Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson 1971

Devastation Rating

Ugly Crying
addiction philosophical loss literary fiction

Our Take

Thompson's bender through Las Vegas is grief dressed as gonzo comedy — the death of the sixties, the death of the American dream, the death of the self that believed in both. The drugs are real but the loss is realer. He's not having fun. He's conducting a post-mortem. What makes this devastating is the competence — Thompson never loses the thread, even as everything dissolves.

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