Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

I’ve been busy over at ESPN.com, including pieces on Chris Carpenter going to Boston and the A.J. Burnett trade, plus draft blog posts on Mark Appel, Kenny Diekroger, and Stephen Piscotty; and Luc Giolito and Max Fried.

I’d never read Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas before last week primarily because I was always under the mistaken impression that it was a work of non-fiction, a magazine article or series of them expanded to book length. I’m sure most of you know that that impression was wrong, as it’s a novel, inspired by actual events and probably by actual drugs, but largely the product of Thompson’s expansive imagination and, in his own words, a “fantasy.”

The novel is often categorized as one of the earliest examples of “Gonzo journalism,” where the writer involves himself in the event or feature he’s covering. (In a related story, I’ll be throwing the sixth inning for the Rangers on Friday.) Thompson (as “Raoul Duke”) and his lawyer (“Dr. Gonzo”) scam their way through two dubious assignments in Las Vegas, one covering the Mint 400 off-road race, the other covering a conference of district attorneys to discuss the scourge of recreational drugs. They never even see the race beyond the starting pistol, spending more time running around Vegas getting into trouble, while their involvement in the Drug Conference is largely limited to scaring the crap out of a rural DA whose district hasn’t yet seen much action. Most of the novel is about these guys ingesting various substances and acting under their influence with often hilarious results.

I’m of two minds about the book. As a comic novel, a satire, or merely a piece of entertainment, it’s brilliant. The book reads like an unending con job, an Ocean’s 11 for people who are OK with having their fictional con men look like actual crooks. These two knuckleheads trash rental cars and hotel rooms, charge everything to their hotel accounts, and consume absurd quantities of drugs, taking one drug to ease the effect of coming down off another, and drinking heavily all the while. (Which makes me wonder how anyone could think this was all true. If Thompson survived ingesting all of these chemicals, would he actually remember anything that what happened afterwards?) A maid sees something she probably shouldn’t, so Thompson/Duke cooks up a scam on the spot threatening her with arrest, then turning her into an informant, which the gullible woman buys wholesale because she’s as greedy as the next American.

Where it lost me slightly was in its social commentary aspect, which probably just went past me as someone who was born two years after the book was published. The novel’s subtitle, “A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream,” sets out up front that said journey isn’t going to be pretty, and it seems like Thompson’s intent was to put the lie to the common notion of the American Dream. In probably the funniest passage in the book, these two drug-addled idiots seek out “the American Dream” and are directing to a bar by that name, only to find that it burned down a few years earlier, the sort of symbolism that threatens to jump off the page and slap you in the face. (Your symbolism meter might break with all of the novel’s references to sharks and, eventually, to a car the characters nickname the “great white whale.”) They infiltrate the Drug Conference, already high, while privately mocking how far behind the times the attorneys and cops are, yet also realizing that the halcyon days of recreational drug use are over, losing its proponents to Vietnam, capitalism, and the effects of excessive consumption. But since the book’s publication, we’ve seen two economic booms (and busts), a growing wealth gap, massive changes in societal attitudes towards drugs, and a pretty big image overhaul for Vegas itself. The book’s humor remains, but I think the immediacy of its message has faded with time. Or perhaps I’m just sufficiently jaded that the book couldn’t have the same impact on me that it might have fifteen or twenty years ago.

Next up: I’m about two-thirds of the way through Wilkie Collins’ 1868 novel The Moonstone, regarded as the first detective novel, praised by writers from T.S. Eliot to G.K. Chesterton to Dorothy Sayers.

Comments

  1. One of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Thompson has a wonderful ability to create these lush worlds in your mind that are so surreal that they let you fall into them. As long as you don’t have a problem with the fact that many parts of his “journalism” are going to be fabricated, then it’s a great experience. I recommend “The Rum Diary” for these same reasons. It’s a similar story — a constantly inebriated writer getting into trouble in an unfamiliar land populated by absurd characters. Good fun.

  2. Pat Cloghessy

    While haven’t read ‘Vegas’ in a while, am currently toward the end of ‘Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail 72″. Could not be more appropriate than in this election year. ‘Campaign Trail’ certainly holds up.

  3. You were probably thinking of “Hell’s Angels” as “a work of non-fiction, a magazine article or series of them expanded to book length.” If you enjoyed this, you should see Thompson when he did play it straight (relatively speaking). They’re still using “Hells Angels” in graduate J schools as a textbook for literary journalism, a.k.a. The New Journalism.

  4. I get where you’re coming from with the statement about the message losing its immediacy. However, I would say that “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72” maintains its resonance and might even be more powerful today than it was in the past. It’s one of the best books about American politics that’s not a data driven expansion of some rigorous social/political science. It’s also hilarious. Literally laugh out loud funny at numerous points and that’s a very difficult thing to achieve.

  5. I certainly enjoyed the book when I read it, Thompson did have a knack for descriptive writing. Going back even more, I also enjoyed Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road.”

  6. Not sure how much people know any longer, so this may be obvious, but:

    He was hired by Sports Illustrated to cover the Mint 400. What he produced was rejected by SI, but Jann Wenner liked what he saw. He sent Thompson to cover the drug conference for Rolling Stone. The result of these two pieces was run in Rolling Stone in two parts, with Ralph Steadman doing illustrations. The two parts were eventually combined into one book. As Luke noted, your description might be closer to Hell’s Angels. I can’t speak for journalism schools, but I’m an English professor, and I have used F&L in Las Vegas as a text on more than one occasion, partly for its place in New Journalism, but more for its place in American literature.

    Thompson wasn’t just giving the lie to the common notion of the American dream. He was also noting the ways the counterculture’s moment had peaked and gone. I admit I didn’t know this until I checked Wikipedia, but the most famous passage in this regard is now called “the wave speech”.

  7. I actually thought the film was better than the book. But then I was in college at the time, so maybe I didn’t know any better.

  8. Hey Klaw – good luck tomorrow, we’ll be thinking of you. Todo lo puedo en Cristo que me fortalece

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