The Rum Diary [Import] [Paperback]

Hunter S. Thompson (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• ISBN-10: 0684858207
• ISBN-13: 978-0684858203
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (169 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Hunter S. Thompson's books include Fear and Loathing in America, Screwjack, Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Proud Highway, Better Than Sex, The Rum Diary, and Kingdom of Fear. He was contributor to various national and international publications, including a weekly sports column for ESPN Online. Thompson died February 2005.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good lost novel and a great view of San Juan, August 16, 2002

By 

Jon Konrath "Jon" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rum Diary: A Novel (Paperback)

This is the "lost novel" by Hunter S. Thompson, a book that he started writing in 1959 to make a quick buck. He struggled all through the sixties to get this thing rewritten and published, but because of its quality and Thompson's legendary shakedowns with agents, publishers, and contracts, it died on the vine - until a few years ago. This quasi-fictional account of a New York reporter drifting into a job at the San Juan Daily News is somewhat based on Thompson's experience on the Carribean island in the late 1950. Trying to put Puerto Rico on the literary map like Hemingway did for Paris, he spells out a story of corruption, boredom, and alcohol in a more simple San Juan, before the big booms of the travel booms and technology of the sixties. Paul Kemp, the fictional narrator, describes the coworkers, women, natives, and insane government, riddled with syndicates and kickbacks. The writing here isn't like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - it's more of the Orwell/Mailer/Miller genre, and does a good job of painting memorable scenes of the insanity, camaraderie, poverty, and drunkenness on top of the tropical backdrop. It's not bad stuff, and I wonder if it recently went through heavy rewrites, or if there just wasn't a market for it back in the sixties. Either way, it's a light, fast read at just over 200 pages, and made me wonder if Thompson's other unpublished work would be as satisfying in a trade hardcover. Maybe someday?

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This Doctor can really write, July 14, 2000

By 

Ben Duchek (Las Vegas, NV United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Rum Diary: The Long Lost Novel (Hardcover)

I came to the good old Doctor probably like the good old Doctor comes into life after a drunken night living on his fortified compound near Puerto Rico(book jacket) -- not knowing what to expect.

But I'm glad I crashed my first Thompson novel -- it's a wicked cool party. Some of the passages are just like wine on a Sunday afternoon - "All manner of Men came to work for the News: everything from wild young Turks who wanted to rip the world in half and start all over again-to tired, beer- bellied old hacks who wanted nothing more than to live out their days in peace before a bunch of lunactics ripped the world in half."

The book continues on like this for a quick 204 pages, with Thompson occasionally digging up such gems of lines. It's a wild, brash adventure that doesn't seem dated, and stirs up all the feelings about what fiction should be.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars (hum d)rum diary, October 28, 1999

By 

Bill Chaisson (Rochester, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rum Diary: The Long Lost Novel (Hardcover)

This novel is like a film noir script. The prose is terse. The characters are tragic, but don't evoke much in the way of pity. You see them go down and you think "well, it figures".

What I like most about this book was its ability to evoke a time, a place and a certain demographic. San Juan in the late 50s must have been a blast if you were young, American and basically looking for an exotic good time without the bother of getting a passport or changing your money.

If Paul Kemp is Thompson's alter ego, then HST was impressively candid about what a worthless rake he was. I suspect that Kemp is a composite of the worst tendencies of Thompson and several other guys from the same crowd. No eternal verities are even hinted at in this book. If there was one iota of "hey this is literature" in this book, then it would be truly bad. On the contrary, it is just a well-written story about a shabby life.