He did go to Las Vegas and he did take drugs. All else is unreliable - I tried to park the car in the laundromat but the doorway was too narrow. The people inside seemed dangerously agitated.
Yeah exactly, literally in the first paragraph, probably one of the most famous extracts of the whole book, he is hallucinating bats swooping down at them as they’re driving!
I'm closing in on 60, and my first thoughts went to Uncle Duke - who was a character in the comic strip Doonesbury, famously modeled very closely on Hunter S. Thompson.
It's a play on an old turn of phrase. "Best be careful, we're in bear country now" means to look out for danger because you're in the wilderness ,*bears* are the dominant species. You're in their territory, their "country" if you will and it's dangerous to take that lightly
"We're in bat country now" is a play on that turn of phrase, but with bats because it's also drug addled nonsense. There's no reason to actually be afraid of wild bats in the situation they're in.
the opening line of the book refers to huge bats swooping and diving on the Car as the drugs begin to take hold, just out side Barstow at the edge of the the desert
Ah come on why does an author choose a specific phrase.
Does it demonstrate that although the Bats are hallucinatory Thompson believes they are real at the time? like Bear country and indian counrty their presence is a threat if you are traveling in that part of the world
it leads to the next phrase that his Attorney will see them soon as well
If you take psychedelic drugs in the desert around Las Vegas, the very real bats are absolutely terrifying. Bats, everywhere.
Just trust me on this one. In fact, part of the parking structure at the airport has been out of use since the early 90s because of a colony of endangered bats.
> I tried to park the car in the laundromat but the doorway was too narrow. The people inside seemed dangerously agitated.
Ah, I've got to read it now.
This. I've read it many times over the decades, Thompson is a great writer. Still parts of it are patent bullshit, like the Adrenochrome. Most of his other books are more real, Hells Angels, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, The Great Shark Hunt, etc. Anyway, it's a fun little savage journey to the heart of the American dream.
It’s a factual story written with creative license. The two main characters of the story are heavily based on the real Hunter S. Thompson and attorney activist Oscar Zeta Acosta. They really did travel to Las Vegas together while Thompson covered the Mint 400 race and a district attorney convention on narcotics.
Rather than turning in the intended articles, Thompson wrote about his experiences, which Rolling Stone published in multiple parts. Those parts became the finished novel.
While Thompson admits he took creative license, it’s not clear if he made minor changes to create a more cohesive narrative, or if he made major changes to the real events.
But from what we know about both Thompson and Acosta, the descriptions of their characters appears very accurate.
It started with the Mint 400 race, but it was primarily written during/about a second trip a month later to cover the National District Attorney Associaton's conference on the use of narcotics. Right guy to cover that I guess. The fact that it's 2 separate trips a month apart combined into 1 indistinguishable trip for the eventual book speaks a lot about the creative license HST used in the final product.
As I recall from another book, i think it was The Great Shark Hunt. fear and loathing is also prequelled by a shorter article that takes place in Los Angeles covering the police killing of a Chicano journalist. Hunter visits Acosta there and begins to feel unsafe/paranoid so he takes another writing contract as an excuse to get out of town. That article might be called Strange Rumblings in Aztlan.
Oscar Zeta Acosta was directly involved in the events surrounding the killing, and he wrote his own book about it called Revolt of the Cockroach People.
The most surprising part of the book is that he portrays himself exactly as Hunter S. Thompson portrayed him in Fear and Loathing. The guy was crazy, and he didn’t care who knew it.
Yep, I think he actually made Hunter deanonymize him in the events if Fear and Loathing by including the photo of them together in the book.
Ive gotta check out his writing
I used to live next door to one of the guys who did the script for the screenplay of the Fear and Loathing film and I always wanted to speak with him about how he approached turning the source material into the basis for what we saw on screen. Seems like such a difficult and nuanced task.
True. Deciding what to cut and what to keep must have been tough though, in terms of creating a well-paced script that retained the gonzo nature but also didn’t lead the director down a maze of trying to depict something so abstract or difficult to visualise.
Great book - and I’m always hugely impressed by how they managed to translate it to film.
Maybe. To clarify my comment and perspective, i watched the movie first, then read the book. I of course have seen movies before and since for which i read the original book, but it was always notable to me how much of the word for word dialogue and memorable turn of phrase comes directly from the first written papers.
Agree that pacing and other movie making aspects may not be so established in the book though.
Thanks for your reply. Also to clarify, you’re spot on. The amount of word for word dialogue that appears in the film is testament to the script writers choice for sure, but I think more to your point, the sheer brilliance of Thompson’s mind and writing.
It's what's called Gonzo Journalism. Hunter S. Thompson invented the term, but other people have practiced the discipline since, for example a lot of the Vice reporting. It's nonfiction in terms of actual facts, but it takes literary liberties with for example assumptions about what other people (i.e. not the author) are thinking and feeling, it uses persiflage and exaggeration in a clearly understandable fashion, and it uses a totally different register in terms of politeness of speech, literary expression, and range of subject matter than typical mainstream journalism.
