Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 book began as magazine assignments to cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race and a district attorneys conference on narcotics. What he filed instead was a careening account of two men, Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo, driving a red Chevy convertible into the Nevada desert with a trunk full of drugs and a thin grip on reality. The book reads as a long, comic, often frightening trip through casinos, hotel rooms, and highway stops where the line between reportage and hallucination dissolves. Behind the chaos is a real argument about the end of the 1960s and the failure of the counterculture's promises. It became the founding document of gonzo journalism and a permanent fixture of American letters.
What you might want to know about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A journalist and his attorney head to Las Vegas to cover a desert race, then unravel into a chemical-fueled tour of the American dream.
Bourdain repeatedly cited Thompson as a core stylistic influence and pointed to this book as a model for first-person writing that fuses reporting, voice, and bad behavior into something honest.
Loosely. Thompson did travel to Vegas on assignment, but the book treats the trips as raw material for a fictionalized gonzo account rather than straight journalism.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was written by Hunter S. Thompson, published in 1971 by Vintage.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is 204 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas takes most readers 3 to 4 hours to finish.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.