Te American Dream in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Essay

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas;

A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream Essay # 2: Genre

In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas the genres that prevail through out the novel include a combination of fictional framework written around an originally intended story, told via traditional and untraditional journalism. Hunter S. Thompson wrote the novel as an in depth view of what the generation after the sixties (the exploratory drug era) had turned into, using a luminously crafted writing style. Traditional fiction novels are not usually written as alterations of actual events but entirely thought of and created by the Author, unlike Thompsons unique style. The novel is written as if Thompson had written word for word what actually happened on a trip to Vegas to cover a motorbike race and Drug Convention within the previous year with a friend (Oscar Acosta) for Sports Illustrated magazine (published by Rolling Stone in the end). The two events that were months apart in real life, became part 1 and 2 of the article (later published into a novel) showing Thompsons semi fictional style (he was a participant in his writing while using different names). He uses the idea originally created by William Faulkner (an early 1900s novelist) that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism and the best journalists have always known this."(1)

Unlike other authors at the time who were experimenting with New Journalism such as Tom Wolfe (author of the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test), no one has taken the step to write a story as a first person style experience as in Fear and Loathing. Tom Wolfe had written novels through interviews with drug experimenters and other people instead of creating his own image through imagination or creativity. This sets Fear and Loathing apart from other novels covering the shambles of the drug culture that had been forming after the sixties had ended, combining the elements of journalism, and fiction. Hunter Thompson actually believes he failed in what he had originally wanted to write for Gonzo Journalism (a series of novels by Thompson), as it was intended on being a straight journalistic story on the bike race. It ended up evolving into a reflection of the sixties, while in the seventies living in the aftermath of what started off with a sort of meaning/purpose and ended with careless ruthlessness.