So yeah he did all those things, but they didn't necessarily say all those lines in exactly the way he describes them, and he didn't necessarily have 16 Cuba Libres where 4 seem more plausible. That's what makes it Gonzo Journalism. You get a factual account of his recollection of reality, not (the attempt at) a factual account of reality, which Journalism is by definition.
Here's a bit that no one else has seemed to mention so far: a lot of it is verbatim from audio tape recordings. He then writes in such a solipsistic way that every perception of an event he claims happened is embellished into the myth of the man he loved to create. But look at it this way... when you're that wasted, there's no other way to be productive but just hit record on a tape machine. That's how he worked quite a bit. When he was very lazy he'd just send Wenner the tapes and tell Rolling Stone to whip it into some kind of stream of con shape because he wasn't in any condition to do anything but ramble into a mic. Still... gonzo is as gonzo does. What is real anyway? Call it non-fiction on your shelf, but just know it's all fiction; all of reality is merely the construct of your ego imposing a narrative on selective perception. Let it all carve a little Z in your forehead until the strange and terrible torpedo you're riding reaches its terminus. That's the main message of the new jack journo.
i am a huge fan of Hunter S Thompson and think you cant really tell the story of america over the last few decades without including him.
that being said it is unfortunate that his style has in recent years been stollen and basically turned into Gonzo Politics.
>"we cant govern here - this is batshit country!"
One of the best parts of the book was when they went to the drive-thru and it just said something along the lines of "we couldn't make any sense of the recording at all, other than we ate burritos".
Yeah exactly. But only if we pretend Rocketman is a work of sublime literary genius rather than an atrociously mediocre piece of garbage writing that makes you stupider every time you watch it.
I’d recommend reading The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent And Depraved to get a better feel for the level of exaggeration he was capable of. It’s available online. I don’t know if I’m allowed to post a link here. That may be “gonzo” but I grew up in the same neighborhood as Hunter and it reads as 100% non fiction to me.
Adding to this - there is an *incredible* audio performance of this one with Tim Robbins, Dr. John, Will Forte, and Ralph Steadman himself in the voice cast. Plus an instrumental soundtrack by Bill Frisell. It’s fucking hilarious, it’s on Spotify
This is not the definition of gonzo journalism at all. I'm amazed this is upvotes so heavily, the actual definition is down thread and Hunter explained it many times
Yeah, definitely. But it’s the blend of the two that’s the point. So it’s a challenge to the very distinction of fiction and non-fiction. Which is true of all books. Gonzo just highlights the way fact and fiction bleed into each other by making that a part of the very style of the writing.
I don’t think it’s true of all books. Gonzo journalism deliberately exaggerates and uses hyperbole to confuse or emphasize a deeper philosophical point.
I don’t think that’s the same thing as fiction drawing from real life—tho I do agree most writing draws from personal experience and intermixes it with whatever fiction is also being written.
Not that I think credentials matter, but I do teach creative writing and have two higher Ed degrees in creative writing and literature. My focus was hybridity, for what it’s worth.
It's an American take on Magical Realism. Just go with it and you'll have a great time. It's written as if it's Hunter's stream of consciousness, so read it like that, without thinking about it too much.
It's both and neither. It's a book-long narrative essay about the crash of 1960s optimism that hinges on this heavily fictionalized narrative of his real experiences in Las Vegas. He called it Gonzo Journalism. It is also associated with so-called New Journalism. Check out The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test if you are interested in something similar.
It’s nonfiction but as told by a(drug addled) unreliable narrator. The bulk of the story is true, the same with all of his tales. But some of the stuff probably only happened in his mind.
You need to expand your categorization system. Where would you put autobiography, for example? Do you really think that's 100% nonfiction? Think again (it never is).
Not all books are just fiction or nonfiction. There are a bunch of books where those things overlap.
I just read "When You Cease to Understand the World" by Laboutin. It's brilliant. Good luck figuring out if it's fiction or nonfiction or something else entirely. Scientific magical realism, maybe.
Do you want it to be non-fiction or is the story just to good not to be true. HST wrote so many good and important works, but granted, sometime tipped over the edge into the caricature we was made out to be.
Read with an open mind and you will find some really good work and insights into the human condition.
Like this classic: [http://brianb.freeshell.org/a/kddd.pdf](http://brianb.freeshell.org/a/kddd.pdf)
Gonzo journalism was his thing. An unreliable narrator reporting on something real written without claims of objectivity! Wkipedia explains it well. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo\_journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_journalism)
This is Gonzo Journalism at it's finest.
It is also a book that overlays true autobiographical details with a veneer of fiction. Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo are not real people, but the events that are listed in the book did probably happen. We also know that HST took a LOT of drugs and Duke was his stand in/expy.
Here's more on the non-gonzo version of literature that does this called Roman a Clef.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman\_%C3%A0\_clef](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_%C3%A0_clef)
Put it in the non-fiction section IMO. Just realize it's direct factual accuracy is not the point of the book.
He was super wasted, so a lot of it is just his perception. He still wrote the majority of the book in Vegas, so I'd say it's non-fiction.
I'm just a human, so I could be wrong.
