the indisputable thompson of his time

An oddball, wild and crazy thrill ride bursting at the seems with drugs, drugs, and even MORE drugs, how on earth I managed to get through this in one piece is beyond me but did spend a lot of the time laughing my socks off, even if I didn't really have a clue just what the hell was going on, but then again neither did Duke or Dr Gonzo so that makes three of us!. Can't think of anything else to date that comes even remotely close to this so credit to Mr Thompson for that. A total shot in the arm (no pun intended!).

Ridiculous. I mean, I had a vague memory of watching the film while super high in the second year of university and having an absolute riot, and maybe that should have prepared me for the book.... (But enough about that.)

Nothing can prepare you for this drug and violence-fuelled look at America's seedy underbelly. Hunter S. Thompson was a genius. Read this utterly compelling and captivating book. That is all.

This book would've been better if they took all the drugs in the briefcase at once and fell into a coma and crashed their car on the first page. Would've been a lot shorter too.

Any book that makes me laugh out loud (frequently) while reading merits a five star rating, regardless.

Hunter S. Thompson’s brain functions on a different level. Be it a product of drugs or alcohol, I have no idea, but this guys writing is unlike anything I’ve ever encountered.

And that’s what makes life fascinating...

I read this book in 1972. There was nothing like it before and probably never will be again. Thompson was at the height of his short reign of creativity and wrote like he was on a roller coaster to hell. As he stated in this book, he was searching for the American Dream, like many of us were, but he saw the nightmare as well as the dream. Many of my generation were seduced by Kerouac's On The Road, however Thompson turned that on its head and forced us to look at the dark edges. I still read this book over and over. Hunter S. Thompson is the greatest writer of his generation.

"Too weird to live, too rare to die!"

Holy crap, my guys, I needed some time to digest this book. Obviously, that’s why you’re getting this review late.

Anyway, I want to talk about how this is the book that made my dad do drugs. And as his mentally ill daughter, when he told me to "never read that book," I used his Amazon password to buy it.

Here are my thoughts:
First of all, this is probably the most hilarious, dream-like book you could ever read, and you’re going to lose your mind when you realize it’s nonfiction.

I could tell you about the revolving restaurant, the motorcycle race, the ape incident, the kidnapping of the girl from McDonald’s—so many iconic scenes. You could talk about them the way you’d talk about *The Princess Bride*, but it would be inconceivable to fully convey them without understanding that this book is its own genre.

Hunter S. Thompson crafted his own genre—his own type of journalism—to create *Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas*. I can’t tell you about every scene in this book because I fear you won’t understand a word I say. That’s how it feels while reading it. This book *is* a drug, and when I say it has crack in it, I mean it—because the suitcase spilled all over the pages.

This book will make you laugh, and the attorney will say, "I advise you to turn the page." This is for anyone who wants to giggle their ass off or who dreams of doing acid in the middle of church. You could be either, or you could be both—or you could be a priest. I don’t give a shit.

We, as average people, cannot fathom the insanity that is this book—or that it’s real. This is madness at its finest, in a way so self-deprecating that it makes you laugh so hard you might feel like a villain. But trust me, it’s fun. Trust me, this book deserves all your love and devotion.

*Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas* is the American dream—it’s found within these pages. I can say nothing more without you actually reading it, page by page. I’m sorry I can’t tell you about every single scene—I think I’d get flagged.

To all you mentally ill folks out there: you’re going to love this shit. Me and you? We don’t need drugs to be this crazy, and this book feels like the best confidence boost you’ll ever get.

— From the illiterate motherfucka who somehow knows how to read. I blame how we were all born with heads full of acid… or rivers… or lakes? Who cares. I loved *Lord of the Rings*.

I probably would have liked this book had I read it 10-15 years ago but today I just felt it was ugly.
There was no real beauty for me.

Hunter S. Thompson's classic 1971 gonzo journalistic novel/memoir "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is proof that the shit you find hilarious and deep when you are ridiculously high are almost always neither. Also, what may have been profound and shocking for a 1971 audience is, in 2024, dumb and cringe-worthy.

This is not to say that Thompson's book is without merit. It is, in fact, laudable as an excellent snapshot of a particular time and place, a perfect encapsulation of the zeitgeist of the early-'70s, an epitaph for the death of the '60s.

Plus, Thompson was just a fucking good writer, and he always seemed to be at his best when he was angry. And, in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", he is furious.

Much of his anger has to do with Vietnam, Nixon/Agnew, the police, capitalism, women, birds, and himself. There is also a lot of imbibing, ingesting, and injecting of a wide variety of drugs--- many of which I have never heard of---which contributes to his angry mindset. Mostly he seems to be angry that the American Dream---the hippy-dippy lovefest of the countercultural movement of the '60s---seems to have been replaced with a militant, money-hungry, apathetic suburban nightmare.

