Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

Like probably thousands of other people, this was the book that introduced me to the work of "Dr. Gonzo" himself, Hunter S. Thompson. I was given this to read by a mate when I was a student, and from the first page I was hooked! I must have read the whole thing from cover to cover in an afternoon! Thompson's writing style was unlike anything I'd read before and I was mesmerised by his descriptions and observations on the excesses of American society. Thompson wrote the book supposedly as a search for the American Dream, what he unleashes however is an acid-fuelled picture of the "Dark Side" of American life, with Las Vegas as ...  Read the complete review

After watching snippets of the film whilst wandering through the movie channels on bleary Saturday nights,I succumbed to my purism and read the book instead.I feel film adaptations can never really recreate the personalisation and insight that an author can give. Besides,the parts of the film that I can remember make a heapload more sense now I have been initiated. So,what did I think of the book? First off,any book that opens with the scene of a man and his attorney in a red convertible driving through the desert flailing and flapping at bats that aren't there is fantastic. It's the law. A book that then unfolds as an original,fascinating auteur piece that ...  Read the complete review

This book really made me stop and wonder. It was the first time I realised that reckless, nihilist rebellion could be carried out, glorified and even justified by intelligent people completely at odds with their society. "We were in the desert at the edge of Barstow when the drugs began to take hold." So more or less, does it begin and it never relents. Hunter Thompson and his lawyer, Oscar Acosta, who was if anything even more of a maniac,(see his own excellent books "Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo" and "Revenge of the Cockroach People") have hired a car, collected a monstrous arsenal of illegal drugs and are off to Las ...  Read the complete review

The number of druggies in their late teens who describe their various experiences as 'just like Fear and Loathing' is enough to put you off reading the book. What these saps neglect to mention about the book however is that it's pretty much a bad trip from beginning to end, with Duke playing straight man to his Samoan attorney's more outlandish excesses, trying to stop him from pulling knives on waitresses, guns on hapless reporters and from covering the walls of whichever hotel they're staying at in technicolour vomit. But his efforts are to no avail, as the Samoan does all of this - and worse. That the novel (actually the book defies ...  Read the complete review

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a drug fuelled road trip about a journalist who gets side-tracked from his assignment partly due to, among other things, the contents of his suitcase which includes"...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 multi-coloured uppers, downers, screamers, laughers.....also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Hunter S Thompson's finest book really is unequalled. It is a study in anarchic hedonism with a writing style that is visual, immediate and often imitated. ...  Read the complete review