The 70s was a crazy time, man.

Journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson appears in this memoir under the name of his alter-ego, Raoul Duke. Accompanied by his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, he travels to Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race in the desert. They rent a Chevrolet convertible called “the Great Red Shark,” pack the trunk with a plethora of drugs, and head out “in search of the American Dream.” The race coverage does not go well, since it is near a gun range, and the customers do not stop their target practice. The two rent another car – this time a “white Caddy.” Ironically, they are redirected to cover the National Conference of District Attorneys’ Seminar on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. This does not go well, either. Suffice it to say they spend the majority of the narrative in a drugged-out haze, alternating between highs, paranoia, and “crashes.”

This book is outlandish and over-the-top. It is almost frenetic in its pace, mirroring the impact of the drugs on the two “heroes.” I knew beforehand that the content would probably not be my cup of tea (and it wasn’t), but I was curious. I found it humorous in places. Published in 1971, the book is a product of its times, documenting the demise of the late 1960s counterculture movement. It satisfied my curiosity and I now understand the term “gonzo journalism.”

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

is one of my favourite opening lines in literature. Two paragraphs later are the equally brilliant lines:

“I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.”

That whole opening narration sets the tone of chaos and comedy told in a perfect deadpan that defines this book.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a modern classic of American literature and is the cause for untold numbers of irresponsible Vegas road trips.

Published in 1971, it tells the semi-true story of when Hunter S Thompson and Oscar Acosta (renamed here as Raoul Duke and Dr Gonzo) went on a drug-fuelled road trip from LA to Vegas where Thompson was commissioned by Sports Illustrated to do a write-up on the Mint 400 motorcycle race in the desert.

The drugs they consume - marijuana, mescaline, all kinds of pills, cocaine, opiates, LSD, ether, and adrenochrome - lead to whacky adventures and surreal hallucinations as the pair barrel through a plotless non-story where they also cover a drug convention full of cops and go in search of The American Dream - or its corpse. Our anti-heroes learn nothing and have no character arcs - and it’s perfect!

I read Fear and Loathing some fifteen years ago when I was a teenager and remember devouring it in one go, laughing the whole time - it instantly became one of my favourite books. Years later, I’m glad to say it still holds up. I wouldn’t say it’s as intoxicating still, but it remains a terrific book and really funny to boot.

What’s most striking about Fear and Loathing is Thompson’s unique voice narrating with a loquacious urgency and an intelligently arresting, feverish, tone. It’s what makes this book so original. And that has to be stated: Fear and Loathing is ORIGINAL.

It’s said that there are seven basic plots in the world that get repeatedly used; so how do you get around that to create something new? Abandon plot altogether! Because, yes, there’s a kind of setup with the road trip and reporting, but nothing that could be concretely described as plot. Fear and Loathing careens around at high velocity though it’s aimless – and that’s fine because the book’s strength lies in Thompson’s unstoppable descriptive narration. The book also marked a shift from the author as the creator of the story to the author as the story.

And no, Fear and Loathing isn’t the first plotless novel or the first to feature the author as main character. It’s not the first to have a road trip or hallucinations feature prominently - I don’t mean it’s original in that sense. But there had never been a voice like Thompson’s before in literature - he’s the only reason this book is so much fun and so famous - and he would set a style that would be oft imitated for decades to come.

It’s also notable for being the first Gonzo book, meaning a blend of fiction, non-fiction, and fantasy. Cartoonist Ralph Steadman’s iconic line drawings capture the mania of Thompson’s potent writing and helped define Gonzo as a literary style.

But Fear and Loathing also has more traditional literary features, as befits a writer heavily influenced by Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The search for The American Dream, as abstract as it sounds, takes the form of the novel as well as a real place Duke and Gonzo go searching for – and turns out to be a long burned-out bar (heavy-handed symbolism, Thompson!).

The form of the novel could be seen as an indictment of the American Dream, post-idealistic ‘60s. There are snippets of news stories dropped into the text highlighting that ‘Nam was still ongoing, Nixon was in the White House and declared a “war on drugs” that persists today, people on drugs were killing others, and maybe Thompson wanted Duke and Gonzo to embody the America he saw in 1971: self-destructive, paranoid, and almost wilfully stupid.

