A Journey to the Postmodern Capital of the American West: Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Abstract

The following article examines Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1971) both in terms of its revelatory value to the peculiar nature of Las Vegas and also as major literary testimony to the symbolic role of this city as a microcosm of the New West and of contemporary America. It is also argued that most Las Vegas writing, as exemplified by Thompson’s book, has often overlooked the multiple ingredients and complexity of Las Vegas life to focus on the archetypal image of this city as the incarnation of vice, artificiality, chaos, and excess in postmodern America.