The RUM DIARY: The Long Lost Novel

About the Author

Hunter S. Thompson was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. His books include Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, The Curse of Lono, Songs of the Doomed, Better Than Sex, and The Proud Highway. He is a regular contributor to various national and international publications. He now lives in a fortified compound on the south coast of Puerto Rico.

Product Description

The irreverent journalist-author's long-lost novel, written before his nonfiction became popular, chronicles a journalist's enthusiastic, drunken foray though 1950s San Juan, in a work that offers glimpses of the literary talent that would emerge from the chaos. Simultaneous.

From Library Journal

Thompson has long been known as the father of gonzo journalism. His essays?part fact, part fiction?on politics, media, and the culture of his America can be as beautiful as a poem or as brutal as today's news. The Rum Diary, begun in 1959, is his first novel. It is also an autobiography, for he is evident in the character of Paul Kemp, a young writer new to Puerto Rico: "a seeker, a mover, a malcontent." Kemp has accepted a job on the Daily News, the English-language paper in San Juan. He soon meets the paper's photographer, Sala, and another young reporter, Yeaman. Together, they embark on a strange odyssey?a drunken, carousing journey through the Caribbean of the 1950s. Amazingly beautiful passages, well read by Campbell Scott, run dead end into dark ugly reminders of the violence, fear, and loathing that populate Thompson's later work (e.g., Songs of the Doomed, Audio Reviews, LJ 6/15/91) . Recommended for all libraries with an interest in politics, journalism, and American literature.?Theresa Connors, Arkansas Tech Univ., Russellville

Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile

The inspiration for the Duke character in "Doonesbury," Hunter Thompson invented "gonzo journalism," the subjective, macho, grandiloquent and self-serving writing that is as much fiction as fact. This early novel is as much fact as fiction, a first-person account of a young gringo reporter's hard living in San Juan, Puerto Rico, during the 1950's. Campbell Scott captures the authorial voice in the first sentence, crisply delivering the swaggering narrative and neatly fleshing out the characters. Thompson's inspiration may have been Hemingway, but Scott gives us a touch of Mickey Spillane as well. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine