Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Other American Stories

by Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Steadman (Illustrator)

Overview

First published in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is Hunter S. Thompson's savagely comic account of what happened to this country in the 1960s. It is told through the writer's account of an assignment he undertook with his attorney to visit Las Vegas and "check it out." The book stands as the final word on the highs and lows of that decade, one of the defining works of our time, and a stylistic and journalistic tour de force. As Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in The New York Times, it has "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."
        This Modern Library edition features Ralph Steadman's original drawings and three companion pieces selected by Dr. Thompson: "Jacket Copy for Fear and Loath-
ing in Las Vegas," "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan," and "The Kentucky Derby Is Deca-
dent and Depraved."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679602989
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/28/1998
Series:	Modern Library Series
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	21,314
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Hunter S. 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 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which blurred the distinctions between writer and subject, fiction and nonfiction.

The best source on Thompson's writing style and personality is Thompson himself. His books include Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (1966), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1972), Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 (1973); The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979); The Curse of Lono (1983); Generation of Swine, Gonzo Papers Vol. 2: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the 80's (1988); and Songs of the Doomed (1990).

Date of Birth:

July 18, 1937

Date of Death:

February 20, 2005

Place of Birth:

Louisville, Kentucky

Place of Death:

Woody Creek, Colorado

Education:

U.S. Air Force, honorably discharged in 1957

Editorial Reviews

"We werearound Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." The hold deepens for two days, and the language keeps pace for 200 pages, in what is by far the best book yet written on the decade of dope gone by...It is, as well, a custom-crafted study of paranoia, a spew from the 1960s and -in all its hysteria, insolence, insult and rot- a desperate and important book, a wired nightmare, the funniest piece of American prose since Naked Lunch. Books of the Century, The New York Times,July, 1972

Crawford Woods