It was Fear and Loathing in Last Vegas, Hunter S Thompson's most famous work, which helped me through my GSCEs. I found the sheer energy and drug-fueled hyper-reality he wrote of truly exhilarating. This is not an uncommon opinion on Fear and Loathing, a book which is unquestionably a modern classic. It's both a buddy-story bender through early-70s Vegas, and a dark satire on the American dream, set as the optimistic warmth of modernism slips from view leaving cold, multi-layered reality to usher in the cynical era of post-modernity. In such a setting, who can blame the two protagonists for such heroic levels of consumption.Since this first encounter I've read most of his other works from 'Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs' through to the broadest and best collection of his work 'The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time'; which in finest HST-style reports on high-minded politics, violent bar room scuffles and everything in between.
Not long before his tragic death in 2005, Thompson gave a fascinating interview with an Australian journalist on the state of post-9/11 America (download the interview here). He come across as eloquent and intelligent political analyst but also a rambling, contradictory, deluded paranoid. His remarks in this interview are highly provocative and deeply insightful. Classic Thompson.
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