When you read something that starts like this, “we were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold” (Thompson 3), you know it’s going to be different. Hunter S. Thompson is the pioneer of gonzo journalism, which is the format of my favorite reading thus far, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Usually I am very critical when I read and I find it hard to enjoy books because of it. While reading Thompson’s piece, I really enjoyed the comic emphasis that shone throughout it. When an author adds real life situations into their writing, the story becomes far more real to me and definitely more enjoyable. Also, by having dialogue and detail in a story, I feel that it gives you more of a chance to picture what is going on with the characters. For example, “the trunk of the care looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers . . . and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.” (Thompson 4). That alone makes you wonder what trouble the characters of this story are going to get into, and also keeps you wanting to find out exactly what happens.

Hunter S. Thompson is by far the best writer that I have read in a long time. Stories that involve some kind of humor always get me and I haven’t laughed aloud while reading in a long time. Even the film version of this book made me enjoy it far more. Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Thompson was uncanny, and from all the videos I’ve seen of him the film was dead on to how he acted. By far one of the best books I’ve read.



Works Cited
Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
New York: Vintage, 1971.