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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (novel)
Encyclopedia
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is an autobiographical novel
by Hunter S. Thompson
, illustrated by Ralph Steadman
. The book is a roman à clef
, rooted in autobiographical incidents
. The story follows its protagonist, Raoul Duke
, and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo
, as they descend on Las Vegas
to chase the American Dream
through a drug
-induced haze. The novel first appeared as a two-part series in Rolling Stone
magazine in 1971, was printed as a book in 1972, and was later adapted into a film of the same name
in 1998 by Terry Gilliam
starring Johnny Depp
and Benicio del Toro
.
in March and April 1971. The first trip spawned from an exposé Thompson was writing for Rolling Stone magazine about the Mexican-American television journalist Rubén Salazar
, whom officers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
had shot and killed with a tear gas grenade fired at close range during the National Chicano Moratorium March
against the Vietnam War
in 1970. Thompson was using Acosta—a prominent Mexican-American political activist and attorney—as a central source for the story, and the two found it difficult for a brown-skinned Mexican to talk openly with a white
reporter in the racially tense atmosphere of Los Angeles, California. The two needed a more comfortable place to discuss the story and decided to take advantage of a Sports Illustrated magazine offer to write photograph captions for the annual Mint 400
desert race being held in Las Vegas from 21-23 March.
Thompson wrote that he concluded their March trip by spending some thirty-six hours alone in a hotel room "feverishly writing in my notebook" about his experiences. The genesis of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is in that notebook.
What originally was a two-hundred-fifty-word photo-caption-job for Sports Illustrated grew to a novel-length feature story for Rolling Stone; Thompson said publisher Jann Wenner
had "liked the first 20 or so jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication — which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it". He had first submitted a 2,500 word manuscript to Sports Illustrated that was "aggressively rejected".
Weeks later, Thompson and Acosta returned to Las Vegas to report for Rolling Stone on the National District Attorneys Association's Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs being held from 25–29 April 1971, and to add material to the larger Fear and Loathing narrative. Besides attending the attorneys' conference, Thompson and Acosta looked for ways in Vegas to explore the theme of the American Dream, which was the basis for the novel's second half, to which Thompson referred at the time as "Vegas II".
On 29 April 1971, Thompson began writing the full manuscript in a hotel room in Arcadia, California, in his spare time while completing Strange Rumblings in Aztlan
, the article chronicling the slain Chicano journalist Rubén Salazar. Thompson joined the array of Vegas experiences within what he called "an essentially fictional framework" that described a singular free-wheeling trip to Vegas peppered with creative licenses.
In November 1971, Rolling Stone published the combined texts of the trips as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream as a two-part article illustrated by Ralph Steadman, who, two years before, had worked with Thompson on a Scanlan's Monthly
article titled "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved
". The next year, Random House
quickly published the hardcover edition, with additional Steadman illustrations; The New York Times said it is "by far the best book yet on the decade of dope", with Tom Wolfe
describing it as a "scorching epochal sensation".
The basic synopsis revolves around journalist Raoul Duke and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they arrive in 1970s Las Vegas to report on the Mint 400
motorcycle race. However, they soon abandon their work and begin experimenting with a variety of recreational drugs, such as LSD
, ether
, cocaine
, alcohol
, mescaline
, and cannabis
. This leads to a series of bizarre hallucinogenic trips, during which they destroy hotel rooms, wreck cars, and have visions of anthropomorphic desert animals, all the while ruminating on the decline of culture in a city of insanity.
: He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man. The quotation alludes to the protagonists' profuse drug use in escaping the coarse realities of American life; passages detail the failed counterculture
, people who thought drug use was the answer to society's problems. The contradiction of solace in excess is thematically similar to The Great Gatsby
, a favourite novel of Thompson's.
H. S. Thompson posits that his drug use (unlike Dr. Leary's mind-expansion experimentation drug use), is intended to render him a mess; that he is the poster boy of a generation of "permanent cripples, failed seekers...;" their erratic behaviour depicts the restless failure his generation feels.
