On ‘The Rum Diary’
Before leaving on a recent trip to Puerto Rico, I knew I wanted to read a book about the real Puerto Rico, which I know little about. I didn’t know of any other books at the time and having just read Hell’s Angels I wanted to read more Thompson. I’d seen the film adaptation of The Rum Diary starring Johnny Depp. I arrived in Puerto Rico on Monday and started reading the novel that night. It started slow, as it always does for me, and then I was hooked. I read on the beach, just a few miles drive from Paul Kemp’s haunts in Condado and Old San Juan.
The first thing that struck me about Thompson’s writing was the humor. In the opening pages of the novel, Paul Kemp beats a crazy old man while trying to save a seat for the beautiful Chenault, who he meets later. Though the novel is fiction the voice is clearly Thompson’s so much so that Kemp is indistinguishable from Thompson and the reader feels that much of the events and people draw from real-life experiences. Thompson’s descriptions of people and places demonstrate his skills of observation. How does he remember all those details? Is he always taking notes? Always writing? Or is he able to just pay close attention and remember it all when he sits down to write? He has an ability to clearly depict and relay his thoughts and observations to the reader. Certain passages reminded me of Hemingway, very clear and precise with not a lot of useless prose. I’ve read that Thompson typed out Hemingway novels to understand the writer’s rhythm and style.
The Rum Diary is a wonderfully funny, sad, observant, ego-driven tale of drunken foolishness, depravity during the Puerto Rican ‘boom’ in the late 1950s. San Juan is the backdrop for all the rum filled shenanagins the Yanquis get themselves into. Kemp is especially mean to most of the other Americans, the tourists, and isn’t so kind to the locals either. Thompson gives us the perfect picture of Puerto Rico - a tropical paradise that in the 1950s was the target of Washington’s capitalist ‘experiment’ in Latin America. Thompson writes that before Conrad Hilton built his hotel there, there was nothing and then San Juan was a boom town. The government offered tax incentives to American businesses to set up shop on the island. Kemp covered every new bank or hotel opening for the San Juan Daily News. When Sanderson offers Kemp a steady supply of assignments, Kemp decides to make San Juan home for a while. He gets a car and an apartment and feels like he can stop wandering But then everything gets turned upside down and Kemp has no choice but to move on.
The movie differs from the book only slightly - Yeoman is absent and seems to be combined into Sala and Sanderson though the movie’s storyline works better with Sanderson and Chenault together. Of course the movie wraps up certain things that the book doesn’t - Thompson never writes if Kemp ever finished the brochure he was supposed to work on for Sanderson and the last we know is that it was overdue and he’d forgotten about it. Perhaps the reader is supposed to read between the lines and see that Kemp wasn’t ready to sell his soul just yet.
I enjoyed the movie more after reading the book. There’s a lot of little details from the book that aren’t exactly discussed in the movie but they are quickly shown, like the exchange in the taxi when Kemp first arrives in San Juan, or a mean old man giving Kemp the stare-down, presumably digusted by the Yanquis. If you’ve read the book, these details are there in the movie. Then there’s Segarra and Zimberger’s whole backstory which is only broadly seen in the movie.
I enjoyed Depp’s portrayal of Kemp. Depp brings that big Hollywood star quality to the film and as a result the movie is more exciting than the book which was more depressing. Depp also shows rather than tells us how Kemp might have reacted; for example, in the scene when Kemp stumbles upon Chenault and Sanderson making love in the ocean. This scene is a funny one. Depp’s Kemp is completely distracted and overcome by ‘lustful wanting’. Thompson writes :
“Then I saw two figures clinging together near the reef. I recognized Yeamon and the girl who had come down with me on the plane. They were naked, standing in waist-deep water, with her legs locked around his hips and her arms around his neck. Her head was thrown back and her hair trailed out behind her, floating on the water like a blonde mane. At first I thought I was having a vison. The scene was so idyllic that my mind refused to accept it. I just stood there and watched…The scene I had just witnessed brought back a lot of memories - not of things I had done but of things I failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of my life and I would never get it back. I envied Yeamon and felt sorry for myself at the same time, because I had seen him in a moment that made all my happiness seem dull.” - pg. 37
The film includes a narrative about Kemp wanting to find his own voice. Is that what Thompson was trying to do with this novel? If so, he succeeded - Thompson’s voice is singular and makes The Rum Diary Thompson’s version of the ‘great American novel’.
Until next time,
KW
