Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

At midnight on the first day of the conference, Raoul and Gonzo drive out to get coffee. Gonzo shouts out of the window at two policemen and their wives in an adjacent car, “Hey there! You folks want to buy some heroin?” (151). The men are furious but unable to do anything. Raoul and Gonzo wind up in an all-night diner in North Las Vegas, the area where those marginalised from Las Vegas proper live. Gonzo insults a waitress by writing “back door beauty?” (159) on a napkin and giving it to her. She assumes Gonzo is a pimp and is propositioning her. When the waitress says she might call the police, Gonzo threatens her with a knife, cuts the chords on the diner telephone, and buys an entire lemon meringue pie, before leaving.

An “editor” explains that Raoul has “broken down completely” (161) and the manuscript of his text is so fragmented that for this section he had to rely solely on the tape recordings Raoul made. These are presented in dialogue form, relaying a conversation in a diner in North Las Vegas. Raoul and Gonzo tell a waitress that they are looking for the American Dream and have not yet been able to find it.