Duke and Gonzo end up driving around in a white Cadillac Eldorado which Duke describes as “the White Whale” perhaps a nod to what is often described as “the Great American Novel”, Moby Dick. Are Duke and Gonzo the white whale themselves, elusive and hunted – is that what the “Fear and Loathing” of the title references? – or are they demented Ahabs, chasing the white whale of the American Dream?

While it has a lot of positives, I wouldn’t say Fear and Loathing is perfect. Certain skits like when Duke and Gonzo pretend to be undercover agents to the cleaning lady, or in the bar where Gonzo goes too far in soliciting a female bartender, were very unfunny and felt a bit dated. And, like the tail end of a bender, the novel starts to taper off towards the end and feels like its outstayed its welcome.

Make no mistake though: Fear and Loathing is an outstanding novel. Thompson’s irresistible voice is captured forever between the covers to entertain - and it is incredibly entertaining - for generations to come. Is it an important novel? I think there’s a case to be made for it being of minor literary import and I really think those first twenty pages or so could easily stand up to anything by Twain or Hemingway.

But for me, and probably for you, the real question is, is it a fun read? And it is. It’s so damn cool and sure of itself, the book swaggers! Pick this one up whenever you want to go on the greatest road trip ever.

No point mentioning some of the great scenes that await you inside - you’ll see them soon enough.

Having a Hunter S Thompson phase in high school is an important part of growing up, I think.

This is one hell of a book, but it's definitely not for everyone. At first it's hard to understand whether it's for or against "drug culture", but as the story goes on, you get the picture. It unmasks the stark realities of a 'dope fiend', but at the same time laughs at the pathetic attempts of the authorities to even see what's under their eyes, much less fight it. You can expect blatant craziness from this book, but you can also expect some cold hard facts, stated in a cool journalistic tone, about the realities of drug abuse in the 1970's.

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3.5

I'm not sure if this book made me feel like I was stoned or if I needed to be stoned to really appreciate it.

It really was pretty hilarious and it was quite a wild ride. The reason I don't rate it higher even though I compliment it as a hilarious, wild ride, is because aside from the entertaining craziness, there didn't seem to be any cohesive story here. Nothing that had a point (although I think that was the point). Just a couple of fucked up guys in Las Vegas believing they were on a quest to find the American dream while under the influence of one of the most radical concoctions of drugs and alcohol imaginable.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas... including your traumatized maids and grapefruit rinds.

Reading this is akin to going through a veritable roller coaster ride of Hunter S. Thompson’s mind: manic, frenetic and desultory.

When gas prices skyrocketed in the summer of 2008, I actually had to stop huffing that sweet shit and resumed mainlining heroin to occupy all the time I suddenly found on my hands in the absence of a solid addiction. This was probably a good move, economically speaking at least, especially since I’m pretty much a priss about my huffing, and sternly refuse to douse my rags with anything with a gradation below that of rocket fuel (and don’t even bother trying to pawn off some ‘smoke’ on me, unless you happen to have some of the fabled One-Eyed Jack, the mad chronic known as Indiana’s Finest, or the oft-celebrated White Rhino). Alas, I gave up toking too, unfortunately, as trying to acquire it became a logistical nightmare, especially with dealers applying a hefty fuel surcharge for delivery to their driver’s-license-lacking clientele. With this changing of the guard, what could be more appropriate than another reading of Fear & Loathing as a fond farewell to my old pastimes?

tIt was also fitting in that in my first year on goodreads and having joined the ‘50 Books in 2008’ group, as I slowly drew near the finish line, I wanted to make sure the fiftieth was a certifiable winner; to wrap it up on a high note, and I figured there was no way to go wrong with one of my all-time favorites, representing the feel-good/comedy genre (I hesitate to apply the ‘journalism’ label most affix to this work). Granted, almost 20 of those 50 were re-reads, but hey, what the hell do you expect from a gas-huffer scouring the Chicago burbs for a lid of ‘Purple Haze’ on a Tuesday night.

