Steadman Ralph - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

HUNTER S. THOMPSON is incomparably the most celebrated exponent of the New Journalism. His books include Hells Angels, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (available in Flamingo) and Generation of Swine. The Proud Highway, the first of three volumes of his letters, was published in 1997.

Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail 72

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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Raoul Duke first appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, issue 95, November 11, 1971, and issue 96, November 25, 1971.

First published in Great Britain by Paladin 1972

Copyright Estate of Hunter S. Thompson 1971

Illustration copyright Ralph Steadman 1971

PS section copyright Travis Elborough 2005

PS is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

Hunter S. Thompson, asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007204496

Ebook Edition OCTOBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007596713

Version: 20170215

To Bob Geiger,

for reasons that need

not be explained here

and to Bob Dylan,

for Mister Tambourine Man

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

DR. JOHNSON

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?

Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process. What the hell are you yelling about? he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses. Never mind, I said. Its your turn to drive. I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred miles to go. They would be tough miles. Very soon, I knew, we would both be completely twisted. But there was no going back, and no time to rest. We would have to ride it out. Press registration for the fabulous Mint 400 was already underway, and we had to get there by four to claim our sound-proof suite. A fashionable sporting magazine in New York had taken care of the reservations, along with this huge red Chevy convertible wed just rented off a lot on the Sunset Strip and I was, after all, a professional journalist; so I had an obligation to cover the story, for good or ill.

The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car 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.

All this had been rounded up the night before, in a frenzy of high-speed driving all over Los Angeles Countyfrom Topanga to Watts, we picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew wed get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station. We had sampled almost everything else, and nowyes, it was time for a long snort of ether. And then do the next hundred miles in a horrible, slobbering sort of spastic stupor. The only way to keep alert on ether is to do up a lot of amylsnot all at once, but steadily, just enough to maintain the focus at ninety miles an hour through Barstow.

Man, this is the way to travel, said my attorney. He leaned over to turn the volume up on the radio, humming along with the rhythm section and kind of moaning the words: One toke over the line, Sweet Jesus One toke over the line

One toke? You poor fool! Wait till you see those goddamn bats. I could barely hear the radio slumped over on the far side of the seat, grappling with a tape recorder turned all the way up on Sympathy for the Devil. That was the only tape we had, so we played it constantly, over and over, as a kind of demented counterpoint to the radio. And also to maintain our rhythm on the road. A constant speed is good for gas mileageand for some reason that seemed important at the time. Indeed. On a trip like this one must be careful about gas consumption. Avoid those quick bursts of acceleration that drag blood to the back of the brain.

My attorney saw the hitchhiker long before I did. Lets give this boy a lift, he said, and before I could mount any argument he was stopped and this poor Okie kid was running up to the car with a big grin on his face, saying, Hot damn! I never rode in a convertible before!

Is that right? I said. Well, I guess youre about ready, eh?

The kid nodded eagerly as we roared off.

Were your friends, said my attorney. Were not like the others.

O Christ, I thought, hes gone around the bend. No more of that talk, I said sharply. Or Ill put the leeches on you. He grinned, seeming to understand. Luckily, the noise in the car was so awfulbetween the wind and the radio and the tape machinethat the kid in the back seat couldnt hear a word we were saying. Or could he?