David Pescovitz reported not long ago that in October 1958, “a pre-fame Hunter S. Thompson applied for a job at the Vancouver Sun. The Ottawa Citizen recently published the quintessentially-Hunter cover letter,” which you can read in Pescovitz’s post.
While most job-seekers could not get away with a letter like Thompson’s, the letter offers some bursts of creativity that might inspire the candidate of today to take some risks and express himself or herself in a way that truly differentiates — as in this paragraph from Thompson’s letter:
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you’re trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.
