Rum, Women, and Song

by Benjamin Oren

Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary is a great Caribbean novel. I don't know if it's THE great Caribbean novel, but it has to be one of the great ones (how many other Caribbean novels do you know?). Mr. Thompson might be upset with the fact that I refuse to concede that his newest release isn't the defining piece of literature on a topic as were his takes on the American Dream in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or southern high society in his essays on the Kentucky Derby.

But, you see, when Thompson wrote The Rum Diary he wasn't the infamous, road-wearied, drugged-out alcoholic that we all now know and love and are deeply afraid of.

Before there was gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson was just a country-boy from Louisville, Kentucky who was sports editor for his army unit but wanted something more out of both life and himself. He didn't just want to see and experience the world, but to have the world see and experience him.

His first chance came when he was twenty-two and was offered to be an editor for a small bowling weekly in Puerto Rico. He jumped at the opportunity. So, for a year or two in the late 1950's, Thompson lived the high life in San Juan: drinking cheap liqueur on the beach and attempting to start his first book. He had high hopes for this book, but it just sat around for thirty years, until now. The Rum Diary is his long-lost first novel.

The story begins with the introduction of our narrator, Thompson's alter-ego Paul Kemp, a thirtyish writer who travels from New York to Puerto Rico to work on an upstart English language newspaper named, ingeniously enough, The San Juan Daily News.

Upon his departure to this new tropical paradise, there's a sense that he has been wandering around for too long and that he is ready to settle down. Kemp has high hopes for himself — a new town, a new job, a new life. Things are going to pick up, he thinks to himself. In the terminal he sees a little blonde bombshell and tries to finagle for her to sit next him on the plane. But then things get ugly.

“I was reaching for my typewriter, thinking to put it on the floor, when an old man shoved in front of me and sat down in the seat that I was saving.

`That seat's taken,' I said quickly, grabbing him by the arm. He jerked away and snarled something in Spanish, turning his head toward the window. I grabbed him again.

`Get up,' I said angrily. He started to yell just as the girl went by and stopped a few feet up the aisle, looking around for a seat.

`Here's one.' I said, giving the old man a savage jerk. Before she could turn around the stewardess was on me, pulling at my arm.”

That pretty much defines the rest of Kemp's time on the island: High expectations followed by unrestrained high emotion followed by high failure. If there was a bar on the plane the definition would have been complete, because the high failure is always followed by high debauchery.

Upon his arrival at The San Juan Daily News, Kemp sees all hell broken loose; there's an angry and crazy Puerto Rican mob on strike in front of the office that is being held off by an angrier and crazier American young man who is laughing maniacally at the crowd before him, challenging to take them all on, mano e grupo.

After the man whacks one striker swiftly in the chest, the police arrive, and the mob disperses, and the man struts genteelly into the building as Kemp carefully follows.

Once inside, Kemp quickly learns that the madness is not regulated to only the outside. The office is a clubhouse for drunks and degenerates past—their—prime hacks. Kemp believes he finds some normality when he meets Bob Sala, a photo—journalist who wishes more then anything to get out of Puerto Rico.

As Kemp's mentor on the island, Sala tells him who he's to trust (no one), where to eat and drink (at Al's Backyard Grill where you can only get hamburgers, rum, and beer), and who's corrupt (everyone). He tells Kemp that “the nut” who fended off the mob is Addison Yeamon, a new reporter who just landed with the paper a week before and has been stirring up trouble ever since.

“You should have been here a few nights ago!” Sala tells Kemp. He flipped this table for no reason at all — this very table. No damn reason. Knocked all our drinks in the dirt and flipped the table on some poor bastard who didn't know what he was saying — then threatened to stomp him!”

Kemp soon learns that Yeamon is also responsible for denying him that cute little beauty on the plane earlier in the day. It was his girlfriend, Chenault, and she had already told her man about the events on the NY-SJ flight, with Yeamon laughing, “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.” Still pining over the blonde, Kemp tries to save face for the rest of the novel with her, while not allowing Yeamon to see his true intentions — bedding his woman.

The novel then divides up into the tiny, semi-isolated adventures Kemp has on the island. From dealing with shady politicians to dealing with shady land developers to becoming shady himself, Kemp is slowly broken down by the island and the people around him.

He begins his days with shots of rum and ends his nights in the same manner. He knowingly becomes a journalistic cliché, but can't muster up enough strength to counter it. He is unable to fight for his life until the lives of those around begin to simultaneously crumble. When the group heads off to St. Thomas for Carnival, the orgy of excess ultimately turns to an orgy of loathing with not a soul to save.

I never quite figure Paul Kemp out. He is definitely the saccharine version of what would eventually morph into Hunter S. Thompson's walking and talking id, Dr. Raul Duke.

Both characters are hyper-aware of what is around them, but while Kemp is scared of what he sees, Duke is fearless. Then again, Thompson was only a man in his early twenties when he wrote The Rum Diary; Kemp is clearly a rougher (and perhaps more true-to-Thompson-himself) draft. Both men aren't too sure about why there are where they are or what to do with what they have.

There's a self-doubt in Paul Kemp and that self-doubt comes straight from the young Hunter, himself. Kemp reveals the fear Thompson has about what will happen to him. Will he become a bitter soul like Sala, a lunatic like Yeamon, a drunken faceless hack downing rums out at Al's Backyard Grill — or can he create his own fate regardless of this?

Well, he's not too sure, and if he was I would have to question him myself. There's a reality inherent in this self-skepticism that the reader can relate to, a reality which makes Paul Kemp one of Thompson's most endearing creations to date.

All of this still can't hide the fact that The Rum Diary is a very simple story. It's a basic fable of sorts, a warning followed by the warning not heeded, followed by the warning realized, followed by an acknowledgment of the warning, followed by a moral.

It is very unsophisticated and if Thompson didn't have such a strong command of the English language it wouldn't work at all. His writing possesses a coherence and a poignancy which resonates past what anybody can think or say about his drug-crazed works of the 1960's and 70's. Simply put, Hunter knows prose.

The Hunter in The Rum Diary will surprise both his fans and detractors alike. Its a kinder gentler Hunter, with a little bit of the fear, not nearly so much loathing. But one thing remains the same: he is still looking for both himself and the American Dream. He doesn't quite find either in The Rum Diary, but he's heading in the right direction. At least he knows its not in Puerto Rico and that's definitely more then I can say for myself.