tTo be honest, I was pretty late in jumping on the F&L bandwagon; hell, I didn’t even smoke grass until I was out of high school, and when the Terry Gilliam adaptation of Fear and Loathing came out, all my fiends immediately ran off to see it. I didn’t follow suit, recollecting that these same wankers had similarly scurried off to see “Showgirls” (which I must admit, I ended up seeing in my mid-twenties, and thought it was better than the universal slander it received from critics and the disgruntled masses alike, if only because I got to hear Robert Davi, of “Goonies” fame, drop the line, “It must be weird, not having people cum on you”). However, everyone pretty much always assumed that I partook in the ganja, and I think it’s fair to assume this was because the vast majority of my peeps were a bunch of good-for-nothing potheads. In spite of this unwarranted stigma applied solely on my associations with dunderheaded doobie-smokers aplenty, I wasn’t compelled to get into ‘the lifestyle’ (meaning I’ve never worn tie-dye or Birkenstocks, have never owned a ‘Dead’ album, and vomit at the slightest whiff of patchouli or thought of world peace).

tFinally, drinking by some pond one night, carelessly chucking the empty cans into the murky water while lamenting another pitfall in my varied history with the ladies, my companion decided to roll up a torpedo for himself, and he was completely floored when I asked to partake. How he chuckled; what a joke his little buddy was making, the guy who’d sat there amidst a thousand bongloads and witnessed the smoking of overflowing bowls for years without the slightest inclination to take a toke, the lameass who only strangers even bothered to ask for inclusion in the rotation of a passing joint, as even the politest of friends had long since learned this guy just wasn’t interested, and here he was, on just some random night killing time and brain cells asking for a hit. This curmudgeonly Latvian bastard continued to sit there and suck away on the thing, and being I novice, I wondered if he thought he’d hallucinated my request. I repeated my appeal, and it dawned on the Latvian that he was going to be present for an historic event; he’d get the honor of being the one to say that he’d been there when I first danced with the green gremlin, and I can only imagine he hoped I’d do something noteworthy, foolish, and perhaps entertaining to make this story a staple in his repertoire when attempting to pick up trim. To be totally honest, it wasn’t very noteworthy, but, then again, I was pretty bird-shitty drunk.

tNaturally, having smoked a single joint, I went through the usual routine; instant marijuana dependency and progression into cocaine, heroin, and giraffe-piss addiction, financial despair, selling my body on the mean streets of Lisle, Illinois, constant arrests and other legal entanglements, intermittent blindness, absolutely reckless behavior beyond description, ostracism from family and friends after constantly fucking up, and the growth of an enormous, third testicle which forever imbued my salty seed with a teal hue.

tPerhaps the only benefit from my newfound habit (aside from the colorful joy-juice destined to be a showstopper at parties) was being introduced to Fear and Loathing, which remains one of the funniest damn things I’ve ever read in my life. I recommend this to absolutely anyone without hesitation, and while I’m sure many might suppose you have to be down with the reefer to enjoy this, I can’t imagine this being the case, as most of the richest humor and hilarious insight is independent of the drug-fueled binge the estimable Raoul Duke embarks upon with his twisted attorney Dr. Gonzo, and instead relies heavily on witty and wry writing... or maybe it isn’t. Mayhap, had I never partaken in the sweet leaf and immediately become a permanent mental cripple and social pariah, I wouldn’t appreciate a single element of this vile filth. I’m probably not the man to make this fine distinction.

tNo, on second thought, this would still be uproariously hilarious. Sure, maybe there would be a few gags here and there that would drift right over my head as one of the uninitiated, but these would be far less frequent and less baffling than the detailed and heartfelt sentiments Thompson often invokes with rage and disgust with the ‘establishment’ and social mores circa 1971, at least for someone who wasn’t born for another half-decade.

tAs for the story itself, Mr. Duke (an esteemed Doctor of Journalism) and his hellacious colleague (and attorney) Dr. Gonzo are slumming it at the Polo Lounge when Duke gets a call recruiting him to cover a what seems to be a pointless, piece of shit story, the Mint 400, some off-road dirt-bike race out in Las Vegas. While the assignment itself appears to be little more than a lackluster fuckaround (eventually abandoned and written off when Duke declares ”The idea of trying to ‘cover this race’ in any conventional press-sense was absurd: it was like trying to keep track of a swimming meet in an Olympic-sized pool filled with talcum powder instead of water”), Mr. Duke and Dr. Gonzo don’t just curse their ill fate and dawdle with their tallywhackers in hand, hell no, they’ve prepared themselves to make the most of this trip by collecting an impressive array of drugs and Acapulco shirts with which to assist in assuring their sojourn is a memorable one, and they began their stupefying narcotic binge before even reaching Vegas.

