more. up next, part four of that conversation which focuses on chuck berry, jack, and traveling to cuba with actor sean penn and the late author christopher hitchens. >> when did you have lunch with chuck berry? >> oh, i've had a lot of meals with chuck berry. so chuck berry -- >> deceased now. >> deceased. i wrote in this book "the majic bus" i mentioned chuck berry as a poet. you weren't supposed to do that. i actually wrote it in a "wall street journal" article about st. louis, about t.s. he will elliott, a throwaway cultural piece. nothing that spectacular except joe edwards read it and he runs a restaurant called blueberry hill near washington university and he showed it to chuck berry and chuck thought my description of him was really spot on. >> he's from st. louis. >> he lived in st. louis. and then chuck berry loved "the majic bus." he said i would have stayed in school if someone let me out of the prison-like school room and actually go and see and do things. so he took to the concept and i got, out of nowhere, i will remember the day in my mailbox came a package and he sent me his autobiography and a guitar pick and a note and said if you ever come to st. louis with your magic bus we'll have dinner with chuck berry. i got joe edwards, the guy who set this up, and we met at blueberry hill and chuck and his wife and daughter, ingrid. we all had a meal. we had a great time. and then we went down into the basement and we played music with him. he played guitar. one of my students played drums a little. he had our driver sing and he set my class up as a band while he played and we had a blast. and ingrid, his daughter, is beautiful, and has this incredible voice and personality. it became a mainstay and not only that i would come back to st. louis and we'd have dinner quite a bit. we would go out with chuck, and so i found out, brian, there are two people -- there's charles berry and chuck, and that i was getting charles who was this unbelievable gentleman and chuck is the one who would yell at you, didn't pay me, i want my money. and i was getting this sort of fatherly gentleman, really remarkably kind and he called me professor. we would talk and talk about things and very smart. >> he didn't go to college. >> no, he had that feral, he would say things that could make your hair stand up because he could see what was around him. one day i went and he invited me to his recording studio and weep ate at wendy's. he wears a sailor's cap and we were at wendy's. i sat in while he recorded all the songs and mixed them of his last album. he only had one engineer and he would play the instruments and i watched him record some of these songs. this little studio like this we hung out two days while he was doing it in st. louis he was recording it. i wrote the liner notes to chuck. he called me before he released it and just asked if i would do them and i said yes. >> what did you think of the song "darling"? >> i liked it. i like the whole last album. at this like the album, chuck. didn't make much of a debt in our culture, if i'm a different era, a relic. i thought the cd was tremendous. and so, yeah, sad that he passed but i like that he stayed in st. louis and he was a cardinals fanatic. a baseball fanatic. and joe edwards helped him build a statue or get a statue, a beautiful statue of chuck berry in st. louis. the city has honored him really well. they play his songs at ball games and they were very proud he never left. a lot of stars leave. chuck stayed. that's home and he stayed his whole life there. >> how was he able to pull off showing up in a city without a band and go with a local group? >> yeah. >> how did he do that? >> hubris. everybody knows chuck berry's songs, plug it in. young people would get all nervous because he's like, let's go tune it. and in and out, pay me, performance, go. pay, performance, go. part of it -- >> pay in advance? >> oh, yeah. he did not trust -- he had a lot of run-ins with the irs like willie nelson and others. he liked his cash up front. and he would perform all over the place but he was a remarkable american figure and i've been pleased to see him being noticed in art museums and things. i recently saw a display. chuck berry was this really the standard of what rock as a cultural phenomenon was. >> who followed him? who found him to be the father of anything? >> chess records up in chicago started noticing it. then his records got hot and the eagles and rolling stones, they were just ripping off chuck berry's songs. chuck and jimmy johnson, those guys, the -- they were -- they gave birth to rock 'n' roll as an art form not as a pop -- it's serious guitar playing. and to be able to carry a guitar, tune it, like he does wild singing was quite remarkable. you always felt he was only giving you half his game. he could be in that world. he was the great and i talked to bob dylan about him and bob said, yes, there's two people that matter, chuck berry and myself. >> bob loved chuck berry and, of course, little richard is gone. i did -- bob wouldn't do a major interview once he got the nobel prize. he wouldn't do it, and i did "the new york times," the big interview, the first one after he won the nobel. except for being on his own website. for an outsider, i interviewed him a lot. "the times" only ran part of that particular interview. little richard had just died, so we talked