A Presidential Copy of Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Raptis Rare Books of Palm Beach offers a thrice-signed copy of Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72, by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson with illustrations by Ralph Steadman (who knows better than to call himself "doctor"). Author and illustrator have signed the title page. The page opposite is signed by Jimmy Carter. One assumes that the president's signature was obtained at a later date than the other two. 

Readers should feel free to guess the asking price before scrolling down. Hint: shipping is free. 

By the way, that striking cover and title illustration is not by Steadman but by poster artist Thomas W. Benton. It's a harrowing comment on America's involvement in the Vietnam War. Thompson's coverage of the 1972 Nixon vs. McGovern campaign was published in installments in Rolling Stone and collected in book form the following year. 

Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman
AbeBooks listing accessed July 3, 2025

https://www.abebooks.com/signed-first-edition/Fear-Loathing-Campaign-Trail-72-Thompson/32233892591/bd?cm_ven=nl&cm_cat=trg&cm_pla=want_CM&ref_=pe_aep_AEP_wants_buyer-wants&cm_ite=viewbook

Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman
AbeBooks item description

04998

David Levine: Hearing No Evil

A drawing by caricaturist David Levine gathers the personalities from the Watergate scandal in a circle. There is a lot of finger-pointing going on in a clockwise manner. The image appeared on a printed insert included in the tenth anniversary issue of the New York Review of Books in the summer of 1973. The listening devices in the drawing are unmistakeable references to the White House tapes recorded by President Nixon in the Oval Office. Caricaturist Bado points out on his blog that Levine's image is based on a Thomas Nast political cartoon of Boss Tweed and the Tammany Ring. The eight Nixon Administration caricatures were familiar figures on the nightly news then, but they are not so familiar to us today. Left to right they are (to the best of my and my friend's and family's recollections): Alexander Butterfield[?], unidentified, John Mitchell, Richard Nixon, John Ehrlichman, John Dean, unidentified, and H. R. Haldeman.

David Levine
New York Review of Books Tenth Anniversary Issue, October 18, 1973

Thomas Nast
"Who Stole the People's Money?" 'Twas Him
Harper's Weekly, August 19, 1871

https://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon-Large.asp?Month=August&Date=19

Royal Books, which offers this print for sale as a "broadside," makes some other interesting assertions as well. To be clear, the New York Review of Books is not in any way related to the New York Times Book Review, Vice President Spiro Agnew does not appear in this print, and "passing the buck" does not fully convey the degree of moral turpitude permeating the Nixon White House.

David Levine
Royal Books Listing Accessed March 17, 2019

https://www.royalbooks.com/pages/books/126004/richard-nixon-david-levine-cartoonist-watergate/broadside-depicting-richard-nixon-spiro-agnew-and-others-passing-the-buck-issued-in-honor-of-the

Thomas Nast
Two Great Questions
Harper's Weekly, August 19, 1871

https://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon-Large.asp?Month=August&Date=19

Note:  I'm afraid I've come up a bit short in my ability to recognize all the coconspirators from the Nixon Administration. My thanks to my father for being able to recognize John Dean without his, Dean's, glasses on. Political junkies are invited to help me identify the remaining unnamed figures in the Levine drawing. Avid historians are also welcome to identify the individuals in the Nast drawings standing with Boss Tweed.


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Unauthorized Portraits Signed by Edward Sorel

The cover of Edward Sorel's Unauthorized Portraits (1997) is an illustration he originally created for the January-February 1993 cover of Print magazine. Some of the artist's more prominent subjects try their hand at caricaturing him. They're not too bad, really.

Edward Sorel
Unauthorized Portraits (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997)
Left to right:  Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Lyndon B. Johnson, Edward Sorel, Richard M. Nixon, George H. W. Bush, Cardinal Spellman, Gerald Ford

Sorel creates outstanding work in his studio, but has he made any sketches at book signings? This blog has yet to discover any.

Signed by Edward Sorel
At left, Sorel's New Yorker cover art of January 31, 1994

Note:  The fact that I haven't found any books signed by Edward Sorel with original sketches in them doesn't mean they don't exist, but if they do they're probably quite rare. Anyone who comes across a souvenir book drawing by Sorel should drop everything and photograph it for this blog.