The "American Dream" is the novel's prevalent thematic motif, while searching for the literary and metaphoric American Dream, and for an eponymous real place in Las Vegas, Duke and Dr Gonzo find only a burnt psychiatric office. At story's start, Duke claims their adventure shall be a "gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country", an idea soon cooled when the excess and fear settle in them.
Throughout Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the protagonists go out of their way to degrade, abuse, and destroy symbols of American consumerism and excess, while Las Vegas symbolizes the coarse ugliness of mainstream American culture.
zeitgeist
and its end.
Some critics and readers believe this wave speech was Thompson's favourite passage in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the writing of which he was most proud. Thompson often cited it during interviews, choosing it when asked to read aloud from the novel.
Moreover, "Fear and Loathing", as a phrase, has been used by many writers, the first (possibly) being Friedrich Nietzsche
in The Antichrist
. In a Rolling Stone magazine interview, Thompson said: "It came out of my own sense of fear, and [is] a perfect description of that situation to me, however, I have been accused of stealing it from Nietzsche or Kafka
or something. It seemed like a natural thing."
He first used the phrase in a letter to a friend written after the Kennedy assassination
, describing how he felt about whoever had shot President John F. Kennedy
. In "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved
", he used the phrase to describe how people regarded Ralph Steadman upon seeing his caricatures of them.
Jann Wenner
claims that the title came from Thomas Wolfe
's The Web and the Rock.
In the New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt told readers to not "even bother" with the novel, and that "what goes on in these pages make[s] Lenny Bruce
seem angelic"; however, he acknowledged that the novel's true importance is in Thompson's literary method: "The whole book boils down to a kind of mad, corrosive prose poetry that picks up where Norman Mailer
's An American Dream
left off and explores what Tom Wolfe left out".
As the novel became popular, the reviews became positive; Crawford Woods, also in the New York Times, wrote a positive review countering Lehmann-Haupt's negative review: the novel is "a custom-crafted study of paranoia, a spew from the 1960s and — in all its hysteria, insolence, insult and rot — a desperate and important book, a wired nightmare, the funniest piece of American prose"; and "this book is such a mind storm that we may need a little time to know that it is also literature . . . it unfolds a parable of the nineteen-sixties to those of us who lived in them in a mood — perhaps more melodramatic than astute — of social strife, surreal politics and the chemical feast"; about Thompson, Woods said he "trusts the authority of his senses, and the clarity of a brain poised between brilliance and burnout".
In any event, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas became a benchmark in American literature about U.S. society in the early 1970s. In Billboard
magazine, Chris Morris
said, "through Duke and Gonzo's drug-addled shenanigans amid the seediness of the desert pleasure palaces, it perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the post–'60s era". In Rolling Stone magazine, Mikal Gilmore
wrote that the novel "peers into the best and worst mysteries of the American heart" and that Thompson "sought to understand how the American dream had turned a gun on itself". Gilmore believes that "the fear and loathing Thompson was writing about — a dread of both interior demons and the psychic landscape of the nation around him — wasn't merely his own; he was also giving voice to the mind-set of a generation that had held high ideals and was now crashing hard against the walls of American reality".
Although the drug use and its degree of autobiography remain tepidly controversial, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1971) is often required reading for students of American literature.
, Thompson refers to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as "a failed experiment in the gonzo journalism
" he practiced, which was based on William Faulkner
's idea that "the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism — and the best journalists have always known this". Thompson's style blended the techniques of fictional story-telling and journalism.
He called it a failed experiment because he originally intended to record every detail of the Las Vegas trip as it happened, and then publish the raw, unedited notes; however, he revised it during the spring and summer of 1971. For example, the novel describes Duke attending the motorcycle race and the narcotics convention in a few days' time; the actual events occurred a month apart. Later, he wrote, "I found myself imposing an essentially fictional framework on what began as a piece of straight/crazy journalism".
