Want to learn the ideas in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas better than ever? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson here.
Read a brief 1-Page Summary or watch video summaries curated by our expert team. Note: this book guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher or author, and we always encourage you to purchase and read the full book.
Video Summaries of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
We’ve scoured the Internet for the very best videos on Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, from high-quality videos summaries to interviews or commentary by Hunter S. Thompson.
1-Page Summary of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
Overall Summary
Part 1, Chapter 1
A journalist named Raoul Duke and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, are driving to Las Vegas in a red convertible when they begin taking drugs. Bats swoop above Duke’s head but Dr. Gonzo doesn’t notice them. “It’s your turn to drive,” says Duke as he pulls the car over on the side of the road. They are still about 100 miles from Vegas so they need to get there by 4:00 pm for press registration at the Mint 400 race event that day. As a professional journalist with an obligation to cover stories accurately, Duke needs to write about this one even though it may not be good or bad for him personally because he will just report what is happening around him honestly and objectively.
A fashionable sporting magazine has already reserved Duke a hotel room in Las Vegas and rented him the Great Red Shark. They have also advanced him $300, most of which he has spent on drugs, including two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine (whole galaxy) and many other uppers (laughers), downers (screamers), etc.
“We didn’t need all those drugs, but once you start collecting them, the tendency is to collect as many as possible. I was only really worried about the ether because it makes people incredibly disoriented and irresponsible. We’d taken some of everything except that so far, and now we were going to get into that too. It would be a horrible, slobbering sort of state for the next hundred miles or so.”
A hitchhiker runs up to the car, and he’s never been in a convertible before. The man driving is worried that the kid will realize they’re high on drugs. “This same desert was home to the Manson family,” he thinks. “Will this hitchhiker make that connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car?”
If the hitchhiker is still alive, they’ll have to kill him. Duke realizes that he might be talking out loud. He decides to explain things so the hitchhiker will feel better about his fate and not worry about what they’re going to do with him. They won’t hurt him because they are on their way to Las Vegas for a vacation in order to find the American dream—the car called The Great Red Shark is how they plan on doing this.
Duke tells the hitchhiker that his lawyer, Gonzo, is Samoan. Duke says he has known him for a long time and knows how valuable he is to him. The day before they were sitting at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills when Duke was assigned the Mint 400 story by his magazine. He was told to go immediately and meet Lacerda, a Portuguese photographer, for it. After this phone call with Gonzo there, Duke said that he would be going with him on this assignment because he will need legal advice during it all.
Part 1, Chapter 2
Before the trip, Duke called a magazine in New York and asked them to get him a dirt bike. They referred him to an office in Beverly Hills. When he got there, he was told that they would only give him $300 for it because they didn’t know who he was.
In response to the lack of money, Dr. Gonzo said that they wouldn’t be able to make it work with their current funds. Duke disagreed and insisted that they should continue on because it was an opportunity given by a complete stranger who didn’t ask for anything in return. Duke said that this was how America worked: if you have faith in yourself, you can achieve your dreams.
Duke and Gonzo decided they needed a car, cocaine, a tape recorder, and some Acapulco shirts. Then they would go to Las Vegas and cover the story. Duke said that his job was to “drum up” the story on his own. He said he would do this by doing pure Gonzo journalism—a style of reporting where you write about whatever comes into your mind without any concern for writing standards or conventions of journalistic objectivity. The socio-psychic factor—which is when people need drugs because their life has become complicated—also played an important role in their decision to go to Las Vegas.