tAfter running amok in a drug-induced frenzy and creating general disarray over the weekend covering the ‘fabulous’ Mint 400 (which they attend ever-so-briefly, as Duke recounts ”I didn’t even know who won the race. Maybe nobody. For all I knew, the whole spectacle had been aborted by a terrible riot..””), Dr. Gonzo quickly heads back to LA after their fiendish spree, leaving Duke in the hands of the powers that be in the hotel room they’ve ransacked. As Duke prepares to flee amidst paralyzing paranoia, he receives a telegram from the Good Doctor, informing him to stay put in Vegas, as Rolling Stone wants him to cover the National Conference of District Attorney’s annual seminar on narcotic and dangerous drugs at the Dunes Hotel. Staying in Vegas, and especially voluntarily walking into a conference full of cops is an act of lunacy not even Duke will consider, and he bails.

tOr at least, Duke tries to. His retreat to California is plagued with obstacles and his own frayed nerves, which eventually leaves him enough time to sober up slightly, reassess the situation, and come to the conclusion that the allure of infiltrating the District Attorney’s conference is too crazy/awesome to ignore. He heads back to Vegas, and the pair finish what they started in grand fashion, which is to completely debase every social convention Vegas (herein representing some extreme nexus of American culture in microcosm) holds dear while assbitingly twisted.

tMany readers probably chreish and relate to Fear & Loathing for Thompson’s ‘outsider-looking-in’ attacks on the social milieu in the USA at the time; his most notable grievances are the Nixon Administration, the ongoing clusterfuck in Viet Nam, and the thoroughly pitiful collective mindset that immediately fears or discounts anything which doesn’t walk the straight and narrow in mindless goose-step with the masses. I’m sure an equal number of readers just enjoy the bizarre tale of a pair of fiends engaged in the “excessive consumption of every drug known to civilized man since 1544 AD” while partying like Motley Cru on the Vegas strip. I myself liked it for the humor, and not specifically the humor lambasting the American mores of the day, but just some of the absurd shit that Thompson comes up with, especially his ability to resurrect banalities laid throughout the story with greater flair when reintroduced (nuisance characters, the Great American and Samoan Dreams, comments concerning Fatty Arbuckle, and the menacingly-monikered Vincent Black Shadow). I also happen to like the Dead Milkmen, which may or may not be relevant.

tI consider this one of the books which has had the most influence in my own life; it helped inspire me in keeping a scrapbook/journal-thing which, while abandoned when I began working 60 hour weeks a few years ago, helped me unfuck myself and unwrap my head when I really needed it at times, plus I’ve probably copped more material from this book and ripped off choice quotes to suit my own needs more than from anything else. For instance, one time my pal, I’ll call him ‘Mike’, and I were en route to a head shop so this poor fool could buy some piece of shit called a ‘proto-pipe’, and while I was driving and filling a balloon (yes, I thought whip-its were cool at the time), the balloon managed to slip from my hand, and sputter throughout my posh 96 Toyota Corolla, to which I could only exclaim “Did you see what God just did to us, man!?”, and my compatriot, who was too much of a tool to be filling his own balloon and allowed a half-wasted driver to do it, replied in kind, “God didn’t do that, You did it! You’re a fucking narcotics agent!” proving, I suppose, that my repeated lending of this book and non-stop promotion of it’s virtues even managed to penetrate the thick skulls of my fellow wastoids, perhaps the most enduring testament to its greatness.

"It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it." George Carlin

Paranoia. To me, it feels like the perfect personification of 1970's America.

