Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream Reviews

• And you thought YOUR trip to Vegas was rough and wild!

  
  By A2PN7Z2VTHICL8 on 2004-11-15
  Written in 1971, `Fear and Loathing' still has a powerful impact on the mind even today. If you are easily offended by gratuitous drug usage and the craziness resulting from it, then put the book down and back away slowly. For those who may have perhaps saw the movie with Johnny Depp and did not know what to think of it, I highly recommend reading the book and then watching the movie again, its subtleties come out from the background provided in the book, and you will truly appreciate the performances afterwards.
  
  `Fear' is absolutely hilarious, following the ramblings of a journalist and his attorney into Las Vegas in the early years. Through clouds of mescaline, acid, ether, amyl, tequila, rum, and pot, we see Las Vegas through the demented eyes of a person totally over the edge and bordering on drug induced psychosis.
  
  The bar scene in Circus-Circus is worth the price of the book alone, and all of the vapid trippings of our dynamic duo are practically frightening in their intensity. Thompson has captured the mind of the delusional manic in `Fear', and while it is a journey not recommended for real life, in its book form it is highly entertaining and brutally funny.
  
  Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas may be dated in its use of drugs and money, and the picture painted of a Las Vegas strip long gone to the commercialism of today's Vegas, but the amusing underlying story of human nature of the edge of reason is timeless. Definitely a worthwhile muse to entertain yourself with. Enjoy!
  
  
  

• "only for those with true grit-and we are chock full of it"

  
  By AAGFBE5EM7YKB on 2002-07-01
  I have read and re-read my copy of this book so many times the pages are all dog eared and the spine is on the verge of coming apart. In short this book is an absolute masterpiece. I don't think that there is any other book that will completely hold you in it's grip from the first to the last line in the way that this book will.

  This book and it's author have became cultural icons ever since it went to print in the early seventies. Plenty of other reviewers have gone into great detail about many of the notable qualities of this book: the hilarious dark humor of the two's drug induced antics and the razor sharp wit it is written with, the clarity in descriptions of the drug state, the spot on observations of the 'American way of life' as well as the counterculture of the '60s, the brutal honesty in which the author deals with negative and reckless acts commited by him and especially his attorny (which some find disturbing) and of course the shear genius in every page of this by all means flawless novel.

  After reading this book too many times to keep count, although I still find it totally laugh out loud funny, I generally must say that Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas is ultimately a sad novel. Sure it's a road trip to cover a story in Las Vegas on hallucinogens, but I feel that overall it is the cronicle of a 'failed seeker'. I mean the search for the American Dream is unsuccessfull and you get the feeling from this book that it will always be an unfruitfull search as the American dream doesn't exist. The passages on how the energy of the '60s dissappeared are particularly moving in this way.

  I cannot recomend reading this book enough, it is funny, witty, paranoid, dreamy yet crystal clear and written impecably well.

  "Buy the ticket, take the ride"
  
  

• More truer now than it was originally!

  
  By on 1999-07-04
  I personally live just outside of Las Vegas, and just about everything the good doctor wrote about is still true (especially Circus Circus). I can only imagine what he'd think of the quasi-Disneyland attractions that are there now.

  The drug content was to be expected at that era. The world was still in a white picket fence mode and "creative chemistry" was seen as a tool to escape from it (or at least, take a different view).

  The stream-of-consciousness writing style is a wonder to behold. You can practically feel your mind bob-sledding through the ether-induced haze, coming to a landing on both feet.

  As for weither or not it was real, get over it. Just wallow in the genius of the work; how it dissects the "American Dream" and how we were so rudely woken from it.

  And if you've seen the film, READ THE FREAKIN' BOOK AS WELL! You will discover a favorite quote or two that you'll find yourself using over and over again. I laughed so hard reading it the first time, my face hurt!

  It's a classic document of the tail end of the "flower power" generation, and the beginning of the narcisism of the 1970's. Classic American literature with sheer outright BALLS that's so dearly lacking in today's pop culture.

  I am certain that when Dr. Thompson reaches his final reward, he will have a never-ending orgy held in his honor, just for writing this book.
  
  

• I bothered to read THIS?

