Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 77

A Countercultural Gatsby

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hope to desperate people is all the more deliciously paradoxical when we consider
that countercultural liberalism played a large part in Vegas becoming the
quintessential American city. As Kurt Anderson observes, it’s “ironic that two
decades after Hunter Thom pson’s book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,
countercultural ripple effects have so raised the American prudishness threshold
that Las Vegas is considered no more unseemly than any other city” (43).
Although much of Thompson’s book documents the perceived failings of the
1960s and how those failings contributed to the death of the American Dream, the
shortcomings of the 1960s are by no means the only impetus behind this contention.
Shortly after Duke’s initial eloquent and insightful remembrance of things past, he
and Dr. Gonzo decide to leave Las Vegas, a town they have both come to dislike
because there is “No mercy for a criminal freak in Las Vegas. This Place is like the
Army: the shark ethic prevails— eat the wounded. In a closed society where
everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only
final sin is stupidity” (72). Duke is feeling guilty about running up huge tabs on
bad plastic, and while waiting for his car to be brought around, he decides to read
The Las Vegas Sun, as a way to take his mind off his sins. He is confronted with
such headlines as “Trio Re-arrested in Beauty’s Death,” “GI Drugs Claimed,” “Five
Wounded Near NYC Tenement” and “Pharmacy Owner Arrested in Probe,” and
he is somehow relieved:
Reading the front page made me feel a lot better. Against that heinous
background, my crimes were pale and meaningless. I was a relatively
respectable citizen—a multiple felon, but certainly not dangerous. And
when the Great Scorer came to write against my name, that would
surely make a difference.
Or would it? I turned to the Sports page and saw a small item about
Muhammad Ali; his case was before the Supreme Court, the final
appeal. He’d been sentenced to five years in prison for refusing to kill
“slopes.”
“I ain’t got nothing against them Viet Congs,” he said.
Five Years. (73-74)
What Thompson does is put fictional crimes up against a background of real
life news stories. The adventures of Duke and Dr. Gonzo are not pretty; in fact,
some of the things they do are downright disturbing. But when compared to the
actualities of “real” life in America, as characterized by drive-by shootings, car
jackings, and thrill killers, one can’t help but agree that we live in a country where
reality sometimes seems more like a nightmare.
The first part of the novel ends when Duke and Dr. Gonzo find that they have