a lot about little richard. >> what other music person have you met that you always remember? >> those are the two big ones. i met dizzy gillespie when i did a semester in europe and i went to a jazz club and i got there very early, and somebody let me in beforehand and sitting in a back area by himself was dizzy gillespie and i got to talk to dizzy gillespie for a while. that was a treat. he was so nice to me, too. i'm friends with winton marsalles. we have a mutual -- a couple of mutual friends and we talked a fair amount. we wrote a book together on an african american writer. >> former air force guy. >> we were going to do a book called "blues america" but we kept back burnering it. winton has done jazz at lincoln center. to give new york a premier jazz showcase of the talent that comes through of young jazz players getting to know winton would be high on my list. i deal with different -- i'm friends with a guy in austin named tom russell, a folksinger and writes songs and i think he's underrated. it's not just me. toppin who wrote half of elton john songs called him the most under appreciated singer/songwriter. i like musicians. i like talking to them and knowing them. a guy named joe ealy who is a friend of mine down in austin and there are many others. i knew jerry jeff walker lived just down the road from me and he just passed. i know don henley pretty well of the eagles. we did an event for him up at walden's pars with thorough east and ken burns. trying to save the lake on a border near where lady bird johnson was from. it looks like it's louisiana but it's in texas. beautiful bayou. stunning cypress trees and he works very hard to preserve that. has his home there in this isolated part of the world. i admire him for that. he picks one area that he loves and he tries to do something to protect it. >> go back to the beginning of the jack caroack connection. >> i read on the road and followed it up with subterraneans and visions. >> start with "on the road." >> "on the road" was great because he wrote it in -- with a kind of jazz rhythm and a spontaneity of prose. there's a thought that -- i don't always agree with but, again, i like people i don't always have to agree with. karouac used to say first thought, best thought. probably the truer, more accurate one and then we try to start self-editing. the first thought is the most interesting. he let that go with "on the road" where it was a traditional road journey like huck finn and jim going down the river, two guys, g.i. bill after world war ii, looking for his buddy's father who left him and traveling aimlessly around america looking for the dad. the writing descriptions of places like the mountains at el paso and texas or talking about montana and actually he writes about north dakota in the book. he writes about places. he makes going on the road fun. i believe that the great american -- one of the great american traditions is the road trip. take getting your car and going and seeing america. it's special automobile society and the road trip is a rite of passage. >> when did he write "on the road"? >> he started writing it in the 1940s, late '40s, early '50s, but it didn't come out until '57. what it bottled up was the feeling after world war ii, the war is over, let's go have fun. you might find an "on the road" written after covid, some young person might write about the liberation of covid gone and he was from lowell, massachusetts. he played football at columbia, got hurt. that was considered a masterpiece, "on the road." still is. "the new york times" gave it this giant rave review. he continue writing and died in 1969. of alcoholism. he died in florida living with his mother. very sad last years for karouac. he was like a meteor who flashed in the sky and then faded away. >> where is the original copy? >> original "on the road" is owned by jim irsay, the owner of the indianapolis colts. irsay called me and asked if i would go with him to buy "on the road" scroll at auction in new york. sotheby's had it up. i said, jim, i have to teach, i can't. he said, look, you have to come because i want a karouac scholar with me. i said i can't. doug, understand, we're not going to bid. i'm going to buy. i'll pay $10 million for it if i have to. i'm buying. you're not going to an auction where -- i'm going to get it. he sent the colts plane to pick me up and it flew me to new york and stayed at the waldorf and had dinner with him and his family, his children. and we then went to the auction. i sat by him and he paid like $2.2 million or something for it. he would have gone all the way up. he was going to get it because he was influenced by it and it's called the scroll, written on japanese sort of rolling paper so what he did instead of ripping off one sheet at a time typing, the whole book is like a roll, the original one, and it needed curating like any document does. irsay has done a great job of curating it and gives it on loan to the library or to a university. in march of 2022 would have been his 100th birthday. i need to call irsay and get him to do some public thing with that scroll. >> what is your relationship to the karouac name now is this do you edit anything for him on a regular basis? >> no. that was a while ago. i did edit "wind blown word" and the library of america which is my favorite thing in the world of the arts and culture. the volumes