Despite saying that ‘‘Fear and Loathing’’ was a failed experiment, critics call it his crowning achievement in gonzo journalism. One said the novel "feels free wheeling when you read it [but] it doesn't feel accidental. The writing is right there, on the page — startling, unprecedented and brilliantly crafted".
hired Steadman to do the illustrations for Thompson's first venture into gonzo journalism called "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved
."
Many critics have hailed Steadman's illustrations as another main character of the novel and companion to Thompson's disjointed narrative. The New York Times
noted that "Steadman's drawings were stark and crazed and captured Thompson's sensibility, his notion that below the plastic American surface lurked something chaotic and violent. The drawings are the plastic torn away and the people seen as monsters."
and Oliver Stone
each unsuccessfully attempted to film a version of the novel. In the course of these attempts, Jack Nicholson
and Marlon Brando
were considered for the roles of Duke and Dr. Gonzo but the production stalled and the actors aged beyond the characters. Afterwards, Dan Aykroyd
and John Belushi
were considered, but Belushi's death ended that plan. Art Linson
's 1980 film Where the Buffalo Roam
starring Bill Murray
and Peter Boyle
is based on a number of Thompson's stories, including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
In 1989, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was almost made by director Terry Gilliam
when he was given a script by illustrator Ralph Steadman. Gilliam, however, felt that the script "didn’t capture the story properly". In 1997, Gilliam received a different script he felt worth realising; his 1998 film features Johnny Depp
and Benicio del Toro
as "Raoul Duke" and "Dr Gonzo", respectively; however, criticism was mixed and the film was a box office failure. It has since become a cult classic due in large part to its release on DVD, including a Special Edition released by The Criterion Collection.
Autobiographical novel
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fiction elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction...
by Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...
, illustrated by Ralph Steadman
Ralph Steadman
Ralph Steadman is a British cartoonist and caricaturist who is perhaps best known for his work with American author Hunter S. Thompson.-Personal life:Steadman was born in Wallasey, Cheshire, and brought up in Towyn, North Wales...
. The book is a roman à clef
Roman à clef
Roman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...
, rooted in autobiographical incidents
Autobiographical novel
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fiction elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction...
. The story follows its protagonist, Raoul Duke
Raoul Duke
Raoul Duke is the fictional character and antihero based on Hunter S. Thompson in his autobiographical novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The book was originally written under the name Raoul Duke....
, and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo
Oscar Zeta Acosta
Oscar Zeta Acosta was an American attorney, politician, minor novelist and Chicano Movement activist, perhaps best known for his friendship with the American author Hunter S. Thompson, who characterized him as his Samoan Attorney, Dr...
, as they descend on Las Vegas
Las Vegas metropolitan area
The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...
to chase the American Dream
American Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each...
through a drug
Psychoactive drug
A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that crosses the blood–brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior...
-induced haze. The novel first appeared as a two-part series in Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine in 1971, was printed as a book in 1972, and was later adapted into a film of the same name
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (film)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a 1998 American drama film directed by Terry Gilliam, starring Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke and Benicio del Toro as Dr. Gonzo. It was adapted from Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 novel of the same name....
in 1998 by Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
starring Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
and Benicio del Toro
Benicio del Toro
Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez is a Puerto Rican and Spanish actor and film producer. He won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a BAFTA Award for his role as Javier Rodríguez in Traffic . He is also known for his roles as Fred Fenster in The Usual...
.
Origins
The novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is based on two trips to Las Vegas, Nevada, that Hunter S. Thompson took with his attorney Oscar Zeta AcostaOscar Zeta Acosta
Oscar Zeta Acosta was an American attorney, politician, minor novelist and Chicano Movement activist, perhaps best known for his friendship with the American author Hunter S. Thompson, who characterized him as his Samoan Attorney, Dr...
in March and April 1971. The first trip spawned from an exposé Thompson was writing for Rolling Stone magazine about the Mexican-American television journalist Rubén Salazar
Ruben Salazar
Rubén Salazar was a Mexican-American journalist killed by a Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy during the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War on August 29, 1970 in East Los Angeles, California. During the 1970s, his killing was often cited as a symbol of unjust treatment of...
