Review of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

Prior to cracking Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I'd never read Hunter S. Thompson, which no doubt gets me behind on the mythology. What can I say? In some ways I've lived a sheltered life. But don't think of me as an ignorant naif, instead think of me as that great legal fantasy of an impartial juror, a man who, but for the surprising exception of the famous case at hand, is relatively well-informed. Well, another disclosure: maybe not that well-informed. But you know what I mean.

Fear and Loathing is a binge through sin city, following Thompson (as Raoul Duke) as he, with his attorney (one Dr. Gonzo) in tow, ostensibly reports on the fabulous Mint 400 motorcycle race and a DA's conference on the threat of illegal drugs. Pursuits, as the subtitle goes, of the American dream? Well maybe, but more on that in a moment or two. First, an objective reviewer such as myself must address the drug theme, which is what inflates maybe a dozen pages of journalism and commentary to something novel length. Now, I don't have much of a purchase point with such high-level debauchery--at no moment do Duke and Gonzo escape the influence of substances swallowed or inhaled, and maintaining that state requires some industry on both their parts--but I've spent enough irresponsible time with (mostly) legal drugs to appreciate the motif. It's not quite a comedy, but it's got some good comic timing, centered about the recklessness and the shrewd insanity of a drunk. I got some quality laughs out of the characters' carefully debated illogic, and the shoestring confidence games they had to wield to get out of those same scrapes they got themselves into in the first place. The alarming acid hallucinations fit in well enough as metaphor, or as grounding, but I'm still square enough to have been horrified at the random experimentation, ingestion of industrial chemicals, and some of the physical effects of their extreme dilettantism.

That comic voice does have a familiar tone, and I'm not sure if it's borrowed from film, or from a thousand next-day accounts of foolish escapades (or, for that matter, from however many of Thompson's intellectual heirs). He conducts that timeless brilliance of "acting nonchalant" as the world goes to hell around you like a maestro, and he's mastered the classic art of puncturing assumed dignity with irreverence. He sets a considered pause here to frame a gag, he's got the contrasts of outward calm against the thoroughly absurd or of drug-addled mania over the bland and mundane. The language on the whole is witty and apposite, and it utilized mock-seriousness very well. Our heroes sincerely throw around words like "vile," "swine," and "maniac," which are funny on their own, and on a higher level, the sober truths (and ironies) of them are carefully considered, even as they pertain to their own unsober selves. (Their petty criminalities against The Man are funny by similar measures, especially in that town, but one or two innocents may have been abused. This was much less so.)

But Fear and Loathing is not just for the jokes, and there are sober truths behind it, that need to lie behind to keep the book from achieving anything more than a blivot of props and gimmicks. I would have preferred a firmer bedrock of substance: there were ten pages of hijinks for every three-paragraph insight. I'll admit there are some fine juxtaposition and contrasts, but maybe there's too many left to the reader to decipher. Vegas is portrayed as your standard-issue den of iniquity, but the point's made that it's an ugly conservative version of sin, a real cop's-night-out sort of lawlessness: implicitly violent, outright objectifying, and personally destructive in an orderly and artificial sort of way, from which the real (and presumably less harmful) weirdos are exiled. You might call it an affirmation of genuine feakiness, although I didn't come out approving of Gonzo and Duke's lifestyle either, and these two carefully refute the drug-fueled idealism of the previous decade's youth movements as well. "The American dream," when they find it, is burnt out and irrelevant to any personal quest either Horatio Alger or Timothy Leary may have proposed, just a dangerous journey with not much at the end of it. You might say it takes lunacy to show the lunacy.

As a final note, I found the lamented demise of 60s idealism a bit tired in 2008--the boomers have reinvented their generation half a dozen times by now--but I expect it was potent in 1971. I have no reason to believe, however, that Thompson himself ever gave up his integrity. Before I finished writing this, I came across his 1994 eulogy of Nixon, now the second piece of his I've read, and I recommend it. It's brilliant without all the drug gimmicks.

Review: Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon

Airport books come with their own sorts of baggage. It's not that my expectations are low going in so much as that they're negative. Unless you're lucky enough to have that big Borders store in your terminal (which will stock a fair supply of canon and cult, for irritatingly precious travelers like myself), then the selection is geared toward more saleable names (I don't know what kind of books Nicholas Sparks writes, and I don't want to know), political and economics schlock (the cover with a white background, high-contrast typeface, and either a catchy graphic or a picture of some sweat-soaked hack trying to look stern), paperback mysteries and romances (the two science fiction books are of the embossed cover variety), and recent literary fads (you can bet that they're stocking up with Jonathon Franzen as I type). Also, David Sedaris, who's entertaining enough those rare times I catch him on the radio, but I'm disinclined to read something called "when you are engulfed in flames" as I fly.

