About five years ago Tom Wicker wrote a column in the New York Times that focused—for reasons I no longer remember—on a whole wasps’ nest of ominous flaws that he (Wicker) had only recently discovered in the character of Richard Milhous Nixon.
Wicker was shocked. He called up the memory of Conrad’s “Lord Jim,” and said that he’d always thought Richard Nixon was “one of us.”
This is an impossible concept to explain to anybody who hasn’t brooded over the Meaning & Truth of “Lord Jim.” But to anyone who has, the idea that one of the most eminent journalistic gurus in the nation could ever have thought that “Richard Nixon was one of us” is genuinely unsettling.
Conrad’s “one of us” idea was a sort of primitive version of today’s far-flung belief that a very few people in this world radiate an almost unnaturally “good kaharma” (sp?) [sic]—and that only the ones who can radiate on this special level are capable of recognizing it in others. A sort of Aristocracy of Instinct . . .
Did Tom Wicker once see this special inner glow in Richard Nixon? He has come a long way since he wrote that thing, five years ago, but . . . well, what can you say? Wicker appears to be one of those fast-learning types. He is one of the few big-league journalists in America who still sees his job as a means of furthering his education. Which keeps him interesting . . . but it makes me a little nervous to know that Wicker might still be nursing some secret flash about Nixon being one of the world’s special laid-back fireball truthseekers . . . while I still can’t decide if the bugger is even human.
Which is neither here nor there, for now. Probably we’ll never know anyway. And all I started out to do here was explain away a few of my worst mistakes.
The only other thing I had in mind was to say—to all the people who keep writing me those vicious goddamn letters—is that I get a really fine high boot out of reading them. I read them all, screening the best ones for good lines to steal. About a week ago I got one from somebody in Chicago, calling me a “Cryptofaggot Bulldog-nazi Honky-fascist Pig.”
I can really get behind a letter like that. But most of the stuff is lame. I’m not running a goddamn “Dear Abbey” [sic] service here. Anybody with problems should write to David Felton, Bleeding Heart Editor, at the San Francisco office. He’s paid to get down in the ditch with lunatics. And he likes it.
But I have more important things to do.
Politics.
Human Problems are secondary.
—30—
Letter from HST to JSW
Sept 17 ’72
Dear Jann:
I think we should offer McGovern a full page, free, in every issue between now and the election. As far as I’m concerned he has a pretty weak goddamn case, but I think we should give him a chance to make it—especially in RS, because everything he’s done since Miami has been subject to criticism by various RS writers, including me, and I suppose it’s possible we’ve all been wrong.
So why don’t we just give him a “house ad” in every issue from now until Nov 7? Let him do whatever he wants with it: solicit funds, denounce drugs, praise Muskie, etc. . . . whatever he wants.
Needless to say, we’ll reserve all rights to comment, whenever necessary, on the content of the ads . . . Or at least I will.
OK for now. I have no plans to come to California anytime soon—unless McGov follows thru on his rumored plan to campaign out there with Humphrey. If that happens, I’ll definitely make the trip. A horror like that would just about wrap the thing up for me, I think.
Hunter
Letter from HST to JSW
12/3
Jann/
—I will definitely need speed to get the campaign book done properly & on time—nevermind the fucking wisdom of it; just gather all you can & send it ASAP—with a bill, of course.
H
The Campaign Trail:
Is This Trip Necessary?
January 6, 1972
Outside my new front door the street is full of leaves. My lawn slopes down to the sidewalk; the grass is still green, but the life is going out of it. Red berries wither on the tree beside my white colonial stoop. In the driveway my Volvo with blue leather seats and Colorado plates sits facing the brick garage. And right next to the car is a cord of new firewood: pine, elm, and cherry. I burn a vicious amount of firewood these days—even more than the Alsop brothers.
When a man gives up drugs he wants big fires in his life—all night long, every night, huge flames in the fireplace & the volume turned all the way up. I have ordered more speakers to go with my new McIntosh amp—and also a fifty-watt “boombox” for the FM car radio.
You want good strong seatbelts with the boombox, they say, because otherwise the bass riffs will bounce you around inside like a goddamn pingpong ball . . . a very bad act in traffic; especially along these elegant boulevards of Our Nation’s Capital.