  
  By A3XGIQ3U908JT on 2000-01-29
  This book is loathsome. I don't even rate it at all. It is incoherent, rambling, and remarkable solely for its subject - which CLAIMS to be realistic and drug-fuelled. It is sordid, squalid and depressing, with no redeeming qualities, except to convince one that drugs are just as you always thought they were. This book is overhyped, and nauseating. The cartoons merely annoy and irritate, especially the deliberately blotted pages. There is no insight into the human soul, or what passes for a human soul in these soulless victims of their own selves. I still do not believe that I read it all through, and will definitely never do so again. Never before has a book actually made me feel so physically sick - I would have flung it on the fire had there been one handy. The only thing it would be good for would be as compulsory reading in drying-out drug rehab clinics, to convince people that they don't deserve to demean themselves so miserably in this way again.

  There is only one good episode in this entire work, involving a sportsman and a young fan, which genuinely shows some insight and considered attack upon the American dream. The rest of the book is all misanthropic attack, failing to satisfy the principal rule of satire - there MUST be at least some basis of the thing you are attacking in your attack, rather than just attack and nothing to show what you are attacking.
  
  

• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

  
  By A3PM7CTXMNLMBC on 2008-05-05
  "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" by Hunter S. Thompson
  
  Hunter Thompson practiced total immersion journalism. This form of reporting is called gonzo journalism.
  
  Hunter Thompson drove to Las Vegas to report on a motorcycle race and ended up writing a story about himself writing a story about a motorcycle race. If he would have written a conventional report on motorcycle racing it would have been interesting to motorcycle enthusiasts for a few days. Since he wrote a gonzo story he had a very wide canvas and he used it well to create a classic.
  
  The reader might be turned off by the obstreperous behavior, extreme self indulgence and offensive inconsiderate language. If you can look past this offensive conduct and you will see that Hunter Thompson gave us an insight into the American character of the 1970's.
  
  See also: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Modern Library)
  
  I completely enjoyed this book and recommend it to others.
  
  
  
  
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
  By A3PM7CTXMNLMBC on 2008-05-05
  "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" by Hunter S. Thompson
  
  Hunter Thompson practiced total immersion journalism. This form of reporting is called gonzo journalism.
  
  Hunter Thompson drove to Las Vegas to report on a motorcycle race and ended up writing a story about himself writing a story about a motorcycle race. If he would have written a conventional report on motorcycle racing it would have been interesting to motorcycle enthusiasts for a few days. Since he wrote a gonzo story he had a very wide canvas and he used it well to create a classic.
  
  The reader might be turned off by the obstreperous behavior, extreme self indulgence and offensive inconsiderate language. If you can look past this offensive conduct and you will see that Hunter Thompson gave us an insight into the American character of the 1970's.
  
  See also: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Modern Library)
  
  I completely enjoyed this book and recommend it to others.
  
  
  
  
• The Best American Comedy of the 20th Century?
  By A3Q9K57FARA2WQ on 2000-02-09
  This hilarious satire is fast paced, very entertaining even after multiple readings, and a hysterically funny yet scathing portrayal of American society and the city of Las Vegas in the early 1970s.

  Thomson admired the previous generation of American writers such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald and the polished craft of his writing style reflects this. In 200 pages there isn't a single bad sentence, or a miscued punchline. Vast amounts of hard (sober) work (and talent) must have gone into perfecting a deceptively conversational, light style.

  For "serious" readers, this book can also be read as a coda to the late 1960s social revolution. By the early 1970s, its apparent to Thompson that the dream is dead, a pre-Watergate Richard Nixon is in the White House, and the silent majority are satisfied and complacent.

  My title for this review is quite deliberate - this is the best American comedy of the 20th Century, and it will be read and enjoyed 100 years hence.
  
  

• Arghhhhh! LAME lame LAME! Freaking Bats!
  By A32US3YAO24NKQ on 2001-12-02
  This book is so overrated. I've yet to read exactly WHAT the genius is supposed to be behind this book. That Thompson is able to ramble on and on and on and on and ON about drugs for a few hundred pages? That he was able to put to words what it's like to be in a week-long drug binge (which WOULD be hard, because how COULD you remember it?)

  I enjoy out-of-the-ordinary books and movies. Although the people that have previously posted (rave) reviews about this book are much deeper into the alternative culture, things like Pulp Fiction and Fight Club are still considered "out there" by the vast majority of the public. And Fear and Loathing not just out there, it's gone.

