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What did Hunter S. Thompson mean by this quote exactly?

Sl33p3r

Sl33p3r

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"We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
 
this is just my own guess, no fact to back it up, but i think he is talking about the acid wave in the 60's, which was predominate in california (west of Las Vegas) and then subsided in the earily 70's, which was when Fear and Loathing took place.
 
The hippy movement in san franciso. The disillutionment that they could fight it all by not fighting but simply being. That peace can be brought to the world by means of prevailing alone. I belive he explains it before he said that.
 
its English in the precedent - he was merely remembering an experience. It has no meaning
 
I'm definitely not certain, and never read anything anywhere about it, but I've always assumed that he was referring to the beginning of a certain era of drug use [or of multiple drugs used at once, of which substance(s) I'm not sure], and about reaching a certain level of 'fucked-up-ed-ness'... But in a good way. Not the nauseated, sick kind.. Just being so completely elevated to the point where it's beautiful, and everything makes sense.. And that upon looking back with the "right kind of eyes" (meaning, high as FUCK), you would see just what was going through their head.. what was going on in their mind.. Well, that's how I've always interpreted it at least.. :)
 
Heres what I always interpreted it as:

The hippy drug movement started in California, and spread outwards/eastwards across the united states. But Las Vegas opposed all the hippy ideals, it was an unnatural place, where money was of paramount importance. This is the plac ethat the hippy "wave" could not cnvert, and so it "broke" and rolled back.
 
NameTaken said:
Heres what I always interpreted it as:

The hippy drug movement started in California, and spread outwards/eastwards across the united states. But Las Vegas opposed all the hippy ideals, it was an unnatural place, where money was of paramount importance. This is the plac ethat the hippy "wave" could not cnvert, and so it "broke" and rolled back.
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Ding ding ding

i think youre the closest, but its definately mixed in with Breakzs explanation too. i think if you 2 put yours together it would be correct
 
I'd say name taken has it without any of shaddows post . . . the thing is, no matter how many drugs hst took and no matter how soaked some of his writings were with drug experiences, he was almost always writing about social and political issues . . . so even under the guise of a drug fueled trip like fear and loathing was, he was really, throughout the whole book, writing a vitriolic salvo on the state of affairs in the country, socially and politically . . . name taken struck it pretty close
 
lacey k said:
Ding ding ding

i think youre the closest, but its definately mixed in with Breakzs explanation too. i think if you 2 put yours together it would be correct
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Yup, it's both time and place. Many in the 1960s cultural revolution thought the idealism of those times died with the assasination of RFK and MLK in 1968. Hunter, reflecting back on that period from the 1970s, was stuck in an opposite world, both temporally and physically. The idealism spread west from San Francisco and east from New England and the midatlantic, but it never quite got to the midwest and the Nevada desert, despite Las Vegas' geographic proximity to California.
 
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a main era - -the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - -that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - -on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - -the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Click to expand...

The whole passage brings a tear to my eye. I wish I could look at my own generation and say something like that. Unfortunatly it's not to be.
 
Hunter

Hunter, drank scotch for breakfast, with Cocaine.

he took hundreds of LSD trips, and gobbled drugs like candy.

The dude mayhave had some credibility back why, but later on?-he was a walking chemical taker.;)
 
probably some obscure reference to where there is a stash of a few ounces of lsd, stored under ground in a cave keeping it cool. Right by the high water mark, peel back the boulder and enter the time transport machine.

Crest Hill
Right kind of eyes
high water mark
look west
Roll it back

Its out there waiting in a cool dank cavern waiting for the water to rise so people can once agaian float on the liquid doing the back stroke underwater 5 point finger print goggles.

:)
 
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