V's Pick #34: The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson

I've never read anything by Thompson before (although I loved Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a film) and I'm not sure I'm glad I began with this one. The Rum Diary was written when Thompson was in his early twenties - it was his first book and while it doesn't read like a first novel, I'm also not sure it captured, for me at least, what I was expecting from when I know about him as an artist.

My friend Richard was obsessed with Thompson for a handful of months two summers ago - he read this, Fear, a few other titles and a collection or two of his letters entitled The Proud Highway which alone totals in around 650+ pages all in the course of a few weeks - which had him speaking in Hunterisms for at least 2 months prior. TRD was by far his favorite and since we usually have pretty similar taste in books, maybe I went into reading this wanting too much from it. I figured if this was his favorite out of all that Thompson, I would love it too.

I *liked* the book but I did not love it.  I found it easy to read and as I posted on Facebook a few chapters in, it really is "the perfect summer book." However, I also found it easy to put down. In fact, I even left it in John's car for almost two days and didn't really miss it. I don't usually notice when a writer is writing for a certain gender, but it was very clear to me that this book was meant for a largely male audience - there's a lot of observation, the only action is either sex or fighting and of course, there's a lot of rum. Now, despite womanhood, I enjoy reading about all of those things, but not wholly in the way Thompson delivers them here. As a journalist, both in character and in his personal life, The Rum Diary reads more like a newspaper column than a novel. Perhaps he did that on purpose, considering journalists make up about 98.5% of the characters in the novel or perhaps it's just evident of his pre-Gonzo writing style...the beginning of the end in terms of standard prose.

The shakedown: read this for a quick intro to Thompson's life work, read this if you're going to Puerto Rico, read this if you're into journalism/journalists/newspapers and absolutely read this if you're into drinking fiction. There's a lot of rum and for such a masculine book, there's not nearly enough sex. My favorite thing about the book - it was short and I think it did represent the only period of innocence Thompson probably lived.