Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a 1971 novel in the gonzo journalism style by Hunter S. Thompson. The book is a roman à clef, rooted in autobiographical incidents. The story follows its protagonist, Raoul Duke, and his attorney, Doctor Gonzo, as they descend on Las Vegas to chase the American Dream through a drug-induced haze, all the while ruminating on the failure of the 1960s countercultural movement. The work is Thompson's most famous book and is noted for its lurid descriptions of illicit drug use and its early retrospective on the culture of the 1960s. Thompson's highly subjective blend of fact and fiction, which it popularized, became known as gonzo journalism. Illustrated by Ralph Steadman, the novel first appeared as a two-part series in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971 before being published in book form in 1972. It was later adapted into a film of the same title in 1998 by director Terry Gilliam, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro, who portrayed Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo, respectively.
"Fear and Loathing" redirects here. For the other Thompson book whose title uses that phrase, see Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.Author
English
Gonzo Series
November 11, 1971 (magazine)
July 7, 1972 (book)
United States
Print (Hardback & Paperback)
204 pp
070/.92 B 21
PN4874.T444 A3 1998b
Plot[edit]
In 1971, journalist Raoul Duke and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, are driving from LA to Las Vegas to cover the Mint 400 Motorcycle race. Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker, and Duke explains the preparation for the trip, including gathering several drugs and renting the "Great Red Shark". Shortly after explaining, the two scare off the hitchhiker, and then take a large dose of LSD and finish the drive to Vegas.
The two arrive in the lobby of the Mint Hotel, while still under the influence of LSD. Duke has bizarre hallucinations and acts strangely, culminating in him perceiving everyone in the bar to be giant lizards. Gonzo, who is able to keep a level head throughout all of this, signs the two in with press credentials, and brings Duke up to their hotel room. They later leave to get an early look at the Mint Gun Club, where the race will be held. While there, Duke meets Lacerda, a photographer assigned to work with them.
The next day, Duke and Gonzo go to the bar at the gun club and wait for the race to start. Once it starts, Duke is unable to tell what is going on, and goes on a side-by-side ride with Lacerda, to capture photos. Eventually, Duke gives up and leaves.
Later that night, Duke and Gonzo are driving around Vegas intoxicated. After struggling to find parking, they go to the Desert Inn to see a Debbie Reynolds performance. The pair get kicked out of the show for smoking marijuana. They then huff some ether and wander around the Circus Circus, in a drunken stupor. While in the Circus Circus, Gonzo starts to feel the effects of the mescaline pills that he took earlier, and the two leave. Back in the hotel room, Gonzo keeps getting worse. When Duke eventually calms him down, he reminisces about the 1960s, and goes to sleep.
He wakes up the next morning and finds that Gonzo is gone and there is a pile of room service receipts. Unable to pay, he flees, hoping to make a quick drive back to Los Angeles. While driving along in an extremely paranoid state, Duke eventually calls Gonzo, and finds that he was supposed to check into the Flamingo Hotel and cover a national police meeting on drug use.
After Duke finishes checking into the hotel, he is attacked by a teenage girl named Lucy. He then learns that Gonzo gave her LSD to "help her out" only to find that she is a devout Christian and has never even used alcohol. The two give her more LSD, and then drop her off at a different hotel, hoping she will not remember them. However, when they get back to the hotel room, they find that Lucy has left them a message, and is asking Gonzo for help. Gonzo manages to trick her into thinking that Duke drugged both of them, and that Gonzo is now being arrested, advising her to hide. Afterwards, Gonzo advises Duke to take adrenochrome. When Duke takes it, he experiences nightmarish hallucinations, before eventually falling asleep.
The next day, they attend the drug convention, where they observe a comically out of touch presentation by a police "drug expert". Later, the two drive in Las Vegas, and encounter a family from Oklahoma, whom Gonzo aggressively tries to sell heroin to. Afterwards, they stop at a diner in North Las Vegas, where Gonzo makes a provocative and offensive gesture to the waitress, leading to a confrontation.
Next morning, the two rush to the airport and upon realizing they are about to miss a flight to L.A., Duke drives onto the runway area of the airport, drops Gonzo off and escapes through a break in a fence. After the departure of his lawyer, Duke spends the remaining days in his hotel suite recounting memories from Aspen, and attempting to purchase an ape. Duke was sadly denied the ape after the owner discovered it was house trained. After a while, Duke himself boards a plane to Denver. The book ends with Duke purchasing Amyl Nitrite from the airport pharmacy, and consuming them in front of the petrified pharmacist.[9]
Title[edit]
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.
