2010 books

[peteryoung]

3) Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971
Thompson and his fat Samoan attorney hit Vegas with a carful of drugs. Actually they do it twice, as both the first and second parts of this book are structurally identical only with different incidental characters, different hotels and a different set of wheels. I kind of wished Thompson had cut the retrospective bullshit about this being "a failed attempt" at gonzo journalism and graciously accepted the acclaim for coming up with this work of near-genius that defined his own genre, however Thompson inevitably wanted everyone to think of him as anything but gracious. While writing it all up for Rolling Stone he shaped these experiences more as comic fiction than anything resembling real paranoid dementia, even though the events he described were often verifiable and real enough. This book was as much a showcase of his own sharp writing as being about two guys getting out of their heads on chemicals; everything – especially the dialogue – reads as exceptionally fluid, and his summary dismissal of the American Dream in the second half is done with an almost sad subtlety. I'm not surprised this appears on many lists of 'the funniest books ever written' – I ended up completely knocked out by it and I'm now chastising myself for not having read it twenty years ago.

Comments

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

Another pair to read are Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter and The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse. The Boys on the Bus became the archetypal study of presidential campaign journalism, but it was almost an accident.

The Rolling Stone team covering the '72 campaign were three: Hunter to write the articles, Annie Leibovitz as photographer (!), and Crouse to hold Hunter's bail money. As far as publisher Jan Wenner was concerned, if Crouse could do some writing along the way, mazeltov, but his real job was to keep Hunter out of the pokey.

I think all three ended up doing fantastic work, and are probably the best team ever to have covered an American campaign.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

The original fear and loathing book. Not funny, but brilliant: http://www.nytimes.com/1967/01/29/books/thompson-1967-angels.html