The Rum Diary: A Novel

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The baggage room was empty. I found my two duffel bags and had a porter carry them out to the cab. All the way through the lobby he favored me with a steady grin and kept saying: "Sí, Puerto Rico está bueno...ah, sí:, muy bueno...mucho ha-ha, sí..." The Rum Diary is an early novel by American writer Hunter S. Thompson. [1] [2] It was written in the early 1960s but was not published until 1998. The manuscript, begun in 1959, was discovered among Thompson's papers by Johnny Depp. [3] The story involves a journalist named Paul Kemp who, in the 1950s, moves from New York to work for a major newspaper, The Daily News, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It is Thompson's second novel, preceded by the still-unpublished Prince Jellyfish. I have a theory that Hunter was inspired by Naipaul when he wrote this novel. He kind of looked upto Naipaul. I've seen a photo of Hunter driving Naipaul around. Naipaul gave the freedom to a lot of writers to be as honest about race as possible. The portrayal of the people of San Juan was very Naipaulian. The drug addled Hunter who went apeshit in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and behaved badly, and over here he expresses his fear for the natives of San Juan, who are not exactly the best hosts. He shook his head and pointed at the building, then at me. "Sí, estÿ News." He nodded, then pointed again at the building. "Sí," he said gravely.

We're all going to the same damn places, doing the same damn things people have been doing for fifty years, and we keep waiting for something to happen. You know - I'm a rebel, I took off - now where's my reward?" The fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, care-free living, drinking and nearly dying flowing through out the narrative is very Beat Generation. There's no real goal, no protagonist with any particular object to obtain or obstacle to hurdle. This is not genre writing. This is what was en vogue in the mid 20th century. It's what most of my crusty old writing professors muddled my brain with. "Get with the times! Genre writing is finish, maaan!" I bought it, hook, line and stinker, and so I struggled to come up with novel ideas. Ah, but I'm grudge-grinding and getting off topic. Yeamon laughed again. "Sala's the oldest man in San Juan. How old are you, Robert -- about ninety?"The goofy movie based on this book was a joke. I paid premium for a show in Mumbai to watch the crappy goofy movie. Hunter would have strangled the overrated Johnny Depp fraud for that travesty. The movie even ignored an important character in the book. What a joke the movie was. Lotterman laughed nervously. "You know what I mean, Bob -- let's try to be civil." He turned and waved at Yeamon, who was standing in the middle of the room, examining a rip in the armpit of his coat. He didn't even blink, and finally I shut my eyes and tried to sleep. Now and then I would glance up at the blonde head at the front of the plane. Then they turned out the lights and I couldn't see anything. Like most others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going"

No matter how much I wanted all those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction - toward anarchy and poverty and craziness. That maddening delusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas Goat." This has some noir influence, like The Stranger's Meursault on rum instead of wine, disaffected, full of late fifties hipster (but not quite Beat) ennui. Bukowski drinking territory. Raymond Carver. There's a kind of dark carnival scene that would be a lite version of the Day of the Dead festivities in Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. A sign said the News editorial office was on the second floor. I took an elevator, half expecting to find myself lifted into the midst of more violence. But the door opened on a dark hall, and a little to my left I heard the noise of the city room. Paul and Sala go to visit Yeamon a few days later to see how he is doing without a steady income. Sala and Paul witness Yeamon hitting Chenault before the three of them take off to have a few drinks at a local bar that Yeamon insists will give him credit. However, once they have shared in more than ten dollars of rum, the manager of the bar insists they pay their bill. Yeamon refuses and will not allow Sala or Paul to pay either. The three of them leave only to be chased down by the bar's customers and local police. A brawl erupts and the three men are beaten severely before being taken into police custody. At court later that night, the cops lie and say that Paul, Sala, and Yeamon started the brawl. Sanderson shows up and drops a few influential names that persuade the judge to set bail for all three.