where they bring great writing back and beautiful use of paper and cover and book mark and it's almost like the highest honor a writer could have to be in the library of america honestly. >> who owns it? >> it's a private institution. it's run like a nonprofit in new york city. it means your reputation is sort of set forever. albert murray got his essays into that. kerouac, i did the road novels for jack kerouac as the editor for that project for them. i wrote a cover story on kerouac for "the atlantic monthly." i used to be more engaged. right now with three kids in high school and i'm phone cuss focusing on the book, my back pages. there are writers i love right now and inread more than i read people we're talking about because they were influenced to me when i was younger but subsequently every year i kind of go through a fad of a different writer, i just start reading everything of them i can. >> what do you know about kerouac that would help us better understand why we should read him? >> he was an original, too. he followed thomas wolf's trail but tried to celebrate america, tried to get to just the most moving writings i could feel. he would say things like in the '50s america, you know, where thou goest in your green automobile at night. and there are times you drive in america at night and you see all these cars and headlights going all these different directions. i think about we never know where everybody is headed as they're crossing us. >> let me read to you -- i have some quotes, interpret them for us. this is a brief one. the only truth is music. >> well, there's a lot, there was once a writers workshop at iowa, the number one creative writing. it was snowing. he came in, and i'm going to say it wrong, but he brought a cassette. pushed bach recording or something and then just said this is -- and then walked out with the music on. you'll never be able to achieve this. there's a feeling that some of that classical music might be the greatest, and jazz, like duke ellington, might be the greatest arts contribution of all. music is -- i mean what would life be without music? look how much music you have in your daily life. >> all the time. >> all the time. >> this quote, the best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorrented point of view, that comes from "on the road." >> that's the key. i just think you go -- there are people who do things and do it. if you're going to have an idea, go for it. if you have a dream, go for it. experience things. don't just talk about it, go do it. that's where -- i think that differentiates people in life, people that -- i'm not very keen on the slacker model of just, you know -- i read recently rose kennedy, the mother of john f. kennedy, used to say every hour has to be purposeful. make your life purposeful like do something. >> quote, this from jack carroll. great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion. >> you have to go your own route. make your own vision. it's not for everybody but if you want to be a pioneer, you have to be an innovator. you don't need to -- give it a shot. risk. you have to take some risk. i mentioned to my son johnny, he says he wants to be a general manager of an nba team. well -- he's a young kid. he's watching nba basketball and he thinks that would be great. he can't do that. if he has the dream and the guts and the fight and the moxie, i still believe in america. you can do things but you have to work harder than people let on. >> there was a story you were recruited possibly to write the third volume of winston churchill when he died? >> no, i never could -- i never would have done that. there was a trolling about. i love william manchester's writing, though. he's remarkable. there used to be a man named gordon prang who wrote on pearl harbor all these incredible books and at the end had to have help finishing some of those. i'm not the right person. all my books have been about americans. >> paul reid ended up doing that book. he sat in that chair. you never talked about it? >> no, no. >> would you ever let anybody do that for you if you had a book halfway done? >> yeah, i never say no because i don't know the deprivations or as kerouac says all we know for sure are the forlorn rags of growing old. i don't know what i will look like at 85. i suppose if i had a book half finished and in chemo treatments and might ask someone to help me, want to be a partner. >> robert caro said he would never let that happen. >> he has too much of a distinction on what he does i think that would be hard to do. >> do you have things you would not do? i'll give you an example. shelby foote wouldn't sign books. some people won't shake hands. >> you know, my only fear now is i get mixed up now with covid not shaking hands but even before that. in the south, i live in austin, when you meet people you give them half a hug and up north that's taboo. there are different cultural morays like that. as far as i'm concerned i'll sign any book, do a photo. i try to be as kind as i can if somebody is purchasing a book of mine. i just won't do a lot of -- you know, for example, i draw lines bill mahar has a show i was booked for the nixon tapes. i was to fly from new york to california i said, great. it's a promotion of a book. i found out the eve before i wasn't really talking about my book. i would be stuck on a panel with, like, four