However, the decade before was an extreme 180° shift in collective perception as the counterculture era (or 'Flower Power') grasped America's youth. Psychedelia, recreational drug use, the hippie culture and more outward artistic expression held a more general acceptance within mainstream society. In other words, it was an attempt at a more laid back outlook on life. This was a short lived sociological experiment, as the Vietnam War raged on like an erratic forest fire, peace and love almost segued into an abstract concept after the Moon landing and Woodstock in 1969, and by the seventies, Flower Power was starting its painful decline in public consciousness.

n  "All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit..."n

And so we're thrown into some manic prose as Raoul Duke and Dr Gonzo embark on a trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in search of the American Dream. The book itself is a satirical black comedy, focusing on Duke's retrospective musings of the counterculture era, while also being a deadly serious, politically minded meditation on Nixon-era America. The aforementioned events as well as other events from the late sixties are deeply embedded into the rambling pages, while also making us laugh hysterically at these semi-autobiographical characters and their drug fueled adventures in the surrealistic and metaphysically delusional landscape of Nevada.

One feels the paranoia filtering through the pages as Hunter S. Thompson lucidly describes the effects of "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high power blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers..." in mind-bending fashion. Reality itself is elevated into extreme subjectivity as the characters talk in and out of drug induced hallucinations. One wonders whether certain scenes actually happen, or whether it is an extended illusion, playing out in Duke's or Dr Gonzo's fried minds.

In addition to all of this, simply enjoy and feel the beauty of this story. Hunter S. Thompson's acid fueled, uncensored prose is relentless in its execution and beautiful to read. When released in 1971, it was an early retrospective of the late sixties, but now it reads like a timeless 204 page book of nostalgia, insight and political unrest topped off with a seriously unhealthy dose of deliriousness and surrealism.

n  "Panic. It crept up my spine like the first rising vibes of an acid frenzy."n

For a blender full of seventies literary paranoia, read this, followed by Gravity's Rainbow and finally A Scanner Darkly... Enjoy!

A masterpiece! One of the most underrated books in American literature. Thompsons search for the American dream is a journey that leads him through the absurd. This journey is taken at face value, as Thompson and his "lawyer" alter their own perceptions to see the true absurdity of reality, the American dream, and Las Vegas. A great book to read in connection with this is Camus The Stranger. There is a lot more philosophy in Thompson's book than I ever thought was possible. A great surprise, which is laugh-out-loud funny! Also, I recommend Thompson's biography, a documentary narrated by Johnny Depp, called simply, Gonzo.

“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.”

I remember the first time I read Alice in Wonderland I said to myself- Stepheny, what the hell did you just read? I was lost, confused and quite certain that the book was a random conglomeration of events that surely only someone heavily under the influence of multiple drugs could possibly understand. Well, I have come to the conclusion that Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the adult version of Alice in Wonderland.

This is a book about two guys travelling through the desert in search of the American Dream. These two are so fucked up on drugs that you as the reader don’t have clue what is actually happening. In fact, if there were ever fanfiction I would want to read, it would be anything written from the perspective of the other characters in this book. You know, telling us what was actually happening. Here you have two men completely whacked out on multiple drugs…wouldn’t you just love to see what the scenarios were like from someone else’s perspective?? I can’t be the only one who thinks these accounts would be worth reading!

“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”

Anyway, these scenes are absolutely insane. Everything in this story feels so over the top, yet so likely under the circumstances. When reading this book you’ll feel like you’re the one tripping your face off on all these drugs and questioning the reality of the world you live in.

The writing in this book is what surprised me the most. I had a basic idea of what the book was about and a very vague idea of who Hunter S. Thompson was before picking this book up. It amazed me how profound some of the thoughts were for a book about being whacked out of your mind. I really loved the writing and can’t wait to read more of his work. Sure it was vulgar, but when you set all that aside and look at what is being said, I think then you will begin to realize what an incredible mind he had.

“Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits -- a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”

I think this last quote I will share with you is probably the best summary of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I could hope to give you. So, here it is:

“1) Never trust a cop in a raincoat.
2) Beware of enthusiasm and of love, both are temporary and quick to sway.
3) If asked if you care about the world's problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks, he will never ask you again.
4) Never give your real name.
5) If ever asked to look at yourself, don't look.
6) Never do anything the person standing in front of you can't understand.
7) Never create anything, it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life.”