems with it and Hunter didn’t approve of the end result. There are a few copies around, and some footage from that movie have turned up in the documentary Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride, and a short scene shows up in Alex Gibney’s film Gonzo.

MF.. Did Hunter have a favorite between Art and Jim?

SC..  Art was so accustomed to being the wildest, most macho presence at the O’Farrell, that he seemed a bit jealous of Hunter–since Hunter had a legendary reputation for partying, and a respected journalistic career that eclipsed porn. Hunter was critical of Art’s bad behavior towards me, and he seemed to prefer Jim’s more sedate persona. When Jim and Art took a caravan of people to Aspen to show support during Hunter’s trial in 1990, Hunter was very appreciative. But I think Hunter was suspicious of the way each of the Mitchells treated people—for good reason. After Jim shot Art to death, their acquaintances rallied to Jim’s support—but Hunter never made any public statements about the killing. Unlike one hundred of Jim’s acquaintances who wrote letters pleading for leniency at Jim’s sentencing, Hunter never did.

MF.. I’m curious as to what Hunter would have thought about this book, what do you think he’d have said?

SC.. Hunter had a great curiosity about the milieu of the O’Farrell and knew it was a worthy subject—but Jim killing Art had to have complicated the problems of writing about it for him. There are a few pages about his time at the O’Farrell in his book Kingdom of Fear. I hope Hunter would have been pleased because my story is genuine, and I tried to tell it well and truthfully.

MF.. Did you have much (if any) contact with Hunter after the O’Farrell days?

SC..  By the time my relationship with Artie was intensifying, Hunter was only visiting the O’Farrell occasionally. Since Artie was jealous of the admiration I felt for Hunter, he didn’t invite me when Hunter was around, and it would have been risky for me to continue the connection. Then after Artie died, everyone was in shock. I took it hard and felt that Jim was guilty, but I never heard how Hunter felt about the killing.

MF.. Will you write another book? A novel maybe?

SC.. Yes, I am planning to write another book, and I would love to write a novel.  The sex business provided me so much drama and material it would be a pity to waste it.

© Martin Flynn hstbooks 2009.

I’m sure all HST fans will have heard of Simone Corday. Simone was a dancer at The Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater during the time Hunter was “Night Manager” there. In 2007 Simone published a memoir of her time at O’Farrell Theater, and her time as girlfriend of Artie Mitchell.

Simone kindly agreed to an interview with me about her book 9 1/2 Years Behind the Green Door, her times at O’Farrell and getting to know  Hunter S. Thompson.

As soon as it’s ready I’ll be posting it here. Many thanks to Simone for taking the time to do this.