people not saying a word about my book but they would show the picture of it up. i just canceled, and i don't think they were used to people not doing the show. i've never done bill maher. i didn't like that. i felt i was getting booked to talk about a book. i worked really hard on this, why can't i talk about it? i don't want to play it's my movie not yours. but, also, maher was starting to put people -- mock religion and i don't do that. i don't make fun of people that are catholic or muslim or buddhist or, you know, whatever -- hindu. it's people's own business, their religion. i judge people how they treat me. >> did a whole documentary on religion. >> i wasn't very keen on it. i wasn't very keen on the putting down of people's sense of faith because we're all on such limited time here. people find a life line of faith that brings them happiness and joy, so be it. i'm not keen on mocking somebody's religion. >> what's the story of you going to cuba? >> i went to cuba -- i was with cbs -- one of the things i was a historian for cbs for quite a while. i did the inaugurals with bob schaefer and katie couric and ended up writing the book on walter cronkite. i represented cbs and christopher hitchens was writing for ""vanity fair"." and the actor sean penn was writing for "the nation." this started on hitchens and i were friends, we were with sean one night, and he was saying he could get us an interview with hugo chavez and fidel castro. and we said, great, do it. and, unfortunately, the next morning, i'm afraid sean -- now i have to live up to my word. was pushing sean on it. you said that we could do it and sean delivered. sean like hugo chavez. hitchens loathed him. i didn't know enough about him and i leaned towards not trusting him but i was willing to kind of see my gut on him. he was very funny, the biggest thing i learned from him was that revolution, the red was from the cincinnati reds baseball team. because, you know, the baseball players from venezuela, miguel cabrera, they're on and on. the reds were the team because the shortstop grew up near chavez and i was willing to give him a chance until i started interviewing him and he fell into full bore conspiracy mode. he said that the united states never walked on the moon. i'm a big neil armstrong space guy. i was aghast. and then he started intimating that 9/11 was a conspiracy. and at that point -- i realized that i understood quickly why we weren't in good relationships with his government. he was charismatic but really disliked the united states. >> how did you and sean penn and christopher hitchens get to cuba? >> we then flew on a plane from cuba, a cuban plane to meet fidel to interview them. when we got there everything went okay. we met fidel castro's son. sean brought a lot of baseballs to give out. we had a nice meal and we went to the restaurant. everything was good. then we kept not getting our interview. not getting our interview with fidel castro. and cbs news told me that they really just wanted a photo, if i could get a photo of him, because there are not been seen a photograph of him in a long time. they said if you can get one photo we would consider this a successful venture. and suddenly there's a knock on the door and a little s.w.a.t. team came and they wouldn't let hitchens and i see castro. >> did sean penn see him? >> yes. they had a long evening together and they blackballed hitchens and i. they thought we were too rah-rah america or something, i don't know why. at that point i was ready to get home and the thing with hugo chavez was interesting. i got to see some of havana and i was ready to go home. hitchens was livid. he was, i know the walls are listening to me. denouncing the regime pacing about. he was reading a henry james book so, look, let's take a walk. follow us. he spent a lot of time setting up for the big interview and at that point he thought sean shouldn't have gone, that we were three musketeers, you stick with us. i kept saying, maybe they'll come back for us. maybe somebody will come. it was a good try and richens was angry at sean for going. and i remember flying home like they wouldn't talk and it was grim. >> we commercial flew out of havana, some to miami on some flight. we flew out of houston. there was nonstop houston to caracas. the oil industry still has a nonstop flight into venezuela. sean and hitchens are great friends. they more than patched up their difference. sean tried to live up to what he said he would do. you can't predict someone like fidel castro. fidel's friendship with marquez, the great novelist, and marquez used to keep a light on at night to let fidel know when he was up and they used to talk and brain storm and all of this. raul was available down there but it wasn't the same. to have seen castro get to ask him a couple of questions would have been of interest but, alas, it didn't happen. >> my memory of fidel castro and american media is the media in this country salivated over the opportunity to talk to him. almost left us with the impression that cuba is a really sharp, wonderful place. why did they do that? there's no evidence that you can see today that would be the way to live. >> i think castro became a folk hero there in the early '60s. hollywood -- it was a period when there were red books handed out at berkeley and there were black panthers that we're talking about, fidel