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Attempted Bloggery's Authorized Index

02823

Mischa Richter: The Unforgiven

An original 1990 New Yorker cartoon by Mischa Richter brilliantly conflates the political and the personal. Note too the body language: how the husband leans forward in a bid for the marriage counsellor's attention and empathy while the wife and the counsellor demonstrate their respective personal and professional emotional detachment.

"She can forgive Nixon, but she can't forgive me."
Mischa Richter, original art
The New Yorker, October 1, 1990, page 33

Mischa Richter
eBay Listing Ended November 28, 2016

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mischa-Richter-original-published-illustration-art-New-Yorker-Forgive-Nixon-/381817661372?hash=item58e61b27bc%3Ag%3AD1QAAOSwmLlYBTWW&nma=true&si=YQGb25QThn5Fxe78BW8tTy6VzZY%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Mischa Richter
eBay Item Description

eBay Bid History
The bidding jumps by over $100 in the very last minute.

"She can forgive Nixon, but she can't forgive me."
Mischa Richter, original art
The New Yorker, October 1, 1990, page 33

Cartoons by William Hamilton and Mischa Richter

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1990-10-01#folio=032

Note:  Attempted Bloggery seeks out scans and photographs of original cartoon art by Mischa Richter and other New Yorker artists. Do you have something I can borrow for the blog? I am not a crook.


Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Mischa Richter

Original New Yorker Cartoon Art

Attempted Bloggery's Nixonian Index

02276

An Unconventional Convention: Garrett Price Proposed New Yorker Cover Art

Can a proposed New Yorker cover be a little too ambitious? Garrett Price depicted familiar scenes from a political convention in a variety of artistic styles and placed them on the spiraling walls of Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Guggenheim Museum. The resulting hodgepodge doesn't quite work as a convincing political reflection or as an artistic commentary. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened its Fifth Avenue site in 1959 so this concept art can provisionally be dated to the summer of 1960, the next Presidential election year. The delegations of Alaska and Hawaii are shown prominently and this was the first Presidential election in which those new states participated.

Garrett Price
Proposed New Yorker cover art, c. 1960

Detail

Detail
Note the prominent placement of Alaska and Hawaii. The 1960 Presidential election (Nixon vs. Kennedy) was the first in which the two newest states got to participate.

Detail

Detail

Detail

Detail

Detail

Garrett Price's signature

Verso

Garrett Price
eBay listing ended March 5, 2017

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Garrett-Price-ORIGINAL-THE-NEW-YORKER-COVER-Old-Modernist-PAINTING-4-NO-RESERVE-/361910161787?hash=item544386d17b%3Ag%3AcZMAAOSwTuJYrpDy&nma=true&si=YQGb25QThn5Fxe78BW8tTy6VzZY%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Garrett Price
eBay Item Description

eBay Bid History
The prize goes to the very last bid—by one second.

Garrett Price
Proposed New Yorker cover art

Spoiler Alert:  In the 1960 Presidential election, Democrat John F. Kennedy defeated Republican Richard M. Nixon.


Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Garrett Price

Proposed New Yorker Cover Art

Politics

Attempted Bloggery's Unconventional Index

02164

Resplendent Subtlety

Welcome to the world's most popular cultural blog! Please, there's no need to thank me.

You know, if there's one complaint I get more than any other—and I get plenty, believe me—it's that I have a tendency here on the old blog to overindulge in what might be called gross-out humor. Too often, my numerous critics tell me, I emphasize only the obvious, the offensive, the scatological, eschewing the nuanced and the refined—qualities wrongly thought not to be in my wheelhouse—in favor of the tasteless, the crass, or the frankly disgusting. In short, I am accused of pandering to the lowbrow tastes of my audience for the mere sake of maintaining what I concede is an already wildly-lucrative blog. While I am not totally blameless in all this, I have to admit I'm a little hurt by the constant criticism of my crudeness. Well, friends, that ends today.

Why today? Because, having duly checked my calendar, I see that today is the first day of the 2017 MoCCA Arts Festival, a two-day comics extravaganza held on the West Side of New York City not too far from the Intrepid. Last year I attended the 2016 Festival, if only for a couple of hours, and photographed a rather refined piece of original illustration art by the great Rick Meyerowitz, "O Tempore! O Sophomore!"—a classy Latin title if ever there was one. Now, one full year later, I am finally posting this bounteously-overflowing work to help promote the new 2017 MoCCA Arts Fest and to usher in a new, more genteel phase of my blogging. Can you scent the change? At last I can indulge my true predilection—too often suppressed in the past—for the subtle, for the serene, for the sublime. No longer will anyone be able to say that urbane sophistication and refinement are simply not to be found in my Milhouse.

