Fifty years of Fear and Loathing
God bless Hunter S. Thompson’s editors. Imagine paying someone a handsome amount of money to cover an off-road race and getting thousands of words of rambling prose that have a great deal more to do with drugs than with cars. It was a good time to be a writer, I suppose. The manuscript that became Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas appeared in two installments in Rolling Stone in November 1971. (Sports Illustrated passed.) Somehow, this rabid work of “gonzo journalism” spawned a book, a film, a graphic novel and a host of imitators, catapulting Thompson to the higher realms of fame. He never recovered from his own success. Fear and Loathing is easily summarized. Raoul Duke (Thompson) and his friend Dr.
