Jag tänker nog när jag läser och ser ”romantiseringar” av droganvändande och dess efterföljder att det ser ganska festligt ut. Men när jag tänker på hur det måste lukta? Och om jag föreställer mig det illamående som jag själv allra högst troligt skulle känna i vilken given situation i boken som helst så… Huvvaligen, som man säger. Fear and loathing är en dråplig berättelse om drogpåverkade galenskaper.Av en journalist som är mer en deltagande i galenskaperna och en nyhetsmakare i sig själv, än en observatör och reporter, och det är också hela poängen. Och jag kan uppskatta the overthetop-madness som inte har några gränser, mestadels. Dock kan jag inte lägga bort min egenskap av att vara kvinna när de scenerna kommer in – det framställs ju som ”all in good fun” men reads to me more like: actual abuse. Lucy, städerskan, servitrisen. Det kanske ser festligt ut, haha vilka svin de är, men? Nä, det går liksom inte. Jag tänker på det där ibland. Att det liksom inte går att ta av sig vissa roller. Att jag alldeles för lätt kan tänka mig in i hur det skulle vara att vara den kvinna som är i den utsatta änden. Och då? Ja då slutar det ju vara roligt.
Filmen följer boken ganska tätt, bara några mindre förenklingar, men the jest of it är detsamma, berättarstilen, fantasin, galenskaperna. Dock gjorde det en stor skillnad att läsa de efterföljande berättelserna, där den första är en slags introduktion till Fear and loathing, där Thompson berättar om dess uppkomst, att han ”gjorde det reportaget” som en paus i ett tyngre jobb om en mexikan-amerikansk journalist som mördats av polisen, och han berättar om idén bakom ”gonzo journalism”, som triggar mig fast på mitt eget sätt förstås. Men hela ”leva och skriva om det”-approachen. Därefter kom det reportaget, som gav en mycket mer seriös framtoning, och politisk inte minst, och dagsaktuell inte minst – eftersom det handlar om polisbrutalitet. Och sist, ett till exempel på gonzojournalistik, som alltså i hans tappning mest verkar betyda ”befinna sig på platsen för ett stort event, bli påtänd och full och skriva om den upplevelsen ur en personlig vinkel”. Det knäppa är att det funkar. Eftersom han skriver underhållande.

Men som sagt, det är tur att det inte följer med några lukter när man läser…

This non-fiction by Hunter S. Thompson was a brilliant (and hilarious) book. Hunter S. Thompson describes his drug induced voyage of covering a motor-sports race for the Rolling Stone magazine in Las Vegas. Mr. Thompson is a man of great vision and truth and is the ultimate satirist of the world and himself.

He takes the logical premises of many in society around him and follows them to their absurd conclusion while doing it under the influence of a cocktail of high powered narcotics. He delves into the morality of drug usage, he delves into the efficacy of the Vietnam War and repeatedly questions the humanity of Richard Nixon's Rolling Thunder campaign in Cambodia. Finally he poses questions about drugs which society still grapples with today. Should drugs be legal? Do their illicit use manifest a response of self-sustaining abuse of power on those who are charged with the enforcement of their non-usage?

He does all this in a way which is just ridiculously funny.

I would love to know if Hunter's attorney is real, or just an invented personality of Hunter's wonderfully warped mind.

What a great read!

This is what happens when I make spur-of-the-moment pickups at the library: I pick a book I already read, but don't remember reading! Sooo... I already started it, so I guess I'm going to re-read it. Plus, this edition has a couple of extra writings, so I'll read those, too.

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I got halfway through the Fear and Loathing portion and decided I wasn't enjoying it all that much (and wondered why I gave it such a good review the first time I read it), so I skipped that and went to the other stories.

The other stories are the original (long) dust jacket "blurb" for F&L (and was probably about 1/3 or 1/4 the length of the actual book); a story written for Rolling Stone about unrest in L.A. following the death of Ruben Salazar; and a story for Scanlan's Monthly about the Kentucky Derby and all the drunken celebration that happens around it.

The dust jacket blurb and the Kentucky Derby story were okay, but I really enjoyed "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan." It was more authentic journalism rather than Thompson's gonzo journalism and drug trips.

Wow. This book is bloody brilliant. It goes along at one hell of a pace. The book starts off hilariously funny, some of the things they get up to and how they stay under some kind of control makes for an awesome read.

