the rum diary hunter s thompson book review

Thompson spends a lot of time discussing Kemp’s rum-fueled, low-rent lifestyle. Kemp struggles to make a living at the paper, but Kemp’s journalism plays only a secondary role in the plot. The story centers on Paul Kemp, a down-on-his-luck American journalist who takes a job at a struggling English-language paper in Puerto Rico. But the novel works and it has a lot of the “Gonzo” spirit that propels Thompson’s best work. Years of mediocre offerings from Thompson had conditioned me to expect little. The Rum Diary, therefore, came as a great surprise to me.

By the late-1990s, things had devolved to the point where Thompson seemed to have become a performance artist playing a pathetic real-life imitation of Doonesbury’s Uncle Duke. The years since the mid-1970s had been an ugly downward slide. It had been decades since Thompson’s best work ( Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, and The Great Shark Hunt).

Thompson finally published The Rum Diary in 1998, his best days were long past. Summary: The Rum Diary is Thompson’s self-described “Great Puerto Rican novel.” It’s terrific coming-of-age story that makes me lament all of the years Thompson wasted while fighting his demons. Readers will benjoy this “Gonzo” take on the coming-of-age story.

After years of delays, the novel finally appeared in print in 1998. In 1959, Hunter S Thompson began what he hoped would be “The Great Puerto Rican novel,” The Rum Diary.

The rum diary hunter s thompson book review