“For many readers of ‘Fear and Loathing,’ the real Oscar Acosta remains invisible.” It’s a fair point but not a unique circumstance. “f Acosta lives in the white imagination at all, it is as Raoul Duke’s wingman - a bombastic, cartoonish ‘ethnic’ attorney whose ethnicity is obscured,” Aguirre maintains. Later, he also contributed the introduction to the paperback editions of Acosta’s novels, which are still in print.Īs Abby Aguirre notes in her recent New Yorker piece, some critics see Thompson’s depiction of Acosta as an enduring slight. Following his disappearance and presumed death in 1974, Thompson wrote a lengthy eulogy in Rolling Stone. Sales were sluggish, and Acosta’s personal problems intensified. Gonzo, a 300-pound Samoan attorney.īut the attention generated by Thompson’s work allowed Acosta to place his own fiction Rolling Stone’s book division quickly published two autobiographical novels. Specifically, Acosta was irked that Thompson converted his character into Dr. As the Las Vegas material shaped up, however, tensions surfaced between the two men. At the same time, he was an aspiring novelist who sought and received literary advice from Thompson. Acosta had been involved in the Chicano Movement and was defending its local leaders in court. The two men met in Aspen but lit out for Nevada from Los Angeles. Some of the recent critical conversation has revolved around Oscar Acosta, who accompanied Thompson on both trips to Las Vegas. Together, they put Thompson in exalted literary company and drew millions of new fans who didn’t read books. In 1996, Modern Library issued its own edition, and a film version appeared two years after that. In November 1971, Rolling Stone ran the Las Vegas story in two long articles Random House published the book version in 1972 and helped make Thompson a cultural icon. But if the counterculture was faltering during the Nixon era, Thompson was hitting his stride. The Gonzo classic hinged on two drug-fueled weekends in Las Vegas and served as a freeform epitaph for the 1960s. Thompson’s comic novel is already under way. THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is almost upon us, and a critical reconsideration of Hunter S.
0 kommentar(er)