  Writing and acting characters that are deranged, whacked out, or insane is no major feat. Just as Hoffman and Pitt's performances for their whacked roles in Rainman and 12 Monkeys were unashamedly way overrated, so is Fear and Loathing.

  I started the book. I lost interest. I rented the movie, hoping it could contain my focus for 90 minutes. It was lame. At the encouragement of another author, I read the book all the way through. Still bored. Constant drug ramblings with no real objective. It could have ended 50-100 pages earlier, or it could have continued 50-100 pages more (in Denver or Malibu), and it would have made no significant change to the content of the book. I rented the movie again. Ugh. Other than they did a good job sticking to the original content (amazingly so), the original material still was...boring!

  I'm sure the flames will come, but after spending a considerable amount of energy trying to get through this material, I can't find the genius in the work. As for why everyone that has previously reviewed it has given it 5 stars: it is rare for anyone not extremely interested in the drug culture to get past the first 5 pages, so anyone who didn't love the book probably gave up on it way early and can't make a valid review.
  
  

• Look Mom, No Couth!
  By on 1999-10-27
  I guess a lot of people might be shocked by all the drug use in the book. Mostly I just found it self-indulgent and tedious. This is your basic story of two guys badassing around, 70s style. Really not much different from Animal House or any other frat story. It is a little ruder than F. Scott Fitzgerald and not as glitzy as Less Than Zero. Not badly written, and yeah, Vegas is ugly and scary, but this book is just too impressed with itself. Any claims of deep social commentary or other insight are vastly overinflated.
  
  
• Adolescent nonsense
  By AMG37RXRROK60 on 2006-07-28
  It's truly mind boggling how this book got the reputation it now has. I finally read it after being encouraged by so many of my friends who considered it genius. Simply put, the writing is immature and pointless, full of "craziness for its own sake" with a few lame attempts at cultural criticism thrown in to try to give it some legitimacy. The only thing I can say for this book is that perhaps it was somewhat original when it was written, but that hardly qualifies it as great literature, or even as literature. If it weren't so horrendously overrated and made no further pretentions than to be a mildy amusing story, it might have found a semi-respectable place in some obscure niche as comedy writing, but as it has been trumped all around as some groundbreaking example of an insightful cross-breed of journalism and literature, I can't bestow upon it any higher title than "Garbage." I suggest reading this only in that it is necessary to understand the infantile minds that cling fervidly to its pages. You will learn something about our culture, yes. What you will learn is how terribly the idea of literature has been degraded that such a book could be so praised by supposedly literate people.
  
  
• Not a fan
  By A2U50GMHBQQCSM on 2006-06-21
  I have to admit that this was a required book for a college course I took on art and criminality, most of the required books I found interesting, but this was very boring and silly. I didn't like how the book had a modern tone and yet is obviously set in a past time. It is hard to imagine the Vegas they describe to a younger reader. Also the drug culture that is talked about profusly in the book is both boring and pointless. I think you would have to be interested in the drug sub culture to like this book and that is something I am not. Maybe this book is interesting to a certain type of reader, but I found it more or a nuissance than a pleasure.
  
  
• The emperor has no clothes
  By A2EA5U4ZG1T53E on 2008-01-16
  I read this book while traveling in a small third world country. When you are surrounded by normal people struggeling to get by every day you can see what a self absorbed jackass Hunter Thompson was. This explains why he is so popular with old clapped out hippies.
  
  In the book he is constantly stoned and hassels everybody from maids to hotel clerks. Anybody struggeling to get by is his target. His character never goes after anybody who can do something about it ,only the powerless. Apparently his fans think this is high humor. It takes a low IQ and a lot of self loathing to really appreciate this author.
  
  
• This is IT?
  By on 1999-05-09
  A friend of mine, whose favorite author is Thompson, loaned me this book. I haven't finished it. I haven't the heart to tell him I really don't get it. I've read some tripped out, scatterbrained stuff in my day, but this just confounds me. I think it's supposed to be the ultimate in excess, or maybe not. I think it's supposed to be funny, and I'm not reading it that way. Or maybe not. I can't tell. I have gotten about halfway in, and it's not going anywhere. Considering this has such a strong reputation, it's not cutting it for me. About the only compelling thing about it to me is how the two main characters can handle so much booze and drugs. Most of us would be face down for 3/4 of the story if we were in it. Page after page I keep waiting for something to get rolling, but it never does. Is that the whole point? Sorry, but this is not worth my time.
  
