“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold” (3):
the opening sentence of Hunter S. Thompson’s
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegashas become one of the most famous in American literature. It tells the reader exactly what the novel will deliver: a risky journey through a hostile environment by protagonists high on dangerous chemicals. Although influenced by sources such as Jack Kerouac’s
On the Road(1957), Norman Mailer’s autobiographical fiction
The Armies of the Night(1968) and the semi-fictional New Journalism of Tom Wolfe,
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas(hereafter
Vegas) defined its own distinctive territory very clearly when first published in Thompson’s main outlet at the time, the San Francisco-based
Rolling Stonemagazine,…
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Citation: Stephenson, William. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 February 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=20177, accessed 23 November 2024.]