It's pointless to give a synopsis. The point of Thompson's particular brand of journalism---"gonzo" as he called it---was that it was virtually impossible to distinguish fact from fiction. One has no idea if what he is writing about actually happened. That's part of the fun, I guess.

It should be noted that the character of Raoul Duke, Thompson's sidekick/Samoan attorney in the book was based on Thompson's real-life friend Oscar Zeta Acosta, a Mexican-American attorney. Acosta and Thompson had a falling out over the book, Acosta claiming that Thompson misrepresented him. Considering that Thompson portrays Duke as a knife-wielding hothead and (in one extremely uncomfortable scene) a rapist of a drugged-out underage girl, I would hope that Thompson misrepresented him. Acosta disappeared, and was presumed dead, in 1974 after getting involved in the Sinaloa drug cartel.

While I'm a fan of Thompson's writing, I'll be the first to admit that he is far from a model citizen. Raging asshole is more like it. And what the fuck is up with his obsession with grapefruit?

Still, Thompson did manage to offer a strangely poignant and intelligent alternative to the mainstream media bullshit.

As Your Attorney ...
26 September 2016

tI have been meaning to get around to reading this book for quite a while especially since I delved into a couple of Thompson's other works such as Hell's Angels. However this book sort of sits apart from not only his other works, but other works of non-fiction, though I would probably not go as far as calling it 'non-fiction' because technically the story did not pan out the way Thompson has described it. Sure, he did make a couple of trips to Vegas as a journalist, but his Samoan attorney (who seems to provide legal advice for anything and everything that doesn't have anything to do with the law – as your attorney I advise you to have the chilli burger) never actually existed. Actually, in real life Hunter's companion on the trip to Vegas was Oscar Zeta Acosta, a Mexican activist and lawyer.



tIn a way this book is somewhat of a laugh – it is about how Thompson, under the alias of Roaul Duke, travels to Vegas with his attorney to first of all cover an off road car race (the Mint 400), and then the District Attorney's conference, but rather than actually doing what he is being paid to do, he simply goes around consuming copious amounts of drugs and causing heaps of trouble. Then again, isn't that what one is supposed to do in Vegas – take drugs and cause trouble? Isn't that why there is a saying that goes along the lines of 'what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas'? Anyway, when I think about it, what does one expect to happen when you give people money and tell them to go to Vegas to do something – I would say not what you have instructed them to do.

tThe weird thing about this book is that I kept on getting it mixed up with another story about a trip to Vegas – the Hangover. Yet it sort of makes me wonder whether one can actually have any other story set in Vegas that doesn't involve gambling, drugs, and getting yourself into no end of trouble. Well, one sort of wonders whether it is possible to get oneself into trouble in Vegas, particularly since Thompson suggested that he managed to catch a plane by doing an illegal u-turn on the expressway, crashing through the fence, driving down the runway, and then proceeding to drop his attorney off behind a baggage truck. Actually, I'm not sure if you could get away with that these days, not with all the added security around airports, but this was 1971, and people could get away with a lot more back them.

tThe other rather amusing thing is that before I started reading this book I had just finished another book on American culture – The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Normally I don't read two books of a similar theme in a row, namely because it can lead to a bit of confusion, but this is what I did, and in a way this is what happened. Well, not really, but it was interesting to see two different perspectives on the American way of life – from from the view point of a child in the fifties, and another from a drug addled journalist in the early seventies. Mind you, both writers are no doubt contemporaries, yet Bryson and Thompson couldn't be more different, not just in their outlook on the world, but also in the way that they describe it – but while they are quite different, in many cases they are simply saying, and perceiving, the same thing.

tWell, it does make me wonder a bit because it all boils down to the concept of the American dream, and Bryson in a way saw it in action, and being fulfilled, as he grew up in Des Moines. This is the idea that if you work hard, and are persistent, then anybody can share in the country's prosperity, and if you don't end up sharing in this prosperity then it must be something that you have done wrong. Well, Thompson looks at the other side of this belief, but in a way it is what has come of the dream after the upheaval of the sixties, and if one can point to a result it clearly comes down to one word – Vegas. You see what Vegas represents in the dark side of the American Dream – it is not a question of working hard and living a prosperous life, it is a question of never being satisfied with what you have and always wanting more, and the blowing what you have on incredibly risky ventures so that in the end you have something.

