The Rum Diary: A Novel

Product Information

He didn't even blink, and finally I shut my eyes and tried to sleep. Now and then I would glance up at the blonde head at the front of the plane. Then they turned out the lights and I couldn't see anything.

He's been beating that old man ever since we left New York," said the stewardess. "He must be a sadist." Yeamon laughed again. "Sala's the oldest man in San Juan. How old are you, Robert -- about ninety?" Lotterman laughed nervously. "You know what I mean, Bob -- let's try to be civil." He turned and waved at Yeamon, who was standing in the middle of the room, examining a rip in the armpit of his coat.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. 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. Thompson had unsuccessfully applied to work at the larger English-language daily called The San Juan Star which novelist William J. Kennedy edited. While in Puerto Rico, Thompson befriended many of the writers at the Star, providing the context for The Rum Diary 's fictional storyline.

He sat on my typewriter," I explained, helplessly watching the girl find a seat far up at the front of the plane. He gobbled one of his hamburgers. "You'll see," he muttered. "You and Yeamon -- that guy's a freak. He won't last. None of us will last." He slammed his fist on the table. "Sweep -- more beer!" urn:lcp:rumdiarylonglost0000thom:epub:56a4b443-950e-4f15-9b49-e6afb23ec71e Foldoutcount 0 Identifier rumdiarylonglost0000thom Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2c04nxsgnt Invoice 1652 Isbn 0684855216 Lccn 98034128 Ocr tesseract 5.1.0-1-ge935 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9219 Ocr_module_version 0.0.16 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-0001232 Openlibrary_edition

Table of Contents

I have a theory that Hunter was inspired by Naipaul when he wrote this novel. He kind of looked upto Naipaul. I've seen a photo of Hunter driving Naipaul around. Naipaul gave the freedom to a lot of writers to be as honest about race as possible. The portrayal of the people of San Juan was very Naipaulian. The drug addled Hunter who went apeshit in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and behaved badly, and over here he expresses his fear for the natives of San Juan, who are not exactly the best hosts.

Dale Carnegie was not the only evil American. How many people did Carnegie save? How many lives did Hunter destroy? Nobody has a clue. Nobody knows anything. You're the same way", he said. "We're all going to the same damn places, doing the same damn things people have been doing for fifty years, and we keep waiting for something to happen." He looked up. "You know- I'm a rebel, I took off- now where's my reward?" The cook shuffled across the patio with our drinks. "Where were you before this?" Sala asked, lifting his beers off the tray. The film opens as the ambitious young hero Paul Kemp (Depp), sporting a white suit, a straw hat and the dark glasses Thompson would wear for a lifetime, applies for a reporting job at the Star. It doesn't appear to be the kind of paper that attracted the ambitious in those days. Lotterman ( Richard Jenkins), the editor, spots him for trouble and immediately asks him how much he drinks. "The high end of social."At six-thirty I left the bar and walked outside. It was getting dark and the big Avenida looked cool and graceful. On the other side were homes that once looked out on the beach. Now they looked out on hotels and most of them had retreated behind tall hedges and walls that cut them off from the street. Here and there I could see a patio or a screen porch where people sat beneath fans and drank rum. Somewhere up the street I heard bells, the sleepy tinkling of Brahms' Lullaby. Yeamon laughed. "Chenault thought you were the lunatic -- claimed you kept staring at her, then ran amok on the old man -- you were still beating him when she got off the plane."

Sweep came hurrying out with two more beers and Sala grabbed them off the tray. Just then Yeamon appeared in the doorway; he saw us and came over to the table. Sala shook his head. "That figures -- he's a nut." He nodded. "Probably mouthed off at those union goons. It's some kind of a wildcat strike -- nobody knows what it means."The goofy movie based on this book was a joke. I paid premium for a show in Mumbai to watch the crappy goofy movie. Hunter would have strangled the overrated Johnny Depp fraud for that travesty. The movie even ignored an important character in the book. What a joke the movie was. A sign said the News editorial office was on the second floor. I took an elevator, half expecting to find myself lifted into the midst of more violence. But the door opened on a dark hall, and a little to my left I heard the noise of the city room. Paul and Sala go to visit Yeamon a few days later to see how he is doing without a steady income. Sala and Paul witness Yeamon hitting Chenault before the three of them take off to have a few drinks at a local bar that Yeamon insists will give him credit. However, once they have shared in more than ten dollars of rum, the manager of the bar insists they pay their bill. Yeamon refuses and will not allow Sala or Paul to pay either. The three of them leave only to be chased down by the bar's customers and local police. A brawl erupts and the three men are beaten severely before being taken into police custody. At court later that night, the cops lie and say that Paul, Sala, and Yeamon started the brawl. Sanderson shows up and drops a few influential names that persuade the judge to set bail for all three. Arriving half-drunk in a foreign place is hard on the nerves. You have a feeling that something is wrong, that you can't get a grip. I had this feeling, and when I got to the hotel I went straight to bed. We have the feeling that Kemp/Thompson saw much of life through the bottom of a dirty glass and did not experience it with any precision. The film duplicates this sensation, not with much success. The difference between Kemp and Withnail is that Withnail is seen from outside, partly through the eyes of his horrified friend. As Kemp loses focus, so does the story.