, whom officers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is a local county law enforcement agency that serves Los Angeles County, California. It is the fourth largest local policing agency in the United States, with the New York City Police Department being the first. The second largest is the Chicago Police...
had shot and killed with a tear gas grenade fired at close range during the National Chicano Moratorium March
Chicano Moratorium
The Chicano Moratorium, formally known as the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, was a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based coalition of Mexican-American groups to organize opposition to the Vietnam War...
against the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
in 1970. Thompson was using Acosta—a prominent Mexican-American political activist and attorney—as a central source for the story, and the two found it difficult for a brown-skinned Mexican to talk openly with a white
White American
White Americans are people of the United States who are considered or consider themselves White. The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa...
reporter in the racially tense atmosphere of Los Angeles, California. The two needed a more comfortable place to discuss the story and decided to take advantage of a Sports Illustrated magazine offer to write photograph captions for the annual Mint 400
Mint 400
The Mint 400 is an annual desert off road race that was resumed in 2008 after a 20 year hiatus.The race was for both motorcycles, until 1977, and four-wheel vehicles sponsored by Del Webb's Mint Hotel and Casino. Del Webb, a well known builder and friend of Howard Hughes, was owner of the Mint...
desert race being held in Las Vegas from 21-23 March.
What originally was a two-hundred-fifty-word photo-caption-job for Sports Illustrated grew to a novel-length feature story for Rolling Stone; Thompson said publisher Jann Wenner
Jann Wenner
Jann Simon Wenner is the co-founder and publisher of the music and politics biweekly Rolling Stone, as well as the owner of Men's Journal and Us Weekly magazines.-Childhood:...
had "liked the first 20 or so jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication — which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it". He had first submitted a 2,500 word manuscript to Sports Illustrated that was "aggressively rejected".
Weeks later, Thompson and Acosta returned to Las Vegas to report for Rolling Stone on the National District Attorneys Association's Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs being held from 25–29 April 1971, and to add material to the larger Fear and Loathing narrative. Besides attending the attorneys' conference, Thompson and Acosta looked for ways in Vegas to explore the theme of the American Dream, which was the basis for the novel's second half, to which Thompson referred at the time as "Vegas II".
On 29 April 1971, Thompson began writing the full manuscript in a hotel room in Arcadia, California, in his spare time while completing Strange Rumblings in Aztlan
Strange Rumblings in Aztlan
"Strange Rumblings in Aztlan" is an article published in Rolling Stone #81, dated April 29, 1971, and written by Hunter S. Thompson.The article takes its title from the name Aztlán, referring to the "conquered territories" of Mexico that came under United States control after the Mexican-American War...
, the article chronicling the slain Chicano journalist Rubén Salazar. Thompson joined the array of Vegas experiences within what he called "an essentially fictional framework" that described a singular free-wheeling trip to Vegas peppered with creative licenses.
In November 1971, Rolling Stone published the combined texts of the trips as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream as a two-part article illustrated by Ralph Steadman, who, two years before, had worked with Thompson on a Scanlan's Monthly
Scanlan's Monthly
Scanlan's Monthly was a short-lived monthly publication, which ran from March 1970 to January 1971. Edited by Warren Hinckle III and Sidney Zion, it featured politically controversial muckraking and was ultimately subject to an investigation by the FBI during the Nixon administration. It was...
article titled "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved
The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved
"The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" is a seminal sports article by Hunter S. Thompson on the 1970 Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky, first appearing in an issue of Scanlan's Monthly in June of that year...
". The next year, Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
quickly published the hardcover edition, with additional Steadman illustrations; The New York Times said it is "by far the best book yet on the decade of dope", with Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...
describing it as a "scorching epochal sensation".