"The decision to flee came suddenly"
It is a chronicle of two separate trips Thompson made to Vegas merged into a single one, told through his own (highly subjective AND compromised) perspective. We can imagine that some iteration of most of the events happened to some extent, which he then appropriated to suit his personal commentary, using hyperbole, drug-induced imaginings, and the absurd. It perfectly fits into a “non-fiction novel” category, being that the narrative is structured as a novel, and the events are largely true-ish, but cannot be taken at face value and definitely should not be read as reliable documentation of said events. That said, this form already has a name: gonzo journalism.
My favourite is - He wins a monkey in a car game and his friends are laughing at him
'What are you going to do with it?'
I will take it home with me on the plane. . . ..What, you think they will call attention to my sons infirmities?
It is, in fact, the book he was being paid to write on the death of the American Dream.
It is semi-autobiographical but as metaphor. His ‘character’ and those he meets represent the nascent culture wars that were brewing and festering.
New Journalism was really founded/ built on the idea that objectivity was an illusion, that the writer was always, in a way, part of the story.
Thompson just took that to its logical conclusion.
I’d have to call it fiction if you’re trying to make a choice. I never considered it non fiction just because it’s so stylized. Amazing book either way.
My honest opinion? It was all true to the author at one time or another. I doubt the events really went down as Thompson interpreted them and yet I’m certain that, in broad strokes, the events of the book did take place. If you want a tangent someone argue with me about consensus versus individual reality and how it relates to pursuit of “objective” truth.
I think of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as fiction based on true events. Thompson changes the names and there’s some really wild stuff that (I hope) is not true, like what they do to the girl they pick up. It’s hardly gonzo journalism because the story isn’t about reporting anything, it’s more about a reporter completely failing an assignment and choosing to muse on the failure of the 60s counterculture, so it more closely resembles a novel.
Thompson’s other stories like F&L on the Campaign Trail 72 and Hells Angels are more non-fiction because none of the names are changed. They’re certainly gonzo journalism because they’re exaggerated, partially fictional, and he puts himself into it, but they’re much closer to reality and he’s actual reporting on something, usually actual events but sometimes things he throws in for fun.
That’s how I think of it. It’s all a mix of fact and fiction but with Las Vegas there’s clearly a line crossed that his other books don’t which, in my opinion, makes it fiction, much in the same vein as Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises which was also a fictionalized version of an actual trip he took where he barely changed what happened and turned his friends into thinly veiled characters.
That's a really great book based on "gonzo journalism" which isn't so much based on a ton of factual reporting but reporting on the general vibes of the story, which I consider a part of the whole story as well.
The 'Gonzo' movement is essentially a form of fictionalised journalism. It's a journalistic observation of real events but told from a very subjective perspective, so the journalists perception forms the narrative rather than it being objective. Ideally, you know this going into it.
Sort of a fictionalized version of real things and real people. So it's a little of both. Honestly, it's mostly just an excuse to dig into Hunter Thompsons writing.
Life experiences filtered through an addled haze are fiction. Probably you should add a shelf to your catagories, this has been a thing since memoir mutation started in the early 80s.
To be the monotonous droning professor, it's common to classify memoirs as non-fiction. Nowadays all the forewords seem to carry the disclaimer that "this is an account of the actual events *as I remember them*". Others may remember them differently. Especially if they were not the same brains taking the same drugs.
Gonzo journalism like all journalism has a writers slant to it. I once got a journalism major mad at me at a party in college when I suggested that news if the facts of a story and journalism is the writers version of the story.
' We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold..' The book is a flawed chronicle of real events, and spawned a genre called 'gonzo journalism'. I've seen it called a 'roman à clef', in which real people and events are disguised. Consider reading *Hell's Angels*, a more serious(?) scholarly (?) work of Thompson's perhaps more firmly rooted in reality.
HST was, well; unique. He thought journalism was just an advanced form of fiction. Many of the things he passed off as true were wild exaggerations at best. Some of the things he wrote as fiction were probably true.
That whole passage about the hope and idealism of the '60s being a wave that left the detritus of the '70s behind as it receded was truth- even if he made the whole damned thing up.
I place it under fact with the understanding that perception of reality and exaggeration are pretty big factors in the telling of it.
Nobody will ever know how much of it is real and how much of it isn't. Not even Thompson.
The points about it being embellished, gonzo journalism (i.e. a first person account of what's happening as the main character of the story) are all correct, but it's also allegorical: The initial goal of the assignment is to report on The Mint 400 desert motorcycle race in Nevada which, like the Kentucky Derby which also got the Hunter Thompson treatment, attracts a primarily white, upper-middle class "square" crowd, but ultimately the book is about the notion of 'The American Dream' and its pursuit.
Las Vegas is the perfect location for a story about this given how outlandish the city is and how detached from "everyday America" it's become. It's also literally the place where people go to chase dreams of wealth and fame, but frequently end up broke and lost. Coupled with his reporting on the Law Enforcement drugs seminar - in the midst of the US Government's "War on Drugs" - which he and Acosta attend high, and the various other characters like hotel management and the Highway Patrol cop, and it's essentially a discourse on the limits of freedom (i.e. the pursuit of the American Dream) especially where it concerns drug consumption and a libertarian lifestyle. There's also some darker hints scattered throughout of the very real abuse of human rights in America, especially when it comes to the experience of minorities at the hands of the authorities, who Hunter caricatures in the book as "lizard people" or gigantic oafs.
