Book a Week: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I usually will have multiple books going at once (not simultaneously, though I wish), so I can swap between them if my mood changes. The problem is if the books I read are both non-fiction and have a similar tone to them, I can’t really switch between them because of the similarities. I often put them down for awhile, which is what happened in the last year or so while I was reading The Lands of Partitioned Poland, The Closing of the Western Mind, and The Stories of English. I haven’t finished any of those three (about halfway through each one), and may finish them one day for my book a week thing. The takeaway message here is, when you are reading multiple books, make sure they are sufficiently different so that burnout on one style/genre/topic will not take all the other books with it.

Yesterday I finished Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and went on to start 1984 last night. All the while, I have also been reading Rob Neyer’s (a friend of the blog) book about baseball stories (review forthcoming). You see, now THAT is a varied reading list. When I got sick of reading Thompson, I could jump over and read about the validity and truthiness of baseball stories told over the years. It kept me fresh for both books, and the one thing I hate while reading is that not-so-fresh feeling.

The other good thing about having multiple books going is that you pretty much will have one of those books near you at all times. I usually keep them in my backpack, downstairs near the couch, or upstairs near the futon (my preferred reading location). So, wherever I am, one of those books is usually in one of those spots. The only problem is when I forget to put any in my backpack and then go in to school because, while most of my day does not involve reading for fun, there are times when I need to get away from it all and escape for a little bit into a book (the internet is a poor substitute). This is especially true, say, on Friday afternoons around 3 or 4 when my productivity drops and I am sick of anything computer or internet related. Say, sometime like...RIGHT NOW.

I forgot to load my backpack with one of my books, and here I sit with time to read and a desire to read but lacking the damn books. WHY MUST YOU TORMENT ME, HIDEOUS LIFE-DRAINING UNIVERSE?

What do I think about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Hunty Thompson (can I call him Hunty? He’s dead, he won’t mind) does a great job writing this so it felt natural. Not the imagery and ‘plot’, but the writing didn’t feel forced and overdone, which I imagine generations of wannabe gonzo journalist are guilty of. I touch on this on my abrasive and bitter name blog, but things like names and writing should not feel forced, and as odd as it seems, the writing was good and didn’t drop into parody. Even though the book was full of twisted and weird and drug-filled imagery, he kept a serious tone of someone who actually thinks about the craft of writing.

The first half was good and engaging, but the first part of the second half sort of just hung there. It lost a bit of steam and was seemed more strained; I just wasn’t feeling it for that section. The last part of the last half, however, was back to good form, though it was different. The tone was one of thawing out of a drug stupor and more introspective and was prone to longer speeches to the reader.

My question is how do you edit Hunty Thompson? If you were the editor, what would you say? “This sentence doesn’t make sense.” Of course it doesn’t, but put it into the whole context and it…well it still doesn’t make sense, but it fits. I mean, he goes off into these tangents at times, but you can’t remove or reduce them because the entire book is tangential.

One problem with reading a book 35 years after it is published is that it is no longer groundbreaking. Plenty others have copied at least some of his style, and drug use isn’t as shocking to masses as it might have been back then. It was cutting edge back then, and in many ways still is, but what keeps it still in circulation is not the drug use or really really really weird stuff, but instead it is still readable and relevant because Hunty was an excellent writer.

Also, after reading the book, now I know first hand what my brothers’ teenage years were like.