Plot summary
The novel lacks a clear narrative and frequently delves into the surreal, never quite distinguishing between what is real and what is only imagined by the characters.The basic synopsis revolves around journalist Raoul Duke and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they arrive in 1970s Las Vegas to report on the Mint 400
Mint 400
The Mint 400 is an annual desert off road race that was resumed in 2008 after a 20 year hiatus.The race was for both motorcycles, until 1977, and four-wheel vehicles sponsored by Del Webb's Mint Hotel and Casino. Del Webb, a well known builder and friend of Howard Hughes, was owner of the Mint...
motorcycle race. However, they soon abandon their work and begin experimenting with a variety of recreational drugs, such as LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
, ether
Ether
Ethers are a class of organic compounds that contain an ether group — an oxygen atom connected to two alkyl or aryl groups — of general formula R–O–R'. A typical example is the solvent and anesthetic diethyl ether, commonly referred to simply as "ether"...
, cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
, alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
, mescaline
Mescaline
Mescaline or 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid of the phenethylamine class used mainly as an entheogen....
, and cannabis
Cannabis
Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three putative species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. These three taxa are indigenous to Central Asia, and South Asia. Cannabis has long been used for fibre , for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a...
. This leads to a series of bizarre hallucinogenic trips, during which they destroy hotel rooms, wreck cars, and have visions of anthropomorphic desert animals, all the while ruminating on the decline of culture in a city of insanity.
Major themes
The preface quotes Samuel JohnsonSamuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
: He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man. The quotation alludes to the protagonists' profuse drug use in escaping the coarse realities of American life; passages detail the failed counterculture
Counterculture of the 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s refers to a cultural movement that mainly developed in the United States and spread throughout much of the western world between 1960 and 1973. The movement gained momentum during the U.S. government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam...
, people who thought drug use was the answer to society's problems. The contradiction of solace in excess is thematically similar to The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922....
, a favourite novel of Thompson's.
H. S. Thompson posits that his drug use (unlike Dr. Leary's mind-expansion experimentation drug use), is intended to render him a mess; that he is the poster boy of a generation of "permanent cripples, failed seekers...;" their erratic behaviour depicts the restless failure his generation feels.
The "American Dream" is the novel's prevalent thematic motif, while searching for the literary and metaphoric American Dream, and for an eponymous real place in Las Vegas, Duke and Dr Gonzo find only a burnt psychiatric office. At story's start, Duke claims their adventure shall be a "gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country", an idea soon cooled when the excess and fear settle in them.
Throughout Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the protagonists go out of their way to degrade, abuse, and destroy symbols of American consumerism and excess, while Las Vegas symbolizes the coarse ugliness of mainstream American culture.
The "wave speech"
The "wave speech" is an important passage, at the end of the eighth chapter, that captures the hippieHippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
zeitgeist
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
and its end.
Some critics and readers believe this wave speech was Thompson's favourite passage in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the writing of which he was most proud. Thompson often cited it during interviews, choosing it when asked to read aloud from the novel.
Title
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is Thompson's most famous work, and is known as "Fear and Loathing" for short; however, he later used the phrase "Fear and Loathing" in the titles of other books, essays, and magazine articles.Moreover, "Fear and Loathing", as a phrase, has been used by many writers, the first (possibly) being Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
in The Antichrist
The Antichrist (book)
The Antichrist is a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1895. Although it was written in 1888, its controversial content made Franz Overbeck and Heinrich Köselitz delay its publication, along with Ecce Homo...
. In a Rolling Stone magazine interview, Thompson said: "It came out of my own sense of fear, and [is] a perfect description of that situation to me, however, I have been accused of stealing it from Nietzsche or Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
or something. It seemed like a natural thing."
He first used the phrase in a letter to a friend written after the Kennedy assassination
John F. Kennedy assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
, describing how he felt about whoever had shot President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
. In "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved
The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved
"The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" is a seminal sports article by Hunter S. Thompson on the 1970 Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky, first appearing in an issue of Scanlan's Monthly in June of that year...
", he used the phrase to describe how people regarded Ralph Steadman upon seeing his caricatures of them.
