They are making a movie out of the book and I wanted to be ahead of the game.

While it was enjoyable, and often times reminded me of Fear and Loathing with everything going on in the book, it took me a long time to become interested in the story enough to continue. I originally started it a year ago and is one of the few books I’ve put down and never came back to. It is mainly a drunken rum induced adventure of a newspaper man, Paul Kemp, who can’t decide if he wants to stay or leave. By the time I got through the last page, I found it enjoyable.

Reading The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson, one will soon realize the extent to which this story can be classified as a work of fiction. Less gonzo than F&L or The Curse ofLono, The Rum Diary is an interesting account of Thompson's time spent in Puerto Rico, and it provides a fascinating look into the journalistic machinations involved with maintaining a newspaper on life-support. Indeed, this book is prescient in that it signaled what we know as true today, as anyone will be aware having watched The Wire that newspapers are struggling, some even losing the battle "to do more with less". But it is a work of Dr. Thompson, and as such one cannot always tell where the journalism begins and the gonzo ends.

The story revolves around Thompson's actual stint working for The San Juan Daily News, at a time when flights from New York to San Juan cost around fifty dollars. Basically, throw in a bunch of alcohol,barfights and general disarray in the newsroom, and The Rum Diary will soon enough end itself enjoyably. Two interesting facets surface along the way though. First, Thompson, as is his strength, surrounds the reader with an eclectic cast of characters, mostly fellow journalists with acumen ranging from intrepidly skillful to absurdly incompetent though all are predictably dysfunctional. Thompson, I think, admittedly includes himself with this group, this time under the alias as Paul Kemp. What's important is that amid all the corruption within the Puerto Rican society, all the drama occurring within the newsroom, the journalists can't seem to find, perhaps aren't allowed, newsworthy stories for print. Consequently, they unknowingly create their own.

The other important aspect to the story is the detail in atmosphere that is characteristically Thompson. In addition to the sweltering heat, he also provides depth to the overall carefree nature yet sudden volatility experienced in Caribbean culture. In particular, he paints an engrossing, vivid, and nearly horrific picture of Carnival as it exploded during a side-trip to St. Thomas. Overall, this is a curious work of his that should be taken for what it's worth; that is, whatever it is you make of it. ( )

I found this to be a bit boring in some spots but overall a good read. I felt pretty depressed when I finished the book. For some extremely odd reason I felt bad for Yeamon, even though he was a huge jerk. The paragraph where Kemp talks about watching Yeamon after he dropped him off in Fajardo really got to me. I think it was because it was a sign that things wouldn't be the same. ( )

Hunter Thompson's original ambition was to be a novelist, and he wrote two unpublished novels, Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary, before he became a star of New Journalism and abandoned fiction for good. Prince Jellyfish has not seen the light of day, except in a short, forgettable excerpt, but The Rum Diary did, well after the fact.

And it's not very good. It opens with an uninteresting passage of description that attempts to set up the narrator and characters as larger than life. Thompson's protagonist, Kemp, arrives in Puerto Rico to work for a newspaper, where he falls into a love triangle involving the beautiful Chenault and his colleague, Yeamon. The climax of the piece occurs during a carnival, and Chenault is the issue, and ultimately, everyone goes their separate ways. Thompson's debt to The Sun Also Rises is clear, not only here but in the first paragraph of chapter one.

Overall, the novel is a disappointment. The characters are unconvincing and throughout, Thompson is trying too hard. There's little hint of the future, gonzo Thompson, except in an early scene on the flight into San Juan. The Rum Diary is the derivative early attempt of a young (22-year-old) writer, and it's likely that it would never have been published had Thompson not subsequently become famous -- and had he not been so careless of his reputation as a writer. ( )

Fiction by the master of gonzo. Thompson paints a vivid picture of Puerto Rico in the late 50s/early 60s that I can relate to the Dominican Republic. Although the DR was in political turmoil at the time the story takes place.

I associate the book more with 'Las Vegas' than in the 'campaign trail'. It's hard to tell apart what could actually have happened to him from what he made-up. ( )