Gonzo Travelogue

A drug-fuelled road trip to
America's gonzo heart
While loathing Vegas.

You did guess this haikued book, of course?! (The bad poetry's all mine this time, I'm afraid!)

I threatened to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas a little while back when Hunter S. Thompson's remains got propelled into the upper atmosphere. I felt embarrassingly ignorant because the book had completely slipped beneath my biblioradar. (How sad that it takes a suicide and a rocket-fuelled exit to make some folks aware of your writing.)

It is a book very well worth reading, if you haven't already discovered it - I found parts laugh out loud funny (that hitchhiker! the shortcut across the airport runway!). Thompson is an engaging writer even if you are justifiably horrified at the subject matter (drugs, drugs, drugs and more drugs ... oh, and did I mention drugs?).

Never mind, it's fine to live a little vicariously, and Thompson's prose very quickly intoxicates without the need for illegal substances.

Thompson describes a journey to Las Vegas made with his attorney friend, Dr. Gonzo (pictured above in one of Ralph Steadman's terrific illustrations). In the boot of the convertible they load industrial quantities of just about every illegal substance known to man:

... two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers ... A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls ...

and set out to find their own version of the American dream while consuming the lot.

Thompson (travelling under the pseudonym Raoul Duke) is ostensibly on assignment to cover a biker's race in the Nevada desert, but somehow fails to get the story. His attorney then proposes that they should attend a conference for drug-enforcement officers. The irony is, of course, deeply relished.

Thompson's Las Vegas is a million miles from Narayan's Malgudi (also visited this week). How great that reading stamps your passport.