⋙ [PDF] Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream Hunter S Thompson Ralph Steadman 9780679785897 Books

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream Hunter S Thompson Ralph Steadman 9780679785897 Books

Download As PDF : Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream Hunter S Thompson Ralph Steadman 9780679785897 Books

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream Hunter S Thompson Ralph Steadman 9780679785897 Books

Better to enjoy Hunter's experiences in book form than in real life. Shame he took his own life, but I respect his choice. I think he lived more in his 70+ years than I could, even if I lived past 100. I think Depp and Torres did an awesome job with the movie version. Highly underrated!


Tags : Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream [Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Steadman] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. This cult classic of gonzo journalism is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page.  It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken. Now  a major motion picture from Universal,Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Steadman,Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream,Vintage,0679785892,Literary,Journalists - United States - Biography,AMERICAN JOURNALISM,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Editors, Journalists, Publishers,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Literary Figures,Biography,Biography & Autobiography,BiographyAutobiography,Fiction-Coming of Age,GENERAL,General Adult,HISTORY United States 20th Century,Journalism,Journalists,Journalists;Biography.,Journalists;United States;Biography.,LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES Journalism,Language Arts & DisciplinesJournalism,Literary,Modern fiction,Nevada,Non-Fiction,Political ScienceAmerican Government - General,Pop Arts Pop Culture,Popular Culture - General,Social SciencePopular Culture,TRAVEL Essays & Travelogues,Thompson, Hunter S,True stories,United States,United States - 20th Century,classics; travel writing; writing; fear; journalism; essays; autobiography; biographies; travel books; biography; politics; political books; biographies of famous people; travel gifts; autobiographies; jack kerouac; american literature; travelogue; travel memoir; history; travel; travel diary; travel book; bucket list; travel memoirs; travels; traveling books; travelogue books; travelogues; classic; satire; interviews; literary fiction; plays; american history; film; race; anarchism; president; war; vietnam war; communism; americana,classics;travel writing;fear;jack kerouac;autobiography;biography;writing;biographies;autobiographies;biographies of famous people;travel;travel books;history;politics;political books;travel diary;travel book;travel gifts;bucket list;travelogues;travelogue books;travel memoirs;travelogue;travel memoir;travels;traveling books;journalism;essays;american literature;satire;literary fiction;classic;plays;american history;race;film;president;anarchism;vietnam war;war;communism;americana;culture,Biography & Autobiography General,History United States 20th Century,Journalism,LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES Journalism,POLITICAL SCIENCE Government General,Popular Culture - General,SOCIAL SCIENCE Popular Culture,United States - 20th Century,Pop Arts Pop Culture,American Journalism,Biography,Journalists,Thompson, Hunter S,United States,Biography & Autobiography,BiographyAutobiography,True Stories,American English,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),Modern fiction

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream Hunter S Thompson Ralph Steadman 9780679785897 Books Reviews

I admit that I only read the book after seeing the movie when I was younger, and even after hearing the song by Avenged Sevenfold "Bat Country", but this story changed a lot about the way I think. "The American Dream" is the theme of this adventure story (though I use the term adventure in place of "drug binge fueled blaze across Nevada), and two unlikely companion take their wild "trip" to the heart of Nevada Las Vegas to find the dream and write about it to bring home. This story is very crazy to be honest but it is time and time again one of my favourite stories. If you are into half truth and half fiction stories where it is hard to draw the line between what could have really happened and what exactly was fabricated you will enjoy the wild ride Thompson will put you through in Fear and Loathing. It has twists and turns and bizarre events at every turn. It will keep you enthralled and engaged and you can buy a ticket to take this ride safely from the comfort of your home.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream was, as is probably common, the first book by Hunter Thompson I ever heard about. Since then I've read it twice. The first time I was 15, and it appealed to me for a lot of the reasons one would expect. Thompson was raunchy and hilarious, intelligent, endlessly passionate, moral, angry at the squares, and his writing "had balls" (this being my probable takeaway in 2009).

I was hooked on HST's moral philosophy and precise writing style right away. Immediately after F&L I read Hell's Angels, his first published book, and loved that too. Through the years since I've read most of his other books -- The Proud Highway, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, The Great Shark Hunt, and the Rum Diary most notable among them.

Very recently, a workplace debate with a coworker who despises Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (and Thompson as a concept) inspired me to go back and read F&L a second time. It's been almost 10 years since the first reading, and I'm shocked at how much of what he was really talking about flew right over my head when I was 15. The slapstick humor and ridiculous hi-jinks that Raoul Duke and his "attorney" Dr. Gonzo get into are still fun and aptly described, but on a closer reading these serve a similar purpose as does the magician's other hand, yanking your attention away from the real thing going on.

This really is the quintessential novel about the death of the American 60s and the youth idealism of that period. If you've heard anything about this book you're probably familiar with the chaos and the hedonism and the rampant drug use (all admitted by Thompson as fictional exaggerations), and you probably know one-liners like "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold," or "Buy the ticket, take the ride," or the famous "“We can't stop here, this is bat country!” To most non-fans Thompson is best remembered for these sort of one-offs that've been made cliche by the commercial reproduction machine.

Below is a long-ish passage about the end of the 60s from Fear in Loathing in Las Vegas that is less well-known than the cliches and displays Thompson as what he really was beneath the rage, drugs, and liquor a visionary thinker and writer of the first order.

“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
Fear and Loathing is one of the great classics of American journalism (literature?) and IMO the definitive book for developing an understanding on American drug culture in the late 20th century. The book is hilarious and horrifying, a piece of narrative genius both disrupted and enhanced by the author's instability and grotesqueness. More than anything it captures the ambivalent draw of a life on the edge -- with the exhilaration and freedom displayed alongside the self-loathing and despair. Thompson was both the most disgusting of men and the most empowered, and Fear & Loathing is perhaps the most enduring display of this strange mixture. And like all good anti-hero's narratives, there's a powerful sense of voyeurism strewn throughout. I found myself drawn in by a powerful sense of vicariousness, and even more powerfully repulsed.

I'm not sure if anything can be "learned" from such a book or if could be called an intellectually enriching experience, but it's certainly a culturally enriching one, and a sturdy landmark of American journalism that's unlikely to lose it's relevance -- or it's appeal -- anytime soon.
Better to enjoy Hunter's experiences in book form than in real life. Shame he took his own life, but I respect his choice. I think he lived more in his 70+ years than I could, even if I lived past 100. I think Depp and Torres did an awesome job with the movie version. Highly underrated!