  
• Don't believe the hype
  By on 1999-10-16
  Read Hell's Angels instead of this one. His earlier books are subtle and brilliant, where this one is maniacal and completely ego-driven. In addition, Thompson himself has admitted that it is fiction, and not the product of a crazed junky's prodigious memory. Take it from a Thompson fan, it ain't all that.
  
  
• WHY DON'T WE HAVE OUR CHILDREN READ THOMPSON IN SCHOOL?
  By on 1999-12-17
  Thompson's most famous work, and for good reason. "Dr. Raoul Duke" proves himself to be the Mark Twain of our time: indulgent, biting, and hysterically critical of society just like good ol' Sam Clemens...so why don't we read "fear and loathing" in school? Kids can learn a lot more about the nature of drugs from seeing the hysterical adventures at the Circus Circus casino and the horrifying moment in the hotel bathroom after Thompson's cohort digested an entire sheet of blotter acid...this book is truly brilliant, on par with Jack Kerouac's work, only Thompson doesn't take himself as seriously as Kerouac, which of course makes him all the more fun.
  
  
• A Look Into Insanity
  By A2V3P1XE33NYC3 on 2002-02-20
  Just about everything other reviewers have said about this book here on Amazon.com is true. This is funny, it does try and examine the American Dream (albeit in a weird and twisted way) and it is insane. Hunter Thompson takes his attorney, Gonzo, on a twisted trip to Las Vegas to cover the Mint 400, a bike and dune buggy race sponsered by a casino owner. Then they try and cover a meeting of cops and district attorneys who are meeting in Las Vegas to figure out how to deal with the drug problem in the United States. Along the way, the two end up in crazy situations that would make even a straight person go nuts. Of course, these two are anything but straight. Before starting out on the trip they load up their car with enough dope to kill a company of Marines...

  Needless to say, the trip ends up being more about getting high and trying to maintain than the events they are supposed to cover. The book is screamingly funny at times, scary and sad at other times. I think you'll miss out on some of the book if you've never gone on an extended freakout like Gonzo and Duke... When Duke hears the song on the jukebox and freaks out about it, I can relate... P>Some of the situations the two find themselves in are a real hoot. The observations on the Circus-Circus are a scream, and who else has been kicked out of a Debbie Reynolds concert? The two also find themselves in a possible rape rap, hotel rooms that quickly take on the appearance of a cell for mental patients, and tooling down the highways of Las Vegas being attacked by manta rays and bats. The stories are endless and funny. A theme about finding the American Dream also works its way into the story, although I think it takes a back seat to the hijinks of these two wacked out freaks... P>A weird and strange book that is worth the time. I can't comment on any of Thompson's other books because I haven't read any of them but if they are like this one, they would be worth it too. I can't believe Thompson is still alive, but he is and continues to write (I think). Give this a shot.
  
  

• Hunter S. Thompson is more than just a junkie
  By on 1999-10-26
  A million times from a million Hunter S. Thompson fans I have heard nothing but 'wow that guy took more drugs than I ever seen 'afore.' And that is the extent of their study into this book. We look at writers from the 60's and we say: 'hey they were good writers.' When we think of William Burroughs, or Kerouac, or Ginsberg we think of their skills, they have been adopted into the pantheon of American hippie/writers and they are the greats in the field, but Thompson, sadly may not be remembered in this way. We have to first remember that Thompson wasn't a novelist by trade. He's a journalist. In between the lines containing the words 'lsd' and 'mescalin' there is a very deep and yes, subtle meaning hidden in this book. Through the drug frenzied nightmare that is his story is a sad and sentimental testament to the troubles that plague this country. On drugs, in the '70's but wasn't that prerequisite for being a writer in the 70's? Thompson has the macho tendency to play dumb, all the while keeping genius hidden from the people on the streets. You know, like how you catch Sistah Soldjah writing books, or Tupac poetry. This book is a festive celebration of memories, like all people have on introspective nghts, full of drudgery and melancholy, but only on the epidermis. Inside this book if you look really hard you will find that 1970's Las Vegas, on drugs, committing pedophilia, vandalism, fraud and a variety of other felonies, is a microcosm of the American Dream, and the sociological repurcussions of that dream. As well as a prophetic and all-to-accurate vision of things to come. Which from a man as obsessed with the prospect of Apocalypse as Thompson is quite a scary thing indeed.
  
