Fear and Loathing

I'm in the midst of listening to the audio version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The first time I read the book, I was freshman in college. I've revisited the book maybe five or six times since then. The energy of Part 1 always sucks me in. It's hard to not go as far as the Chapter 8 "breaking waves" section once you've started that dynamite first chapter. But I'm listening to it with a clarity this time through. I'm knee deep in Section 2, and it has its own appeal. Duke has just name-dropped Fatty Arbuckle, and the insane Montana girl who only paints Barbara Streisand is enough to engage with on its own, and I still have the actual DA drug conference left in this section.

For whatever reason, listening to the book over the past couple of days has really made think to myself things like, "Everything I needed to know about 20th century America, I learned from Hunter S. Thompson." The first couple of times, I thought of the book as a more or less journalistic piece of prose. That is, I was caught up in the veracity of Thompson's agenda: Lucy, the Mint 400, the unbelievable trek through the Circus Circus, the Samoan attorney cum drug addict, etc. How did all of this happen? But now I know this is a miniscule point. The book is about validation the Faulknerian adage that fiction is the most powerful piece of journalism.

Over the past ten years, I've been able to increase my cultural knowledge to the extent that I get more of the book's references to songs or news events. Oscar Acosta = Dr. Gonzo. The devastating back-to-back of "Memphis Blues" and "Like a Bridge" that Duke hears in the bar the morning after the Mint 400. Even the particular locales in Vegas have taken on this nightmarish quality after I spent my honeymoon there and stayed in the same Flamingo that Duke occupied when attending the District Atty's Conference.

I think what I'm ultimately drawn to is Thompson's fidelity, in a Badiouian sense, to his story. He's committed to his assignment. As he says, once you're caught up in the middle of an epic drug run, the only thing you can do is follow it through. There is a sort of disinterested passion that comes with Duke's narration. The drugs function as a way of distancing Duke from concerns of his own happiness. The hallucinogens are the means by which Duke can maintain a focus on desire. The name for that desire? The American Dream. No doubt there are moments where that dream is betrayed. Lucy, for instance, and Duke's callous proposal of pimping her out to the cops in Vegas. The crass concern for money. The truth of this moment is that Thompson is the obscene double of the American Dream, of the law and order that the DAs stand for. He reveals that he is a product of the capitalist system, a martyr to it in some sense. But that's what I love about most of this book. It's based on credit, on fronted money, on bureaucratic gaps, on cost benefit analysis, on initial investment and subsequent returns.

The hilarious exchange with the CHP near the end of Section 1 is a perfect example. Duke is tearing hell on the highway, trying desperately to get back to California before the hotel he's stayed at realizes he has skipped out on his bill. Unfortunately, he gets a cop blinking him for speeding. Rather than slowing down, however, he simultaneously turns on the right blinker so it appears he is pulling over even as he guns his car. When he gets a chance, he takes a ramp and wheels the car around, causing the patrolman no little problem stopping his own bike. The result is that Duke is standing outside his car with a smile on his face when the cop gets his act together. But then Duke looks down and notices the Budweiser can in his hand. The remainder. The thing he forgot. The backseat filled with beer and grapefruit. The perfectly executed plan with one small problem. IMO, that's capitalism. The crazily executed plan that has its shit together until you realize that its underlying motivation (read: does Duke have a chance of either formulating or executing the plan without the beer that he's been guzzling) is still flawed. In another way, the beer is by far the least of Duke's sins. The acid, mescaline, etc. remains hidden in trunk. The beer is all we get to see, but it's enough. America's real crimes remain in the trunk, but the offenses that we _do_ have access to will suffice for now.