And let’s not forget the violent badgering and traumatizing of a housekeeper. The narrative rewards disgusting actions toward bartenders, front desk staff, and waitresses.
On the page is the same entitled, rude at best, threatening at worst behavior that is often displayed by visitors in this city. What I see, as a former hospitality worker in Las Vegas, is a series of overdone scenes where the narrator and his “attorney” are obnoxious assholes to hospitality workers in Las Vegas. It’s a manic, circular anecdote that leads nowhere. The characters have all the depth of a drug-filled bathtub. However, labyrinthine prose and exciting illustrations do nothing to mask the staggering array of inexcusable transgressions Thompson revels in as a pseudo-protagonist and author. The singular imagery and rhythms of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas may be compelling. What I see, as a former hospitality worker in Las Vegas, is a series of scenes where the narrator and his ‘attorney’ are obnoxious assholes to hospitality workers in Las Vegas. I go inside for the cold kiss of air conditioning and to wipe down the backs of my sweaty knees. As they start posing in front of the massive Moulin Rouge sign, mimicking influencer affectations, I thank God it’s time for my break. One of them has a cigarette holder poking out of her mouth. They’re wearing white bucket hats, white tank tops beneath open floral short-sleeved button-downs, beige shorts, and oversized aviators with yellow lenses. That’s when the bachelorette party in matching outfits shows up. The thermometer one of the other docents snuck in has broken from the heat. As a docent at the Neon Museum, I spend most of my time in the Boneyard, the outdoor display area featuring over 200 Las Vegas signs in various stages of life. Now, 50 years later, three Vegas writers examine the text against a backdrop of tourists cosplaying Thompson’s fantasy and parachute journalists attempting to report on “the real Las Vegas.” Spoiler: they come away with very different opinions. He chooses Las Vegas as his setting and portrays a gaudy, greedy, and garish city as both magnet and maker of the worst triumphs of capitalism.ĭetermining whether this work has earned its literary standing is something that can benefit from the local voices not represented in the most famous book about their own city. If there is one theme in his surreal journey at the start of the 1970s, it’s Thompson’s alternately grandiloquent and bizarre assessment of where America landed after the turbulent 1960s.
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