ED.: What is it about America that you think shocks him most?

HST: I think it's the lack of subtlety and the lack of the traditional British attempt to cover up the warts, or explain them away somehow. In America, we decorate the warts, sell them, cultivate them. . . I'm looking at this drawing he did in Vegas of all those cops standing in the lobby.

ED.: Is it the people who shock him?

HST: Yeah. The extreme types -- cowboys and burr-haired cops, horrible Southern drunkards at the Kentucky Derby and gross degenerates in Miami beach. Of course that's all he's seen on these experiences.

ED.: He's had a one-sided look at things, traveling with you.

Gonzo 1 - The Great Shark Hunt

HST: That's true. It's been pretty hard for him. . .

ED.: Couldn't be worse.

HST: Only if he'd traveled with Charlie Manson, somebody like that. . . Ralph seems to work much better when he's genuinely offended. And I've learned now I can just kinda chuckle when I see something, and even if it's not worth writing, I'll think, “Ah-hah, this'll really give the bastard a jolt. . .” So I'll make sure he has to confront it.

ED.: He needs to be in jeopardy?

HST: I think that's part of the reason the Vegas book worked so well. That sense of being in jeopardy ran all through it. I think he identified very strongly with it. There's no substitute for that horrified adrenalin rush.

There's a paranoid flash in a lot of his works too. He has a paranoid side to him: “People are lying to me; that cant be true. . . if Thompson says I should turn right here, probably I should turn left. . .” He gets very confused about things like that. But he's fun to work with. I think he deliberately gets himself in situations that I have to get him out of, so I have to worry about him. That thing at the Watergate is a perfect example, although I didn't rescue him then, I knew what was going to happen.

ED.: You didn't rescue him?

HST: Well, I pulled him out after a while -- but not when he jumped up and crashed through a line of marshals around Ervin and knocked him into the TV cameras. It was a narrow aisle between the press table and the TV. . . it was all their machinery really, all the hardware.

ED.: Who would you compare him to in the history of art? What do you think of him, objectively?

HST: George Grosz, I guess. That's who I think of right away. And. . . Hogarth. . . or maybe Pat Oliphant today. . .

ED.: Do you think he's given us an accurate portrait of America?