Gonzo, his “Samoan lawyer”, was really Oscar Zeta Acosta, a Chicano activist (and lawyer, and author). Raoul Duke has been hired by a “fashionable sporting magazine in New York” to cover the “fabulous Mint 400” which is “the richest off-the-road race for motorcycles and dune-buggies in the history of organized sport-a fantastic spectacle in honor of some fatback grossero who owns the luxurious Mint Hotel in the heart of downtown Las Vegas.” And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”
#FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS BOOK COVER FULL#
I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded maybe you should drive.” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. It has the best opening line of any book since “A Tale of Two Cities”: You’ve probably already heard the drugs quote, right from the start, and rather than set the tone, it seems pedestrian once they get to the underage girl from Montana and the American Dream itself. This is the most manic of Thompson’s books. This was Thompson’s first book-length team-up with illustrator Ralph Steadman, whose images do as much as to define gonzo as Thompson’s ravings do.
The only way to prepare for a trip like this was to dress up like human peacocks and get crazy, then screech off across the desert and cover the story. And then the tape recorder, for special music, and some Acapulco shirts. But the race is quickly lost in Thompson’s trademark gonzo mania:īut first we need the car. Thompson is ostensibly traveling to Vegas to cover the “Mint 400”, presumably a motorcycle race.