Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Softcover

Thompson, Hunter S.

4.07

348,868 ratings by Goodreads

9780006551362: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000655136X ISBN 13: 9780006551362

Publisher: Flamingo, 1998

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Film tie-in edition of this classic book to coincide with the release of the film starring Johnny Depp and directed by Terry Gilliam.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘savage journey to the heart of the American dream’, introduced the world to Gonzo journalism, and the book has been a cult classic ever since. Now it’s being made into a major film starring Johnny Depp (Ed Wood, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? etc.) and directed by Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Time Bandits) of Monty Python fame. A cult classic of its own in the making.

Equipped with a veritable arsenal of heinous chemicals, Thompson and his comrade-in-arms Ralph Steadman confront casino operators, bartenders, police officers and assorted members of the Silent Majority with a hallucinatory humour and nightmare terror never before seen on the printed page.

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Review:

Heralded as the "best book on the dope decade" by the New York Times Book Review, Hunter S. Thompson's documented drug orgy through Las Vegas would no doubt leave Nancy Reagan blushing and D.A.R.E. (US anti-drugs organisation) founders rethinking their motto. Under the pseudonym of Raoul Duke, Thompson travels with his Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in a souped-up convertible dubbed the "Great Red Shark." In its boot, they hide "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 multicoloured uppers, downers, screamers, laughers ... A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser [and] a pint of raw ether" which they manage to consume during their short tour.

On assignment from a sports magazine to cover "the fabulous Mint 400"--a free-for-all biker's race in the heart of the Nevada desert--the drug-a-delic duo stumbles through Vegas in hallucinatory hopes of finding the American dream (two truck-stop waitresses tell them it's nearby, but can't remember if it's on the right or the left). They of course never get the story, but they do commit the only sins in Vegas: "burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help." For Thompson to remember and pen his experiences with such clarity and wit is nothing short of a miracle; an impressive feat no matter how one feels about the subject matter. A first- rate sensibility twinger, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a pop-culture classic, an icon of an era past and a nugget of pure comedic genius. --Rebekah Warren

Review:

‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a scorching epochal sensation. There are only two adjectives authors care about any more -
“brilliant”
and
“outrageous”
- and Hunter Thompson has a freehold on both of them’
Tom Wolfe

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