Adore and Loving 'Fear and Loathing' -- by Matty Jacobson

Matty Jacobson fears nothing
and loathes everything. So
it's only natural he would
love Hunter S. Thompson's
"Fear and Loathing."

THE SKEWED REVIEW - If you're going to write a book about nothing, then at least make it entertaining.

I could wax annoyance eternally on how Gregory Maguire managed to fill four books with almost nothing. However, genius by the name of Hunter S. Thompson managed to fill a book with nothing, but managed to make it worth my while.

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is Thompson's semi-autobiographical account of a two-day drug riddled stint in Las Vegas under the guise of a journalistic endeavor. The story follows Raoul Duke and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they drive from Los Angeles to Vegas with myriad drugs packed in their red convertible.

The 48-hour account of Duke and Gonzo running amok in Vegas is hilariously stupefying. There literally is no point to the story. There's really not an end game in mind. However, since the story is about two men on a psychedelic trip, then I was more than satisfied that no goals were accomplished.

I especially love that, no matter where the two go, they are always making up stories on the spot as to who they are and what they are doing. Most of the time, the explanations are unwarranted. For example, near the beginning of the book, the two go to buy a tape recorder. They arrive late at the store and have to be let in by one of the employees. As they're leaving, the attorney basically tells them all to go to hell and that he'll be back to blow up the store.

Genius.

After reading the book, I had to do some research on Thompson. If you haven't seen the movie adaptation to this book, then you're missing out. I think the film captures the essence of the story almost exactly. And as for Johnny Depp's rendition of Thompson? Well, let's just say that Depp toned it down.

I looked up a few interviews with Thompson from the '70s and '80s. He's so outrageous that he's literally a caricature of himself. I just pictured Thompson reading the book aloud. I could almost hear his rambling, stuttering speech lifting off the pages of the book.

"Fear and Loathing" is a wonderful read for those times when you're just a little sick of those hoity-toity look-at-how-learned-I-am authors who string together unending sentences that, without the aid of a thesaurus, would be nothing but second-grade jibber. See the previous sentence for a small example.

Out of OzzZZZZZZZzzzz - By Matty Jacobson

Matty Jacobson is owner, operator,
editor and contributor to The Skewed
Review. He's also the most
disappointed man in the land. For
some reason, he expects story tellers
to tell complete stories.
How absurd! 

I think the most frustrating thing about Gregory Maguire's re-imagining of the stories of Oz through the eyes of the Wicked Witch of the West, her friends, and her family, is he seems to think stories aren't allowed to have closure.

I read "Wicked" before it was ever a musical, and I remember thinking the end was, well, not an end. It was like there was supposed to be more to the story but Maguire just stopped writing. But then "Son of a Witch" came out, so I assumed the story would pick up again where it had left off before.

Wrong.

So I guess it was a "Fool me once, shame on you" scenario when I assumed the third book, "A Lion Among Men" would do what I wanted the first two to do: resolve something. Anything. But, no.

So when "Out of Oz" appeared, I thought that maybe, perhaps, hopefully, Maguire would fashion a satisfactory end to the saga of, well, what is this a saga of?

I decided to check out some reviews before I actually put my time into reading the monstrosity that is "Out of Oz." USA Today's reviewer said, believe it or not, that it was a satisfactory end to the "Wicked" saga.

But now that I look back at the so-called saga, I realize it's not a saga at all. It's more like a reading of minutes from a bureaucratic meeting that just happened to take place in Oz.

From the first page of "Wicked" to the last page of "Out of Oz," I realized that there isn't a purpose to anything. Ninety percent of each book is more about the rules and regulations of Oz than any actual plot lines. The readers are forced to watch some group of people wandering around the land for literally no apparent reason other than to wander.

We are introduced to random characters who seem to have something important to do with the plot, and if they do, their stories are told in some other book somewhere else, because I can't find a trace of them in the "Wicked" stories.

But what pissed me off the most was the potential these books had to be literary gold. There was so much potential for character development. There was so much potential for action. There was so much potential for hear-wrenching love stories. But in the end, I never felt for any character. And it didn't matter that I didn't feel for any character because none of the characters cared, either.

The whole series ended with more questions than answers. So that's the schtick, you might say? Well, I don't accept it. If Gregory Maguire would have put half as much effort into drafting a complete story as he did with describing how Glinda prepared a meal, then these books would have won my heart over.

Instead, they left me wishing I could click my heels together three times and retrieve all the time it took to read these books -- time I'll never get back.