It's just eight weeks till Bartfest, so I thought I'd get the partying started early and give you a recommendation to help stoke up that good old Vegas Fever with this week's recommendation.

But before that a message from the Editor: I wasn't joking last week. I really am going to be away for three months, and there won't be any Bartcop Books recommendations in that time unless someone else wants to take it over from me. If you're interested in taking it over then please email me: bartcopbooks@onetel.net.uk - if you just want to take it over for the three months, or for good, then I don't mind!

Still, there's still a few more weeks of me left (four after this if reality doesn't intervene too badly and prevent me posting an update) so let's not worry about the future and get on with the present and this week's recommendation:

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

"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 a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas."

And so Thompson's 'savage journey to the heart of the American Dream' begins. In simple terms, it's about the time he and his attorney spent in Las Vegas while Thompson was reporting on two events: the Mint 400 desert race and the National Conference of District Attorneys' four day seminar on narcotics and dangerous drugs. Of course, when Hunter S. Thompson's involved, nothing's ever as simple as it first appears.

His writing style is pretty much unlike anyone else's (though there have been numerous attempts to imitate him), a stream of distorted consciousness that mixes reportage, commentary and scabrous humour, turning the story from a simple task of attending and reporting to a full lesson in Gonzo journalism, where the writer becomes the story and conventional reporting tactics are out of the window. However, unlike the countless others who've tried to pastiche this style, Thompson always knows that there's only so much he can write about himself without boring the reader, and continually keeps the action flowing, turning his mission into a quest for the American Dream, wherever in Vegas it might be hiding.

Written in 1971, it captures Vegas at a time when it was just becoming the desert mega-resort it is today. Thompson's Vegas acts as a character in the book, a source of malevolent fun and games, where all the rules of the regular world are suspended and reality becomes something amorphous that lives on the other side of the desert. In his words, 'Circus Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis won the war. This is the Sixth Reich.' The whole disorienting spectacle of Vegas, with its lounge lizards and rotating bars trapping you there, forcing you to participate and enjoy it. But that's not to say it isn't fun in its own way.

It's a classic, anyway. I could go on and tell you about some of the great scenes in the book, like arguing over the definition of a taco in North Las Vegas, or trying to persuade Lucy (who paints pictures of Barbra Streisand) that she has to get away, or even the scenes in the Drug Conference, but I couldn't do it anywhere near as well as the man himself, and it'd just spoil the book for you. One thing I can tell you is that no matter how scary I may have made it all sound you still end up wanting to go to Vegas when you've finished the book, just to see what all the fuss is about.

"I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger...a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident."

---

OK, all done for another week. And, if you're the sort of person who finds books too challenging, then Terry Gilliam's film of Fear and Loathing is also worth watching.

Till next time...keep an eye out for the bats, and artists named Lucy.

Nick