Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken. (via Goodreads)
What is it with me and reading these days? I guess you could say that I'm probably going through a bit of a lull right now, seeing as it took me nearly three weeks to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. You could also suppose that, because it took me so long, I didn't enjoy this book. Well, both of these assumptions are correct.
I absolutely loved Thompson's novel, The Rum Diary (review here), so I really wanted to enjoy Fear and Loathing too. But unlike The Rum Diary, there are no surprisingly elegant descriptions. I also didn't connect at all with the characters, and their drugged-up antics became tedious by the end of the book (though they were amusing during the first fifty pages).
I was very dissapointed. I know Fear and Loathing is Thompson's most celebrated novel, but I fail to see why. The Rum Diary, for a reader like me, just has so much more substance (no pun intended!) Perhaps it's the sheer, unbelieable obsurdity of Fear and Loathing that reels people in: its Gonzo style. Obviously, I just didn't get it.
Rating: 2 / 5
Have you read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? What were your thoughts?
