When he arrived, he discovered that the
base’s newspaper was looking for a sports
editor. Since he didn’t really fit in with armed
forces lifestyle, Thompson conned his way
into the position by claiming to have a jour-
nalistic background. As Thompson wrote at
the time, “The people who hired me didn’t
bother to check too closely on my journalistic
background...I’ve managed to keep them in safe
ignorance for about a month now.”
A quick learner and gifted writer, Thompson
soon caught on and excelled as a journalist. He
began moonlighting for a competing newspa-
per in the area (under the pseudonym Thorne
Stockton) and was helped by a sergeant who re-
spected Thompson’s talent enough to overlook
his numerous infractions of military protocol.
Thompson was always interested in literature
and knew that his best bet in life was as a writer.
He studied the classics but was particularly
taken with modern writers like Fitzgerald, Hem-
mingway, Ayn Rand and an emerging group
known as the Beats. He had an interesting way
of studying the writers he loved. He would
transcribe their works on his typewriter in an ef-
fort to discover rhythm and flow of each writer’s
writing style. He went so far as to re-type “The
Great Gatsby” and “A Farewell to Arms” in their
entirety.
InOctober of 1957, Thompsonwas delighted to
receive an honorable discharge fromtheAir Force.
After the service, he spent time in Pennsylvania and
NewYork, living nearly in poverty. Hewas fired from
one newspaper job because he kicked in a vending
machine that cheated him. It was at this time that he
beganwriting his Fitzgeraldian novel, “Prince Jelly-
fish”, which remains unpublished in its entirety.
THE CARIBBEAN BECKONED
By 1959, he was getting tired of the bitter
Eastern climate and became determined to find
work in the Caribbean. He responded to an
ad for a sports editor for the San Juan Star in
Puerto Rico in typical Thompson style: “I have
given up on American journalism. The decline
of the American press has long been obvious,
and my time is too valuable to waste in an effort
to supply the ‘man on the street’ with his daily
quota of cliches, gossip, and erotic type. There is
another concept of journalism, which you may
or may not be familiar with. It’s engraved on
a bronze plaque on the southeast corner of the
Times Tower in New York City.”
He received no job offer but got a cynical
reply from the young editor of the magazine
named William Kennedy, who went on to win
the Pulitzer for the novel “Ironweed.” Although
Kennedy rejected him, Thompson was able to
secure a job on El Sportivo, a new English-lan-
guage weekly bowling publication in San Juan.
Things in San Juan did not go as smoothly as
Thompson had hoped. “Prince Jellyfish” con-
tinued to be ignored, eliciting little more than
form letters from publishers; El Sportivo was
bombing and his paychecks were consistently
bouncing, if they came at all; and he was becom-
ing increasingly jealous of his girlfriend, Sandy
Conklin, who was living in New York.
But soon his personal life turned around as
Conklin joined him in San Juan and became his
common-law wife. He also received the oc-
casional infusion of cash for writing freelance
articles for the New York Herald Tribune and
Louisville Courier-Journal, as well as working
as a male model.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 46
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