#THE RUM DIARY FULL#

It’s a ramshackle, liquor-fueled farce that sets the stage for Kemp’s moment of truth about his real purpose as a writer-a moment that comes courtesy of a mind-altering drug and a conversation with a lobster.Įarly on, Kemp is little more than a lazy, drunken, conniving opportunist who’s rocketing toward self-destruction. And never mind the thousands of locals who’ll get tossed off their land like so many vagrants to make way for his sprawling hotels.Įnter Sanderson’s Venus-like beauty of girlfriend, Chenault, who captivates Kemp’s imagination … and leads him into all sorts of other trouble. Sanderson envisions an island paradise for the privileged and for corporate executives who don’t want to bother with those annoying little things called taxes. And it makes him angry.ĭirection 2) He’s quickly courted (with nice perks like a shiny Corvette convertible) by a slippery land shark named Hal Sanderson, who wants Kemp to write marketing copy selling his slick vision of Puerto Rico’s future. A man who’s prone to medicating every waking moment with, you guessed it, rum.īut as Kemp staggers through this hedonistic, purpose-starved existence, two divergent realities begin to pull him in opposite directions.ĭirection 1) His rum-sodden conscience begins to awaken as he notices how impoverished so many of San Juan’s residents are. Often with fellow Star staffer Bob Sala, a jolly but disheveled sad sack of a photographer who’s taken Kemp under his sweaty wing. When Kemp’s not writing puff pieces, he’s drinking. And what a job it is: writing horoscopes and covering vacuous stories, such as Americans’ love for San Juan’s bowling alleys. Kemp gets the job-he was the only applicant-and fits right in.

#THE RUM DIARY FULL#

He discovers a newsroom full of misfits and miscreants led by a pompous and preening editor, E.J. Devouring aspirin to temper a wicked hangover, Kemp shuffles through the steamy Caribbean capital’s streets to land a job at the local paper, The San Juan Star.

Paul Kemp, author of two and a half unpublished novels, has just deplaned (and gotten smashing drunk on rum at his hotel) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He never would’ve published that twenty years before.” The book sold well but Thompson was disappointed, calling it 'the sloppiest job of Book Publishing I've ever seen.It’s 1960. His assistant, Lynn Nesbit, explained: “ The Rum Diary came out when it did because he needed money, absolutely. Thompson had always felt it was too weak to sell, but now he needed money. When it was published in 1998, The Rum Diary was billed as 'The Long Lost Novel' but it had never in fact been lost. Wills explains 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. In these excerpts, it is possible to see how the manuscript was changed before its final publication. Parts of the novel were published in 1990 in Thompson's collection, Songs of the Doomed. After missing various deadlines, he gave up on The Rum Diary until 1998, when it was finally published. However, he felt that the more time passed, the more difficult it was to write about an increasingly distant era. 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. 'I still can't beat that goddamn Gatsby.' Thompson himself stated that he wanted to write the Great American Novel. The narrative uses a highly paced and rather exciting style, also typical of Thompson's oeuvre.

The prominent characters are typical of Thompson's work: violent, maniacal and alcoholic, stumbling through life. While in Puerto Rico, Thompson befriended many of the writers at the Star, providing the context for The Rum Diary 's fictional storyline.Īlthough Thompson wrote his narrative at the age of 22, it deals extensively with a fear of 'going over the hill' and growing old. Thompson had unsuccessfully applied to work at the larger English-language daily called The San Juan Star which novelist William J. Thompson himself travelled from New York to San Juan in 1960 to write for an ill-fated sports newspaper on the island of Puerto Rico. Set in the late 1950s, the novel encompasses a tangled love story involving jealousy, treachery and violent alcoholic lust among the Americans who staff the newspaper.

The rum diary