Fetch Your Copy Diário A Rum Assembled By Hunter S. Thompson Shared As Kindle
just spent more than an hour and a half finishing The Rum Diary, I wanted to stop and hit the sack but something inside me whispered to go on, It was when I realized that nothing actually happened in the book, Large portion of the book was very descriptive its like reading a strongopinionated newspaper article about Puerto Rico and its appalling inhabitants.
The Rum Diary opens very promising, with snippets of office politics, masculine desperation and ones 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 mans got way with words, The only problem I encountered was, through the eyes of protagonist Paul Kemp, Thompson didnt 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 Kemps eyes, except maybe “that little muff of brown hair standing out like a beacon against the white flesh of Chenaults belly and thighs”.
In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed Thompsons writing style, Verdict: Highly engaging though lacks of substance,
Not sure what the purpose of this book was, Throughout reading I struggled to find any semblance of a plot as the drunken Paul Kemp meandered through a series of rum bottles and dull conversations with equally dull characters.
My /stars, I couldn't get into this, luckily the audio edition was onlyhrs andmins long so it's not like I wasted a lot of time on the book.
Campbell Scott was a decent enough narrator but he could only do so much with the drab 'story' if it can be called that.
My recommendation: avoid, there are too many good books waiting to be read,
On a positive note, I thought the place setting was pretty interesting and the author did manage to instill a distinct Caribbean feel throughout.
'Here I was, living in a luxury hotel,racing around a halfLatin city in a toy car that looked like a cockroach and sounded like a jet fighter, sneaking down alleys and humping on the beach, scavenging for food in sharkinfested waters, hounded by mobs yelling in a foreign tongue and the whole thing was taking place in quaint old Spanish Puerto Rico.
. . '
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's I suppose that would explain their behavior as well.
"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"
"You fool," I said, " There is no reward and there never was, "
Gritty and raw with a tinge of desperation, Paul Kemp in addition to everyone else he's become acquainted with since his arrival on the island
of Puerto Rico have only ended up there in hopes of escaping to something better.
After quickly realizing that Puerto Rico at the time is far from their original vision of paradise, the spiteful and bitter attitudes begin making an appearance.
It doesn't take Kemp long to become just as bitter after the realization that a person can work so hard to have a better life, have more money, and to accomplish your dreams and never actually get anything done except wasting time and getting older.
"We keep getting drunk and these terrible things keep happening and each one is worse than the last.
. . Hell, it's no fun anymore our luck's all running out at the same time, "
The Rum Diary is simply that, a diary, There isn't even that much of a plot, really, It's almost like a pilot episode, a small glimpse of what's to come but unfortunately there isn't any full episode to look forward to.
Despite that, I find myself extremely fascinated and I now have an incredibly strong desire to read anything I can get my hands on of Hunter S.
Thompson's. The Rum Diary is his second novel which he wrote at the age ofis semiautobiographical because Hunter himself flew down to Puerto Rico as a journalist to write for a newspaper.
Despite writing The Rum Diary in the early's, it was never actually published untilbecause no one was interested and he was constantly rejected.
Fortunately, he revisited the idea of publishing it several decades later and he finally succeeding in releasing it to the world.
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.
I do think it can be kind of tiring when you read multiple books with a male protagonist and you can just tell the character doesn't really see women as multifaceted human beings.
I would avoid this if that's going to bother you, I didn't care except when because that felt like a little much.
I was more incredulous than anything else though,
I really want to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas now, I've read mostly everything else HST has written, and had heard of this early novel, but hadn't found it on the library shelves.
So when I found it on sale at Borders I jumped, It's clear that this is early work, it lacks the bite of the Gonzo, Nevertheless, the writing is clear and well paced,
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.
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.
All in all, a good read, If you've read other, later books of his and expect to find more of that in this you might be disappointed.
I felt more like I was reading Hiassen, or even Dave Barry some of the time, LOVED IT Much preferred this thend time around,
Loved him referring to the other woman as his pig date all the time! So funny.
