the last book I ever read (Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson, excerpt eight)

from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson:

George never mentioned it, and when I suggested to Gary Hart that the Senator might like to take the machine out for a quick test-ride and some photos for the national press, I got almost exactly the same reaction that Mankiewicz laid on me in Florida when I suggested that McGovern could pick up a million or so votes by inviting the wire-service photographers to come out and snap him lounging around on the beach with a can of beer in his hand and wearing my Grateful Dead T-shirt.

Looking back on it, I think that was the moment when my relationship with Mankiewicz turned sour. Twenty-four hours earlier I had showed up at his house in Washington with what John Prine calls “an illegal smile” on my face—and the morning after that visit he found himself sitting next to me on the plane to Florida and listening to some lunatic spiel about how this man should commit political suicide by irreparably identifying himself as the candidate of the Beachbums, Weirdos, and Boozers.