Book 02 - The Rum Diary - Hunter S. Thompson

Well, it's week two, and I'm posting again on time!  Last week the link closed early (unless Robin is in England), but I posted my review by 9PM EST on Saturday night, so in my book that counts as on time.  Not that it really matters that much to me.  I've said on numerous occasions that I'm not so worried about the individual weekly deadlines, just the overall 52 book goal.  However, given my poor showing last year, and the frantic rush to successfully finish the year before, maybe I should pay a little more attention to the weekly goal.

The release of the movie, The Rum Diary, last October got me to thinking about Hunter S. Thompson.  It's been a long time since I read anything of his (25 years??), so long that I considered rereading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  Although there have been a couple books on the challenge that I started in the past and never finished, so far I haven't completely reread any books, and those that were incomplete I have always restarted from the beginning.  I needed something by Thompson that I hadn't yet read, so I settled on The Rum Diary itself.  Unfortunately, due to the movie being out, I had to sit on the waiting list at the library for a while in order to get a copy, so I'm just now getting around to reading it.  I haven't yet seen the movie, but I loved Johnny Depp's treatment of Thompson in the movie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Although published in 1998, this book was originally written in the 1960s and is apparently Thompson's second book, with one other as-yet-to-be published book preceding it.  Thompson, known for his prolific drug use and his Gonzo journalishm style, is probably most famous for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, as well as his writing for the Rolling Stone magazine.  His book covers and articles are often accompanied by the nightmarishly surreal art of Ralph Steadman (here's a link to some of Steadman's work), and it is said the character of "Duke" in the Garry Trudeau comic strip Doonesbury is modeled after Hunter S. Thompson.


Book 02 - The Rum Diary - Hunter S. Thompson

The novel takes place in Puerto Rico in the late 1950s.  Kemp is a journalist who has hopped around from job-to-job, working in various places in Europe and most recently in New York, when he receives an offer to work at the San Juan Daily News, an English language newspaper on the island.  Upon his arrival, he learns of the shaky financial status of the publication, but stays anyway.  He befriends a photographer named Sala, who shows him to the local watering hole.  Al's serves cheap booze and hamburgers, and tends to be a hangout for the Daily News employees.  Kemp also becomes drinking buddies with Yeamon, a rather coarse and unstable reporter who lives with his girlfriend Chenault, who turns out to be a girl that Kemp fell madly in lust with on the plane trip down.

Kemp becomes aquainted with Sanderson, an extremely well connected man who started out working at the paper, but now runs a PR firm on the island.  Sanderson has his hands in everything, and starts to feed Kemp freelance work, which takes some of the edge off his worries that the newspaper will fold.  So much so that Kemp feels settled enough to get a car and a place of his own (for a while, he was staying with Sala).  However, this feeling of complacency makes him worry about feeling older and selling out.

Meanwhile, the newspaper is a cesspool of laziness, alcoholism and other forms of moral decay.  The reporters show up drunk, drink while they are working, and drink when they get off.  There was so much alcohol consumption going on that I thought I was in a Hemingway novel.  And like Hemingway, there is the question of whether alcohol is the cause or the symptom of a greater problem:  that of being lost in life.

Eventually the drinking takes on tragic consequences.  We learn that Yeamon frequently beats Chenault when he gets drunk.  Yeamon's instability under the influence leads to his dismissal from the newspaper, and shortly thereafter to Kemp, Sala, and Yeamon being savagely beaten by locals and local police and thrown into jail.  Chenault turns out to be just as volatile when drunk, and a trip to Carnival in St. Thomas again turns violently ugly when both she and Yeamon act out.  Finally, the financial troubles of the newspaper combine with the drunken mental instability of the employees (including Yeamon) to ratchet the tragedy up to a whole new level.

For an early effort, this novel is surprisingly good.  Thompson has a fluid writing style that keeps things moving along, and because this is only the 50s, his depiction of drug abuse seems to be limited to alcohol.  The book tends to mirror its characters, though.  It does not move forward much.  There is no great redemption.  Although Kemp learns things about himself over the course of the story, it is unclear in the end as to whether any of these lessons stick.  It is not even clear as to whether he took what seemed to be the immediate path in front of him.  All-in-all though, I'd say it's a pretty good read.