My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turnoff to take when I got to the other end… but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that…
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Although Thompson felt that it failed in keeping absolutely faithful to the real events the novel recalls, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas proved to be one of his most outstanding works of ‘gonzo journalism’. Appearing first as a two-part story in Rolling Stone in 1971, the story follows Raoul Duke and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they navigate the American Dream in a drug-induced haze. Thompson’s ability to craft journalistic narratives with the techniques of story-telling provided a voice for a generation struggling with the highs and lows of the American reality. The quote above is an excerpt from one of the more famous passages of the novel, one which captures the pinnacle of a post-60s social movement and its ultimate end.
