Yeamon came toward us with a long bow-legged stride, smiling politely when Lotterman introduced me. He was tall, with a face that was either arrogant or something else that I couldn't quite place. I bought this book when I was a total wannabe in Chennai around 2003. Wannabes discover all the evil books. They deserve the alien cultures they appropriate. Then I reread this while I was wasting my youth getting drunk in Mumbai bars. A man discovers the books that destroys his life. Or some books discover men who want to destroy their lives. There is some magic here. 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?" 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.

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."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] 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?" Yeamon laughed. "Chenault thought you were the lunatic -- claimed you kept staring at her, then ran amok on the old man -- you were still beating him when she got off the plane." I walked for thirty minutes, looking into windows of stores that sold "Ivy Liga" clothes, peering into foul bars full of whores and sailors, dodging people on the sidewalks, thinking I would collapse at any moment if I didn't find a restaurant. 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"

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..." 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. 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.Thompson finished a draft of The Rum Diary in the early sixties but continued to work on it throughout that decade, ultimately selling it to Random House after they agreed to publish his first book, Hell's Angels. However, he felt that the more time passed, the more difficult it was to write about an increasingly distant era. [6] After missing various deadlines, he gave up on The Rum Diary until 1998, when it was finally published. 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. 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. I have no doubt Hunter Thompson could have been a decent and successful novelist. Instead he created and named his own branch (Gonzo Journalism) of the New Journalism Tom Wolfe and others had pioneered. He probably made the right decision if a lasting literary legacy was his goal, and I think it was.

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." Happy," I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is on of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much fait in them and I am no exception -- especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.' - Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary Arriving half-drunk in a foreign place is hard on the nerves. You have a feeling that something is wrong, that you can't get a grip. I had this feeling, and when I got to the hotel I went straight to bed. 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. 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 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. 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”.

He looked at me as if it were incredible that I should have to ask. "Didn't you see him?" he said. "That wild-eyed sonofabitch! Lotterman's scared shitless of him -- couldn't you see it?" Oh girlfriends, is this stuff dated! It’s so dated it stinks. I can’t imagine who would like to read it, really. Old boys, priests of the cult of St. Hemingway, who feel nostalgic about the good times when women, coloreds, and queers knew their place? Honestly, I can’t see the appeal. I groaned, feeling the web of sin and circumstance close down on the table. Sala eyed me suspiciously. 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?" 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.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