As a wannabe journalist, a fan of Thompson's work (The Rum Diary is my second favourite book ever) and a person who knows the film adaptation word by word, it's quite surprising that it took me so long to get round to reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the acidic epic of two men going to Las Vegas in a car full of drugs in pursuit of capturing the American Dream in it's purest form. However, when I found a battered copy of the book from one of it's original printings in the college library, I felt it was too good an opportunity to miss.
Despite everyone's raving reviews of the book I was probably too shy to read it due to not wanting to be disappointed - that and the fact that at my heart I am a massive hipster - but it satisfies me to no end to say that Fear and Loathing was everything it could and should have been for me.
It's unsurprising that the film adaptation was so successful and revered by fans, as not only was actor Johnny Depp a close friend of Thompson before his death, as I read the book I could see how faithfully recreated the film was - much like Fight Club, the film and book are both rooted so deeply in a certain style that they're both on equal pedestals. The book is the epitome of Thompson's mental prose style, pure candy coated porn for the eyeballs, and as I read I found myself rolling around gleefully, laughing, and generally having the most fun I've ever had reading a book.
I guess I could go into detail pulling apart the mad gonzo style which Thompson perfected, but I genuinely would not know where to begin. If you're a wannabe journalist like myself, a fan of the film, or just someone who likes fucked up tales of men on every sort of drug available in the seventies, boy are you in for a treat.
Pages: 204
Bottom Line: A jam-filled, acid-laced doughnut of a book that will tear apart your mind, put it back together in the form of an abstract art exhibit and quickly leave the room before you even come to terms with what just happened.
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