Fear and Loathing my First Real Post

So, the last two books I have read were Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin. I'll start with Fear and Loathing, since I think I have less to say. I got this as a Christmas present, I assume it was my present, because the other gift in the box sent to me and my wife was some sort of mascara. It may seem obvious, whose gift would be whose, but there was a curious note about my lashes being subpar.

There is a plot of sorts, but if you have read the book, you don't need me to rehash it, and if you haven't there is no point. This book may be autobiographical, or not, or maybe Hunter S. Thompson wants us to believe that it is, or not. I suppose somewhere, someone explains it all, but I am too lazy to look, and why ruin the vibe? For whatever reason, I always thought this book was written in the late 60's. About half way through I looked at the copyright date and saw it was published in 1971. This made a lot more sense.

There is a pervading sense of a party winding down in the book. The party was fun and interesting at one point, but it's late, everyone feels a little sick, and the only stuff left to drink is the scary, green and sticky bottle of some unpronounceable bottle of something that the previous renters left behind, and the foreign exchange student from the former Soviet bloc that you invited to the party swears he recognizes from his home country and will get you "f'ed up good." Everyone winds up drinking it, because looking around, you realize that at this time of night, you don't want to sober up in the disgusting apartment the party is in, and it seems easier and safer to be in an altered state, no matter how sickly, until daylight comes around. Towards the end, Thompson admits that by the early 70's no one wanted their consciousness changed, they just wanted to kill the Nixon years by ingesting any downer they could find.

The funniest parts for me were when they found the American Dream in Circus Circus. Having honeymooned in Vegas, and staying in Circus Circus, I can certainly see their point. Perhaps even more so, since by the time we got there Circus Circus was no longer as exciting and as depraved as Thompson describes. Looking back, the washed-up feeling seems to better suit today's American Dream. The other really funny part, comes when Thompson's character and his Samoan lawyer are crashing a police convention on the drug problems in the United States. Thompson's description of the convention lampoons brilliantly the persistent, conceptual, misunderstanding that the state always has of those on the outside of society. The presumptions that both sides bring to the table are always so far apart, neither side can ever understand the other. The divide becomes more apparent, when Thompson and his lawyer tell stories about the drug culture in California and what is being done about it, while masquerading as undercover cops, to cops from middle america. The stories are so outlandish and so obviously not true that  no one could ever take them seriously, unless, the level of incomprehension is so high that the stories plug straight into the fear receptors of the listener's consciousness. If we haven't seen, in our own lives, such fear-mongering over drugs, terrorists, the dangers of a progressive tax-code, etc. and the horrendous outcomes, we would never be able to take Thompson seriously.