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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dreamby Hunter S Thompson
Powells.com Staff PickWhen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer bought the Modern Library in 1925, its mission was ? and still is ? to provide attractive, hardcover editions of important works of literature and thought to serious readers on a budget. The Modern Library became the foundation on which Cerf built Random House and, in time, the largest and most diverse publishing empire in the country. It's hard to believe, though, that Cerf could have imagined his beloved Modern Library one day including in its list of "important works of literature" a book such as Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Who could have? When Thompson's masterpiece was first published in Rolling Stone in 1971, it took literally everyone by surprise. Thompson's deranged tour of the more psychotic corners of the American psyche was so original it marked the beginning of a new literary genre. According to Thompson, "gonzo journalism" is "a style of 'reporting' based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism..." Coming from a journalist, this sounds suspiciously like a ready-made excuse for not doing your job. And, in fact, Fear and Loathing recounts a failed journalistic assignment. Thompson accepted an assignment by a sports magazine to cover a motorcycle race in Las Vegas. Of course, it's difficult to concentrate on the "Mint 400" when your weekend's supply of drugs includes:
And during the course of their brief trip to Vegas, Thompson and his Samoan lawyer sidekick manage to ingest the lot. Not surprisingly, they spend the weekend by turns manic, depressed, incoherent, paranoid, and completely out of their minds. Nonetheless, though Thompson couldn't see in front of his car for the hallucinatory bats flying in his hair, his vision had never been clearer. He may not have fulfilled his contract, but he did get his story. Today, this picaresque romp through hell is widely acknowledged the greatest literary portrait of the sixties drug culture and one of the most terrifying — and hilarious — visions of the state of the American union ever written. Bennett Cerf may never have personally included such a book in his Modern Library list, but he would most certainly have approved. This twenty-fifth-anniversary edition features Ralph Steadman's original drawings and three companion pieces selected by the author: "Jacket Copy for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan," and "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved." Farley, Powells.com Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 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 this cult classic of gonzo journalism is a major motion picture from Universal, directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro. Opens everywhere on May 22, 1998. Review:"[A] kind of mad, corrosive prose poetry that picks up where Norman Mailer's An American Dream left off and explores what Tom Wolfe left out." Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
Review:"Among journalists I have but one hero, and that is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I honor him because he reports the simple facts, in plain language, of what he sees around him. His style is mistaken for fantastic, drug-crazed exaggeration, but that was to be expected. As always in this country, they only laugh at you when you tell the truth. Dr. Thompson's problem is how to equal, without merely imitating, the scholarly precision of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He is really much more than a journalist. Not a journalist at all, but one who sees ? a seer." Edward Abbey
Synopsis:Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good 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. About the AuthorHunter S. Thompson lives in Woody Creek, Colorado. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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