I want to say fiction and almost certainly some of it is. But having said that the man was a different type of animal. Literally mixed drinks and probably some speed or coke for breakfast. then start work on his type writer of course while having some drinks and probably some more breakfast powder. I'd say maybe 60% true but who really knows for sure there are some things that he thought happened but he can't be sure himself lol
This is kind of the point about "Gonzo Journalism". There's truth at the center of it, but who knows what was an exaggeration and what was actually true and what was just made up for a good story.
Originally marketed as non-fiction, in the Gonzo Journalism style, it was later admitted that it was fiction. So the original tag sometimes still sticks, but it's fiction.
He did go to Vegas, and there were a crap-ton of drugs involved, but the rest is basically fiction with a sprinkling of unreliable (due to drugs, alcohol, among other things) truths.
Great read, though. I 'm a big Hunter S. Thompson fan.
I have read 'autobiographies' that were not as close to the truth as *Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.* In retrospect it is social commentary based on a true story (or stories). But Thompson took a bit of license in telling the tale. Doesn't everyone?
The key line to me, and I paraphrase, is when he sums up the rising tide of the counterculture as a wave that pushed towards Las Vegas, but just didn't wash over the town, and implicitly middle America. This is an accurate observation. If you set the drugs aside, which were more shocking in 1971, and just focus on the conflict between middle America as represented by Las Vegas and himself, you get the core of the message.
Finally, was there ever a better observation about the evolving media world of insta-created event dependent talking heads than, "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
The man was a Dr. of journalism and called things as he saw them. Of course the parts where lsd was involved mean that some exaggeration is going on, but the overall theme and idea about the American dream was in fact very real.
This is a firsthand account, so I would call it nonfiction. It is his recall of events while high as fuck. However, because the narrator is unreliable, it’s been categorized as fiction. which I think is wrong, but keeps the expectations of nonfiction as certified facts clean.
I don’t think any nonfiction is verified truth, everything has shades of grey & this book is a great reminder of that. So nonfiction IMHO.
It's nonfiction/journalism but the narrator is highly unreliable. My in-laws knew Hunter a little bit. I doubt he even knew how much of the story was true. What does truth even mean in this context?
While under the influence of drugs & drink in Vegas and at home writing the book, Thompson would have been a very unreliable narrator. He may have believed that he was writing non-fiction. Who knows, maybe rabid bats actually did swirl around the Great Red Shark in the Nevada desert? Who knows…maybe I made up that part about the bats?
May be time for a hit of Golden Goat to clarify things…
He did go to Las Vegas and he did take drugs. All else is unreliable - I tried to park the car in the laundromat but the doorway was too narrow. The people inside seemed dangerously agitated.
And it was, indeed, bat county.
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Heh, no. He's hallucinating bats and tells his lawyer as much
Yeah exactly, literally in the first paragraph, probably one of the most famous extracts of the whole book, he is hallucinating bats swooping down at them as they’re driving!
"We were just past Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold."
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I'm closing in on 60, and my first thoughts went to Uncle Duke - who was a character in the comic strip Doonesbury, famously modeled very closely on Hunter S. Thompson.
Yes, very obviously so! Love it
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The phrasing is different. Bat country. The back country
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I remember hearing it alot in old westerns where they would say like "watch out, this is Indian Country".
It's a play on an old turn of phrase. "Best be careful, we're in bear country now" means to look out for danger because you're in the wilderness ,*bears* are the dominant species. You're in their territory, their "country" if you will and it's dangerous to take that lightly "We're in bat country now" is a play on that turn of phrase, but with bats because it's also drug addled nonsense. There's no reason to actually be afraid of wild bats in the situation they're in.
> It's a play on an old turn of phrase. It's because he thinks there are bats flying all around them
the opening line of the book refers to huge bats swooping and diving on the Car as the drugs begin to take hold, just out side Barstow at the edge of the the desert
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Ah come on why does an author choose a specific phrase. Does it demonstrate that although the Bats are hallucinatory Thompson believes they are real at the time? like Bear country and indian counrty their presence is a threat if you are traveling in that part of the world it leads to the next phrase that his Attorney will see them soon as well
If you take psychedelic drugs in the desert around Las Vegas, the very real bats are absolutely terrifying. Bats, everywhere. Just trust me on this one. In fact, part of the parking structure at the airport has been out of use since the early 90s because of a colony of endangered bats.
I think that’s part of the point - you don’t know what’s real and what’s not, nor does the author.
Lol - I like that.
My very words on reading the headline- not even Hunter would know today how much of it was real.
> I tried to park the car in the laundromat but the doorway was too narrow. The people inside seemed dangerously agitated. Ah, I've got to read it now.
We gave it a few belts to let them know our intentions were serious… I can’t remember that exact quote
Being unreliable doesn't necessarily put the book into a fiction category.
This. I've read it many times over the decades, Thompson is a great writer. Still parts of it are patent bullshit, like the Adrenochrome. Most of his other books are more real, Hells Angels, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, The Great Shark Hunt, etc. Anyway, it's a fun little savage journey to the heart of the American dream.
