Read Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, as It Was Originally Published in Rolling Stone (1971)

Last week, we revis­it­ed John­ny Dep­p’s read­ing of the famous “wave speech” from Hunter S. Thomp­son’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Would­n’t you know it, a week lat­er, we’ve dis­cov­ered that you can read the entire text of the orig­i­nal nov­el, online, for free.  The Gonzo jour­nal­ism clas­sic first appeared as a two-part series in Rolling Stone mag­a­zine in Novem­ber 1971, com­plete with illus­tra­tions from Ralph Stead­man, before being pub­lished as a book in 1972.  Rolling Stone has post­ed the orig­i­nal ver­sion on its web site. The 23,000 word man­u­script famous­ly begins:

We were some­where around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remem­ber say­ing some­thing like “I feel a bit light­head­ed; maybe you should dri­ve. …” And sud­den­ly there was a ter­ri­ble roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swoop­ing and screech­ing and div­ing around the car, which was going about 100 miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was scream­ing: “Holy Jesus! What are these god­damn ani­mals?”

Down the line, you can find this text per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks, as well as in our List of 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005). Enjoy.

via @SteveSilberman