What follows is a fast, disjointed account of a high-speed run from L.A. “And my first advice is that you should rent a very fast car with no top and get the hell out of L.A. “You’re going to need plenty of legal advice before this is over,” his attorney warns him in Los Angeles. Originally published in two parts by Rolling Stone, the book ostensibly tells of Thompson’s (Duke’s) assignment to cover the Fabulous Mint 400 motorcycle race in Las Vegas. Ralph Steadman’s deranged illustrations are a perfect accompaniment to Thompson’s text. The persona of Duke owes a clear debt to On the Road’s Dean Moriarty-in real life Neal Cassady who figures prominently in Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test about Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. The narrative tells of a drug-and-alcohol-fueled trip (or two) to Las Vegas by Raul Duke and his attorney. It’s hard to say on just which side of the fiction/non-fiction line this book falls. Gonzo injects the writer squarely into the story and further blurs the boundaries of fiction and journalism. New Journalism can be subjective and uses the techniques of fiction to tell a factual story. But the subgenre known as gonzo journalism is Thompson’s, and 1971’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the preeminent work of gonzo journalism by its preeminent practitioner. Jack Kerouac was pointing the way in the 50s.
Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote and a host of others were exploring it in the early 1960s. Thompson (AKA Raul Duke, doctor of journalism) did not invent New Journalism. and I was, after all, a professional journalist so I had an obligation to cover the story, for good or ill.
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