castro and i think that he lived so many lives like the cia tried to kill castro and he survived. we go through president after the other but he was like eisenhower through obama or something. it's like they never leave. >> his brother just left. >> so there's this sort of, you know, presence of somebody like that. i found it repressive in cuba, everything is antiquated and quasi broken down but havana is a beautiful city. it's in disrepair. so you're kind of going back in time when you're there and that participate of it was really interesting. i was interested theodore roosevelt's famous campaign and they like him in cuba, theodore roosevelt, because he was part of the cuban revolution, the liberation from spain. and then the bay of pigs, they celebrate. so it was very interesting, educational journey for me and that's why i didn't care one way or another. yes, you're right. in the world of journalism like that, let's call the "60 minutes" world they want to interview who they can't, who is hard to get to. if you can get castro it's a big catch. the pope or putin right now would be big to get if you can really have a real interview with them but they're hard to get to. >> you interviewed neil armstrong for how many hours? >> we did a day, an eight-hour day, a regular work day at nasa. and i've talk to you about it before but it was george abby, former head of the space center down there helped me set it up and telephones an honor just getting to talk to armstrong because growing up in ohio he grew up down the road in ohio and i was in perrysberg and i was amazed at that generation of pilots and korean war aces. in korea we didn't have any missiles so the war was won by the aviators and armstrong by some people's view the greatest military aviator of that era and picked to be the first on the moon. he did not want to do it. it was not a labor of love. it was a labor of obligation. i'm younger and, you know -- >> where are the tapes? >> they're in nasa. they may be on line. i have them. they were tape recorded by nasa. somebody was running the machine and we'd have a box lunch. i couldn't resist and i'm glad i did. he couldn't have been nicer. i was always a big fan of john glenn. i was ohio proud. >> what did he tell you you didn't know before the interview? by the way, did you write this? >> i wrote a major cover story for american history magazine and i did a long article for "newsweek" and i put some of it into my book called "american moon shot." i still have more. i toyed with writing but there was a good book called "first man" i reviewed hanson's biography for "the new york times" and when i read it, i can't do that. he already did it. it was really good biography and he seemed to understand aviation history but the engineering better than i could. but i've lectured on him, too, at purdue. one of the great thrills, they don't know what to do. it could be pro-nasa, anti-nasa, they're a government agency. so they didn't do anything. somebody got around it and liked it. i got to give a talk to all the current employees down in houston at the johnson space center. i was so intimidated. these are the people and i'm over here telling my space stories. they bought boat loads as their souvenir going to the moon. >> it gets back to early conversation and work ethic. he loved aviation. i loved history. he went to purdue and i went to ohio state and georgetown. anytime he could be around an airplane armstrong was in. he loved flight. he also had an extraordinary cool temperament. the thought of him panicking in space was zero. he had that something about him, a steely, cool disposition which made him the perfect, you know, first astronaut. he has a great sense of humor if you got to him a little bit. his big thing i picked up which he talks a lot about is engineering. he felt that the engineers are most underwritten about in american history, that we don't do biographies of engineers, we don't celebrate them and 20th century america was built by amazing engineering. very interesting point. and i've had william ruckelhouse tell me one thing historians are missing is the history of sewage treatment. he said we take it for granted this system we have in our country that's quite remarkable for processing but it's like go find the book on it and in both of their -- i remember those things. i once knew a professor robert sobel who died of brain cancer, but he told me somebody should write a history of cement. and at first you laugh about it but you do a little digging and you see how cement changed things. so there's a lot about history we gravitate to biography or the political history. there are other ways to approach studying things. what was the relationship with buzz aldrin? >> i think they were professional with each other. >> what's the camera story? >> the camera -- you know, buzzal driven wanted to be the first person on the moon but neil got cherry pick to be the first for a lot of reasons. mainly that he was not active military. nixon did not want to seem to be militarizing the moon. they wanted someone who had a military back ground but wasn't active. that ticked buzz aldrin off. he got some revenge by having neil take the photos of him so all the photos we see of the first man on the moon are really pictures of neil armstrong's taking of buzz aldrin. they kept their disagreements from public theater. it