Hunter.S. Thompson Self Portrait, On the Road to Tijuana (Pic Courtesy: M+B)
…or the world according to Hunter S. Thompson.
I found something in The Paris Review. I thought you might like this.
Interviewer:
The drug culture. How do you write when you are under the influence?
Thompson:
My theory for years has been to write fast and get through it. I usually write five pages a night and leave them out for my assistant to type in the morning.
Interviewer:
This, after a night of drinking and so forth?
Thompson:
Oh yes, always, yes. I’ve found that there’s only one thing I can’t work on and that’s marijuana. Even acid I could work with. The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane. Either you function or you don’t. Functionally insane? If you get paid for being crazy, if you can get paid for runnin amok and writing about it…I call that sane.
Interviewer:
Almost without exception writers we have interviewed over the years admit they cannot write under the influence of booze or drugs-or atleast what they’ve done has to be rewritten in the cool of the day. What’s your comment about this?
Thompson:
They lie. Or maybe you have been interviewing a very narrow spectrum of writers.It’s like saying, “Almost without exception women we’ve interviewed over the years swear they never indulge in sodomy” – without saying you did all your interviews in a nunnery. Did you interview Coleridge?Did you interview Poe? or Scott Fitzgerald? Or Mark Twain? Or Fred Exley? Did Faulkner tell you that what he was drinking all the time was iced tea, not whiskey? Please. Who the fuck do you think wrote the Book of Revelation? A bunch of stone sober clerics?
