After ten minutes of half-hearted listening I suspected I was in a den of hustlers. Most of them seemed to be waiting for the seven-thirty flight from Miami, which -- from what I gathered of the conversations -- would be bulging at the seams with architects, strip-men, consultants and Sicilians fleeing Cuba. The fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, care-free living, drinking and nearly dying flowing through out the narrative is very Beat Generation. There's no real goal, no protagonist with any particular object to obtain or obstacle to hurdle. This is not genre writing. This is what was en vogue in the mid 20th century. It's what most of my crusty old writing professors muddled my brain with. "Get with the times! Genre writing is finish, maaan!" I bought it, hook, line and stinker, and so I struggled to come up with novel ideas. Ah, but I'm grudge-grinding and getting off topic.

Thompson, did in fact, work for a newspaper in San Juan in the early 1960's. And the novel has the feel of truth. The narrative is fast paced and gritty in a he said/ she said type of alcoholic fugue, but there are wonderful, lucid passages also: You bastard," Sala muttered. "That girl hasn't been here a day and you're already talking about having whores crawl on you." He nodded wisely. "You'll get the syphilis -- you keep on whoring and stomping around and pretty soon you'll stomp in shit." He smiled. "Chenault said there was some young guy beating up an old man on the plane with her -- was that you?" Yeamon smiled and sat down. "Are you still bitching about Moberg?" He laughed and turned to me. "Robert thinks I mistreated Moberg." Yeamon came toward us with a long bow-legged stride, smiling politely when Lotterman introduced me. He was tall, with a face that was either arrogant or something else that I couldn't quite place.After he finishes this piece, Paul goes to visit Yeamon and Chenault on St. Paul. Carnival season is in full swing, and the city is one large, crowded, noisy party. The three head to the outskirts of town where several quieter parties are in effect, mostly being put on by the locals. At one house party, Chenault dances with some local men who move to surround her, forcing her to leave with them. Yeamon and Paul try to intervene, but the other people at the party stop them. With its large amount of disrespect for women, I find the book disappointing and outdated. I didn’t connect with the main character because he did nothing. The most memorable scenes in the book contain Al’s burgers because the description of Puerto Rico falls short of any exotic glamour. I kept waiting for something exciting to happen and before I knew, the book was finished. The characters are unconvincing and as I said, there is no plot going on. Paul and Sala go to visit Yeamon a few days later to see how he is doing without a steady income. Sala and Paul witness Yeamon hitting Chenault before the three of them take off to have a few drinks at a local bar that Yeamon insists will give him credit. However, once they have shared in more than ten dollars of rum, the manager of the bar insists they pay their bill. Yeamon refuses and will not allow Sala or Paul to pay either. The three of them leave only to be chased down by the bar's customers and local police. A brawl erupts and the three men are beaten severely before being taken into police custody. At court later that night, the cops lie and say that Paul, Sala, and Yeamon started the brawl. Sanderson shows up and drops a few influential names that persuade the judge to set bail for all three. Finally I gave up. There seemed to be no restaurants in the Old City. The only thing I saw was called the New York Diner, and it was closed. In desperation, I hailed a cab and told him to take me to the Daily News. Parts of the novel were published in 1990 in Thompson's collection, Songs of the Doomed. In these excerpts, it is possible to see how the manuscript was changed before its final publication. David S. Wills wrote in High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism that the original manuscript, as well as the 1990s excerpts, were "littered with" racial epithets and racist depictions, but that these had almost all been removed by the time it was released as a book. [7]

The main character of the novel, Paul Kemp, is a journalist in New York City who longs for adventure and excitement. Looking for something new, he moves to San Juan, Puerto Rico and gets a job at a paper there. Paul gets drunk before getting on the plane to Puerto Rico; as he boards, he notices a beautiful woman with whom he wants to talk. He attempts to entice the woman to sit next to him on the plane, but an old man takes the seat Paul had been saving for her. Paul gets into an altercation with the man, and the girl leaves in disgust.I have a fascination with Hunter S Thompson. To me, he is the quintessential bad boy of the late 60s and onward. In your face, always high, and getting away with it. I used to fall for guys like that. I even married one but it didn't last. Still, I have a romantic remnant that attracts me to such rebels. Happy," I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is on of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much fait in them and I am no exception -- especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.' - Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary The thing that makes it less than fun is that there's some physical abuse (slapping) by the friend of Kemp of the (hopeful) girlfriend, and then she dances naked in a bar one night and is gone missing for a couple days, with no real explanation of what seems to be ominous events we can only guess at. The boys don't endear themselves to the locals with their arrogance. . . I think of Graham Greene's foreign journalist stories such as The Quiet American, or Hem's drunken Pamplona novel, The Sun Also Rises. Sound bleak? I would have liked it more at 25 than I did, but Thompson reveals lots of good writing chops here that makes it engaging.