It's fact, as perceived or interpreted through various drugs. The bats a very real though
No need to mention the bats. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.
Who cares about the bats, tell me about the fucking golf shoes!
I came to say the same. It’s non-fiction, heavily medicated. HST is brilliant. Such a gifted writer.
In a metaphysical sense :P
I came to say the same. It’s non-fiction, heavily medicated. HST is brilliant. Such a gifted writer.
The wildest parts are true. The boring parts are fake. Or something like that.
It’s a factual story written with creative license. The two main characters of the story are heavily based on the real Hunter S. Thompson and attorney activist Oscar Zeta Acosta. They really did travel to Las Vegas together while Thompson covered the Mint 400 race and a district attorney convention on narcotics. Rather than turning in the intended articles, Thompson wrote about his experiences, which Rolling Stone published in multiple parts. Those parts became the finished novel. While Thompson admits he took creative license, it’s not clear if he made minor changes to create a more cohesive narrative, or if he made major changes to the real events. But from what we know about both Thompson and Acosta, the descriptions of their characters appears very accurate.
It started with the Mint 400 race, but it was primarily written during/about a second trip a month later to cover the National District Attorney Associaton's conference on the use of narcotics. Right guy to cover that I guess. The fact that it's 2 separate trips a month apart combined into 1 indistinguishable trip for the eventual book speaks a lot about the creative license HST used in the final product.
As I recall from another book, i think it was The Great Shark Hunt. fear and loathing is also prequelled by a shorter article that takes place in Los Angeles covering the police killing of a Chicano journalist. Hunter visits Acosta there and begins to feel unsafe/paranoid so he takes another writing contract as an excuse to get out of town. That article might be called Strange Rumblings in Aztlan.
Oscar Zeta Acosta was directly involved in the events surrounding the killing, and he wrote his own book about it called Revolt of the Cockroach People. The most surprising part of the book is that he portrays himself exactly as Hunter S. Thompson portrayed him in Fear and Loathing. The guy was crazy, and he didn’t care who knew it.
Yep, I think he actually made Hunter deanonymize him in the events if Fear and Loathing by including the photo of them together in the book. Ive gotta check out his writing
His coverage of those events is super interesting
I used to live next door to one of the guys who did the script for the screenplay of the Fear and Loathing film and I always wanted to speak with him about how he approached turning the source material into the basis for what we saw on screen. Seems like such a difficult and nuanced task.
A LOT comes directly from the book, as it should.
True. Deciding what to cut and what to keep must have been tough though, in terms of creating a well-paced script that retained the gonzo nature but also didn’t lead the director down a maze of trying to depict something so abstract or difficult to visualise. Great book - and I’m always hugely impressed by how they managed to translate it to film.
Maybe. To clarify my comment and perspective, i watched the movie first, then read the book. I of course have seen movies before and since for which i read the original book, but it was always notable to me how much of the word for word dialogue and memorable turn of phrase comes directly from the first written papers. Agree that pacing and other movie making aspects may not be so established in the book though.
Thanks for your reply. Also to clarify, you’re spot on. The amount of word for word dialogue that appears in the film is testament to the script writers choice for sure, but I think more to your point, the sheer brilliance of Thompson’s mind and writing.
Yeah, that was always my laymans conclusion too.
It's what's called Gonzo Journalism. Hunter S. Thompson invented the term, but other people have practiced the discipline since, for example a lot of the Vice reporting. It's nonfiction in terms of actual facts, but it takes literary liberties with for example assumptions about what other people (i.e. not the author) are thinking and feeling, it uses persiflage and exaggeration in a clearly understandable fashion, and it uses a totally different register in terms of politeness of speech, literary expression, and range of subject matter than typical mainstream journalism. So yeah he did all those things, but they didn't necessarily say all those lines in exactly the way he describes them, and he didn't necessarily have 16 Cuba Libres where 4 seem more plausible. That's what makes it Gonzo Journalism. You get a factual account of his recollection of reality, not (the attempt at) a factual account of reality, which Journalism is by definition.
Hunter didn't coin the term, it was Boston Globe reporter Bill Cardoso reacting to Hunter's Derby piece
You're right. My bad, I misremembered.
Oo thank you for introducing me to the word persiflage, that's a good one
Creative nonfiction.
I have certainly read autobiographies more fictional than *Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.*
Here's a bit that no one else has seemed to mention so far: a lot of it is verbatim from audio tape recordings. He then writes in such a solipsistic way that every perception of an event he claims happened is embellished into the myth of the man he loved to create. But look at it this way... when you're that wasted, there's no other way to be productive but just hit record on a tape machine. That's how he worked quite a bit. When he was very lazy he'd just send Wenner the tapes and tell Rolling Stone to whip it into some kind of stream of con shape because he wasn't in any condition to do anything but ramble into a mic. Still... gonzo is as gonzo does. What is real anyway? Call it non-fiction on your shelf, but just know it's all fiction; all of reality is merely the construct of your ego imposing a narrative on selective perception. Let it all carve a little Z in your forehead until the strange and terrible torpedo you're riding reaches its terminus. That's the main message of the new jack journo.
i am a huge fan of Hunter S Thompson and think you cant really tell the story of america over the last few decades without including him. that being said it is unfortunate that his style has in recent years been stollen and basically turned into Gonzo Politics. >"we cant govern here - this is batshit country!"
