![]() Trying to put Puerto Rico on the literary map like Hemingway did for Paris, he spells out a story of corruption, boredom, and alcohol in a more simple San Juan, before the big booms of the travel booms and technology of the sixties. This quasi-fictional account of a New York reporter drifting into a job at the San Juan Daily News is somewhat based on Thompson's experience on the Carribean island in the late 1950. ![]() He struggled all through the sixties to get this thing rewritten and published, but because of its quality and Thompson's legendary shakedowns with agents, publishers, and contracts, it died on the vine - until a few years ago. Thompson, a book that he started writing in 1959 to make a quick buck. "When the sun got hot enough it burned away all the illusions and I saw the place as it was - cheap, sullen, and garish - nothing good was going to happen here." Early characteristics of Thompson's style do break through - most notably the drunken madness and brawls that the antagonist gets involved in. The novel simmers along at a subtle pace leading to an edgy - and quite shocking - climax at a street festival. Also, judging by his letters, he was immensley proud of this book and - as a desperate poverty striken writer without much work - he became disillusioned with publishers and the writing world in general on its lack of success. ![]() Reading his letters at the time, he sweated blood to try and get this piece of work published, despite rewriting it many, many times. This is not to say that this novel is just a cash in for Thompson. The Rum Diary was actually written in the late 50s - early 60s, however it remained unpublished until the later years when Thompson's name was enough to give it a seal of quality. Sure, his influences do include Hemingway, and this is most notable in The Rum Diary, but Thompson manages to capture a boozy, sleazy, sun-soaked world full of typical Thompson creatures. However, there was much more to Thompson's methodical writing than 'gonzo' (see his earlier letters for example). This is largely due to its pre-gonzo style that will alienate most of the fans who have been seduced by his later works - most notably Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Thompson's thinly veiled self-acknowledged portrayal of a journalist - Paul Kemp - who leaves New York to go working for a folding newspaper, the San Juan Daily News - is a largely ignored piece of work. And this too, far in the future, I will look on as youthful folly. It feels like the end of an era, the end of some mythological golden age, a stage we all go through and only realize it on the way out the door, when you realize that the "best years of your life" - the time when nothing could destroy us, that anything and everything was possible, when we were bigger than the world, even the universe, up knocking at God's door, absolutely sure we could do it bigger, better, faster, more. Something has changed and to the younger invincible self, it feels like death. Paul has recently turned 30 and he's realizing how arrogant and cocky he was in his younger years, how he eschewed the plain averageness of middle class suburban life, rebelled against everything and how now that's not what he wants. In it, the very Hunter-like protagonist, Paul Kemp, runs around Puerto Rico doing very Hunter-like things, but there's something extra odd in there that isn't in anything else I've read of his. Hunter wrote it when he was 22 and it shows, but in the way that a sapling has the blueprint for the whole tree in its little structure. The writing is beautiful, with delicious descriptions of the beautiful and the ugly alike, but there is no real tension to keep you riveted on Kemp's story. The book meanders through Kemp's time in Puerto Rico, his drunken nights and even drunker days, his wild exploits with the paper and the journalists that work there, with no real point to it. And yet, his opinion of his surroundings and the people he spends time with is quite detached his hatred is a cold thing, he has no passion and is not spurred to action by his malcontent. He's simply unsatisfied in his life, in his career, in everything. He hates Old San Juan, he despises Condado, he visits St Thomas and is ready to be quit of it after only one night. He yearns for the places he hasn't been yet, or has already been he yearns to be anywhere but where he is at that moment. He's a drifter, never quite finding a place to put down roots, and though he wishes that San Juan will be different for him, he soon realizes that is not to be. Paul Kemp moves to Puerto Rico for a position with the local paper.
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