I have nine books by Hunter S. Thompson -- nine. That's eight more than just "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." He wrote 13 books, turns out.
Most of which are memoirs or essay collections which comment on politics, philosophy, sociology, psychology -- the sciences and cultural studies of our time. Even his books before "...Vegas" get inside the machine of a major presidential campaign or the subculture of the Hell's Angels revealing the machinations and cultural forces at work through a subjective account that is, in its telling, spellbinding, educational, enlightening, thought-provoking and hilarious.
And Hunter's work is riddled with subject literary devices utilized to portray th belly of the beast -- it's likely many of his craziest stories were devices to comment on the chaos or hypocrisy of a situation from the inside.
I don't want to jump on the "you didn't even see the concert" bandwagon, but to discount his influence based on hearing about his crazy drug habits or that whacky book about sex and drugs is a road to nowhere.
From the NY Times in 1990:
"While self-effacement has never been one of Mr. Thompson's strengths, I think he was absolutely right about how good a writer he was then. Fans across the political spectrum from Norman Mailer to Tom Wolfe and William F. Buckley Jr. have said as much in the past."
From the NY Times in 1973:
"Unlike Theodore White's regular reports, which have become as much a part of the electoral institution as the inauguration, "Fear and Loathing" is obviously not an exercise in objective, analytic contemporary history. But neither is it like Norman Mailer's accounts of the conventions, which are, by contrast, less involved with the factual immediacy of politics and more concerned with its symbolic implications. Mailer is essentially always a novelist, even when he ventures into personal journalism. Mailer's imagination takes us as far as we want to go intellectually, but on a gut level we are kept at a distance because Mailer's personality intrudes between us and the experience. Genet, Burroughs and Arthur Miller have also attempted to run the campaigns through their literary arteries; but none has successfully captured the vulnerability, lust and desperation that are released each time we elect "the best man."
Thompson's book, with its mixed, frenetic construction, irreverent spirit and, above all, unrelenting sensitivity to the writer's own feelings while on the political road, most effectively conveys the adrenaline-soaked quest that is the American campaign. Crisscrossing the country often two times a day, stopping in hotels, shopping marts and factories in obscure Midwestern towns, Thompson might have been running for office himself. By monitoring his own instincts and observations in the process, he shows us what it must be like for the candidates.
....Must the men who aspire to lead us be put through such an ordeal, living constantly on what Thompson refers to as "the edge"? Perhaps whistlestop and jet-plane campaigning should be abandoned and the candidates should compete solely through the electronic media. I don't know, and neither does Thompson. What Thompson does know, however, is that whatever the campaign procedures, the White House will continue to loom in the imagination of power- addicted men as the glassine-bagged white powder does in the imagination of the junkie. Watergate was the attempted rip-off of a fellow addict. "Fear and Loathing" lets us understand why the men we elect to the Presidency may have needle tracks on their integrity."