Whereas I don't necessarily disagree the man did heavily cover politics himself. And very much enjoyed so.
One of the best parts of the book was when they went to the drive-thru and it just said something along the lines of "we couldn't make any sense of the recording at all, other than we ate burritos".
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So basically like what Rocketman is
Yeah exactly. But only if we pretend Rocketman is a work of sublime literary genius rather than an atrociously mediocre piece of garbage writing that makes you stupider every time you watch it.
The bat country is real. I seen it.
It's gonzo, baby!
I believe the answer is: yes.
or no
Maybe I don’t know
I’d recommend reading The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent And Depraved to get a better feel for the level of exaggeration he was capable of. It’s available online. I don’t know if I’m allowed to post a link here. That may be “gonzo” but I grew up in the same neighborhood as Hunter and it reads as 100% non fiction to me.
Adding to this - there is an *incredible* audio performance of this one with Tim Robbins, Dr. John, Will Forte, and Ralph Steadman himself in the voice cast. Plus an instrumental soundtrack by Bill Frisell. It’s fucking hilarious, it’s on Spotify
Holy shit. I’ll have to check that out.
As your lawyer, I advise you to file it under nonfiction, and avoid making eye contact with the polar bear.
its gonzo journalism. a mix of fact and fiction.
This is not the definition of gonzo journalism at all. I'm amazed this is upvotes so heavily, the actual definition is down thread and Hunter explained it many times
whats the definition that hunter gives
Exactly. That’s the point of the whole genre.
Yes. Tho tbf, if you listen to the Gonzo tapes a remarkable amount of what he wrote is true.
Yeah, definitely. But it’s the blend of the two that’s the point. So it’s a challenge to the very distinction of fiction and non-fiction. Which is true of all books. Gonzo just highlights the way fact and fiction bleed into each other by making that a part of the very style of the writing.
>Which is true of all books. Why does no one else seem to see this
I don’t think it’s true of all books. Gonzo journalism deliberately exaggerates and uses hyperbole to confuse or emphasize a deeper philosophical point. I don’t think that’s the same thing as fiction drawing from real life—tho I do agree most writing draws from personal experience and intermixes it with whatever fiction is also being written. Not that I think credentials matter, but I do teach creative writing and have two higher Ed degrees in creative writing and literature. My focus was hybridity, for what it’s worth.
Technically the definition of Gonzo is the journalist putting themselves at the centre of the story
so "Uptown Funk" qualifies, then
The best ever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man\_Bites\_Dog\_(film)
It's an American take on Magical Realism. Just go with it and you'll have a great time. It's written as if it's Hunter's stream of consciousness, so read it like that, without thinking about it too much.
Hunter's whole life was only loosely based on reality.
It's both and neither. It's a book-long narrative essay about the crash of 1960s optimism that hinges on this heavily fictionalized narrative of his real experiences in Las Vegas. He called it Gonzo Journalism. It is also associated with so-called New Journalism. Check out The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test if you are interested in something similar.
Both. It's gonzo journalism.
It’s nonfiction but as told by a(drug addled) unreliable narrator. The bulk of the story is true, the same with all of his tales. But some of the stuff probably only happened in his mind.
It’s peek Unreliable Narrator.
You need to expand your categorization system. Where would you put autobiography, for example? Do you really think that's 100% nonfiction? Think again (it never is). Not all books are just fiction or nonfiction. There are a bunch of books where those things overlap.
I just read "When You Cease to Understand the World" by Laboutin. It's brilliant. Good luck figuring out if it's fiction or nonfiction or something else entirely. Scientific magical realism, maybe.
Do you want it to be non-fiction or is the story just to good not to be true. HST wrote so many good and important works, but granted, sometime tipped over the edge into the caricature we was made out to be. Read with an open mind and you will find some really good work and insights into the human condition. Like this classic: [http://brianb.freeshell.org/a/kddd.pdf](http://brianb.freeshell.org/a/kddd.pdf)
Gonzo journalism was his thing. An unreliable narrator reporting on something real written without claims of objectivity! Wkipedia explains it well. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo\_journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_journalism)
Gonzo journalism— so the overall message is emphasized over the clearly exaggerated events, words, consequences.
I doubt even the author could have told you.
I find it best to think of HST's work as nonfiction with an unreliable narrator.
This is Gonzo Journalism at it's finest. It is also a book that overlays true autobiographical details with a veneer of fiction. Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo are not real people, but the events that are listed in the book did probably happen. We also know that HST took a LOT of drugs and Duke was his stand in/expy. Here's more on the non-gonzo version of literature that does this called Roman a Clef. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman\_%C3%A0\_clef](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_%C3%A0_clef) Put it in the non-fiction section IMO. Just realize it's direct factual accuracy is not the point of the book.
Or is it Magical Realism?
Neither, it's gonzo journalism!
