Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Harper Perennial Modern Classc) [Paperback]

Hunter S. Thompson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2005 | Series: Harper Perennial Modern Classc

Stylish reissue of a classic first published in the 1970s: Hunter S Thompson's ether-fuelled, savage journey to the heart of the American Dream. 'We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold! And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas!' As knights of old buckled on armour of supernatural power, so Hunter S. Thompson enters Las Vegas armed with a veritable arsenal of 'heinous chemicals'. His perilous, drug-enhanced confrontations with casino operators, bartenders, police officers and assorted representatives of the Silent Majority have a hallucinatory humour and nightmare terror never before seen on the printed page.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the ne plus ultra of Hunter S. Thompson and the whole gonzo clan he spawned. Written in the lurid afterglow of the 1960s, Fear and Loathing is a loosely connected series of mad dashes across the desert, trashed hotel rooms, and goofs on the brutish, naïve, or merely unhip, perpetrated by Thompson and his mammoth Samoan attorney. The pair start out high on a medicine cabinet's worth of elixirs, powders, and pills, and stay that way for 200 pages. They careen through an unsettling landscape of paranoia and alienation, but that doesn't mean the book isn't a riot. Here's a small taste: "By this time, the drink was beginning to cut the acid and my hallucinations were down to a tolerable level. The room service waiter had a vaguely reptilian cast to his features, but I was no longer seeing huge pterodactyls lumbering around the corridors in pools of fresh blood."

Though somewhat dated (it appeared serially in Rolling Stone throughout November 1971), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a book of real vitality and Rabelaisian wit. A document of the counterculture after it was well past ripe and deep into rot, the book is a wild ride, a paranoid ramble that is thoroughly exhilarating and worth the trip. No pun intended. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a scorching epochal sensation. There are only two adjectives writers care about any more! "brilliant" and "outrageous"! and Hunter Thompson has a freehold on both of them.' Tom Wolfe 'What goes on in these pages makes Lenny Bruce seem angelic! the whole book boils down to a mad, corrosive prose poetry that picks up where Norman Mailer's An American Dream left off and explores what Tom Wolfe left out.' New York Times

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (April 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007204493
• ISBN-13: 978-0007204496
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (489 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #471,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars And you thought YOUR trip to Vegas was rough and wild!, November 15, 2004

By 

Schtinky "Schtinky" (California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (Paperback)

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!

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, May 5, 2008

By 

Stephen Williams "Stephen Williams" (Hawthorne, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

"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.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, May 5, 2008

By 

Stephen Williams "Stephen Williams" (Hawthorne, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Paperback)

"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.