A review by polly_baker
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
4.0
The American Dream has been well-documented in literature. From Fitzgerald to Steinbeck to Yates to Thompson…. it’s always a fucked up, unattainable lie.
You could read this chaotic prose as just a mangled report of drug-fuelled idiocy. Two chancers taking liberties at every turn, leaving the Everyman in their wake. But Thompson does more than that. He chases down the lies of American culture, tearing through the facade at 100mph and kicking up the filth from beneath.
The only thing separating the idiots and the geniuses in Thompson’s prose is perception. If Duke and the attorney are lucid – there’s idiots at every encounter. If they’re high and paranoia is rife, then every damned teenage hitch-hiker is conspiring against them.
And it turns out, perception is everything.
Las Vegas is either a glittering city of wealth, abundance and glory or a garish speck in a desert wasteland, a magnet for lowlifes, degenerates and charlatans. The bright lights of Vegas, like Gatsby’s green light, are just another example of false advertising – propaganda. The long-awaited end of the rainbow, but when you arrive there is nothing but “a huge slab of cracked, scorched concrete in a vacant lot full of weeds.”
You could read this chaotic prose as just a mangled report of drug-fuelled idiocy. Two chancers taking liberties at every turn, leaving the Everyman in their wake. But Thompson does more than that. He chases down the lies of American culture, tearing through the facade at 100mph and kicking up the filth from beneath.
The only thing separating the idiots and the geniuses in Thompson’s prose is perception. If Duke and the attorney are lucid – there’s idiots at every encounter. If they’re high and paranoia is rife, then every damned teenage hitch-hiker is conspiring against them.
And it turns out, perception is everything.
Las Vegas is either a glittering city of wealth, abundance and glory or a garish speck in a desert wasteland, a magnet for lowlifes, degenerates and charlatans. The bright lights of Vegas, like Gatsby’s green light, are just another example of false advertising – propaganda. The long-awaited end of the rainbow, but when you arrive there is nothing but “a huge slab of cracked, scorched concrete in a vacant lot full of weeds.”