I have a fascination with Hunter S Thompson, To me, he is the quintessential bad boy of the lates 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,
The Rum Diary is a book dripping with legend and lore: that Thompson wrote it inwhen 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, that Depp finally got it made as a movie in, six years after Thompson's death.
When it comes to Hunter S Thompson, the truth is deeply buried in his outrageous persona,
I put the book on thelist for My Big Fat Reading Project, I saw the movie last year and it was good, Depp spiffed it up for thest century but the book is better less flashy, more sunk in youthful despair, and the female character is unrecognizable.
She is not the one in the movie, she is more pathetic, but most of all she fits right in with the way bad girls were portrayed by male novelists in the earlys.
Hemingway would have approved.
The Rum Diary is a quick read, Since it is about newspaper people working at a failing daily paper in San Juan, Puerto Rico, it reminded me a little of The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, though this is the better book in my opinion.
As a piece of Hunter Thompson history, the novel contains numerous harbingers of the man's later writing, Next up: Hell's Angels,!
My first night in Saigon, I was sitting in a restaurant when a blind lady selling counterfeit books approached my table, Despite her glazed eyeballs and her inability to find my eyes with her own I was captivated by her bright personality and attractive face, and so I decided to actually have a look at her selection of illegally printed books rather than shoo her off like I did everyone else.
She mostly had garbage travel books and lonely planet guides, but I did spot The Rum Diaryin the corner of my eye, and being a fan of Hunter S.
Thompson fan I realised this was a great opportunity to read his first novel, which was written inbut not published untila late bloomer if there ever was one.
I also bought some weed off the woman before parting ways! I read this book everywhere, I read it in my shoe box hotel room I use the word room lightly, I read it in the sun, I read it on the bus, I read it on the toilet, I read it on the beach and I read it while drinking rum.
. . lots of rum. The word 'rum' gets thrown around so much you become fixated on it, and before you know it you're ordering three or four with every meal.
The Rum Diary is a very easy and enjoyable read, It's a bit slower than Hunter's other novels, but is to be expected as he was still learning his chops.
That is not to say he didn't have any chops when he wrote this, it oozes the Gonzo flavour that made Hunter famous.
The review excerpt on the front cover puts it perfectly: "Crackling, twisted, searing, paced to a deft prose rhythm.
. . a shot of Gonzo with a rum chaser" San Fransisco Chronicle, The story follows journalist Paul Kemp Hunter S, Thompson in Puerto Rico, as he tries to make it in the hot and isolated world that he has escaped to.
I won't say any more, but if you're a fan of Hunter S, Thompson, you owe it to yourself to read this and skip the movie, which is a pile of hollywood shit.
If you've never read anything by Hunter S, Thompson, then you should start by reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his best work by a long shot unlike The Rum Diary, the film adaptation of Fear and Loathing is actually very good.
How does anyone make drinking this boring My neighbor's German shepherd could tell one better about sampling homemade dandelion wine.
At least it didn't cost me much, Not much to buy and not much of my time, It's a quick read because it's easy and light, Wonder Bread to my American friends or the sort called "toast" here in Europe.
I like to chew. Give me real bread, golden in color not copier paper white,
Reading this makes me long for some good Hemingway or Raymond Chandler, Writing it, Thompson is like a kid trying to fit his feet in sand prints that are too big.
You watch from your beach chair and soon shut your eyes asleep, Three for lulling me there, But I'm not on a plane or a train with time to kill, I'd rather Ernest gave me a shake or Ray landed one of those sucker punch sentences of his.
and a half
The Rum Diary is an early work by the Gonzo Journalist, Ostensibly a novel, the line between fiction and fact feels blurry when reading Thompson, The story is about a bevy of young hardliving journalists working for a struggling newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
It's the late's and Paul Kemp Thompson, the first person narrator, tells us of his and his disillusioned cohorts alcohol fuelled follies during his stint as a writer for a floundering newspaper.
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.
Thompson, did in fact, work for a newspaper in San Juan in the early'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:
"Like most others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hellraiser.
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"
That sounds pretty autobiographical to me.
Either way though, it was an interesting peak into the early work of a man who lived on the edge.
.