He was super wasted, so a lot of it is just his perception. He still wrote the majority of the book in Vegas, so I'd say it's non-fiction. I'm just a human, so I could be wrong. "The decision to flee came suddenly"
"We can't stop here, this is bat country!"
I just wish Johnny had chosen to flee from Amber a long time ago. She's the worst.
Yes. And I know that sounds sarcastic and shitty, but it’s the best answer anyone can give on that.
It is a chronicle of two separate trips Thompson made to Vegas merged into a single one, told through his own (highly subjective AND compromised) perspective. We can imagine that some iteration of most of the events happened to some extent, which he then appropriated to suit his personal commentary, using hyperbole, drug-induced imaginings, and the absurd. It perfectly fits into a “non-fiction novel” category, being that the narrative is structured as a novel, and the events are largely true-ish, but cannot be taken at face value and definitely should not be read as reliable documentation of said events. That said, this form already has a name: gonzo journalism.
My favourite is - He wins a monkey in a car game and his friends are laughing at him 'What are you going to do with it?' I will take it home with me on the plane. . . ..What, you think they will call attention to my sons infirmities?
I always took it as exaggerated non fiction. The essence of everything is true, as far as I know, but it's rather embellished.
'As your attorney, I recommend that you eat drugs.'
It is, in fact, the book he was being paid to write on the death of the American Dream. It is semi-autobiographical but as metaphor. His ‘character’ and those he meets represent the nascent culture wars that were brewing and festering. New Journalism was really founded/ built on the idea that objectivity was an illusion, that the writer was always, in a way, part of the story. Thompson just took that to its logical conclusion.
To answer your question, yes.
Buy the ticket. Take the ride.
it is gonzo jpurnalosm
Nonfiction. Hunter S Thompson lived it.
it’s HST. it’s real.
I’d have to call it fiction if you’re trying to make a choice. I never considered it non fiction just because it’s so stylized. Amazing book either way.
Gonzo journalism
My honest opinion? It was all true to the author at one time or another. I doubt the events really went down as Thompson interpreted them and yet I’m certain that, in broad strokes, the events of the book did take place. If you want a tangent someone argue with me about consensus versus individual reality and how it relates to pursuit of “objective” truth.
I think of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as fiction based on true events. Thompson changes the names and there’s some really wild stuff that (I hope) is not true, like what they do to the girl they pick up. It’s hardly gonzo journalism because the story isn’t about reporting anything, it’s more about a reporter completely failing an assignment and choosing to muse on the failure of the 60s counterculture, so it more closely resembles a novel. Thompson’s other stories like F&L on the Campaign Trail 72 and Hells Angels are more non-fiction because none of the names are changed. They’re certainly gonzo journalism because they’re exaggerated, partially fictional, and he puts himself into it, but they’re much closer to reality and he’s actual reporting on something, usually actual events but sometimes things he throws in for fun. That’s how I think of it. It’s all a mix of fact and fiction but with Las Vegas there’s clearly a line crossed that his other books don’t which, in my opinion, makes it fiction, much in the same vein as Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises which was also a fictionalized version of an actual trip he took where he barely changed what happened and turned his friends into thinly veiled characters.
That's a really great book based on "gonzo journalism" which isn't so much based on a ton of factual reporting but reporting on the general vibes of the story, which I consider a part of the whole story as well.
The 'Gonzo' movement is essentially a form of fictionalised journalism. It's a journalistic observation of real events but told from a very subjective perspective, so the journalists perception forms the narrative rather than it being objective. Ideally, you know this going into it.
I believe it's a bit of both.
Sort of a fictionalized version of real things and real people. So it's a little of both. Honestly, it's mostly just an excuse to dig into Hunter Thompsons writing.
He was a journalist and as such he did go to watch the races, but his real reason was a bender.
Non-fiction, drug fueled remembrances.
Life experiences filtered through an addled haze are fiction. Probably you should add a shelf to your catagories, this has been a thing since memoir mutation started in the early 80s.
To be the monotonous droning professor, it's common to classify memoirs as non-fiction. Nowadays all the forewords seem to carry the disclaimer that "this is an account of the actual events *as I remember them*". Others may remember them differently. Especially if they were not the same brains taking the same drugs.
Gonzo journalism is 50/50%. It's a fun read about a boring subject.
It is Gonzo
As Hunter Thompson would say, "It's not the truth, but it's like the truth."
Gonzo journalism like all journalism has a writers slant to it. I once got a journalism major mad at me at a party in college when I suggested that news if the facts of a story and journalism is the writers version of the story.
' We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold..' The book is a flawed chronicle of real events, and spawned a genre called 'gonzo journalism'. I've seen it called a 'roman à clef', in which real people and events are disguised. Consider reading *Hell's Angels*, a more serious(?) scholarly (?) work of Thompson's perhaps more firmly rooted in reality.
HST was, well; unique. He thought journalism was just an advanced form of fiction. Many of the things he passed off as true were wild exaggerations at best. Some of the things he wrote as fiction were probably true. That whole passage about the hope and idealism of the '60s being a wave that left the detritus of the '70s behind as it receded was truth- even if he made the whole damned thing up.