  
• A funny (albeit sick) drug enduced romp through Las Vegas.
  By on 1998-06-04
  I can say, with a fair amount of certainty, that this is one of the most unusual and disturbing books I have ever read. It is one of those books that makes perfect sense when one is reading it. But, when one puts the book down, the single lingering thought is, "What the hell?" For an entire year of school now, I have listened to my English teacher---who I now believe to be slightly disturbed---rave about the literary accomplishment of Hunter S. Thomson and his unbelievable creation, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Finally, I gave in to pressure and read the book. Thomson describes the effects of the various substances he and his attorney abuse clearly enough that the reader can imagine what it feels like to chew a blotter sheet of acid, or inhale an ether soaked rag. The best descriptive scene however, comes at the end of the book, where "Raoul Duke" is starting to burn out when all the drugs evacuate his body. When I read his description of withdrawal, I felt sick. Never has a book done this effective of a job describing anything. Though I will not deny that it is written in a unique, clear, and unbelievable voice, I feel that the book is kinda sick. When excerpts were read to the class, the book sounded funny. Two guys, stuck between the death of the hippies and birth of the yuppies get hyped up on three hundred dollars worth of various controlled narcotics, and have a crazy hallucination packed romp through the glitz and glitter that comprise Las Vegas. However, when I got home and began to read the book, it seemed less funny and more scary. "There were people like this allowed loose at one point in time?" I found I was asking myself. As I got further into the book, I began asking, "Are there still people like this loose?" I found that I didn't much like the answer to either of the questions. At certain points the drug induced antics of "Raoul Duke" and "Dr. Gonzo" passed the point of funny and crossed the thin line of ! federal and state laws. For example, the drugged kidnaping and raping of Lucy, a confused girl from Montana with a Streisand obsession. Some parts of this story are just plain sick and wrong. Okay, okay, I liked the part when they scared the crap out of the hitchhiker. I laughed when they convinced the narcotics cop from Georgia that there were satanistic psychos on a hunt for a pineal gland chopping off peoples' heads left and right, but come on, there was a line crossed.
  
  
• Dissapointing
  By A12DHNEMM7NTWZ on 2004-02-02
  I used to be a real enthusiast about Hunter and his many adventures untill i found out that his stories are nothing but over the top exageration and i should have realised this earlier when i read his first book, he makes himself to have lived this life on the edge, a real tough guy who takes no abuse, but when it comes down to it hes a coward who hides in the trunk of his car whenever a fight breaks out (See Hells Angels: The Life And Times Of Sonny Barger), the stories in this book always got side tracked and never made sense and by the sounds of it hes probobly never taken a abusive substance in his life (due to the mass exageration of his highs) even if this was fiction it would have got a poor score from me
  
  
• Raoul Duke
  By A1VAH3AU6N0ODI on 2005-02-21
  As ugly as it is, it makes sense. Not drugs but a gunshot to the head. Like Hemingway. He wasn't going to grow old or fade away. The same day Sandra Dee died. Crazy f**ker. I have bought 3 or 4 copies of Fear and Loathing because every time I loaned it to someone I never got it back and I never cared, I just bought it again and read it again. It's probably the book I have read more times than any other. Somewhere on one of my ancient vhs tapes I have him on Letterman in a show taped in a high rise hotel room (?) sometime in the 80s, completely off his nut, starting nonsensical sentences and then staring off into space, drink in hand, "of course I'm an alcoholic." I always wondered if it was adrenochrome squeezed from a fresh pineal gland.
  
  Wherever he is now there is a shortage of ice and limes.
  
  "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold..."
  