Jann Wenner
Jann Wenner
Jann Simon Wenner is the co-founder and publisher of the music and politics biweekly Rolling Stone, as well as the owner of Men's Journal and Us Weekly magazines.-Childhood:...
claims that the title came from Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Clayton Wolfe was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing...
's The Web and the Rock.
Reactions to the novel
When the novel was published in fall of 1971, many critics did not appreciate the novel's loose plot and the drug use of Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo; however, some reviewers understood that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was to become important American literature.In the New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt told readers to not "even bother" with the novel, and that "what goes on in these pages make[s] Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider , better known by the stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American comedian, social critic and satirist...
seem angelic"; however, he acknowledged that the novel's true importance is in Thompson's literary method: "The whole book boils down to a kind of mad, corrosive prose poetry that picks up where Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
's An American Dream
An American Dream
An American Dream is Norman Mailer's fourth novel, published by Dial Press. Mailer wrote it in serialized form for Esquire, consciously attempting to resurrect the methodology used by Charles Dickens and other earlier novelists, with Mailer writing each chapter against monthly deadlines...
left off and explores what Tom Wolfe left out".
As the novel became popular, the reviews became positive; Crawford Woods, also in the New York Times, wrote a positive review countering Lehmann-Haupt's negative review: the novel is "a custom-crafted study of paranoia, a spew from the 1960s and — in all its hysteria, insolence, insult and rot — a desperate and important book, a wired nightmare, the funniest piece of American prose"; and "this book is such a mind storm that we may need a little time to know that it is also literature . . . it unfolds a parable of the nineteen-sixties to those of us who lived in them in a mood — perhaps more melodramatic than astute — of social strife, surreal politics and the chemical feast"; about Thompson, Woods said he "trusts the authority of his senses, and the clarity of a brain poised between brilliance and burnout".
In any event, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas became a benchmark in American literature about U.S. society in the early 1970s. In Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
magazine, Chris Morris
Chris Morris
Chris Morris may refer to:* Chris Morris , gay rights activist* Chris Morris , American football player for the Detroit Lions...
said, "through Duke and Gonzo's drug-addled shenanigans amid the seediness of the desert pleasure palaces, it perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the post–'60s era". In Rolling Stone magazine, Mikal Gilmore
Mikal Gilmore
Mikal Gilmore is an American writer. He was born "Michael Gilmore," but later changed the spelling of his name.-Life & career:Gilmore was born on February 9, 1951 in Portland, Oregon to Frank and Bessie Gilmore....
wrote that the novel "peers into the best and worst mysteries of the American heart" and that Thompson "sought to understand how the American dream had turned a gun on itself". Gilmore believes that "the fear and loathing Thompson was writing about — a dread of both interior demons and the psychic landscape of the nation around him — wasn't merely his own; he was also giving voice to the mind-set of a generation that had held high ideals and was now crashing hard against the walls of American reality".
Although the drug use and its degree of autobiography remain tepidly controversial, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1971) is often required reading for students of American literature.
As a work of gonzo journalism
In the book The Great Shark HuntThe Great Shark Hunt
The Great Shark Hunt is a book by Hunter S. Thompson. Originally published in 1979 as Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time, the book is a roughly 600-page collection of Thompson's essays from 1956 to the end of the 1970s, following the rise of the author's...
, Thompson refers to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as "a failed experiment in the gonzo journalism
Gonzo journalism
Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first-person narrative. The word "gonzo" is believed to be first used in 1970 to describe an article by Hunter S. Thompson, who later popularized the style...
" he practiced, which was based on William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
's idea that "the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism — and the best journalists have always known this". Thompson's style blended the techniques of fictional story-telling and journalism.
He called it a failed experiment because he originally intended to record every detail of the Las Vegas trip as it happened, and then publish the raw, unedited notes; however, he revised it during the spring and summer of 1971. For example, the novel describes Duke attending the motorcycle race and the narcotics convention in a few days' time; the actual events occurred a month apart. Later, he wrote, "I found myself imposing an essentially fictional framework on what began as a piece of straight/crazy journalism".
