Book Review: The Rum Diary

By STEPHEN SIFF

New York--Hunter S. Thompson, the drug-crazed journalist who introduced the word "gonzo" to dictionaries, is legendary for leading a life too weird for fiction. It therefore comes as a shock to crack his resurrected youthful novel "The Rum Diary: The Lost Novel," and find the 20-something narrator to be something of a bore.

The subtitle of "The Rum Diary" is misleading. Published in the wake
of the successful film adaptation of Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, "The Rum Diary" was not as much lost as unwanted. Thompson began the novel in 1961, but blew a 1967 deadline with  Random House to have it published. Thompson, whose most productive period ended 20 years ago, raided the early work for fodder
when putting together a 1990 book, “Songs of the Doomed.” Prior to the release of “The Rum Diary” in November, a section of the book appeared as a short story in The New Yorker.

The fate of “The Rum Diary” was for years the subject of speculation
by fans of the cult journalist’s non-fiction, which includes “Fear and
Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72” and “Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga.” Although “The Rum Diary” is Thompson’s only published work of fiction, the novel is clearly autobiographical.The "Rum Diary" details an alcoholic reporter's misadventures with his drunken and washed-out colleagues at the San Juan (Puerto Rico) Daily News. The 20-narrator, Paul Kemp, gets swept up in street 
brawls, thrown in jail, and virtually run off the island before booking a
flight back home. Thompson started the book in 1961, soon after he
ended a short stint in Puerto Rico, where he hung around the San Juan Star and befriended the editor, future Pulitzer-Prize winner William Kennedy. 

Until the release of "The Rum Diary," Thompson has called all his
books journalism, though he writes in first person, even as he warned
they shouldn't be entirely believed. Thompson admits that if he actually took all the drugs he ingests in his books, he would be dead.

Critics often pan Thompson for lacking credibility. Amazingly, however, an awful lot of his journalism is true: He actually did introduce the Hells Angels to LSD and Ken Kesey while working on "Hells Angels." Covering the 1972 presidential campaign for Rolling Stone, Thompson did snort coke on the press bus, show up drunk to discuss football with Richard Nixon, and lend his press pass to a man who assaulted presidential hopeful Edmund Muskie. 

A newspaper search using the keywords "Hunter S. Thompson" and "felony or misdemeanor" unearthed charges against Thompson for the possession of large quantities of drugs and explosives; for machine gunning at a porcupine on his Colorado property and for spraying a theater employee with a fire extinguisher. He was also charged with pulling a shotgun from his caddy bag and firing into the air while playing a round of golf with "60 Minutes" correspondent Ed Bradley. All these events took place within the last 15 years.

“The Rum Diary,” Thompson's only published work of fiction, disappoints because it is far less colorful and illuminating than the
journalism from Thompson's mature, chemically-enhanced period. Thompson was only 22 when he began “The Rum Diary,” and Kemp’s voice is vague and tentative. This is never a problem in Thompson's later work. 

In "The Rum Diary," flat, desultory dialogue is meant to hint at deeper currents that seem as mysterious to the author as to the reader. On a freelance assignment to write a tourist brochure for a hotel developer, Kemp's ruminations provide the key to what holds the novel back: a hesitation to let his ego fly.

"I sat there a long time and I thought about a lot of things.Foremost among them was the suspicion that my strange and ungovernable instincts might do me in before I had the chance to get rich. No matter how much I wanted all those things I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction - toward anarchy and poverty and craziness. The maddening conclusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas Goat.

When Thompson, the author, succumbs to the devilish current in later works, his writing become more intense and powerful, and his
vituperation rises above vague dissatisfaction to phenomenal heights.
He portrays himself as a freak and a drug fiend, utterly irresponsible
and self-obsessed, all ego with the brakes off. Thompson's observations may only be the outward extensions of his own depravity, but they are frighteningly lucid and cannot be denied. 

In his later journalism, Thomson exposed a dimension of American
reality that his readers before only suspected. Thompson constrained
his writing to the subjects he knew best: primarily, the machinations
of his own drug-addled mind. But he also understood the ugly, unseemly side of America, and could portray it with shocking vibrancy. At its best, Thompson's twisted and dangerous journalism cuts through the flab of "the truth" and hits bone. 

Through Thompson's chemically-tinted lenses, Hubert Humphrey in 1972 campaigned "like a rat in heat." Richard Nixon was a used-car salesman who specialized in passing off vehicles with cracked engine blocks. Thompson's book "On the Campaign Trail '72" rounds out the list of the 100 most important 20th Century works of American journalism compiled last month by the New York University School of Journalism & Mass Communications.

Unfortunately, Thompson did not know Puerto Rico. As a 22-year-old, he could not quite articulate his internal rage, and attempts to project it onto a country he did not understand miss the mark. "All the while I had been in San Juan I'd condemned it without really disliking it," he writes in “The Rum Diary.” "I felt like sooner or later I would see that third dimension, that depth that makes a city real and that you never see until you stay there awhile. But the longer I stayed there, the more I came to suspect that for the first time in my life I had come to a place where this vital dimension didn't exist, or was too nebulous to make any difference." 

On its face, this is an absurd assertion. The vital dimension is always there, but at 22, in a strange country, Thompson couldn't grasp it. His failure haunts the book. Puerto Rico is a blank page to Thompson, little more than a mirror to reflect his own misogynistic and racial fantasies. The slurs and stereotyping in the "Rum Diary" are disturbing, but not usefully so. They do not illuminate America, or Puerto Rico, or the thoughts of anyone beside Thompson.

Devotees will find some satisfaction in the light "The Rum Diary" sheds on Thompson's development as an author. But if you are looking for a good read, forget Thompson's attempt at fiction. The facts make a better story.