For years, no work of his stood out to me as much as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 or the Gonzo letters. Like Mark Twain, he chronicled American stupidity in the tongue of his generation, and he captured it perfectly, from the insanity of the drug experience to the depravity of American politics. But he chose to do what he did, and he did it better than any of his generation.
He probably could have been a brilliant novelist of any kind. He probably could have been a very rich super-novelist of popular, uninspired filth. He spoke to a true astonishment at the complete, unrelenting fuckedupedness of America and her politics, and he did it with a bite that was deserved and unmatched. Thompson is dearly missed by many people, and on a personal level, I miss him deeply. I hadn't read this book in years, and previously, it hadn't even been my favorite Hunter S. A first-rate sensibility twinger, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a pop-culture classic, an icon of an era past, and a nugget of pure comedic genius.I recently went to Las Vegas for the first, and probably only, time in my life. They of course never get the story, but they do commit the only sins in Vegas: "burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help." For Thompson to remember and pen his experiences with such clarity and wit is nothing short of a miracle an impressive feat no matter how one feels about the subject matter. On assignment from a sports magazine to cover "the fabulous Mint 400"-a free-for-all biker's race in the heart of the Nevada desert-the drug-a-delic duo stumbles through Vegas in hallucinatory hopes of finding the American dream (two truck-stop waitresses tell them it's nearby, but can't remember if it's on the right or the left).
A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls," which they manage to consume during their short tour. Gonzo, in a souped-up convertible dubbed the "Great Red Shark." In its trunk, they stow "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers. Under the pseudonym of Raoul Duke, Thompson travels with his Samoan attorney, Dr. Thompson's documented drug orgy through Las Vegas would no doubt leave Nancy Reagan blushing and D.A.R.E. Heralded as the "best book on the dope decade" by the New York Times Book Review, Hunter S.
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