It's not all fun and games though, the fear and the loathing soon start to creep into them, there is so much paranoia its hard to keep up. How they don't end up dead, especially with how violent the attorney is, amazed me.

The favourite part of the book for me though was the illustrations, I loved examining them and they really add to the experience of the read.

Hunter S. Thompson is one of my favourite authors.

The Vegas piece was very entertaining. The very finest "Gonzo" piece I've read by the man. It made me feel like if any of the fictional parts of the story had actually happened, that he would have fried in the chair, and never would've made it out of Vegas alive. That made for some fun reading!

On the Salazar piece: This is the second draft of the same piece I've read, and it still hits with equal power. It would make any journalist, who was on the same side, think twice about what they were writing, and Thompson felt the same anxiety. It was a very well written piece.

The Kentucky Derby piece was my favorite of all. Thompson's description of what makes the "Derby" the "Derby" is very amusing, but also, all these years later, still holds correct. It also helped me understand how the relationship between Thompson and Steadman came to be.

Overall a very nice read. I would recommend to any journalist, or anyone with an open mind, and a somewhat dark sense of humor.

I just recently discovered Hunter S. Thompson; a devotee friend of mine encouraged me to read this and it was phenomenal. I was exhausted after finishing it , I wanted to join him at the Polo Lounge for a drink. The Atzlan piece was even better, I felt like I was right there with him the entire time; he captures everything from the sun streaming in through the small high windows of the bar to the cultural powder keg of the time. Really amazing stuff.

A hilarious book that made me laugh several times. Can you find the American dream in Vegas? In between the lines this book mocks the idea of it and what USA have become.

Doctor Gonzo advises you to read it straight away.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a story of the drug-induced delusions of a reporter while on assignment in Las Vegas, Nevada. The author arrives in Las Vegas in a red convertible, riding along with his lawyer, to cover a three-day car race in the desert. You'll have to take my word that he's covering a car race, because he doesn't really talk much about it in the book, except to mention that he went to it a couple of times. After the car race, the adventures continue, as he gets another assignment; this time to cover a police drug enforcement conference. He trades in the 'Gread Red Shark' for a white Cadillac, the 'White Whale' and sets out to find the American Dream. What that has to do with the drug conference, I'm not sure. In fact, I'm not sure of a lot of things, like is the lawyer really even there?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is followed by two short stories. The first is the story of the death of Ruben Salazar, which I believe may have been included simply to prove that Hunter S. Thompson was capable of sane, real journalism. That is followed by a story of a trip to the Kentucky Derby, which falls somewhere between Fear and Loathing, and Strange Rumblings in Aztlan. I did notice that the phrase 'fear and loathing' was slipped somewhere into each of the short stories. That makes me want to read more of Thompson's old magazine articles to see if he did that in all of them. The Kentucky is Decadent and Depraved leaves me wondering, also, if Ralph Steadman is a real person and was he actually with Thompson at the Derby, or was he another delusion similar to the Samoan lawyer in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?

Easy to read; impossible to follow. But that's Hunter S. Thompson, right?

This is the book that came at the end of the counter culture movement. A tale that examines the American Dream through a drug fueled week in Las Vegas. This book is fun to read, but can also be disgusting. Thompson writes with a honesty that I admire, and helped him reach the fame of being the people's journalist of that era. Fear and Loathing also challenge Timothy Leary's psychedelic drug craze, where Leary suggested to key to understanding life is through the use of illicit substances. Thompson turned that idea of its head and created comedy gold as he and his lawyer were on the brink of a psychotic meltdown. This book is the beginning of the Gonzo journalism movement. It's also a funny read.

***1/2 I am glad I finally got around to reading Hunter S. Thompson. I really enjoyed his writing style very much. His extreme paranoia got to be a bit much at times, but the guy was on drugs 24/7 so it was what it was. It was a "trip" to read. I would like to read more from him. I imagine his time with the Hells Angels was quite the experience.

very easy read. very trippy. No real hard core plot.

Hard to separate out attitude toward book versus movie, but I definitely agree with 90% of the cutting choices they made for translating F&L into film, some of the asides are a bit much.

This definitely cemented my opinion that HST is great but at his best in the sprinting of short form.