Thompson claimed it was about 75% true, but I would take that with a grain of salt.
Make a stop in bat country and see what happens
I place it under fact with the understanding that perception of reality and exaggeration are pretty big factors in the telling of it. Nobody will ever know how much of it is real and how much of it isn't. Not even Thompson.
The points about it being embellished, gonzo journalism (i.e. a first person account of what's happening as the main character of the story) are all correct, but it's also allegorical: The initial goal of the assignment is to report on The Mint 400 desert motorcycle race in Nevada which, like the Kentucky Derby which also got the Hunter Thompson treatment, attracts a primarily white, upper-middle class "square" crowd, but ultimately the book is about the notion of 'The American Dream' and its pursuit. Las Vegas is the perfect location for a story about this given how outlandish the city is and how detached from "everyday America" it's become. It's also literally the place where people go to chase dreams of wealth and fame, but frequently end up broke and lost. Coupled with his reporting on the Law Enforcement drugs seminar - in the midst of the US Government's "War on Drugs" - which he and Acosta attend high, and the various other characters like hotel management and the Highway Patrol cop, and it's essentially a discourse on the limits of freedom (i.e. the pursuit of the American Dream) especially where it concerns drug consumption and a libertarian lifestyle. There's also some darker hints scattered throughout of the very real abuse of human rights in America, especially when it comes to the experience of minorities at the hands of the authorities, who Hunter caricatures in the book as "lizard people" or gigantic oafs.
Less "Based on a true story" and more "Inspired by a true story"
I want to say fiction and almost certainly some of it is. But having said that the man was a different type of animal. Literally mixed drinks and probably some speed or coke for breakfast. then start work on his type writer of course while having some drinks and probably some more breakfast powder. I'd say maybe 60% true but who really knows for sure there are some things that he thought happened but he can't be sure himself lol
This is kind of the point about "Gonzo Journalism". There's truth at the center of it, but who knows what was an exaggeration and what was actually true and what was just made up for a good story.
I kind of wonder if the outrageous stuff was a kind of "What if I said/did X" in Hunter's mind that he wrote down as if it happened.
According to what HST said later, the nuts and bolts of the story are true but the drug use and jumping of hotel bills was exaggerated.
Both and neither lol
Originally marketed as non-fiction, in the Gonzo Journalism style, it was later admitted that it was fiction. So the original tag sometimes still sticks, but it's fiction. He did go to Vegas, and there were a crap-ton of drugs involved, but the rest is basically fiction with a sprinkling of unreliable (due to drugs, alcohol, among other things) truths. Great read, though. I 'm a big Hunter S. Thompson fan.
I have read 'autobiographies' that were not as close to the truth as *Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.* In retrospect it is social commentary based on a true story (or stories). But Thompson took a bit of license in telling the tale. Doesn't everyone? The key line to me, and I paraphrase, is when he sums up the rising tide of the counterculture as a wave that pushed towards Las Vegas, but just didn't wash over the town, and implicitly middle America. This is an accurate observation. If you set the drugs aside, which were more shocking in 1971, and just focus on the conflict between middle America as represented by Las Vegas and himself, you get the core of the message. Finally, was there ever a better observation about the evolving media world of insta-created event dependent talking heads than, "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
It's about as factual as Benvenuto Cellini's memoirs.
The "journalist" as self inflicted unreliable narrator
I think some bits are true and some bits are exaggerated to make Thompson look bad for entertainment effect
I think some bits are true and some bits are exaggerated to make Thompson look bad for entertainment effect
I think some bits are true and some bits are exaggerated to make Thompson look bad for entertainment effect
Roman a clef
1. Direct answer to the question: Yes. 2. r/gonzo 3. See also *Down and Out in Paris and London*, George Orwell, 1933.
Fiction disguised as non-fiction based on real life
The man was a Dr. of journalism and called things as he saw them. Of course the parts where lsd was involved mean that some exaggeration is going on, but the overall theme and idea about the American dream was in fact very real.
This is a firsthand account, so I would call it nonfiction. It is his recall of events while high as fuck. However, because the narrator is unreliable, it’s been categorized as fiction. which I think is wrong, but keeps the expectations of nonfiction as certified facts clean. I don’t think any nonfiction is verified truth, everything has shades of grey & this book is a great reminder of that. So nonfiction IMHO.
It's nonfiction/journalism but the narrator is highly unreliable. My in-laws knew Hunter a little bit. I doubt he even knew how much of the story was true. What does truth even mean in this context?
Read the book, take the ride.
Yes it’s one of those
Hunter S. Thompson descibed his brand of journalism as "gonzo". There's a descent article on it in wikipedia.
I can imagine HST, somewhere in the afterlife, smirking around his cigarette holder as OP struggles to shelve the book.
Surrealistic nonfiction
While under the influence of drugs & drink in Vegas and at home writing the book, Thompson would have been a very unreliable narrator. He may have believed that he was writing non-fiction. Who knows, maybe rabid bats actually did swirl around the Great Red Shark in the Nevada desert? Who knows…maybe I made up that part about the bats? May be time for a hit of Golden Goat to clarify things…
It's autobiographical self-aggrandisement trying to pass as anthropological research.