never got out of hand. you talk to enough nasa veterans of that era and, you know, there wasn't a great natural friendship between the two. >> neil armstrong's camera didn't work? >> his camera then didn't work. >> and the pictures -- he ended up using buzz aldrin's camera to take all the pictures? >> you've got it. >> one of the few times i've ever heard you irritated in an interview was one you did, and i can't remember who it was with, pushing you to agree that the boomer generation was the generation that caused all the trouble in this country. and you weren't buying it. >> yeah, i think -- i loved the greatest generation of tom brokaw but i look at every generation as great in its own way. that boomer generation did a lot. i mean, the civil rights alone in opening up the american narrative in the 1960s and '70s to the point now that we have national monuments in the national park service for cesar chavez and the national farmworkers or stonewall for lgbtq people or buffalo soldiers or harriet tubman. that movement of opening up america, doing away with jim crow and rethinking medicaid and medicare and public health. remarkable achievements. i don't like when one generation puts down another generation. there's a feeling the baby boomers blew it. the baby boomers did a lot right. i don't have generational animosity from one generation to another. >> do you -- well, let me rephrase it. what is your attitude about always being positive? >> i try to be positive. i don't know if that comes out. i always try to be very positive. i think that it comes out of just realizing how short time is and that you don't -- i always find, brian, when you die, you don't want to have any enemies and you don't want to be angry. you want to live your life where you're not filled with resentment. and so you have to learn to forgive and let go. and i do that a lot. i find people get motivated more by being more optimistic than pessimistic. i'm not cynical. i have worries about american society right now more than ever. i never thought i would have this much worry about our country. i stay optimistic. you don't have hope, then what do you have? i mean, that's what keeps us going is just hope we can make a difference in our daily lives and hope that we can help people, hope that our time here alive is beneficial to other people, hope that you're a good father and, you know. that's all we have. >> we haven't talked yet about your friend from woody creek, the louisville-born hunter thompson. why does he matter? i was never a hunter thompson reader. i did read one, the campaign book of '72, but he always looked weird. was he weird up close? >> he would love you calling him weird. he loved the word weird. he honestly liked the word, the way it was spelled. hunter was a gifted writer. his mother grew up in louisville and she was a librarian. he got a lot of books. hunter was exceedingly well read. his mother was an alcoholic. and so he was being raised by a mother as a librarian, he would have to sit in the library for hours while she worked, like his babysitter. he got into trouble when he was young, joined the air force. got an honorable discharge and then started his career as a journalist. he went all over. he wrote to central america and wrote articles. hunter captured california in the '60s. he got out to big sur early like 1962 right when the california of the '60s and '70s was exploding, the new cultural center of america, california. and he started being able to write on unusual dynamics out in california. and most famously he wrote -- well, he wrote about north beach in san francisco where all the bohemians, so to speak, were. he wrote on the "hell's angels" motorcycle gang and that book, if you really want to read about oath keepers and who joins this sort of qanon or who joins these sort of extreme right groups, just read "hell's angels." usually hard luck, white families, came from oklahoma through the dust bowl out to california. broken families. looking to find a way to bond and they form a motorcycle club and then they're kind of a menace on the loose out there in california and it became the media picked up on it and it became a national phenomenon and hunter wrote the book about hell's angels which he's really writing about who are these people in america, and it's a classic. and then he wrote other ones, but he wrote a lot about the brown power movement. we're talking a lot about black power in america because black lives matters, but brown power movement, reuben salazar in los angeles was murdered and oscar acosta was the big lawyer and then, of course, cesar chavez and the agricultural fights. hunter was covering all that have in california. and then on a lark he got an assignment from "sports illustrated" to write about the mint 500, i think it was, the motorcycle race in california. and he wrote about it. it went into this weird narrative called fear and loathing in las vegas where hunter used las vegas as a metaphor for america where we're all taken in by air-condition and all the shrimp you can eat and the bling and everything that vegas is. and he wrote a sort of satire about it. most of it is the death of the '60s, that the '60s is over. all of that hope and love and understanding of the early '60s by '71, charles manson and bad lsd and, you know, woodstock gone awry and so it's actually a book that shows the