In a Rolling Stone magazine interview, Thompson said of the phrase: "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."[12]
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.[13] 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.[14][15]
Another possible influence is Fear and Trembling, a philosophical work by existentialist Søren Kierkegaard published in 1843. The title is a reference to a line from a Bible verse, Philippians 2:12.
Reactions to the novel[edit]
When it was published in fall of 1971 many critics did not like the novel's loose plot and the scenes of drug use; however, some reviewers predicted that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas would become an important piece of American literature.
In The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt told readers to not "even bother" trying to understand the novel, and that "what goes on in these pages make[s] Lenny Bruce seem angelic"; instead, 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".[16]
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".[17]
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".[18] 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".[19]
Cormac McCarthy has called the book "a classic of our time" and one of the few great modern novels.[20]
Changes in the book version[edit]
The novel was first published serially in Rolling Stone magazine, under the byline "Raoul Duke". The book version was published with Thompson's name as the author.
In chapter 8 of part I, Thompson tells a story about his neighbor, "a former acid guru who later claimed to have made that long jump from chemical frenzy to preternatural consciousness". In the Rolling Stone article, the neighbor was identified as "Dr. Robert De Ropp on Sonoma Mountain Road". In the book version, the name and the street were redacted, as a footnote says, "at insistence of publisher's lawyer".
In chapter 12 of part II, Thompson tells of a belligerent drunk confronting Bruce Innes, of Canadian folk band The Original Caste, at a club in Aspen. The heckler was identified in the Rolling Stone version as "Wally Schirra, the Astronaut". In the book version he is only identified as "a former Astronaut" and his name is, again, redacted "at insistence of publisher's lawyer".
Adaptations[edit]
Audiobook[edit]
An audiobook version was released by Margaritaville Records and Island Records in 1996, on the 25th anniversary of the book's original publication. It features the voice talents of Harry Dean Stanton as the narrator/an older Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Jarmusch as Raoul Duke, and Maury Chaykin as Dr. Gonzo, with Jimmy Buffett, Joan Cusack, Buck Henry and Harry Shearer in minor roles. Sound effects, period-appropriate music and album-like sound mixing are used extensively to give it the surreal feeling characteristic of the book. Quotes from Thompson himself bookend the album.
The album is presumably out-of-print, due to its relative rarity, but is sought after by fans for its high production values and faithfulness to the book's tone. Excerpts of it were included in the Criterion Collection release of the movie.
Other references[edit]
"Fear and Loathing on the Planet of Kitson," an episode of the ABC/Marvel Studios superhero series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., first broadcast on May 24, 2019, not only takes its title from the novel, it also incorporates plot elements from the novel and 1998 film, particularly around characters having to navigate a casino (in this case a casino on an alien planet) while under the influence of a psychedelic drug.[27]
The 2013 album Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die! by Panic! at the Disco (originally from Las Vegas) was named after a line from the movie adaptation of the novel. The quote itself is attributed to Thompsons article "The Banshee Screams For Buffalo Meat" written after Acasta's presumed death.
The music videos for Lil Wayne's "No Worries" and The Weeknd's song "Heartless" draw heavy inspiration from the 1998 film.[28][29]
Japanese electronicore band Fear, and Loathing in Las Vegas is named after the book and film.
"Bat Country", from the album City of Evil of the band Avenged Sevenfold, is based on the novel, with the title coming from what Raoul Duke says to Dr. Gonzo after seeing huge bats and flying manta rays in his hallucinations, "We can't stop here. This is bat country." The song’s music video exemplifies that, referencing numerous scenes from the film.
An achievement in Halo: The Master Chief Collection called "Can't Stop Here, This is Brute Country" is a reference to the line "We can't stop here, this is bat country" from the book and the 1998 film.
A set of cosmetic items in the class-based first-person shooter video game Team Fortress 2 are directly based on one of the outfits that Raoul Duke wears in the book and the 1998 film, both cosmetic items belonging to the Sniper class. The items are named the Hawaiian Hunter and Tropical Camo in-game, respectively.