In its hallucinogenic mania and high-revving comic frenzy, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas put forth a twisted view of Las Vegas — and of America. What Vegas littérateur can forget this classic passage about Circus-Circus?
Right above the gambling tables the Forty Flying Carazito Brothers are doing a high-wire trapeze act, along with four muzzled Wolverines and the Six Nymphet Sisters from San Diego ... so you're down on the main floor playing blackjack, and the stakes are getting high when suddenly you chance to look up, and there, right smack above your head is a half-naked 14-year-old girl being chased through the air by a snarling wolverine, which is suddenly locked in a death battle with two silver-painted Polacks who come swinging down from opposite balconies and meet in mid-air on the wolverine's neck ... both Polacks seize the animal as they fall straight down towards the crap tables – but they bounce off the net; they separate and spring back up towards the roof in three different directions, and just as they're about to fall again they are grabbed out of the air by three Korean Kittens and trapezed off to one of the balconies.
But the book’s lens of potent, truthful distortion was a two-way lens. Its impact and reputation also nurtured a twisted image of Hunter S. Thompson as some irretrievably manic, addled gonzo shaman. You kind of imagine him as a living Ralph Steadman cartoon.
Which is why his 1958 advice letter to a good friend is so bracing and strange. Whoa. What’s this? Here’s a warm, considerate, thoughtful — and thoughtfully uncertain — 22-year-old man trying his best to counsel a friend on that existential whopper: Uh, what do I do with my life? In his letter fizzing with an earnest sense of hell-I’m-still-figuring-it-all-out-myself, Thompson distinguishes between striving for goals and striving for a meaningful way of life. (Note that, even in the tilt and swing of the following sentences, you can hear hints of his later style of spasmic rhapsody.)
... to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal), he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).
Out of context, that snippet sounds a bit like Thompson's working toward some Beat-inflected take on “It’s the journey, not the destination” — which wouldn’t be a grossly inaccurate gloss. Maybe a more accurate version would be, “It’s the fulfillment of the function, not the satisfaction of the goal.” But if you read the letter in its entirety, the texture of Thompson's thought suggests, perhaps surprisingly, a credibly homegrown, cowboy version of Aristotle’s concept of the well-lived life. Of course, for Aristotle, that entails a life of moderation — not exactly a Thompsonian virtue in the image we've inherited of the gonzo philosopher with a school of thought all his own.