Novelist Lucian K. Truscott IV reminisces in the NYT about Hunter S. Thompson's struggling young days as a writer.

An excerpt:

It's hard today to think of a figure like Hunter Thompson as a struggling writer, but most of his letters in my files were about money and the writing business and (again) money - what kind of stories the magazines were looking for, what they were paying, who had the fattest expense account. Hunter was always short of money. We all were.

I first met Hunter when I was a lieutenant in the Army at Fort Carson, Colo., in 1969. I had read and admired "Hell's Angels," and when a friend told me he lived in Aspen, I drove up one weekend looking for him. Aspen was a tiny place back then, and it didn't take me long to find him sharing a late afternoon whiskey with a friend who owned a local art gallery. It turned out we had several friends in common, one thing led to another, and we ended up having dinner at his place. After dinner, I overheard an argument he had with his first wife, Sandy, about charging groceries on their credit card. Food was expensive in Aspen, and if they didn't have enough cash, they'd use the card, the last one they had.