end. it's like the wave of the '60s and then the crash of all of that idealism. and it holds up, too. it's the best book of that period. got rave reviews in "the new york times." and then the campaign trail '72 book hunter had the realization that the media were the stars. he would see john chancellor more famous than frank church or somebody that tv had a big impact on how campaigns are covered and he wrote it behind-the-scenes. he would write what's it like to be with the people partying in the hotel before the convention. they were considered gonzo journalism, tom wolf did it, was a friend of hunter's. he did "the right stuff" and the acid test and joe didian. >> who invented the word gonzo journalism? >> well, the term gonzo comes from a booker, a james booker, a new orleans musician. a new orleans style that hundredor heard. the term gonzo journalism a guy from the "boston globe" knew. hunter carried reel to reel and cardozo said that's portuguese or something. anyway, it got applied to hunter's type of writing. of wr. which is now that where it is ubiquitous. people think of it as something gone awry like january -- you know, it's january 6th riot but it's also like a gonzo event. like you can't even imagine how all these pieces, something like that. so he documented all that pretty well. those were the three books. i mean, he did collected both letters called the great shark and william f. buckley reviewed it for the cover of "the new york times." i'm at ohio state. that's when hunter was at the top of his form. so he was popular. people would read hemingway, different generation. that generation is reading hunter. we missed all of the 60s and early 70s. we were now in the late 70s. so hunter was the documentarian of all that. so my friend, for example, dressed like hunter for halloween. and, you know, he was part of that era. that's when he was at the height of his powers. >> how did you become the literary executor? >> he would -- i gave him advice a lot about his archive. >> how did you get there though in the first place? >> started with the magic bus. he was good friends with doris concerns goodwin, hunter, and dick goodwin. and also with arthur schlesinger jr. some of the kennedys. doris would do a lecture for students in new york when i was doing magic bus. it was at an arts club. and, you know, in her and a few other people just kept saying if you're going out west, you know, and i thought that will be great to see hunter. and we did. we visited him. i was a solid sounding board for him. he would call, we would talk, a friend. towards the end of his life, he came to see me in new orleans and he was very different. you deal with an alcoholic, you know -- or somebody that has drug issues, they're erratic. but there are times when they're note, you know? you don't know what you're getting with that kind of substance abuse. and he was very melancholy. he came to see me in new orleans. it was like a painful melancholy where i went to a restaurant to eat with him and he would say things like, this is my last oysters. last oysters? and i mentioned to him, i said hunter, you sound like -- and he suddenly -- he said, you know, i got to talking to him about suicide. he was that depressed. and i said hunter, you can't. he got out of me. he said don't -- you know, don't talk like that. it's now an option! he had a hip surgery that went terribly. and he had other health ailments. and i guess what he is selling me is suicide is like in my playing deck. ? how old washe? >> 67. that was my tenth card. i never took it seriously. i thought, you know, people think about it and never do. suddenly, it was emerging towards the top of his deck as options. as an option. with that said, i never believed he would do that. i just didn't. i thought he had too much of a self to do that. so i was surprised to get a phone call. i was at rutherford b. hayes's home when i got a telephone call that he committed suicide. and then i got a follow up call that he had me as literary executor in his will. he never told me that before, you know, he mentioned it like in maybe, you know, if you -- make sure you help. he would tell me, make sure my papers don't stay in my basement, it floods. >> what does it mean tore a literary executor? >> i try to help his reputation in history and literature. it's -- i've had to deal with his son juan thompson and anita thompson. i know them both well. a lot of people are doing graduate work on hunter. >> did he make money in his life. >> blew what he had. he is loved by freelance journalists. there are a lot of freelance people. we always think about who is the star at the "washington post." but there is a colonies of freelance writers and they love hunter. he's the triumph of the freelancer. the problem with that is you don't get insurance or benefits. you're going from piece to piece. and it makes some sense in your 20s, 30s, and 40s but you're in your 60s and it's hard. it's like a musician that doesn't have health care or whatever. he always had money struggles. he lived in and out aspen. he had legions of friends much his funeral, brian, is something like you never saw. this giant fist in the air. all the people, john kerri was there, george mcgovern and gary hart and, you know, everybody came for the firing of hunter's ashes over the rocky mountains. >> how did they fire the ashes? >> they got a