My best bet is usually to pick up the popular-but-indeterminate-genre selection (i.e., the fad) if I can find any connection to it at all. I've come across lots of people with tastes similar to mine who like Pynchon, and there's a stable of authors who can't avoid saying dropping an homage every once in a while. And Inherent Vice, unlike the doorstops he's more famous for, is nice and short, so I figure it was a good time to introduce myself to the author. It was important for the blurbs to communicate that there's an essential Pyncon represented here. It's not a good sign when the pocket reviews invoke an indescribable style to tell me why I should read the book: it's not convincing for a newbie, and it's not a good sign if the faithful need to be reassured like that. You can find a good normal-length review here of Pynchon's early book, The Crying of Lot 49, which, looking at in hindsight, comes out as a good guide for Inherent Vice as well. So let's call the style discursive, willing to take a detour for humor's sake or to showcase an entertaining character sketch (not inconsistent with the guy who broke his lifelong reclusiveness for a silly guest spot on The Simpsons), some intentional blurring of perception and reality, and a simmering critique of the social order. (See? Blurbs aren't so hard.) I am given to understand that Pynchon also likes to indulge in point-of-view experiments and shifts that are nearly Joycean (which, I must admit, could be a good deal more enjoyable to read in a contemporary author with a worldview closer to my own—same playground, lower monkeybars), but that's not so much in evidence with this novel.

Our hero in Inherent Vice is Larry "Doc" Sportello, P.I. and connoisseur of beach culture, and if his grip on reality is slipping by a claw or two, then all the weed isn't helping. I've said it before: intoxicated people are funny when they accomplish stuff, when they're successful in spite of their best efforts. Acting nonchalant in unlikely circumstances is a timeless humor device. Doc admittedly appears to be sharp at drawing connections (even the questionable ones), and the indignation and paranoia endemic to the counterculture serves him well, but he's easily distracted, by women, friends and acquaintances, unlikely food, good tunes, and kind bud. The forced and unforced detours he finds on his investigation are made up for by some certain cosmic juju imparted by (entertaining) bodily excursions and the general grooviness that gives him a needed perspective. Among the various characters of his acquaintance, Doc's admirably countered by the hyperarticulate Christian "Bigfoot" Bjornson (got him as Kevin Smith meets Jesse Ventura), a Nazi square of a cop who, when they fall into moments of honesty, occupies only a small blue shift from Sportello on the spectrum between humanity and authority.

Doc doesn't sound like the private dick type, but part of the brilliance is just how well these styles mesh. I'm not a bit mystery guy, or noir guy: I'm not, as a rule, convinced that the trip through discovery is honest in these kinds of books. In mysteries, it's always easy enough to manipulate the reader by just lying about the stuff, or failing to divulge key information. I generally like the uncovering of a theme better than I like the gradual discovery of an act, but then, I have to be careful with those sorts of statements, as everything's always in the execution anyway. I am just suspicious of mysteries, in a way that's obviously not fair. I am always reminded of seminal stuff like The Murders in the Rue Morgue, trying to outguess the reader by moving beyond reason. It was an ape, Edgar? That's fucking stupid. Or maybe I just don't really impressed by superhuman deduction when the author is always able to whisper in the protagonist's ear. In any case, when I find myself in certain kinds of mystery—and noir is one of those kinds-- I'm not willing to fatten up my own conclusions with the author's early fodder, not without a sign that such attention is worth it. I let the case wash over me as it develops, trusting the writer to guide the thing along or not. If it's a good book, it'll have made sense all along and when I look back, I will be happy. If the plotting is sloppy, at least I can hope for some interesting scenery to accompany the ride. I finally clicked on Pynchon when I realized that he's a good enough writer to be playing with those not-necessarily-rational leaps. He is cognizant enough of his style that the flood of random-looking, significant-sounding, and culturally-referential information, which may or not be connected very well, is a knowing part of the whole mystery-solving schtick. I mean, Sportello is basically following Batman logic to crack the case, but getting along through inherent brains (vice?) and a certain infumated Grace. It's a funny understanding of noir, and it's perfect for druggies, not to mention the uncertain strain of semiotics that Pynchon likes to monkey with.

From my personal perspective, I can spot another common element between the Chandler-esque mystery and the Pynchon-ified plot. In both cases, I'm more familiar with the influences than I am with the original material. Detective fiction often enough serves as an entertaining cross-genre experiment (and since I have, like, four readers, I'll note that it ain't hard to derive a common genealogy for Sportello and the likes of Tom Robbins' Switters). When it comes down to it, the combination of jokes, winking technological revisionism (I remain puzzled how ArpaNet fit into the plot, or how what we saw fit within 1960s computational capabilities), deep cultural and mythological signifiers (Lemuria, frex), and vague shadow conspiracies (a minor word about the Golden Fang in a sec) may fall better among the small handful of science fiction authors that you don't know you're missing out on--I mean, I loves me some Neal Stephenson novels--but Pynchon gets big points as an innovator, for such a strong sense of his own flavor, and he wins hands down when it comes to the zany and the madcap. He gives us surreality that is sneakily real. I don't think Joseph Heller and Hunter Thompson are young enough to be Pynchon's heirs, but that's more of the same school.

