Vegas, list trouble etc.

[Robin Landseadel]

On Nov 16, 2009, at 7:05 AM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> On Nov 16, 2009, at 5:05 AM, John Carvill wrote:
>
>>> What happens in Vegas in IV?
>>
>> A question which deserves a thorough analysis. At the very least, the
>> symbolism of that machine spitting out a wave of Kennedy coins is
>> pretty dense. And suggests comparison with the Nixon bank notes, eh?
>>
>> << The novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas accounts for two trips to
>> Las Vegas, Nevada, that Hunter S. Thompson and attorney Oscar Zeta
>> Acosta ... The two needed a more comfortable place to discuss the  
>> story... >>
>>
>> Yes, that's what HST said afterwards. Fear & Loathing, though, was
>> definitely *not* a 'novel'.

> novel was wikipedia's word. Memoir?

Tom Wolfe called it "A scorching epochal sensation," H.S.T. called it  
"Gonzo Journalism," the MSM judged it to be "The New Journalism." Like  
so much else that winds up between the covers, there's an admixture of  
fiction and journalism in Hunter S. Thompson's archetypically Badass  
missive, difference here being that H.S.T. threw all pretense of  
"Objectivity" out the window of the Great White Shark—"Fuck it!'—the  
literary madman would decry—"we're devolving into ancient Rome, Bread  
& Circuses, bring on the bearded ladies, the self-castrators, orgies  
of overindulgence, throw it on the bill, stiff management, what did  
they every do for us anyway?". What separated H.S.T.'s book from the  
pack was that "Raoul Duke" got stomped by Hell's Angels long before  
Altamont alerted the rest of a burgeoning subsector  of young 'n  
stoned Hip wannabees that maybe all that "Peace 'n Love" shit was  
overrated.

As regards the extraordinary sociological impact of "Fear & Loathing"— 
once that loose canon was rolling around, the hippie dream became  
intensely uncool, regularly appearing as a Gilligan's Island" level of  
joke all over the Tube, in "National Lampoon", movies, usw. Some folks  
who hopped on the hippie train while Owsley was still circulating kept  
the faith but most folks withdrew from the scene—another high water  
mark/bathtub ring was John Lennon's "God"—"The Dream is Over."

>> . . . The question is why take the action in IV to Vegas? and what  
>> happens
>> in Vegas and how is it being Las Vegas important?

Remember Doc's little drive to visit Fritz Drybeam? We start with a  
drive into Santa Monica—Raymond Chandler's "Bay City." In the process  
we float on by the "Hughes Company Property." When Fritz shows off his  
high-tech link to Arpanet to Doc TRW and the subcomponent parts of  
that corporation get name-checked—

	The origin of the company was in the Cleveland Cap Screw
	Company, founded in 1901 by Charles E. Thompson, which
	eventually became Thompson Products. The 1958 merger of
	Thompson with the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation (named
	after Simon Ramo andDean Wooldridge) was named
	Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc.,

	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRW

—everything here is circulating back to the CIA and projecting into a  
future of GPS and I-Phones via the interwebs. What Pynchon is doing  
here is revisionist history, showing that the "Nixon Era" really  
belonged to Howard Hughes. That's why Philip Marlowe's pothead  
offspring follows leads to Vegas, not just or only as an homage to  
Hunter S. Thompson, but also showing us what happened to the "Bay City  
Mob."

>> Certainly an interesting question. String flavours of Fear & Loathing
>> in Las Vegas throughout Inherent Vice. In a sense, both books address
>> the same central question: "How did the Dream die?" Whether you view
>> that Dream as referring to the Hippie Dream, or the American Dream,  
>> or
>> both, depends on your political outlook. My guess is that Pynchon,
>> like HST, sees the former as an incarnation of the latter.
>
> Seems like the Vegas version of the dream is what is left of the  
> Economy. US taxpayers propping up the"financial sector" which looks  
> more and more like the high interest gaming tables of deathbed  
> capitalism. Thinking of the loansharks in IV . That was when  
> loansharking was a crime and over 13 percent interest was  
> loansharking. Citibank, bailed out with government money at 0%  
> interest, just raised their card rates to 21% on most cards.

"This economy will self-destruct in 10, 9, 8, 7 . . ."