Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

First serialized in two issues of Rolling Stone magazine in November of 1971 under the pseudonym "Raoul Duke".  Thompson was assigned by the magazine to cover a motorcycle race and a national drug law enforcement convention in Las Vegas. The article, which ended up being mostly about himself, appeared as a two-part story entitled Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  It is a frightening and funny descent into self-destruction driven by regret at the end of the energy and promise of the 60's.  Thompson shows us the end of the road that Kerouac started out on, where the artistic idealism is gone and only the high living is left.  A fun house mirror held up to an era that was quickly running out of intellectual gas, an epitaph for the times.

'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' had an impact on youth similar to that of 'On The Road' in the previous decade.  Like Kerouac's book, the important part wasn't the subject matter, it was the attitude and the style of writing. It was wild, breathless, non-stop action and hysterically funny.  Kerouac was one of Thompson's biggest influences. Thompson's style became known as "Gonzo Journalism".

Thompson's alter ego Duke and his Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in reality Oscar "Zeta" Acosta, a radical, militant lawyer from East Los Angeles, go on the road to Las Vegas to cover the “Mint 400” motorcycle race for a fashionable sporting magazine in New York.  But the covering the story was never the point.

But first we need the car. And after that, the cocaine. And then the tape recorder, for special music, and some Acapulco shirts. The only way to prepare for a trip like this was to dress up like human peacocks and get crazy, then screech off across the desert and cover the story.

The opening line:

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?”

The story is subtitled “A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream”.  A few years back, while living in New York, Thompson had pitched the idea of a book on the "The Death of the American Dream." The idea was to write a book that would "do up a massive indictment, focusing on the murderers of the so-called 'American Dream.'" For two years the book had been the focal point of Thompson's energies. It never appeared in print but it set the stage for 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' where he analyzes the attempt and failure of the 60's generation trying to reach the American Dream.  After Raoul Duke finishes not covering the Mint 400, his attorney books him into a law enforcement convention.  And at night, they head out into the casinos, the bars, and the late-night down-and-out diners looking for the elusive American Dream. “American Dream? Wasn’t that an old discotheque? I think it’s closed down now.”

Thompson’s first teamed-up with illustrator Ralph Steadman for this book and Steadman's images do as much as to define gonzo as Thompson’s manic ravings. 

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