Rick Meyerowitz
"O Tempore! O Sophomore!"
Original art
National Lampoon, August 1972

I don't know if I'm going to make it over to MoCCA Fest this year—I'm trying to keep a low profile in the face of so much public opprobrium—but if I do manage it on Sunday, the day they let in the riff-raff, please say hello and do try to be a little forgiving. I'll be the one not wearing a white carnation.

Becky Cloonan, MoCCA Fest 2017

April 2, 2017 Update: Well, I never made it over there, but if you said hi to me anyway, thanks.


Note:  Rick Meyerowitz has never appeared on this blog before, but, as I've said, I'm turning over a new leaf as of today.

Richard M. Nixon was the 37th President of the United States. Respect.


Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Richard M. Nixon

The MoCCA Arts Festival

Other Posts of the Season

Jack Ziegler (1942-2017)

Attempted Bloggery's Unplumbed Index

02142

Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 Signed by Ralph Steadman

Hunter S. Thompson's uniquely incisive coverage of the 1972 Presidential election (Nixon vs. McGovern) was published in installments in Rolling Stone in 1972 and collected in book form in 1973. It is illustrated by the formidable Ralph Steadman. The artist has signed a copy to Stephen Parr and taken Thomas W. Benton's Vietnam War-era image of the helmeted American GI skull whose eyeglasses reflect a rising swastika—nothing tame here—and amended it by adding a rudimentary pair of horns. While this barely qualifies as a drawing, it does manage to make the book's central image look even more sinister.

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing:  On the Campaign Trail '72, 1973

Inscribed at a signing in 2006 with a drawing of horns on the Benton skull "For Stephen Parr~/Ralph Steadman"

Note:  "A Retrospective:  Ralph Steadman" is now on view at the Society of Illustrators. It will remain in New York through October 22 only. Don't miss it.

I'm always on the lookout for original art by Ralph Steadman that escaped the clutches of the artist, or for original scribblings and spatterings in books, letters, and such. If you've got something to share with the world here on the old blog, please don't treat me with fear and loathing.


Attempted Bloggery's quick links:

Ralph Steadman

Hunter S. Thompson

Rolling Stone

Signed Books with Drawings

Attempted Bloggery's fearful and loathsome index

01964

Ping-Pong Diplomacy: Mischa Richter Proposed New Yorker Cover Art

Mischa Richter's cover proposal for the New Yorker magazine shows Uncle Sam lobbing a ping-pong ball over the Great Wall of China. The artwork is undated, but such an illustration surely must refer to China's ping-pong diplomacy of April 1971. Table tennis players were the first American delegation of any sort to visit the Chinese capital since 1949. This thaw in Sino-American relations was to lead to President Nixon's historic visit to China.

As an artistic comment on contemporary current events, the rejected cover art is more akin to today's topical New Yorker covers than to the type of art the magazine was publishing in the early 1970's. In fact, Richter's conception is not all that dissimilar to the photograph by Norman Webster that was published on the cover of Time magazine's April 26, 1971 issue. That week the New Yorker's published cover was an impressionistic image of Central Park by Arthur Getz which brilliantly captured the light and color of early spring while making no comment whatsoever on any momentous international events.

Mischa Richter, Proposed New Yorker cover art, c. 1971

No, it isn't "tennis."

Swann Auction Galleries, January 22, 2015
Sale 2372, Lot 198
Hammer Price $300

http://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/asp/fullCatalogue.asp?salelot=2372+++++198+&refno=++698777&saletype=

Time, April 26, 1971
Norman Webster, Toronto Globe & Mail

EBay.com

Arthur Getz, The New Yorker, April 24, 1971

Note:  Don't stop now. Why not see all the blog posts here about Mischa Richter?

Studying further examples of proposed but rejected New Yorker cover art is sure to make you a more sought-after dinner party guest.

Arthur Getz illustrated more New Yorker covers than any other artist. Surely he's good for a few blog posts too.

Or maybe ping-pong is your thing...

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