Editing Hunter S. Thompson (section)

===''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas''===
{{Main|Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas}}
[[File:Hunter S. Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta, Las Vegas 1971.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|alt=Photograph of two men seated at a table with drinks|Thompson's 1971 trip to Las Vegas with [[Oscar Zeta Acosta]] (''right'') served as the basis for his most famous novel, ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas''.]]

The book for which Thompson gained most of his fame began during the research for "[[Strange Rumblings in Aztlan]]," an exposé for ''Rolling Stone'' on the 1970 killing of the [[Mexican-American]] television journalist [[Rubén Salazar]]. Salazar had been shot in the head at close range with a tear-gas canister fired by officers of the [[Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department]] during the [[National Chicano Moratorium March]] against the Vietnam War. One of Thompson's sources for the story was [[Oscar Zeta Acosta]], a prominent Mexican-American activist and attorney. Finding it difficult to talk in the racially tense atmosphere of Los Angeles, Thompson and Acosta decided to travel to [[Las Vegas]], and take advantage of an assignment by ''[[Sports Illustrated]]'' to write a 250-word photograph caption on the [[Mint 400]] motorcycle race held there.

What was to be a short caption quickly grew into something else entirely. Thompson first submitted to ''Sports Illustrated'' a manuscript of 2,500 words, which was, as he later wrote, "aggressively rejected". ''Rolling Stone'' publisher [[Jann Wenner]] liked "the first 20 or so jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication&nbsp;— which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it", Thompson wrote.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Thompson |first=Hunter |title=The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time |publisher=[[Summit Books]] |year=1979 |isbn=0-671-40046-0 |edition=1st |pages=105–109}}</ref> Wenner, describing his first impression of it years later, called it "Sharp and insane".<ref name=wennerbook>{{Cite book |last=Wenner |first=Jan |title=Like A Rolling Stone: A Memoir |publisher=[[Little, Brown and Company]] |year=2022 |isbn=9780316415194 |edition=1st}}</ref>

To develop the story, Thompson and Acosta returned to Las Vegas to attend a drug-enforcement conference. The two trips became the basis for "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", which ''Rolling Stone'' serialized in two parts in November 1971. Random House published a book version the following year. It is written as a first-person account by a journalist named [[Raoul Duke]] with [[Oscar Zeta Acosta|Dr. Gonzo]], his "300-pound [[Samoans|Samoan]] attorney", During the trip, Duke and his companion (always referred to as "my attorney") become sidetracked by a search for the American Dream, with "two bags of [[cannabis (drug)|grass]], 75 pellets of [[mescaline]], five sheets of high-powered [[Lysergic acid diethylamide|blotter acid]], a salt shaker half full of [[cocaine]], and a whole galaxy of multicolored [[Amphetamine|uppers]], [[Barbiturates|downers]], [[Methamphetamine|screamers]], [[Nitrous Oxide|laughers]]&nbsp;... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw [[Diethyl ether|ether]], and two dozen [[amyls]]."

Coming to terms with the failure of the 1960s [[counterculture|countercultural movement]] is a major theme of the novel, and the book was greeted with considerable critical acclaim. ''The New York Times'' praised it as "the best book yet written on the decade of dope".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Woods |first=Crawford |date=July 23, 1972 |title=Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/23/books/thompson-1972-vegar.html |url-status=live |access-date=August 3, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130403105014/http://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/23/books/thompson-1972-vegar.html |archive-date=April 3, 2013}}</ref> "The Vegas Book", as Thompson referred to it, was a mainstream success and introduced his Gonzo journalism techniques to a wide public.