The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson’s foray into fiction began with The Rum Diary, which he started writing in 1960 when he was 23 years old, but wasn’t published until 1998.

Paul Kemp is a journalist sent from New York to work on a small, failing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He spends most of his time at Al’s a small bar and food joint with his fellow journalists, a gang of near-crazy, volatile drunks. It is Hunter S. Thompson so you would expect some wild adventures to follow but it is unusually restrained.  Everything – the strange events, the mundane daily activities of the journalists – is told in a weirdly detached voice, which reads rather blandly. It doesn’t have the trademark Gonzo energy.

By the time we got to the street, I could see the first rays of the sun, a cool pink glow in the eastern sky. The fact that I’d spent all night in a cell and a courtroom made that morning one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. There was a peace and a brightness about it, a chilly Caribbean dawn after a night in a filthy jail. I looked out at the ships and the sea beyond them, and I felt crazy to be free with a whole day ahead of me.

The blurb makes a point about the narrative centering on Kemp’s barely suppressed lust for a colleague’s girlfriend, Chenault, but this never really eventuates. When it does come to the surface, it is nowhere near as interesting as the what is going on in the newsroom. The frantic, harried attitude of the journalists keeps them all on edge, but again, this tension never really reaches a breaking point. When the climax does occur, it happens so quickly, and is written in such a blunt and disconnected way that it loses the potential effect.

Then came noon, and morning withered like a lost dream. The sweat was torture and the rest of the day was littered with the dead remains of all those things that might have happened, but couldn’t stand the heat. 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.

The Rum Diary is a little disappointing, it doesn’t even begin to compare to Thompson’s non-fiction and journalism. It shows just how far he evolved from writing lacklustre fiction to the trailblazing non-fiction madness which made him a countercultural icon.