Fear and Loathing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fear and Loathing was the original published title of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson's iconic 1971 work Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, as it first appeared in the pages of Rolling Stone. Thompson would later use the term "Fear and Loathing" as the prefaced title of many other published essays and books.
Since the republication of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in stand-alone book form, it has become Thompson's most famous work, and the piece of literature most often associated with the title Fear and Loathing; subsequently, the term has become colloquial shorthand for the book's full title.
Other works by Thompson using the Fear and Loathing title include:
- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, Thompson's account of the 1972 U.S. presidential election, particularly the specific campaign of Democratic candidate George McGovern.
- Fear and Loathing in America, a published collection of Thompson's personal letters.
- Many of Thompson's articles for Rolling Stone used Fear and Loathing and a place name for their titles. For example: Fear and Loathing in Wisconsin and Fear and Loathing in Elko.
The phrase was much-used by Thompson to describe the feelings he most often came into contact with - his Loathing of the way the American Government of the time was run, as well as his Fear of what that same Government might do, to him or to anyone else, or, alternately, the Loathing in which that same Government (or 'Establishment') viewed Hunter and his 'kind' (hippies and other non-conformists) as well as the Fear the establishment had for people who refused to conform to it. It is likely that he borrowed the actual phrase from a 1918 translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which on page 183 reads 'his father, his governess and his nurse all not only disliked Vronsky, but regarded him with fear and loathing, though they said nothing about him, while his mother regarded him as her best friend.'
Thompson himself first used the phrase in a letter to a friend written in the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, describing how he felt about whoever had shot President John F. Kennedy.
Douglas Brinkley, the editor of another one of Thompson's books The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967, notes that Hunter Thompson took over Kierkegaard's phrase 'fear and trembling' from the work of that name (pub. 1843).