Despite saying that ‘‘Fear and Loathing’’ was a failed experiment, critics call it his crowning achievement in gonzo journalism. One said the novel "feels free wheeling when you read it [but] it doesn't feel accidental. The writing is right there, on the page — startling, unprecedented and brilliantly crafted".
Illustrations
British cartoonist Ralph Steadman added his style of beautiful yet grotesque illustrations to the Rolling Stone issues and to the novel. Steadman had first met Thompson when Scanlan's MonthlyScanlan's Monthly
Scanlan's Monthly was a short-lived monthly publication, which ran from March 1970 to January 1971. Edited by Warren Hinckle III and Sidney Zion, it featured politically controversial muckraking and was ultimately subject to an investigation by the FBI during the Nixon administration. It was...
hired Steadman to do the illustrations for Thompson's first venture into gonzo journalism called "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved
The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved
"The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" is a seminal sports article by Hunter S. Thompson on the 1970 Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky, first appearing in an issue of Scanlan's Monthly in June of that year...
."
Many critics have hailed Steadman's illustrations as another main character of the novel and companion to Thompson's disjointed narrative. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
noted that "Steadman's drawings were stark and crazed and captured Thompson's sensibility, his notion that below the plastic American surface lurked something chaotic and violent. The drawings are the plastic torn away and the people seen as monsters."
Film adaptation
The novel's popularity gave rise to attempted cinematic adaptations; directors Martin ScorseseMartin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
and Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
each unsuccessfully attempted to film a version of the novel. In the course of these attempts, Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
and Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
were considered for the roles of Duke and Dr. Gonzo but the production stalled and the actors aged beyond the characters. Afterwards, Dan Aykroyd
Dan Aykroyd
Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM is a Canadian comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, winemaker and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter.-Early...
and John Belushi
John Belushi
John Adam Belushi was an American comedian, actor, and musician, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, The Star of the Films National Lampoon's Animal House and the The Blues Brothers and for fronting the American blues and soul...
were considered, but Belushi's death ended that plan. Art Linson
Art Linson
Art Linson is an American film producer, director and screenwriter.He was born in Chicago, Illinois. His directorial debut was the 1980 comedy, Where the Buffalo Roam, which was loosely based on stories by Hunter S. Thompson and starred Bill Murray as the writer...
's 1980 film Where the Buffalo Roam
Where the Buffalo Roam
Where the Buffalo Roam is a 1980 American semi-biographical comedy film which loosely depicts Hunter S. Thompson's rise to fame in the 1970s and his relationship with Chicano attorney and activist Oscar Zeta Acosta. Art Linson directed the picture, while Bill Murray portrayed the author and Peter...
starring Bill Murray
Bill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
and Peter Boyle
Peter Boyle
Peter Lawrence Boyle, Jr. was an American actor, best known for his role as Frank Barone on the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, and as a comical monster in Mel Brooks' film spoof Young Frankenstein ....
is based on a number of Thompson's stories, including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
In 1989, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was almost made by director Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
when he was given a script by illustrator Ralph Steadman. Gilliam, however, felt that the script "didn’t capture the story properly". In 1997, Gilliam received a different script he felt worth realising; his 1998 film features Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
and Benicio del Toro
Benicio del Toro
Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez is a Puerto Rican and Spanish actor and film producer. He won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a BAFTA Award for his role as Javier Rodríguez in Traffic . He is also known for his roles as Fred Fenster in The Usual...
as "Raoul Duke" and "Dr Gonzo", respectively; however, criticism was mixed and the film was a box office failure. It has since become a cult classic due in large part to its release on DVD, including a Special Edition released by The Criterion Collection.
External links
- The Great Thompson Hunt
- Book Review by Nick Christenson
- Las Vegas Sun investigation into the actual historical events surrounding the book. Includes many other FLLV-related articles.
- The American Dream & Hunter Thompson's 'Fear & Loathing' Essay and Review by Lucian K. Truscott IV for the Village Voice originally published July 13, 1972