Fear and Loathing in 1971

"They threw me off the hay truck about noon."
the opening sentence of James M. Cain's novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice.
a favorite; I am a fan of that sentence.

Recently while waiting for an ill-fated appointment, took with me a copy of Hunter Thompson's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (I hate to wait with nothing to read -- Time then seems to ooze forward like a snail on barbituates).
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The opening sentence of Loathing / Vegas is,
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."
That sentence immediately reminded me of Cain's opening Postman sentence.

"They threw me off

the hay truck about noon."

* * * *

"We were somewhere around

Barstow on the edge of

the desert when the drugs

began to take hold."

Those two sentences take my attention and invite me into the story in a similar way: a sense of action; some sort of harshness, or bleakness; foreboding; and wry fatalism.

Postman, pub. 1934

Loathing, pub. 1971

~~~~ Perhaps Hunter Thompson was inspired by Cain's First Sentence.

And speaking of 1971, tomorrow it's been 39 years since the Watergate break-in.

-30-