He gobbled one of his hamburgers. "You'll see," he muttered. "You and Yeamon -- that guy's a freak. He won't last. None of us will last." He slammed his fist on the table. "Sweep -- more beer!" I have a fascination with Hunter S Thompson. To me, he is the quintessential bad boy of the late 60s and onward. In your face, always high, and getting away with it. I used to fall for guys like that. I even married one but it didn't last. Still, I have a romantic remnant that attracts me to such rebels.

I groaned, feeling the web of sin and circumstance close down on the table. Sala eyed me suspiciously. Thompson, did in fact, work for a newspaper in San Juan in the early 1960's. And the novel has the feel of truth. The narrative is fast paced and gritty in a he said/ she said type of alcoholic fugue, but there are wonderful, lucid passages also: Parts of the novel were published in 1990 in Thompson's collection, Songs of the Doomed. In these excerpts, it is possible to see how the manuscript was changed before its final publication. David S. Wills wrote in High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism that the original manuscript, as well as the 1990s excerpts, were "littered with" racial epithets and racist depictions, but that these had almost all been removed by the time it was released as a book. [7] At six-thirty I left the bar and walked outside. It was getting dark and the big Avenida looked cool and graceful. On the other side were homes that once looked out on the beach. Now they looked out on hotels and most of them had retreated behind tall hedges and walls that cut them off from the street. Here and there I could see a patio or a screen porch where people sat beneath fans and drank rum. Somewhere up the street I heard bells, the sleepy tinkling of Brahms' Lullaby.For those expecting wild excess and an almost wild, hallucinogenic, ride that you read in the "Fear & Loathing..." pieces, you won't get it here. Though you do see mini-glimpses of it--which I would stand-by to mark them with a pencil. But you do get the treat of seeing a true artist of his day in his earliest forms--almost like being able to see Hemingway or Fitzgerald in their early journalist days. Sweep arrived with our hamburgers. Sala grabbed his off the tray -- and opened them up on the table, throwing the lettuce and tomato slices into the ashtray. "You brainless monster," he said wearily. "How many times have I told you to keep this garbage off my meat?"

We sat there in silence until two men came out of an office on the other side of the room. One was the tall American I'd seen fighting in the street. The other was short and bald, talking excitedly and gesturing with both hands. The Rum Diary is an early work by the Gonzo Journalist. Ostensibly a novel, the line between fiction and fact feels blurry when reading Thompson. The story is about a bevy of young hard-living journalists working for a struggling newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's the late 1950's and Paul Kemp (Thompson?), the first person narrator, tells us of his and his disillusioned cohorts alcohol fuelled follies during his stint as a writer for a floundering newspaper.With its large amount of disrespect for women, I find the book disappointing and outdated. I didn’t connect with the main character because he did nothing. The most memorable scenes in the book contain Al’s burgers because the description of Puerto Rico falls short of any exotic glamour. I kept waiting for something exciting to happen and before I knew, the book was finished. The characters are unconvincing and as I said, there is no plot going on. Yeamon invites Paul to visit him and Chenault at their home in the country. Paul arrives early and sees the couple swimming in the nude. He is jealous of Yeamon, envious of how easily he and Chenault get along. He leaves for a while, returning at the scheduled time. Enchanted by Chenault, Paul is annoyed by the way Yeamon seems to treat her in a controlling way. The Rum Diary opens very promising, with snippets of office politics, masculine desperation and one’s search to find the meaning of life in a foreign land. For a book with nothing particularly interesting going on, Hunter S. Thompson got a way to keep me on the edge of my seat. The man’s got way with words. The only problem I encountered was, through the eyes of protagonist Paul Kemp, Thompson didn’t portray either the Puerto Ricans or the Americans in a very kind way. The expatriates were depicted as drunkards were irresponsible and unprofessional, while the natives were stereotyped as people who started fights with foreigners and cannot be trusted. Nothing is beautiful in Kemp’s eyes, except maybe “that little muff of brown hair standing out like a beacon against the white flesh of (Chenault’s) belly and thighs”. You're the same way", he said. "We're all going to the same damn places, doing the same damn things people have been doing for fifty years, and we keep waiting for something to happen." He looked up. "You know- I'm a rebel, I took off- now where's my reward?"