Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas...is it a classic?

[Munro]

Currently I am reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter Thompson, and even though I am only half-way through it I was wondering if anyone who has read it here actually considers it literature, let alone a modern classic. It has been labelled as that, but I can't see why exactly as of yet. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Zeno]

I think it is considered "a so called classic" because it built up a following over time, it's author has a reputation in the world of writing; He is also a Pop Hero, it captures a piece out of the times and documents them, and it has been made into a movie thereby promoting it and giving it a big audience.

For myself there are many so called classics i don't care for at all but i can see how other people could like them just a matter of taste often it seems to me.

[Molokai]

I think "Fear and Loathing" is more of a cult classic, or a time piece than a full-blown classic. I myself consider a classic to be a work whose themes readers can relate to decades later. Shakespeare and Faulkner are examples of writers who still have influence on people's lives today.

I file Fear and Loathing together with the so-called "voice of a generation" books. "This Side of Paradise" was one of these. The book, more than anything provides you with a snapshot of that point in time. Classic? No. Very well-written portrayal of his viewpoint of a certain time and place? Yes.

[Zeno]

I do somewhat agree with the term "cult classic" however i would withhold judgement for another 150 years on the finale worth.

[Munro]

It turns out that I found an answer to my own question. My English teacher says that it may be considered a 'classic' rather than an account of some druggie journalist's hallucinogenic paranoid experiences in Las Vegas because it was a ground breaker in terms of journalists and how they report stories...
What I mean is that he was one of the first reporters writing on popular culture to actually get involved first-hand and live what he was writing about, note his amphetamine stimulated presence at the National Drug Conference (which was hilarious). Maybe thats why he makes so much fun of the rich journalists flying around everywhere in luxury, and also the policemen who were 10 years behind the 'real-world' in drug crime intelligence also attending the conference.
I agree though, I doubt it will remain a classic in 20 years, as I also think that a classic is timeless and speaks for all generations, not just one as Fear and Loathing did.

[Zeno]

the book is a fictionalized account. He wasn't actully on those drugs at the time discribed, it is somewhat satiricle. The myth that this was a true account built the repution of the book however it simultaneously caused Tompson a great deal of problems trying to get work from editors who believed it to be the truth of his working process.