tYet it is also the idea of how one can only participate in the American Dream if one is the right type of person. This is shown with this idea of North Vegas, the part of Vegas where everybody who does not fit the image of what Vegas is supposed to be about lands up. Take for instance the Longhair who was wandering down the strip, and is then arrested for vagrancy – he doesn't fit the image that is trying to be displayed, and because he doesn't fit the image he is taken out of the picture and kept locked up, and is only let out if he can show that he has money. Well, even when he gets money, they decide to take a bigger cut than they are entitled too, and there is little that he can do about it. This in a way also paints the picture of the viciousness of American capitalism – it is not a question of working hard and getting ahead, it is a question of have you got what it takes, and are you willing to tread on anybody and everybody to get ahead.

tThe American Dream of the fifties is dead, even if it was ever actually in existence – if you were a Negro, or Hispanic, then the American Dream certainly didn't apply to you – only if you were white, and male. However things have changed, and if you don't have the right connections, are not born in the right family, or even have the charm and charisma (or the ethics) to move into the upper classes, then you are probably going to find yourself falling further and further behind. Sure, we may live in an era where those of us in the west are wealthier than anybody has ever been before, but we are also witnessing the slow death of the middle class, and the gap between the haves and the have nots grows ever and ever wider.

як свій адвокат я собі більше не раджу читати таке лайно.
Я бачив дві екранізації:
Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) - додивився заради Білла Мюррея.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) - додивився заради Джонні Деппа.

Я знаю, що цей роман хотіли перекласти стронґовський (не склалося, бо не виявив відповідної питомо української нарколексики) і Поваляєва (ну і ок, що не склалося). На торрент Гуртом є переклад, а оце й Гєник Бєляков зробив.
О і от хоч ти лусни - не можу допетрати, що вони в цьому творі знайшли.
Я все розумію - пошуки American Dream.
Я розумію всі закидони Керуаку в цьому творі - на дорозі як на колесах.
Принципи ґонзо+нова щирість+гакслі з дверями сприйняття. постнаркоманські мрії, які є у Пінчона в "Inherent Vice".
Але загалом книжка ні про що.

Ramblings.

Cult classic, ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, is a wild, chaotic, and hallucinatory ride into the heart of the American dream; or rather, its dark, decaying underbelly. Written by Hunter S. Thompson, this novel is a pioneering work of gonzo journalism, blending fact, fiction, and absurdity into a journey that defies easy categorization. It follows the drug-fueled adventures of Raoul Duke (a thinly veiled Thompson) and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they careen through Las Vegas in search of both a story and the elusive promise of America’s dreams.

The plot is as fractured and frenetic as the minds of its characters. Duke and Gonzo's descent into madness, amplified by a cocktail of drugs, paints a surreal, often grotesque picture of American society in the early 1970s. The story unfolds as a series of increasingly bizarre and disjointed episodes, each offering sharp, satirical commentary on the nation's moral decay, the failures of counterculture, and the pursuit of excess. Las Vegas itself, with its neon lights, casinos, and artificial glamour, serves as the perfect backdrop for the novel's exploration of greed, delusion, and self-destruction.

On reflection, what makes this story so compelling is Thompson's writing style. It is sharp, cynical, and unrelentingly honest. His prose is vivid, chaotic, and intentionally disorienting, immersing the reader in the disintegration of his characters' reality. Through Duke’s warped, drug-addled lens, Thompson paints a picture of America that is both nightmarish and absurdly funny. His humor is biting, full of dark irony, and his observations about society, while exaggerated through the gonzo style, often hit with uncomfortable accuracy.

At its core, the novel is less about drugs and more about what those drugs reveal: the emptiness at the heart of American materialism and the illusions sold as the American Dream. The pursuit of freedom and happiness has become a grotesque carnival of excess, and Thompson’s characters are trapped in it, knowing they are doomed but unable to stop the self-destructive spiral. However, the book can be a polarising read. Its lack of a coherent plot, the relentless chaos, and the often disturbing depictions of drug use and madness make it a difficult novel to fully embrace. Some may find the novel's disjointed structure alienating, while others will see it as an essential part of its brilliance, perfectly reflecting the mental state of its characters and the fractured nature of the American Dream. As a result I can understand why a lot of people don’t enjoy this book.

In conclusion, ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ is a countercultural masterpiece, a darkly comic critique of American excess, and a deep dive into the surreal. Written at the time of the ending of Vietnam War, America was at a turning point. Going from a nation confident in its victories of the Second World War and global influence to one divided, dissolutioned and losing focus. Its gonzo style and satirical sharpness make it a landmark in American literature, though its abrasive nature might alienate readers looking for a more traditional narrative. For those willing to dive into its madness, the novel offers a profound, if nightmarish, reflection of society and the illusions we chase.