  
• Hunter S. Thompson is Tom Wolfe with half the talent and a drug problem...
  By A3JSRMS7FO6EKQ on 2007-04-21
  This little book is mostly self-indulgent tripe, with childish illustrations thrown in. Thompson writes a lot about drugs, drink, sodomy, Nixon, and what a WILD AND CRAZY GUY HE IS! That Hunter S. Thompson..."Dr. Gonzo"...what a CHARACTER! Read it so you've read it, but don't think you're getting anything the caliber of Tom Wolfe...good Lord, no.
  
  
• Hemingway, Shakespear, Thompson
  By A1A0IQ5YQN2056 on 2002-07-10
  Never have I read a book anywhere near as intriguing as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

  Hunter S. Thompson takes us through his drug-crazed reporting trip to Las Vegas where he was sent to take account of the year's Mint 400, a world famous off-road race, with his slightly more demented attorney Dr. Gonzo. Whether or not you are an avid drug user in no way affects your ability to enjoy this novel.

  Thompson wastes no time getting into his story, especially from the novel's famous first line, "We were somewhere over the desert near Barstow when the drugs began to take hold." He manages to keep the reader's attention with his very human and detailed writing style, and doesn't let go. Though the story itself is very demented and deranged, his unique style alone makes the book a good read. He is never confusing and gets his point across smoothly, no matter how far off the subject he may be. Not that he writes about matters as time-tested as Shakespear or Hemingway, but in some obscure way I compare Thompson to these greats just because his intriguing ability to channel his thoughts directly to the reader.

  I definitely recommend this book to anyone. Either you will love it or you will hate it.
  
  

• Everyone loves Fear and Loathing.
  By A1BZIM1U3TSGS2 on 2000-05-09
  Those that love to read about people's adventures during the 60's and 70's will love Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This is a story of a journalist who travels to Vegas to cover a race called "The Mint 400". The only problem is he is a doctor of journalism and an event like this has to be covered is all of the correct preportions. To do this he and his attorny get numerous amounts of drugs and alcohol. They arrive at Vegas just in time to cover the story, but that is the last thing that they want to do. The real purpose of their journey is to find the American Dream. They found it alright but when they saw what it really was they said forget it. They go around breaking all kinds of laws and create all sorts of rukkus. It was all in good fun though and nobody really got hurt. Through out this journey they learn many things including never to give a 16 year old girl that you don't know acid. This book is a very deeply descriptive book and it really puts you in the mind of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I enjoyed this book so much that I have read several other of his books and I have seen the movies.
  
  
• "Reality itself is too twisted...."
  By A1FGG93X6HT374 on 2002-05-18
  Well, what can I say that countless others haven't said several million times? This book is an amazing read. It's possible for one to breeze through this book in about four or five hours...it's that good...it's that engrossing. In that respect, it's much like "The Catcher in the Rye"...but far darker and much more savage. Imagine if Holden Caulfield had grown into a doctor of journalism and begun taking almost every type of drug known to civilized man since 1544 A.D. That's Hunter Thompson, alias Raoul Duke. Hunter travels to Las Vegas, along with his friend and attorney, Oscar Zeta Acosta, to cover an off-road motorcycle race for "Sports Illustrated" magazine. He catches the start of the race, but not much else. He certainly doesn't stick around to find out who won. Instead, he and his attorney run amok in downtown Vegas, breaking every rule in the book, and some that the establishment hadn't even contemplated writing yet. And when that assignment's over, and Hunter is scheduled to cover the National District Attorneys' Association's four day seminar on narcotics and dangerous drugs...my God, man...can it possibly get more insane? Yes...yes, it can...and does. This is THE quintessential book of the early '70s counterculture. It is a brilliant depiction of that age, and a chronicle of demented, depraved, and debauched behavior you will never forget. Five enthusiastic stars...I only wish I could give it six.

  Oh, and I think someone (so I guess it'll be me) should point out to Henry Raddick from London that Hunter Thompson's condemnation of drugs (either in this book, or in life) is nonexistent. This is not a moral tale about two drugged-out losers and how they lost everything. This is a true (if somewhat exaggerated) account of Thompson's misadventures in Las Vegas while there on assignment as a journalist. Raoul Duke is an alias of Thompson's...and Dr. Gonzo, the "300 pound Samoan attorney" is actually Thompson's good friend, a Chicano attorney named Oscar Zeta Acosta. He isn't condemning the use of these drugs...he's simply mentioned that he TOOK them, and what happened as a result.
  
