Imagine you’re in Las Vegas. Now imagine you’re driving. Now imagine you have an inordinate amount of ether, cocaine and LSD in your system, and then you’ll be somewhere close to this little book I decided to pick up off the shelf recently.
Most know Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for its 1998 film with Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro, but the 1971 novel off which it was based is of much higher quality, if just as incoherent. The novel follows the book’s author, Hunter S. Thompson, under the fictional name “Raoul Duke,” and his lawyer, Oscar Zeta Acosta, under the fictional name “Doctor Gonzo.”
This novel is considered fiction, nonfiction and even journalism in its 47 years of existence, as well as “gonzo journalism,” a genre the novel birthed. It’s defined as “journalism with no claim of objectivity.”
On top of being an oxymoron, this definition also blurs the line on what can even be considered true. It tells the story of Thompson’s own reporting in Vegas, but gives him a fictional persona. It relays true drug-addled events in his life, but joins them together in a less-than-accurate way. It’s this tricky persona that has given readers headaches trying to categorize just what the hell Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is.
As a general premise, the two journalists are assigned to cover a motorcycle race in Vegas, doing incredibly hard drugs all the while, and, fittingly enough, are eventually reassigned to cover a narcotics convention intended for police officers. Sounds tame, right? But, then again, who is to say that they did cover this convention, or a motorcycle race, or that they were in Las Vegas at all? It’s these kinds of questions that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas delights in asking and leaving unanswered.
Thanks to drugs, the narrative goes between fact and fiction almost at random, going from a realistic drive down a desert road into a sudden attack of bats, causing them to drive off the road. Duke sits calmly in a hotel lobby waiting for his room key, but then Thompson decides all of the guests should turn into alligators and start attacking him. This proves a frustrating reading experience, but hidden inside is a kernel of postmodern truth.
Most people would like to think of truth as a straightforward concept that can be captured with a pad, pen and vigilant eye. But are we not human? Inevitably, all we can really know for certain comes from our own perception, and, if you’ve inhaled enough mescaline and ingested enough acid, you’d probably be writing about alligators and bats too.
In this way, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is simultaneously the fakest possible news you’ll find and, somehow, the realest possible news as well.
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