Rating: 
Summary: An Experience!
Review: Before one could even start thinking about criticizing this novel, one should take into account that it has been written by a 22 year-old Hunter S. Thompson, before he actually became so familiar with heavy drinking and drugs. It is also his first novel; therefore it is understandable that a person who has already read his other books would regard it with a certain leniency, expecting a naive piece of work.It turns out this is really not the case... the author seems to describe with great accuracy the experiences of a man who looks back on his early years as a journalists and regrets having wasted his life. There is a sensation of loss and defeat throughout the whole book that at least I would believe, requires a great deal of experiences in life to be able to grasp and translate into words. Thompson deals with these descriptions very skillfully, making the reader fear the same fate as the main character. As far as the story goes, Paul Kemp, a young journalist in his early 30s takes an assignment for a new job in the San Juan Daily News, an English language newspaper in Puerto Rico - this place where "men sweat 24 hours a day". The life is easy in San Juan, but the more time he spends there, the more a fear of being stuck there forever takes over him. He feels he's missing out on something by not going to a more happening Latin American city such as Mexico or Buenos Aires. There's also a constant menace that the newspaper will fold and all the employees will lose their jobs from one day to another. Despite his young age, Kemp looks back at his life and concludes he should have taken more out of it instead of acting like he was invincible; this feeling has long left him and he resorts to heavy drinking and making various considerations about his future without necessarily acting to change his condition. Many of his colleagues are in the same situation; although most of them realize they are losing their time in this city, something seems to hold them and prevent them to leave, even if they lose their jobs. Perhaps it is the heat and humidity who oppresses these men and prevent them from acting or making the right decisions about their respective futures, much like in Camus' The Stranger. This lack of opportunities for their future lead the protagonists into a self-destructive and reckless series of events. They talk about leaving, but the constant rum drinking blurs their plans and leads them to once again postpone their plans. Time is running out for Paul Kemp, but he still acts like he has his whole life before him. A very inspiring novel, The Rum Diary is a great contrast to the usually optimistic novels involving young people in search of the American dream, who are ready to take on any challenges to succeed. Paul Kemp has been defeated, actually, he has retired from his fighting to succeed. By signing such a great book at the very beginning of his carreer, Hunter S. Thompson has laid the ground for his more daring later works. Along with this novel I'd like to recommend two other Amazon picks: Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Thompson, The Losers' Club by Richard Perez
Rating: 
Summary: Beginning a life of quiet dissipation
Review: Hunter Thompson arrives in San Juan Puerto Rico as a thirty-something journalist on an english-language newspaper rapidly heading for the skids. For fans of Thompson, this is a pre-drug dive into the nascent miasma of gonzo. A must-add to the collection. For anyone who wants to get the feel of a neo-colonial society on the brink of waterfront hotels and land barons, this book hits the spot. From the moment he staggers out of a New York City bar and takes the cab to the airport, Paul Kemp fuels his post-adolescent lusts with cheap rum, disdainful detachment and occasional guilt. Taking cast-off apartments, cast-off assignments, and finally a cast-off beauty, Kemp reels from pillar to post. Moonlighting writing promotional materials for a piggish land developer, Kemp experiences more guilt than as moonlit lover of the abused Chenault. Watching the raging paper owner's paranoid descent into bankruptcy, shady mafia financing and death is but a sidelight. As he goes down, Lotterman's ravings about his "drunks, bums perverts thieves and wineheads" presages Thompson's classic socially scabrous syllogisms. Moberg the reporter coming in drunk and pissing on the teletype machine might be the only lighthearted moment. The real action takes place in the musty tropical poured-concrete bunkers forming the hidey-holes for the lost souls of fellow expat writers. Feel the humidity drip from the slump-block as the hung-over stare follows a centipede's progress. The book echoes the grey early-morning sadness at the end of "Fear and Loathing", where the liquor's all gone, the final abuse committed, and the piper waits for payment at the door.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Bad for a First Novel
Review: Thompson's first book follows the life of a 31-year old news reporter and his exploits in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The plot documents the woes of burned-out coworkers, jealous lovers, and American businessmen living on the island. What I enjoyed about this book is the insightful descriptions of San Juan and the people living there. The landscape really breathes - more so than the characters. The people are not very memorable, save for Moburg and perhaps the woman Chenault. The plot doesn't drag, but isn't always interesting. Fans of Thompson's prose (ie. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) should not expect much of liquid description of later works. There are glimpses of what will follow in Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing, but these are only flashes of brilliance in a rookie novel. All things considered, this novel is best for hard-core Hunter Thompson fans; it is worth the read but is not his peak work.
Rating:
Summary: A good lost novel and a great view of San Juan
Review: 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?
Rating:
Summary: A Rare Look at the Pre-60's Thompson
Review: Hunter S. Thompson has made a career out of becoming a part of his journalistic endeavors. He has dived into his stories so frequently and so deeply that he has developed his own character in them, the gonzo journalist. The Rum Diary, thankfully, gives us a different look at Thompson: the quiet observer. Quiet, that is, relative to the other characters in this book. The Rum Diary chronicles Hunter's own time spent in Puerto Rico. The book itself is a pretty wild ride. After arriving in Puerto Rico, Thompson goes to work for a newspaper that is in the midst of a protest. The reporters risk mugging just to enter the building. Thompson soon meets a couple of friends and drunken hijinks ensue with Thompson and everybody else gorging themselves on the local drink, Rum (hence the title). Think of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but take away the drugs and add more booze. That would be close. This book isn't nearly as vital or symbolic as some of Thompson's more famous works but for true Thompson fans it offers an insight into the man, not the myth.
