Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

This book was already twenty years old when I read it the first time. It was around 1990 and I was in my mid-thirties. I thought it was the funniest thing that had ever been written by a human. I discovered it one day while riding with a co-worker on his route in southeast Kansas. I saw it on his back seat and asked him about it, saying I had never read anything by Hunter Thompson. He said he thought I would like it. So I picked it up and I was laughing out loud before I got to the end of the first page. I finished the entire book by quitting time. Now having read it again almost thirty years later, I am disappointed but not surprised that I have a different opinion. It’s still funny in places, but I suspect they are different places than the first time. The over-the-top drug and alcohol abuse, which I realize is exaggerated for effect, no longer tickles my funny bone. The frenetic antics of Dr. Duke and his out-of-control attorney, both of them careening from one near-disaster to the next, is exhausting. That they somehow avoided arrest and jail for any number of offenses seems unlikely, even in Las Vegas, but again I understand there is exaggeration for effect. The thirty-something me saw Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas as a comic masterpiece. The senior citizen me finds it mildly amusing. Getting old sucks.