It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

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audiobook, Character Crush, chinua achebe, disgrace, Dr. Gonzo, fear and loathing, hunter s thompson, jm coetzee, kazuo ishiguro, liz jensen, meme, nocturnes, puerto rico, rum diary, sylvia plath, the rapture

Welcome to ‘It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?’, a weekly meme initially hosted by Sheila at the ‘Book Journey – One Persons Journey Through a World of Books’. This is a great way of letting people know what I’ve been reading over the past week and what I’ve got lined up for this week.

Another slow one this week and I’ve gotten side-tracked a lot, but here’s an honest list of things finished/ pending and currently in the works:

BOOKS READ:
1. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey into the Heart of the American Dream – Hunter S. Thompson

Savoured every last word of this insane epic. Loved it so much that I think I’ve been sitting and re-reading choice paragraphs and committing them to memory. Click here to read my review, and check out my ‘Character Crush’ of the week! 

2. The Rapture (Audiobook) – Liz Jensen 

Finally finished the audiobook version of this dystopian/ environmental/ Armageddon themed book that has a healthy dash of religious fanaticism thrown in for good measure. Click here for my review.

CURRENTLY READING:
1. The Rum Diary – Hunter S. Thompson

Currently on page 50 of this fictional account of Thompson’s journalistic experiences during his short stay in Puerto Rico in the late 1950’s. It was written before Fear and Loathing, and retains the linear writing style of your average reporter. But I’m glad to say I can spot flecks of the pioneering Gonzo style very now and then.  

2. Winter Trees – Sylvia Plath
 
This is where I start to deviate from last weeks reading plans. I felt a dire need for some poetry, so I managed to pick up this very slim (but seriously dense) book of Plath’s poems. Written towards the last 9 months of her life, they evoke the emotional turmoil for a woman trapped in a loveless marriage. She writes like a trapped beast. Each word a cutting claw, a razor tooth. I feel disdain for Ted Hughes…

BOOKS TO READ:

1. Nocturnes – Kazuo Ishiguro

Not the promised Murakami, but still a Japanese author nonetheless. I have been desperate to get my hands on Nocturnes ever since ‘A Pale View of Hills’. Haven’t started it yet, but I’m sure it’ll be wonderful.

2.Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

I have yet to read any Achebe, and I was seduced by ‘Things Fall Apart’ at my local library. Now that the world cup is on I wanted to read some African Literature. Praise for the book goes like this: “The writer in whose company the prison walls fell down” – Nelson Mandela. 

3.Disgrace – JM Coetzee

Again, another book with a setting in South Africa, this time by Coetzee, another first time read. This novel won the Booker Prize in 1999. Took a sneak peek and I think it’s marvellous. 

That’s it for this week folks. Would love to know what you think of my choices.

 

Quick Review | ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ – Hunter S. Thompson

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American Dream, banned books, Barbra Streisand, book review, Character Crush, Dr. Gonzo, fear and loathing, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, hunter s thompson, Las Vegas, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Raoul Duke

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“We were somewhere around Barstow when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like ‘I feel light-headed; maybe you should drive…'”

And so the journey begins; a journey where two drug-addled men, nay, two of ‘god’s very own prototypes’ shriek wildly in a red convertible christened the ‘Great Red Shark’, driving at break-neck speed through the unforgiving Las Vegas desert, straight for the mirage that is ‘The American Dream‘.

There it was; shimmering playfully in front of them, always just a little out of reach. Yet they drive anyway, hell-bent on grasping a tendril of it. Little did they know that they ended up creating their own version of it; a sick, twisted psychedelic nightmare birthed by drugs and fathered by pure Gonzo journalism.

Hailed as a cult classic, this savage journey is loosely based on Hunter S. Thompson (aka Raoul Duke, aka self-proclaimed Doctor of Journalism) and Oscar Zeta Acosta (aka Dr. Gonzo – the attorney) and their never-to-be-repeated-one-of-a-kind expedition to the limits of human endurance.

“Oh mama… could this really be the end???”

Initially the journey begins as a serious journalism assignment to cover the Mint 400; an annual race across the desert consisting of dune buggies, custom motorcycles, beer and unsavoury biker types.

“The only way to prepare for a trip like this, I felt, was to dress up like human peacocks and get crazy, then screech off across the desert and cover the story. Never lose sight of the primary responsibility.”

However the objective of the operation soon degenerates to a orgyistic mish-mash of circus casinos, dwarfs, apes, reptilian love, trashed hotel rooms, Barbra Streisand portraits and bad, bad trips. Very soon our two anti-protagonists end up drowning in a cesspool of their own making, trying to make sense of a world that really shouldn’t, but somehow does anyway.

