Fear And Loathing Of Las Vegas Journalism With Acidic...

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Journalism with Acidic Twists Hunter S. Thompson is the literary equivalent to the peyote shaman who document the world around them. Pioneering a genre called gonzo journalism, Thompson spliced nonfiction with fiction while simultaneously documenting an event in first-person. In the middle of the battlefield, up close and personal, gonzo journalism brings the main subject of the novel directly into the heart of all events, reporting in a way that is not entirely nonfiction. Now, if one would take that concept and drown it in LSD, ether, marijuana, a galaxy of pills, Sin City’s finest and two journalists who have taken enough drugs to shock the 60s†¦ then they would have Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In†¦show more content†¦Gonzo journalism typically fits to a common theme, where two inebriated people attempt to cover a story (Colvill 31). However, with Thompsons other works, more nonfiction can typically be found. Thompsonâ€℠¢s documentation of the gang â€Å"Hell’s Angels† was very factual and in-depth, with evidence to back up a large portion of his personal experience (Colvill 15). Fear and Loathing is different. In â€Å"Gonzo Journalism: A Hybrid,† M. Gaffney writes: â€Å"While the book is obviously not a piece of pure journalism, it cannot be grouped with other fiction works†¦ The fact that we do not know how far from the truth Thompson traveled concludes that the book would have fictional tendencies but cannot be exclusively labeled as fiction† (Gaffney 3). Another author, Steven Hoover, writes in â€Å"Hunter S. Thompson and gonzo journalism: A research guide†: â€Å"Anyone interested in Gonzo Journalism or Thompson should read this book, ass it is his most famous and widely-read work. Paradoxically, it is not the finest example of Gonzo Journalism, as the book is closer to a novel than a work of journalism. Nonetheless, it is the pinnacle of the Gonzo writing style, and is loosely based on actual events of a trip that Thompson and his lawyer, Oscar Zeta Acosta, took to Las Vegas† (Hoover 18). For analyzing the tone using this contextual information, one can expect the validity of the situations to be construed while still maintaining realism. That fact coupled with the