The Rum Diary: A Novel

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I actually really enjoyed reading this. It was well written and engaging. I can see why people might have disliked it, but the things people disliked about it worked for me here for some reason. It's funny because the things I liked about this book didn't seem to appeal to me when I read On The Road right before this. Here I kind of liked the directionless plot line and self centered characters. I think the difference here is it felt like those things played into the overall ruminations in the book about aging and wasted time. 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..." To me it seemed as though this was almost autobiographical in the sense that parts of HST are in different characters. Maybe the narrator is HST at the time he wrote this - not young and naive anymore, but experienced to know what his future held and learning his chops as he rolled along like a beach ball in the surf.

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!" 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." Sweep came hurrying out with two more beers and Sala grabbed them off the tray. Just then Yeamon appeared in the doorway; he saw us and came over to the table. 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. But I haven't read his books, just his Rolling Stone pieces as they appeared during the years I was reading that mag, before it lost its edge. So, in my usual way, I am starting at the beginning.

After ten minutes of half-hearted listening I suspected I was in a den of hustlers. Most of them seemed to be waiting for the seven-thirty flight from Miami, which -- from what I gathered of the conversations -- would be bulging at the seams with architects, strip-men, consultants and Sicilians fleeing Cuba. Yeamon nodded. "Robert needs a woman," he said gently. "His penis is pressing on his brain and he can't think." urn:lcp:rumdiarylonglost0000thom:epub:56a4b443-950e-4f15-9b49-e6afb23ec71e Foldoutcount 0 Identifier rumdiarylonglost0000thom Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2c04nxsgnt Invoice 1652 Isbn 0684855216 Lccn 98034128 Ocr tesseract 5.1.0-1-ge935 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9219 Ocr_module_version 0.0.16 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-0001232 Openlibrary_edition 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." Finally I gave up. There seemed to be no restaurants in the Old City. The only thing I saw was called the New York Diner, and it was closed. In desperation, I hailed a cab and told him to take me to the Daily News.

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." There is a reason Johnny Depp chose to make a film of this book as his personal tribute to Hunter. Depp needed to find the perfect work that exhibited Hunter in the personality as he truly was to the people that knew him, rather than the crazy, Doonesbury-like caricature that he would become and eventually how people later remembered him. This book (and even the movie to a certain extent) definitely does do that. It is really for the fans that appreciate the zealousness of writing that HST lived for and nothing draws that out better than earliest, rawest novel. 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.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. Sala groaned miserably. "Oh god, here he is," he muttered. "Don't stomp me, Yeamon -- I didn't mean it."

It was four-thirty when I woke up, hungry and dirty and not at all sure where I was. I walked out on my balcony and stared down at the beach. Below me, a crowd of women, children and pot-bellied men were splashing around in the surf. To my right was another hotel, and then another, each with its own crowded beach. Paul is an arrogant journalist who makes his way from New York to Puerto Rico to work at the only English-language paper on the island. As the paper sits near bankruptcy, he begins to question the reason for coming to the island in the first place. He and his colleagues don’t do much reporting except to each other about drinking and getting laid. Paul falls into a love triangle with a fellow colleague Yeamon and his girlfriend Chenault. I would guess that in the time that lapsed in this story, a couple tons of rum was consumed. I suppose that explains the title. But serious, these people had to be staggering around drunk all the time. It's amazing they actually got anything done. Oh wait. That's right. They didn't. But considering this story is set in the late 1950's I suppose that would explain their behavior as well. Sala shook his head. "That figures -- he's a nut." He nodded. "Probably mouthed off at those union goons. It's some kind of a wildcat strike -- nobody knows what it means."

Table of Contents

The airport in San Juan is a fine, modern thing, full of bright colors and suntanned people and Latin rhythms blaring from speakers hung on naked girders above the lobby. I walked up a long ramp, carrying my topcoat and my typewriter in one hand, and a small leather bag in the other. The signs led me up another ramp and finally to the coffee shop. As I went in I saw myself in a mirror, looking dirty and disreputable, a pale vagrant with red eyes. 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. 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.

My apartment in New York was on Perry Street, a five minute walk from the White Horse. I often drank there, but I was never accepted because I wore a tie. The real people wanted no part of me. He laughed. "Dysentery, crabs, gout, Hutchinson's Disease -- you can get anything here, anything at all." He looked at his watch. "Wait about ten minutes and I'll take you up to Al's." In exchange for Sanderson's help in court, Paul takes on several writing assignments for a couple of Sanderson's clients. One of these requires Paul to travel to a small nearby island where a businessman is preparing to put up a resort. Afterward, Paul goes to St. Thomas to meet Yeamon and Chenault at carnival. Carnival is a loud and out of control party in town, so Paul and his friends go out to the pier to find a quieter party among the yachts. Someone suggests they go to a party at a house on the outskirts of town. When they arrive, Chenault goes off to dance with some of the locals. Before Paul and Yeamon know what is happening, Chenault is whisked off with some men who clearly have perverted intentions. Paul and Yeamon try to rescue Chenault, but are stopped by the locals. The next day, they go to the police, but find little help there. Paul and Yeamon decide to go home and hope for the best. I believe this is labeled as fiction, but since Hunter S. Thompson mostly wrote about his experiences, The Rum Diary is probably about as fictional as say Kerouac's On The Road. I don't know," I said. "A fine young thing came down on the plane with me." I smiled. "I think I'll look around for her tomorrow. She's bound to be on the beach somewhere."The thing that makes it less than fun is that there's some physical abuse (slapping) by the friend of Kemp of the (hopeful) girlfriend, and then she dances naked in a bar one night and is gone missing for a couple days, with no real explanation of what seems to be ominous events we can only guess at. The boys don't endear themselves to the locals with their arrogance. . . I think of Graham Greene's foreign journalist stories such as The Quiet American, or Hem's drunken Pamplona novel, The Sun Also Rises. Sound bleak? I would have liked it more at 25 than I did, but Thompson reveals lots of good writing chops here that makes it engaging. Having worked for newspapers, I enjoyed living vicariously through the main character Paul Kemp "who, in the 1950s, moves from New York to work for a major newspaper, The Daily News, in San Juan, Puerto Rico." (Wikipedia) The struggle to get the story, the weak pay, oddball co-workers and foreign assignments are all dreams and nightmares of the typical journalist, and so it was easy to slide into a comfort-read with The Rum Diary. Lotterman looked puzzled. "Judge Kemp?" he muttered. Then he smiled broadly and held out both hands. "Oh yes -- Kemp! Good to see you, boy. When did you get in?" 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. The cook shuffled across the patio with our drinks. "Where were you before this?" Sala asked, lifting his beers off the tray.