Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I went to Vegas in August and I’ve been legitimately terrified of it ever since. Flashbacks of wading in large pools with hundreds of other assholes listening to loud music and drinking $50 drinks. Woof. Hunter S. Thompson’s infamous book perfectly encapsulates the desert’s vileness. The setting is pretty straightforward. Thompson, in real life, roams on a drug-induced binge through Sin City with his attorney/friend in a search for the “American Dream”. The text draws from a notebook that Thompson kept during two trips to the city. He had been commissioned by magazines to do so, but Thompson found it difficult to complete his reporting duties considering he was on a combination of LSD, mescaline, ether, amyl nitrite (is this a thing?), coke, marijuana, and alcohol at all times.
The actions and dialogue are purposefully outrageous throughout. Chapter titles include things like “A terrible experience with extremely dangerous drugs”, “Paranoid terror and the awful specter of sodomy…”, etc. Per usual Thompson flair (see my old review on The Rum Diary), he aggressively plunges into the depths of human despair as a way to exemplify American lust and consumerism. He wanted to push the envelope as far as it would go because he felt that his generation’s counterculture ethos had failed as a guide towards life’s answers. Specifically, he calls out Timothy Leary’s psychedelic advocacy, stating that the movement did not suffice.
Thompson complains we’re all just “humping the American Dream” (lol), but what exactly is this so-called vision (Thompson, 57)? Americans love a self-made man—someone who can pull himself up by his bootstraps and make something of himself. To portray the ridiculousness of that ideal—the endless search for more, more, more—Thompson took more and more and more drugs and spent more and more and more money in a city that thrives on excessive expenditure. Like, he took all of the drugs.
Thompson is an intelligent and talented hedonist who will frankly prostrate himself in the pursuit of journalistic integrity. Hunter S. Thompson: the gonzo journalist sacrifice! He is a good writer, even if the extreme drug use rubs you the wrong way. Thompson is telling a story and if you judge him, that’s no skin off his back. At the same time, as entertaining as it was, I wouldn’t say that it’s brilliant literature. I had similar feelings towards The Rum Diary—I like it and I like Thompson, but I can only give it 3 out of 5 flames because I don’t find it absolutely groundbreaking. And I don’t think it’s intended to be.
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