Fear and Loathing isn’t for the faint hearted. Thompsons prose has a savage, animalistic vein to it; the mindless antics, a ritualistic mode which speaks of a desperate cleansing of the system. The things that happen in this book are foul, lawless and downright immoral, and it would be unbearable – if it weren’t for the humour.

“Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in; the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas.”

Holy Mother of God… ‘Fear and Loathing’ was some ride and after reading it, I knew things would never be the same again. Because you know when you’ve been Gonzo’d.

View all my reviews >>

Related articles

• The Story Of Steadman, Drawn From His ‘Gonzo’ Art (npr.org)
• Hunter S. Thompson Interviews Keith Richards, and Very Little Makes Sense (openculture.com)

Character Connection | What’s Your Character Crush?

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Character Crush, crazy, Dr. Gonzo, fear and loathing, hunter s thompson, meme

Welcome to a new meme called ‘Character Connection’. This is hosted by IntrovertedJen over at The Introverted Reader every Thursday.

When I heard about this over on twitter, I got all excited.Character crushes are things I sometimes get when reading a great book. Sometimes one character alone can be interesting enough to make you read a whole series! But what I find is I sometimes fall for the minor characters, mostly because I see room for development, or they’re just so damn hot!

So, here’s my latest character crush: 
Dr. Gonzo from ‘Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas’ 
(click above for review)

This vile, fat, corrupt lawyer eats a lot of LSD. He drives like a lunatic, trashes hotel rooms, and if he takes enough mescaline gets completely deranged and insists to carve a little ‘Z’ on your forehead. Nothing serious. Alternatively, acid drives his brain right into Alice’s wonderland, giving him the uncontrollable urge to electrocute himself in the bathtub. Yup, not exactly the type of guy you would be smitten with, but hey, this is fiction… the realm where anything is possible… and my opinion is: the crazier the better! I mean, how many characters are there in literature who really offend, frighten or make you boil with rage? I can’t say I’m a prolific reader, but I can claim to have a read quite a few books, and it’s very rare to come across such strong, ‘unique’ characters that really provoke their readership into thinking about the issues (direct or indirect) that is raised by the author.

Based on a real person, Dr. Gonzo (aka Oscar Zeta Acosta) is larger than life. In fact, being a close friend of Hunter S. Thompson he was described by him as a ‘300 pound Samoan’ – a tag he wasn’t too pleased with, and eventually had removed from the book altogether. The way Dr. Gonzo is portrayed in the novel, gives me a feeling that he must have been one hell of a person in real life. One of Thompson’s peculiar, lingering tributes to him goes something like this:

“There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. Some kind of high-powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.” 

When it comes to describing him, I suppose the best way would be to say he was intelligent (he is a lawyer after all – just about!) but a complete lunatic as well. He was a man of extrmes. If it weren’t for Dr. Gonzo’s erratic contributions of ‘As your lawyer I advise you to…’ [insert whatever it was he’d advise]; Thompson’s break-neck journey to the heart of the American Dream would have been dry as a sun-bleached bone in the Las Vegas desert.

To me, Dr. Gonzo was the life of the party. Just when one thinks it can’t get any worse or weirder, the Gonzo manages to raise the bar that little bit higher. In no way do I advocate the things Gonzo or Duke get up to on their trip, but in literary terms their psychedelic account sheds an appropriately high-strung, disconcerting light on the late 60’s early 70’s mentality of the average American; when a clash of two greatly opposing beliefs (among them War and Anti-war) had gripped and divided a nation in half.   

Dr. Gonzo embodies the tortured spirit of this historical moment in American history, but cranked-up to it’s highest decibel. He’s a bat out of hell with a wickedly black sense of humour. He’s a victorious roar, a total stripping down of mankind’s outer veneer, that lacquer of social niceties that have been applied for centuries and have hardened to a thick impenetrable crust.  The dialogue between Duke and Dr. Gonzo stands out as among the most original and refreshing. Yes it is crude, and yes, it’s sometimes diabolical, but taken with a very LARGE pinch of salt (after all, Hunter S. Thompson was the ‘Doctor of Gonzo Journalism’), it all weirdly makes sense on the peripheries of normality.

While Duke (aka Thompson) was the observer, the writer and the creator of the written version of this one-of-a-kind journey; Dr. Gonzo (aka Oscar Zeta Acosta)  was the one who ultimately initiated it. In closing, one other factor that makes Dr. Gonzo my character crush of the week is the annoying fact that the real Dr. Gonzo has been reported missing since  1974. His mysterious disappearance will haunt me for a long time as I will always wonder where on earth he is now, and what exactly is he doing.

So, that’s my character crush for this week. What’s yours? I’d love to hear about it.