Post - Aug '09
www.visitbatcountry.com/
Tribe has served it's time & Thank You for an excellent run!
we've moved shop
or just come by, pull up some Playa - 9:30/Esplanade - let's drink something!

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"American dream" the BM theme as related to Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

Plot summary

Journalist Raoul Duke and attorney Dr. Gonzo travel to Las Vegas in 1971 to cover a motorcycle race for Sports Illustrated and enjoy a haphazardly planned vacation. As Duke and Gonzo live out the final days of the counter-culture through the use of drugs like LSD, cocaine, mescaline, and cannabis (among others), they wreck cars, hallucinate with visions of desert animals and, eventually, begin to mistrust each other. The two eventually leave Las Vegas, both on separate trips. The book ends with Raoul in a pharmacy in Denver, imagining himself "just sick enough to be totally confident".


Major themes

The book places the radical activism and drug culture of the 1960s into the context of what was the mainstream American experience at the time. It explores the idea that 1971 was a turning point in hippie and drug culture in America, when the countercultural movement no longer had momentum and its innocence and optimism of the late 1960s turned to cynicism.

The book is prefaced with a quote from Dr. Johnson: "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." The quote is a reference to the profuse drug use portrayed in the story, as the protaganists indulge in drugs to escape the realities of American life surrounding them. Ironically, Thompson spends a number of passages in the novel railing against the "failed" 1960's counterculture, or people who naively thought drug use was the answer in itself to society's problems. It is widely observed that such contradiction, a seeking of solace through excess, and the fact that the protagonist indulges in a world he criticizes harshly bear many thematic similarities to one of Thompson's favorite novels, The Great Gatsby.

Thompson puts forth the theory that his drug use, contrary to Leary-esque mind expansion experimentation, is intended to make himself a mess; he considers himself a posterchild of a generation of "permanent cripples, failed seekers..." and his erratic behavior paints a picture of the unrest and failure his generation feels.

The theme of the "American Dream," however, is arguably the novel's most prevalent motif, as Duke and Dr. Gonzo "search" for both the literary/methaphorical American Dream and, eventually, for what seems to be an actual geographical location somewhere in Vegas with the same name (but ends up being a burnt-down psychiatric office.) The story begins with Duke claiming that their adventure is to be a "gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country," or a certain celebration of America, though this idea soon turns cold as excess and fear set in and the symbolism of the burnt-down psychiatrist office is loud and clear. The two finally "find" the American Dream in the form of a seedy diner in a poor neighborhood, where Gonzo humiliates an attractive Mexican waitress while Duke casually looks on.

Throughout the novel, the main characters go out of their way to degrade, abuse, and destroy symbols of American consumerism and excess. Much of Las Vegas is used to symbolize the ugliness of mainstream American culture, to which the characters give little respect.


[edit] The "wave speech"

The "wave speech" is an important passage that appears about a third of the way through the novel, at the end of the eighth chapter. Thompson considered the "wave speech" to be "probably the best thing I've ever written." It tries to capture the zeitgeist of the hippie era, and the way it came to an end.
" Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
"Many have stated that this passage was Thompson's favorite part of the novel and the piece of writing he was the most proud of. He would often cite it during interviews and read it when he was asked to read a portion of the novel out loud. [7]

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"When the going gets weird, the weird turn Pro."

Bat Country is home to the professionally weird and socially feared.
Signature drinks, vibrating hugs, and mimosa-samosa binging are among the landmarks that can be put in print.

NOTE: Bat Country is also a government-designated sanctuary for the now-endangered Lustmonkeys.

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of
arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body,
but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke,
thoroughly used up,
totally worn out,
and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!"

--Hunter S. Thompson

-visitbatcountry.org

~*~*~*~*~*~Bat Think~

When you meet someone in Black Rock city of our hearts are exposed down to our very soul and when we meet the deepest part
of us touches. It can takes years out on that mainland to achieve this.
In the no holds barred, gloves off, shields down Black Rock town, the bond is instant.
Loving soul to loving soul.

love,
seth

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unmeasurable moments

21st century century tribe alive fire thru truth
society to ashes create destroy uncooth
pretend not to learn and feel
delicate science does reveal
unmeasurable moments
bare essence components
scramble frequencies
apply frequently
liberally to hands-face-skin
180 degrees the day will begin
cycle reborn re-think the norm
torn and tattered brain cells shattered
intelligence increases
what the playa teaches.

-walker AP

~*~*~*~**~**~*~*~
The ONLY thing we must do now, in life, is keep this close to our
hearts, one with our soul and to be as infectious to others. As this
IS the point. The great meaning of life is to love one another this much!

BRING IT HOME.
~;~

http://tribes.tribe.net/thisisbatcountry