I have read that deep conspiracy is a big part of Pynchon's M.O., but it took some time for this novel to get there. If it introduced thematic elements as fast as it introduced characters, I'd have been more down with it at the beginning. The connections to the Golden Fang eventually start to bring heavy drama, and [spoilers follow, but I don't think they're the hurtful sort] I like how it culminated with some token rich old fuck shipped in as a proxy to argue for The Man ("the bums always lose..."). I don't know if Pynchon really puts so much stock in the hippie as a revolutionary; they're steeped in their local American cultures far too heavily to be very useful, and they're still consumers, part of the machine like everyone else. In fact, Sportello's intermediate life as a private investigator might be telling: here he is, half cop and half citizen. The band's corrupted by an unspecified zombie mojo, and, for one dude, by the sinister attention of the Fang. It took the whole novel to finally force a confrontation with the string-pullers, and not unusually, it was like a man screaming attention from the universe. Which is unsatisfying, solves nothing, but seems like a worthy effort just the same.

[Minor edits. I was sipping glasses of loudmouth as I wrote that up last night, and if the prose fell apart by the end of the fist draft, then that's why. I have no excuse for the second draft.]

Review of The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac came into into my literary purview over ten years ago, when I combined my meager estate with my wife's. I'm not sure which of her wannabe bohemian boyfriends had originally inspired the purchase, but I can't really begrudge the guy for ultimately adding to the library. On page twenty-five or so, I found the bookmark that I placed in this copy of The Dharma Bums in 1997, where I stopped reading it the first time. It seems like the sort of novel that wouldn't begrudge me for resuming it after so long an absence, and which would be happy to be accepted from some unknown former love interest. It's all good.

The Dharma Bums is more atmospheric and philosophical than it tensely plotted--it doesn't demand a breathless page-whipping race to the finale. It's a buddy story, and a travel novel, which does ramble from somewhere to somwhere else, but not with a particular urgency. Kerouac writes himself in as Ray Smith, and the story details his friendship and experiences with Japhy Ryder, together exploring Buddhist philosophy as well as the natural landscape of California and the Pacific northwest. Ryder is based on a real writer of Kerouac's acquaintance (who is still writing in fact), as, evidently, are all the other characters in the novel as well, not that it would have helped me to keep score. I liked most of the odd bastards, and if they weren't a particularly responsible bunch, they were benevolent, and they seemed like great fun to be around. Stuff happens, and the friendship evolves over time, but any given ten pages of this book give a similar satisfaction as any other ten, and it's a natural to limit the reading to an easy evening, pleasant to pick up and just as easy to put down. Which is probably what happened eleven years ago.

Self-discovery on the road is a time-worn storytelling approach, and in that respect, I hold Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a worthy companion read. I like even better to put these novels in broader arc, and the antecedant that leaps most immediately to mind is Jerome K. Jerome shipping friends around at the turn of the last century in different conveyances. (Were I more ambitious about these of reviews, I'd take on another of Mr. Jerome's for this series, but I happily managed to get through Three Men in a Boat in the same year I stalled on the Dharma Bums--there's only so much of that sort of thing I'm willing to take at a time.) Each has the same thinly fictionalized autobiography, presented with similar mixtures of escape, male bonding, comedy, and philosophical interjections. The escape is for the characters, and the hideout isn't so much the wilderness as it is civilization's fringe, not a matter of pitting brawn against the savage forces of nature, but rather a retreat to a place safe enough and independent enough to explore the world from the writer's own perspective. Over the arc of these novels, this required increasingly drastic measures for the getting away. Late Victoriana could be ditched in a comfortable outing down the Thames. Kerouac needed the deep woods and old weird America to hide himself in, and only thirteen years later, it took Hunter S. Thompson copious amounts of drugs. I also like imagining this progression for the delivered philosophies, which are poked in as wistful or wondering asides, and over the intertextual century, there is a growing refutation of the status quo: from ambivalent glimpses of the human condition, to an escape from Western philosophy, to, in Thompson's case, a horrified rebuke of it. Read the three of them together, perhaps, as commentary on how invasive society has become (and how quickly).

In The Dharma Bums, Kerouac's embrace of Zen Buddhism is a sort that reaffirms his own lifestyle, absent any spiritual effort that doesn't satisfy him. Not that it didn't take some personal effort, but it did often feel self-serving, and maybe even a little self-aggrandizing. I could see the author as that mild, friendly, half-baked, humbler-than-thou sort you sometimes find at parties. It's like a Bohemian slacker superstar version of, say, Deion Sanders glorifying Jesus with his touchdown-scoring awesomeness. Admittedly, I like Jack's sense of splendor a lot better, and his voice is nice enough too, moving along at an elemental groove, and able to summon as much child-like enthusiasm for immense natural wonders as for simple human pleasures. Although I distrusted the spirituality, and found the book a little skimpy on cerebral jollies, Kerouac is out to find and celebrate the things of the world that are still pure and good, and in his travels he always gets there, and it's nice to be along on the trek. The solitude and the friendship, the spirituality and the beauty, they all get through just fine.