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Essay on Hunter S. Thompson
About Author
Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author. He was known for his flamboyant writing style, most notably deployed in his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which blurred the distinctions between writer and subject, fiction and nonfiction. It became known as gonzo journalism and was widely imitated. (Simon & Schuster)
Hunter Stockton Thompson was raised in a middle-class family in Louisville, Kentucky, and had an early brush with the law when he was jailed for robbery at 18: it was the first of several encounters with the authorities. He served for a time with the air force (as sports editor on a magazine) then found work as the New York Herald Tribune’s man in Puerto Rico.
Overview of book
Published in 1971, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a first-person account by a journalist (Thompson himself, under the pseudonym "Raoul Duke") on a trip to Las Vegas with his "300-pound [136 kg] Samoan" attorney, "Dr. Gonzo" (a character inspired by Thompson's friend, Chicano lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta) to cover a narcotics officers' convention and the "fabulous Mint 400" motorcycle race. During the trip, he and his lawyer become sidetracked by a search for the American dream, with the aid of copious amounts of LSD, ether, adrenochrome, marijuana and other drugs. Ralph Steadman, who collaborated with Thompson on several projects, contributed surreal pen and ink illustrations. (Vintage)
But the sporting life collapses in any case when a wire comes from Rolling Stone, keeping the crew in Las Vegas to report on a national district attorneys' conference on dangerous drugs. Coverage of the conference is the book's centerpiece. It includes an imbecilic meeting of narcotics agents, where the officers are solemnly assured that a marijuana butt is called a roach....
