Hunter S. Thompson - The Rum Diary

Published: 1998

So, no book reviews for a while, then. This may have had something to do with the twin addictions of the TV series Breaking Bad, which ought to come with a government warning, and Stephen King’s sprawling, seven book magnus opus, The Dark Tower (review forthcoming when I’ve finished it). But then my birthday, for an age I’d not care to mention, rolled around again, and suddenly I was inundated with books from family members and friends who know what really gets me going. One of these was The Rum Diary.

                Despite the well-worn maxim about not judging a book by its cover, I was practically infatuated with this one before I even opened it. In the black-and-white picture, a young, toned, shorts-wearing man sips a glass of something (rum, the title suggests) whilst making notes on a journalist’s pad on his lap. He’s got his feet up on a table containing empty beer bottles, and in the background is a concrete hotel block, peppered with balconies and fringed with palm trees. From the perspective of another grim Cumbrian winter, I couldn’t wait to start it. The knowledge that it was written back in the early 1960s, but not published until relatively recently, added to the appeal. I wasn’t disappointed. It turned out to be one of those novels so good you don’t want to begin another one afterwards. But the life portrayed in the novel turned out to be far more nuanced and ambiguous than the cover photo suggested.

                Paul Kemp, a vagrant journalist in his early thirties, has pitched up in San Juan, Peurto Rico’s capital, in the late ‘fifties, for a job on an English-language newspaper. He doesn’t speak any Spanish, or for that matter have any significant journalistic talent that we can discern. But he knows the right places to get a decent, inexpensive shot of rum and a hamburger, and that seems to be more important. Wall to wall heavy boozing features strongly, along with a pleasing 1950s disregard to driving drunk, turning up to work drunk, or doing practically anything without a few beers in an exotic land where “men sweat twenty-four hours a day.” Most of the itinerant hacks who write the paper don’t wander in to the newsroom until noon, and do most of their work in the bar. I have to admit that Thompson’s seductive imagery and sparse prose initially made me yearn for Kemp’s carefree life in the sun.

                But despite Hunter S. Thompson’s well known ‘Gonzo’ trappings, the novel is surprisingly ambivalent about the lifestyle. Kemp arrives in San Juan the worse for wear from drinking on the journey, echoing unpleasant memories I have of arriving in foreign lands both jet lagged and hung over. On more than one occasion, in rare sober moments, he wonders if all the booze might be getting the better of him. Aside from a couple of drinking buddies – Kemp has no real friends in the story – considerable contempt is shown for the other sozzled hacks at the News. Fired journalist Yeamon is ridiculed as messed-up and incompetent, and abusive of his beautiful girlfriend to boot. Masochistic over-drinker and whoremonger Moberg is condemned as ‘disgusting’ and ‘degenerate’. If anything, the author – for surely this is at least a semi-autobiographical work – is saying that hard drinking is only cool if you can handle it and keep your head, as Kemp mostly does, but few others manage.

                From a sociological point of view, the novel depicts a pre-globalisation third-world country on the cusp of being converted into one big resort for American tourists, of whom Kemp is suitably scornful. But at the same time, with this process incomplete, it is currently a playground for Kemp’s type of Westerner. Meanwhile, there are no significant Peurto Rican characters in the story; where they do appear, they are portrayed as violent, impulsive and, in one scene, sexually predatory. In a sense, these elements mark it out as a product of a previous era.

                The plot itself follows the fortunes of Kemp, and by association that of his acquaintances and the newspaper. One major plotline involves Kemp’s stewing lust for the alluring but naive Chenalt, Yeamon’s girlfriend. But in the same vein as the not dissimilar 1950s counterculture classic, On The Road, the plotline of The Rum Diary is less important than the overall atmosphere, the sense of place, that makes it so alluring.

                If you’re anything like me, it’s worth remembering that Kemp’s life – if it ever was indeed possible – certainly isn’t now in our interconnected world, where you need more than the false claim of a connection to The New York Times to make it as a journalist in the tropics. At any rate, in the latter part of the novel the footloose Kemp, who has spent his twenties tramping around the world from job to job, admits to yearning for symbols of stable adulthood, such as his own apartment and a car.

                The Rum Diary is one of those books that, whilst reading it, you find yourself wanting to live it. But, like so many novels, from fantasy to travelogue, it’s always worth simultaneously being realistic about the flaws in the world it portrays. There may be plenty of rum in this novel, but there’s barely a hangover in sight.