  

• Continuing the Revolution
  By A1T3VYBAODBK4A on 2004-09-03
  The 60s dream of Freedom was not in any way a departure from the "American Dream". It was its very essence. In this book, two intelligent drug abusers go to Vegas and abuse drugs deliberately as an act of joyous protest against the "grim realities of this foul year of Our Lord, 1971". What they don't realize (I'm talking about the characters, not the author) is that although politics have become more conservative on the surface, there is nothing new about these "grim realities".
  
  In 1971, one could believe that the hippie movement had triumphed. Drug use had become socially accepted. The Vietnam War was being brought to a close. The downside was the dissipation of the psychic energy of the young: not a new phenomenon in social revolutions by any means. For example, after the Russian Revolution in 1917, a powerful body of youth rose who did not simply support the Communist cause, but rather lived the Communist cause. Their energy lasted for one or two decades before fading. These same youth went on to become the graybeards of the fossilized Communist party under Brezhnev. So there is also nothing new in the revolutionaries of one age becoming the conservatives of the next. What all this history cannot change is the sadness of the occurence.
  
  The two protagonists of Fear and Loathing suffer viscerally from a continuous realization that the great wide country road to hippie utopia had dissolved into the myriad byways of the suburbs and downtowns. The people who had gotten together for several years to party, make music, and experiment were now separating from each other again, keeping perhaps only a memory, a fading protest sign, a favorite set of songs, as memento. The more private moments in the book reveal men who, while tremendously aggressive and angry, are actually being driven to these feelings by inner pain: a pain related to their understanding that America is still corporate, lying, Puritan--and they will have to live their lives without having seen real change.
  
  Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo certainly take it out on the town. But they also search fervently for the American Dream. The great irony of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is that, while searching for it, they are actually living it. The American Dream is not something that can be found, like a pot of gold, a big house, or fame--it is something that is done. Racing around Vegas drunk and happy, blowing on drugs and cars the money of the companies that have hired them, and subverting the social systems they see around them, Duke and Gonzo are continuing the American Revolution. The Colonists of the 1770s threw off the chains of England because of raised tax levels and oppressive bureaucracies that wouldn't raise an eyebrow today. Though only 200 years old, the truth is--America has gotten old and boring.
  
  But although Duke and Gonzo don't know it, there is hope: hope, because the 60s consciousness was not an abberant form of American culture that grew once, and then withered away, but rather one of the high points of the entire American experiment. And what grew once will grow again, though in a different form (we have already seen punk... hip-hop... growing more embittered and, actually, weaker as the decades pass). It will keep growing until something changes, because that is America.
  
  As for the more bookish details... suffice it to say that the real protagonist of Fear and Loathing isn't Duke or Gonzo, but rather Hunter Thompson's writing style, which reached a height here that has rarely been challenged, and combines ferocity with precision, speed with subtlety, sadness with humor.
  
  
• Neither bad, nor great
  By A2ER1V1QFB0JDU on 2005-07-14
  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is about a search for the American Dream. But unlike On the Road, this failed adventure does not end in any kind of realization, any kind of "aha!" moment. Hunter S. Thompson doesn't find the dream--that much is clear--but what happened to it, what happened to Horatio Alger, what happened to the American way?
  
  Thompson provides a partial answer, he starts to find where the dream was lost in two particular moments: first in a conversation with a Taco restaurant drive through worker who can't remember whether the American Dream is a right or left turn, and then, when the author laments the end of the dope generation: they tried to find the dream by pumping themselves full of uppers, but in the end, they realized that the dream was lost, and that no amount of drugs would make them see it in a hallucination.
  
  But unfortunately, each time Thompson gets close to the truth, close to that realization which could have made this book an American classic, he gets lost in acid trip. And that, ultimately, is where Fear and Loathing fails: the author is more interested in recounting his tales of drug-induced stupor than in pursuing anything more serious.
  
  Those tales are without question extraordinary, and often hilarious. But that's all, and so this book ends feeling like a waste of the reader's time. A man like Thompson, in fact, would have never read this book, preferring to go out and experience the world himself, and to learn from them, for even if Thompson learned something from his week in Las Vegas, the reader is left with nothing.
  
