The Rum Diary: A Novel

Product Information

Soon as we leave here," Yeamon replied. "I'll take her on out to the house." He nodded. "Of course I'll have to borrow your car -- too much luggage for the scooter." 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 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 It is Thompson's second novel, preceded by the still-unpublished Prince Jellyfish.

The Rum Diary is a book dripping with legend and lore: that Thompson wrote it in 1960 when he was a Hemingway worshipper but couldn't get it published, that Johnny Depp found the manuscript among Thompson's papers and got it published in 1998, that Depp finally got it made as a movie in 2011, six years after Thompson's death. When it comes to Hunter S Thompson, the truth is deeply buried in his outrageous persona. Wait a minute!" I shouted. "Another passenger!" I watched until she reached the bottom of the steps. Then I turned around to smile as she came on. I was reaching for my typewriter, thinking to put it on the floor, when an old man shoved in front of me and sat down in the seat I was saving.An unlikable cast of characters who we never learn much about, and not much in the way of an actual plot, make it ineffective as a traditional novel, and it certainly doesn't have that feel. 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?" Another, perhaps Yeamon - is Thompson as he would like to see himself - the wild, aimless wanderer who knows he'll never starve as long as he has a typewriter or a pen and paper. The waiter appeared with the beers and Sala snatched them off the tray. "No girl with any brains would come here," he said. "Just virgins -- hysterical virgins." He shook his finger at me. "You'll turn queer in this place, Kemp -- mark my words. This place will turn a man queer and crazy." 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:

Then the stewardess arrived, followed by the co-pilot, who demanded to know what I thought I was doing. Paul's perspective is too depressing because he finds nothing beautiful - everything is grey and flat. Besides his passive attitude, he's a pretty flat character with no particular ambitions except getting drunk and getting laid. Somewhere through halfway, it became repetitive to read about his monotonous days. The cook shuffled across the patio with our drinks. "Where were you before this?" Sala asked, lifting his beers off the tray. This is where one of the greatest writers of my generation had his start. In his early 20s, and fresh out of the military, Hunter S. Thompson would spend his days honing his craft in the developing years of Puerto Rico. Tapping into the alcohol, sexiness and unapologetic excess that would define the later Gonzo style of the "Fear and Loathing..." works, "The Rum Diary" finds Hunter in the makings of his talent. It is unrefined and his trade-marks haven't quite become the hallmark prose you normally get, but what you can see (and what always existed in all his works) is Hunter's heart. He truly loves to write and in loves being a writer. You also get an excellent early glimpse into the soul and idealism that also makes up Hunter's personality. Hunter admired F. Scott Fitzgerald probably more than any other writer, and "The Rum Diary" is his ode to Fitzgerald.

Table of Contents

He laughed. "Oh no -- tomorrow. I wouldn't put you to work tonight." He laughed again. "No, I want you boys to eat" He smiled down at Sala. "I suppose Bob's going to show you the town, eh?" The film opens as the ambitious young hero Paul Kemp (Depp), sporting a white suit, a straw hat and the dark glasses Thompson would wear for a lifetime, applies for a reporting job at the Star. It doesn't appear to be the kind of paper that attracted the ambitious in those days. Lotterman ( Richard Jenkins), the editor, spots him for trouble and immediately asks him how much he drinks. "The high end of social."