baby I'd give you my world

[excerpt-Hunter Thompson]-------------
...and essentially record the reality of an incredibly volatile presidential campaign while it was happening:  from an eye in the eye of the hurricane, as it were, and there is no way to do that without rejecting the luxury of hindsight.

So this is more a jangled campaign diary than a record or reasoned analysis of the '72 presidential campaign.  Whatever I wrote in the midnight hours on rented typewriters in all those cluttered hotel rooms along the campaign trail -- from the Wayfarer Inn outside Manchester to the Neil House in Columbus to the Wilshire Hyatt House in L.A. and the Fontainebleau in Miami -- is no different now than it was back in March and May and July when I was cranking it out of the typewriter one page at a time and feeding it into the plastic maw of that goddamn Mojo Wire to some hash-addled freak of an editor at the Rolling Stone news-desk in San Francisco.

What I would like to preserve here is a kind of high-speed cinematic reel-record of what the campaign was like at the time, not what the whole thing boiled down to or how it fits into history.  There will be no shortage of books covering that end.  The last count I got was just before Christmas in '72, when ex-McGovern speech writer Sandy Berger said at least nineteen people who'd been involved in the campaign were writing books about it -- so we'll eventually get the whole story, for good or ill.

Meanwhile, my room at the Seal Rock Inn is filling up with people who seem on the verge of hysteria at the sight of me still sitting here wasting time on a rambling introduction, with the final chapter still unwritten and the presses scheduled to start rolling in twenty-four hours . . . . but unless somebody shows up pretty soon with extremely powerful speed, there might not be any Final Chapter.  About four fingers of king-hell Crank would do the trick, but I am not optimistic.  There is a definite scarcity of genuine, high-voltage Crank on the market these days -- and according to recent statements by official spokesmen for the Justice Department in Washington, that's solid evidence of progress in Our War Against Dangerous Drugs.

Well . . . thank Jesus for that.  I was beginning to think we were never going to put the arm on that crowd.  But the people in Washington say we're finally making progress.  And if anybody should know, it's them.  So maybe this country's about to get back on the Right Track.

---HST
Sunday, January 28, 1973
San Francisco, Seal Rock Inn-------------------[end first excerpt]

===============================
Loving you
Isn't the right thing to do
How can I ever change things
that I feel

If I could
Maybe I'd give you my world
How can I
When you won't take it from me

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way

Tell me why
Everything turned around
Packing up
Shacking up is all you wanna do

If I could
Baby I'd give you my world
Open up
Everything's waiting for you

You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
You can go your own way
Go your own way

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
{first excerpt, "Author's Note/Introduction," Fear And Loathing:  On The Campaign Trail '72, by Hunter S. Thompson.  Copyright, 1973.  San Francisco, CA:  Straight Arrow Books}
{song -- "Go Your Own Way," written by Lindsey Buckingham -- Rumours, Fleetwood Mac, (Warner Bros.) 1977}

-30-