people that did the pyrotechnics for pirates of the caribbean and then you had to have a code. you're not allowed to put anything permanent too high in aspen. they had to build this entire contraption and take it down. it cost something like $2.5 million. >> who paid for it? >> johnny depp. the actor. and he paid the bulk of it. and they came and went. just like an event. and it was like the end of that era for the sort of 60s, 70s people. it was like it's over. >> how did he die? >> gunshot wound through the mouth. >> quote from hunter thompson, graffiti is beautiful, like a -- i can't read it. no. this is important to read it. graffiti is beautiful, like a brick in the face of a cop. >> well, that's -- i don't like that line. but i -- i don't know where it's from. i believe that that would be something -- that's the anarchist. that is the anarchist part of him. >> the brutal reality of politics would be probably intolerable without drugs. you have to realize, this is a lot of satire going on. he's -- hunter is playing paul bunion of exaggeration of the american, you know what i mean? how i do put it? if earnest hemingway, you know, you're watching on ken burns, hemingway went to africa to go hunt. hunter went and i'm going to africa with a submachine gun -- with three semiautomatic weapons and a, blah, blah, blah. he would take this lure and then just draw it out to this whole other level. >> last quote from him vent as for lsd, i highly recommend it. we had a fine wild weekend and no trouble at all. >> that's hunter. >> here's a question about you, john kerry, all these people. why are you supporting a guy that talks about a brick in the face of a cop? or why are you supporting a guy that would shoot a gun through a book? it seems like he represents violence, disrespect. >> the most popular comic strip of you and our age is doonesbury and it is based on hunter. tom wolf, the conservative reagan american spectator guy, tom wolf called him the finest satirist america produced of the 20th century. meaning, you know, it's hard reading. but he's -- and those isolated out, you know, sound different. he had a talent at writing. when you write, you recognize the talent. there is a book by -- do you remember the one, the sh shrunk book. they would make everybody read to learn how to write. at any rate, it's the book on how to write. one of their people in it there beyond henry james and shakespeare is hunter thompson. how to take a situation and break it down as a writer with humor. he was that skilled at that craft. so, you don't have to buy -- there was no real philosophy. but can you see the structural work that he does in covering things. so he's kind of blowing things up. he's looking at political campaigns. he says there is another way to cover this. and so he does it as the outsider. the outsider looking in. and part of the brick thing, fitzgerald used to talk about the always putting my face in the rich people's -- my nose in the window of the rich people's jewelry store, candy store. i can't afford it. but i'm looking in the window. so he's building on all the traditions. so when he wrote an article on politics, it is called the scum also rises. about politics. mocking hemingways, the sun also rises. in politics, a lot of the bad people do come to the top. he would use that kind of language like that. so he's an american original. a satirist. it's a lifestyle proponent or following his political philosophy, there really wasn't one. he was like dave chappelle, the median. chris rock, you know, he's in that -- richard prior. he's in that club. >> and that was the fourth part of our six hour conversation with historian and thor douglas brinkly. the rest of this conversation will air at the same time each week. you can watch this and upcoming segments in the series once they've aired on line at span.org/history. c-span.org/history. >> weekends on c-span2, every saturday, american history tv documents america's story. sounds, book tv brings you the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies including more including cox. >> cox is committed to providing eligible families access to affordable internet through the connect to compete program. bridging the digital divide one connected and engaged student at a time. cox, bringing us closer. >> cox, along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> listen to c-span radio with c-span now. get complete access to what is happening in washington. wherever you are, with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from congress, white house vents, the courts, campaigns and more. plus the analysis of politics with our informative politics. download it for free today. c-span now, your front row seat to washington, any time, anywhere. >> since c-span was founded in 1972, historian and author douglas brinkly participated in many of the network's programs, forups, columns and special projects as well as appearing on book tv and american history tv. c-span sat down with him for nearly six hours to get his insights on american history, popular culture, good books, and more. up next, part 5 of that conversation which focuses on actor johnny depp, stunt manned evil knievel and vice president kamala harris. >> what in the world happened to johnny depp? >> i don't know. alcohol, probably. drugs. bad divorce case. you know, it's -- i worry about him. but, you