Hello again, and welcome to Part 2 of my attempt to change your lives with literature and/or, at the very least, make your commute more enjoyable. I'm searching for literary brilliance so, as promised, I'm not only bringing you news of just-out must-haves, I'm pillaging the dusty bookshelves of time to recommend great reads that have been obscured by the years.
Think of it in music terms: I'm not only letting you know The National is touring the UK in November, I'm also reviewing that old Rolling Stones B-side you never knew existed. This leads us neatly into our next novel, which I first discovered for Phoenix magazine during the Graduate fashion shows this summer, for if the Rolling Stones gave Rolling Stone Magazine its name this book's author gave the magazine its spirit.
I'll go out on a limb and presume everyone reading this blog has at least heard of Hunter S. Thompson. He created and lived the Gonzo journalistic style, he was played by Johnny Depp in that trippy movie from the nineties, he did enough reds, LSD, cocaine, hash, etc to make a narc blush, and he wrote Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, everybody's default book for recommending to Dudes Who Don't Read and one of my all-time favourites.
I have always loved HST's mind. To me, he was a man who stood apart and watched while things fell apart, a man who really observed people, including himself, and then wrote about it honestly. He was not afraid to voice the terrible truths we all see and try to avoid, to look life in the eye and tell the reader straight what it's all about. Perhaps, like most of us, he was afraid, but he had to tell the truth in his writing. The impression I get from reading his words is that he was just built that way, and that maybe he had no choice.
Rum Diary is a little known precursor to Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. It lay unpublished until 1998, and is a must-read for any fan of the godfather of non-sequiturs, although in part this is for the incomprehensible oddity of Hunter forming a comprehensible sentence - and then an entire cogent narrative. As astute as Fear And Loathing but with the careful pace and complete lucidity that belies a literary master - and someone who had yet to slip into his LSD phase - this is an evocative and swift read.
The Rum Diary [the clue is in the title] follows Paul Kemp, a self-proclaimed 'vagrant journalist' from New York starting work at a paper in San Juan, Puerto Rico, amidst brewing violence spurred on by the Communist revolution in Cuba and the island's own Independence movement. An early incarnation of the author himself, I imagine Kemp as a hottie, and we follow his time working for the paper as chaotic brawls break out in the streets, the motley crew of drunken reporters near the precipice of alcoholism and throw themselves happily off, and Kemp wanders not entirely unwittingly into a dangerous and lust-bred love triangle.
That HST was 22 when he began this book is a marvel, and I speak as a 23 year old published author. I wrote about teens and growing up in my own book, but HST writes about the poignancy of growing older, of passing youth, the bittersweet taste of temporary pleasure, 29-year-old Kemp's fear of dying alone but for unfulfilled dreams, and the twisted, complex relationships between adult men and women in the isolation of that crumbling and chaotic Puerto Rican community and in the context of the late 1950s.
I'll go against the grain and say I didn't see any Gonzo in this book. This spoke to me like a sensitive and beautifully-wrought novel by a fresh, young voice, meeting the first notions of weariness and adulthood with fear, wonder... and a rabid inquisitiveness, a refusal to look away as it all falls apart. Maybe curiosity killed the sensitive cat inside Hunter S. Thompson - and if so, I'm glad that this book lives on. It's one of my personal favourites.
Psst: The American cover is way better than the English one - order it online from the US.
RUM DIARY is available on Amazon UK here.
Abigail's book FLICK is available on Kindle here.