On Hunter Thompson: "I never called him a swine."

Bill Kennedy on the Bat Segundo Show today talks about turning down his friend Hunter S. Thompson for a job at the San Juan Star in 1959 (you may already know the story but fans of both never get tired of it):

Correspondent: [Hunter S. Thompson] said, “He refused to hire me. Called me swine, fool, beatnik. We go way back.” But I also know that he wrote you a quite hubristic letter. How did you two patch things up after this early exchange of invective and all that?

Kennedy: Well, I never called him a swine.

Correspondent: (laughs)

Kennedy: It’s possible in a letter, in later years, I might have called him a swine. But that was his terminology. More.