Book: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

I'm constantly playing catch up, constantly seeking out books and movies and music I should've experienced before, and I've been thinking about why I interpret my situation this way. It's certainly not for my own personal enjoyment, although I do enjoy most of what I absorb. I think it's simply because I'll have one more artifact of culture to share with someone else. I yearn for someone to ask me what the last book I read was, so I can reply without hesitation, "the 200 page acid trip titled Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." And then I could describe a couple of my favorite scenes and they could describe a couple of theirs. Isn't that the only reason we do any of this?

But I can't remember the last time someone asked me what the last book I read was. So I'll use this place to say that I loved Fear and Loathing. It was a trip, a high speed chase, a hurricane of social commentary filtered through the consciousness of a drug addled paranoid schizo. The story and the dialog moved so quickly I was done with it in two days and now I'm left with images that will no doubt inhabit my subconscious for the rest of my short life. Thompson was a lunatic, a dangerous person, but that didn't stop him from understanding better than most people how insane existence in this country is. How the American Dream is a void when looking at it as a spectator. When in search of it, all you'll find is an obese ex-stripper sitting at a slot machine so drunk she can hardly keep herself upright. But if you choose to live it, the dream can be literally anything you want it to be, from a crazed dope fiend to an uptight family man. And it doesn't really matter which you choose to strive for because both identities will ultimately end the same way.

5/5