  Nonetheless, the book is an easy read, I finished it in two hours. There are no fatal flaws in the book, and it's better than most of the literature out there.
  
  But Thompson comes close to brilliance in this book, and in the end, the reader is left feeling like the witness to a bad acid trip: expecting to see great things, he is treated to a man vomiting in his shoes, and nothing more.
  
  
• Loathed this book.
  By A2X6VNAUM2DPYA on 2006-04-03
  I bought this book based on appraisals of Mr. Thompson's works that drew rave reviews. I found this book sophomoric and rambling. I saw no point in the drug-infested antics and childish behavior by him and his lawyer friend even for hilarity value. It, unfortunately, did remind me of a time when all cops were called pigs and people in the military were viewed as scum as detailed in the book.
  
  
• Way Overated.....
  By A14SGWZ1M86MPT on 2006-12-31
  Most overated book in the history of literature! Nothing more than a drug-induced binge. No pyschology....no analysis....no intellectual thought of any kind. I expected a whole lot more....
  
  
• This book was stupid
  By on 1999-02-08
  Some people I know were reading this book so I though I might take it on. In the beginning I was quite compelled and couldn't put it down. But then I realized that the distorted narrative of a couple of junkies wasn't going to become any better and would only get miserable. Well, I think I abandoned this one half way through. I can't believe almost 100 people gave this book five stars!
  
  
• one the great books of the 20th century
  By A2EYYAKH4VF70T on 2003-10-27
  As with the movie, many people make the same mistake about the book and get wierded out by the heavy drug content into believing that it is about drug abuse. But that's not the case. The book is not about drugs, violence, sex, or the love generation, it is about something much more basic, as the subtitle says, it is about "A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream". That is some kind of sense of righteous destiny in a place where good always triumphs over evil and nice guys finish first. The book is about that, or rather the realizations that it's not true: the death of The American Dream.

  Basically, most folks believe that it is their right -- as long as they aren't hurting anybody else... they pretty much should be allowed to do what ever the heck they want to do, even if, and maybe especially if... the things they want to do harm themselves.

  Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, whose alter ego basically is our main protagonist, writes this book: Raoul Duke. The book was what Uncle Duke saw as a failed attempt at Gonzo Journalism... that had at its heart that sometimes the best truth is encased in fiction. Of course, most fiction really is written as something along those lines... an author trying to find meaning in a crazy mixed up world. It is just that here we find an author more self conscious of this fact than other writers we may be more familiar with.

  Other books that are similar in approach to this book are, in the mainstream "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe and "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. But I would also point at SF's "The Man in the High Castle" by Phil Dick and "The Book of Skulls" by Robert Silverberg, or even Harlan Ellison's "Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman".

  The American dream either died somewhere along the way or did it simply never really existed at all, and we are somehow just mourning its passing like a bunch of drug crazed wacko's in the same way lots of other folks on a long strange religious trip mourned the death of a flat earth? Many of us believed in The American Dream once, we were raised to believe in it. But then something happened... something bad? Nixon took office and started defecating on the Constitution? Maybe we just woke up -- grew up? Who the heck knows really, because I doubt we really ever understood just what we believed in at the time.

  To quote a line from the book (from the wave speech): "History is hard to know, because of all the hired bulls*, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time-and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened."

  The book is in some kind of way, an examination of ourselves... in the way you sometimes hear that an unexamined life is not worth living... the problem is that, when we look deep into the inner core being of ourselves...sometimes we find nothing. Which leads to the "paradoxically benevolent BS" -- "the desperate assumption that somebody-or at least some force-is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel".

  Which is why, in my opinion, a lot of people don't like or understand this tale. They are uncomfortable thinking about themselves in ways where the conclusion isn't clear and succinct. They want to believe they are "holding on to life firmly by the handle". They want to live in a world where everything makes sense. Of course, they are wrong. Or maybe, in the unkindest cut of all, they are perfectly correct. The world does make sense - and airplanes are supposed to crash into tall building and thousands must die in order to feed the egos of the small groups of evil men who run the world. These are scary places and times, ones where you don't need drugs or alcohol to be scared. But then maybe only the truly sane are getting whacked out on acid and heroin.
  
  

• Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Modern Library)
• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
• The Rum Diary : A Novel
• Fight Club: A Novel
• On the Road (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)