Fear and Loathing: The Blurred Line

Reading Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing" has been at the top of my bucket list since last Wednesday - which, coincidentally, is the same day that I wrote out my bucket list. And now that I have read the book, I can't help but ask the same question that many of you already have: what was the point of that?

For those of you reading who were fans of the book, please understand. I liked it. I appreciated the wild, kinetic, the-train-is-comin'-best-hold-on-tight pacing that Thompson implemented throughout this "non-fiction" narrative. The quirky side characters that Thompson and his attorney meet along the way added to the humor. And, of course, there were the animated bats. All of this felt like a story that proved that truth really is stranger than fiction.

... And then we discover that Thompson wasn't on acid, LSD, crack cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, or anything relatively stronger than marijuana while on the road trip around which this book is based. Like others here have cited, Thompson hoped to communicate to his readers the experience of a road trip like this seen from the point of view of someone on drugs, even if that someone wasn't Thompson himself. In other words, he fabricated the drug experience described in vivid detail in the book. One might shrug this realization off, until he or she realized how prominent a role that drugs take in this novel. Thompson revealing that he created the drug references in "Fear and Loathing" is, for me, the equivalent of Truman Capote coming back to life and explaining how the Clutters never existed, and that he (Capote) had made up the entire crime. Like the murders in "In Cold Blood," the acid trips in "Fear and Loathing" are central to the book's cultural significance. If those are fake, what else can the book offer?

One might argue that the novel's slew of characters make the story worth reading, only to ask themselves the next logical question, "How many of themare fictional?" Throughout this brief semester, we have read numerous non-fiction novels whose authors have admitted to stretching the truth. Capote constructed the Clutters' final days. John Steinbeck never took his dog on the title travels. But Thompson inventing the iconic drugged-out scenes, the ones that gave both the book and film cultural relevance? That's a bit too much of a stretch for me.

This is the one time that I wish the author had really said "yes" to drugs.