Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Created | Updated Feb 19, 2007
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..."; And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"
So begins Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson's infamous hurricane of a novel, a tale of car racing, disturbed young women, redneck police officers, journalism on the edge of reason, and drugs. Mainly drugs, though. Fictional Gonzo hack Raoul Duke and his Samoan attorney break all the rules in the USA's most surreal city, exposing the rampant consumerism and cut-throat predation underlying Las Vegas' tourist veneer. Subtitled "A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream", Thompson's hedonism and irresponsibility is never allowed to entirely overshadow his strong political conscience and journalistic instincts. He's an observer, first and foremost, of what's rotten about the America of Nixon and Kissinger.
Fear and Loathing is something of a student set-text - certainly no literature 2nd-year could admit to having missed it. Its appeal is partly to do with the power of Thompson's prose, frequently hypnotic in its inimitable sing-song way, and partly with the prodigious quantity of narcotics that are consumed (a nice counterpoint to the insatiable consumerism at the gambling tables and slot machines). For many, this is their introduction to the possibilities of hash and cocaine, their benchmark for the difference between blotter acid and mescalin, their description of just what the hell adrenochrome is.
"Savage" is right. This novel is unrelenting, mesmeric, drug-fuelled mayhem. It has been copied many times but never bettered. For a glance at the soft underbelly of the so-called "American Dream", look no further.
So begins Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson's infamous hurricane of a novel, a tale of car racing, disturbed young women, redneck police officers, journalism on the edge of reason, and drugs. Mainly drugs, though. Fictional Gonzo hack Raoul Duke and his Samoan attorney break all the rules in the USA's most surreal city, exposing the rampant consumerism and cut-throat predation underlying Las Vegas' tourist veneer. Subtitled "A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream", Thompson's hedonism and irresponsibility is never allowed to entirely overshadow his strong political conscience and journalistic instincts. He's an observer, first and foremost, of what's rotten about the America of Nixon and Kissinger.
Fear and Loathing is something of a student set-text - certainly no literature 2nd-year could admit to having missed it. Its appeal is partly to do with the power of Thompson's prose, frequently hypnotic in its inimitable sing-song way, and partly with the prodigious quantity of narcotics that are consumed (a nice counterpoint to the insatiable consumerism at the gambling tables and slot machines). For many, this is their introduction to the possibilities of hash and cocaine, their benchmark for the difference between blotter acid and mescalin, their description of just what the hell adrenochrome is.
"Savage" is right. This novel is unrelenting, mesmeric, drug-fuelled mayhem. It has been copied many times but never bettered. For a glance at the soft underbelly of the so-called "American Dream", look no further.