Rating:
Summary: We should be grateful it was found
Review: Hunter S. Thompson's "The Rum Diary" is knows as "The Long Lost Novel", and since it is such an entertaining book that we all should be grateful that it was found. Written when he was only 22, the novel is a very down-to-earth account of a young man's experience of working as a journalist in Puerto Rico circa 1960. Paul Kemp is a thirty-ish with no much hope for his futures. He leaves his New York and moves to Puerto Rico, to work in the only local newspaper published in English. Far from a wealthy reality he dawns in a mad world of drinking, love, jealousy and other insane things, mostly with the help of his journalist friends, until he goes as down as possible and realizes it is time he grew up. Or not. Written in fine prose with the speed of someone who devours a barrel of rum, "The Rum Diary" is Thompson at his best. His first novel has more stamina, imagination, passion and truth that many experienced writers will never acquire. Writing as someone who knows the cause, the author is able to create believable characters and situations. Anyone who has spend a week in a newspaper knows that there are all kind of people self-proclaiming journalists, not to mention yelling editors going insane all the time, and demanding heads off every day. We can find in the book --and in real life-- every sort of weirdos that are trying to find a better existence somewhere else far from home. These outsiders that inhabit Thompson's novel are the real thing, which paints a vivid portrait of people thorn between the passion of being a journalist and the fear of never acquiring any real thing in life. Deep inside this is the moral dilema that comsumes Kemp. While on one hand he has the freedon he always wanted, on the other there is fear of the newspaper being folder and losing his job with nothing in that strange country. While this doesn't happen, he can consume himself with many shots of rum at Al's. With such a realistic portray, Thompson throws his readers to the heart of this late coming-of-age tale, set in an exotic land in difficult times. Political and economical issues are in the background of the tale taking it to another level, making the book not only fun to read, but also important. The constant riots between local people and foreign journalist only prove that Puerto Rico was an incendiary place, in many levels. However, "The Rum Diary" is not a novel with wide appeal, most people won't identify themselves with the events and the characters and will be put off. But those who can stick with Thompson's masterful narrative will have fun all the time.
Rating:
Summary: Pre-caricature HST
Review: In the Rum Diary, Hunter S. Thompson flexes his literary muscles in a way that was matched only by Hell's Angels, in my opinion. It's interesting to see Thompson as a "serious young writer," before he began drugging up and sensationalizing all of his work. Not that I dislike his other works particularly, but how many times can we read about a naked guy on acid with lots of guns, booze and drugs around? I really enjoyed the terse, straight-ahead style of this book. A fun, refreshing read that is good for any young(ish) people who wonder what their future will look like....
Rating:
Summary: "Heads get TWISTED!"
Review: This was the first Hunter S Thompson book I read. It's the sort of book you may want to read at least once more after you've finished, just to make sure you've kept all the characters straight. There are so many of these guys! At the end of the book, the first time, I thought I may have had one extra or too few in my mind's eye. So read it at least twice. Besides that, the novel is completely transporting. When you finish it, rum and the caribbean and Paul and Yeamon sort of haunt you for days. Maybe the rest of your life.
Rating:
Summary: A fine wallow
Review: Whatta fine, seedy trip through debauchery-by-default. Believe it or not it brought to mind Sartre, with its characters' inertia and focus on maybes, mights, and almosts. Well written (I'm not sure I really believe Thompson wrote it at 22... perhaps the basic idea was worked out then) and wonderfully evocative of place and time. The characters are brilliantly drawn. And it is clearly indicative of what Thompson's later literary path would be.
Rating:
Summary: Diary of Debauchery and Journalistic Insanity
Review: Adventures and fist-fighting, relaxation and orgies... when Hunter Thompson sits down to put a tale into print, the result almost always turns out positive. "The Rum Diary" does not show Thompson's innate gift of fluid prose, and does lack attention grabbing shock like his other work, but something emerges from within this story. The reader knows as much as Thompson's pseudonym side-kick alter-ego Paul Kemp that it must be the little things in life which go fully noticed, while bigger things will not always be remembered for what they were. The drinking and conversation, combined with the human interactions present the main theme of "The Rum Diary." The plot mutates into a survival of the fittest competition, a far cry from its beginning idea of a young man trying to escape comfortable life, the story meshes and intertwines tales of those "other people" Hunter "ran into" during his stay in San Juan. The story presents life in how it really flows, for some lucky individuals, from one unknown debacle to the next. The comedy in tragedy is really captured in this Thompson piece. He combines personal observation with character development and tales of insanity... of course! The journalistic documentation style of Thompson is certainly present in "The Rum Diary," but his extensive creative use of words and consumption of other drugs than Rum are almost non-existent. This story mainly comes through in the clutch, having the reader dig deeper and deeper into the story, but not really luring the reader. The story of Paul Kemp escaping New York City for San Juan to take a reporting job at a Puerto Rican newspaper does not give Thompson justice as a story-teller, but it is the debauchery which happens on the side of this straight and narrow job that helps the pace of the read. The debauchery slowly builds towards the end of the book where it finally dumps all over the final pages into a mess of pure madness that finalizes and legitimizes the read. Other professional reviewers hail this as Thompson's first published work, so not too much greatness is to be expected.
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