Me and Uncle Duke

Me and Uncle Duke

http://www.slate.com/id/2272185/

What happened when Hunter Thompson told me Garry Trudeau was spying on him.

By Nicholas Von Hoffman
Oct. 25, 2010

Slate and Doonesbury.com have compiled a list of Doonesbury's 200
greatest moments. Read David Plotz's interview with Garry Trudeau.
See Slate's complete coverage of Doonesbury's 40th anniversary. [See
URL for links.]
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Comic-strip people are supposed to stay on the paper or the screen.
Any reader of Doonesbury has a legitimate expectation that Mike or
Jeff or B.D. or Zonker or Joanie knows his or her place and will adhere to it.

It goes without saying that if any one of them might break the rules,
it would be Uncle Duke. A character with his jump-the-shark
personality would be the one to bust out of his two-dimensional
confines to call me on the telephone one night.

The call came during an Uncle Duke episode in the strip. The caller
was Hunter S. Thompson who, through a long druggo-gonzo literary
career, was unable to separate himself from fictional characters, his
own and others.

Uncle Duke was in no mood for conversation. He was calling to have me
deliver a message to "Garrybaldi," my moniker for Uncle Duke's
creator. I was to tell Garrybaldi that Duke was on to him and that he
was prepared to take steps to stop him.

The ultimatum was outlandish enough to convince me that it surely was
Uncle Duke­aka Raoul Duke, aka Hunter S. Thompson himself­at the
other end of the line. Worried lest Uncle Duke, with his love of
firearms, turn up at my door, I offered to give him Garrybaldi's
telephone number.

"No," he said. He wasn't going to let Garrybaldi trap him through a
phone. I asked something to the effect of, "What in Sam Hill are you
talking about, Uncle Duke?"

Duke answered that Garrybaldi had surrounded him with spies and
informers who had infiltrated his home and violated his family's
privacy. He said that every domestic secret, everything that took
place between him and his wife, Sandy, was being relayed to
Garrybaldi, who was putting it all in the strip. (Here's one of the
strips about Duke's wife.) http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/archive/1978/02/13

The gist of Uncle Duke's paranoia was relayed to Garrybaldi, who made
a noise I could not interpret. "Uncle Duke," I repeated, "says that
you know the intimate details of his life that you could only have
learned by spying on him."

Garrybaldi explained that he obtained the intimate details of Hunter
Thompson's private life by reading his books and articles.

"True facts," I asked, "that anybody can get by going to a public library?"

Yes.

When Duke was told that he himself was the source, he called me a
liar, mumbled, and hung up. I told Garrybaldi that accuracy had no
place in Doonesbury. He didn't exactly say, "Amen to that," though we
agreed that while sticking to the truth might make you free, it also
can get you into tight situations.
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(See the strips that ran the week of Hunter Thompson's death.)
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/archive/2005/03/07

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