The rum diary by Hunter S. Thompson

Paul Kemp has moved from New York to the steamy heat of Puerto Rico to work at the Daily News. He starts hanging out at Al's Backyard, a local den selling booze and hamburgers to vagrant journalists who are mostly crazy drunks on the verge of quitting. Then he meets Yeamon, whose delectable girlfriend has Kemp stewing in his own lust. But the idle tension that builds up in places where men sweat twenty-four hours a day is reaching a violent breaking point.

This is my first encounter with Hunter S. Thompson's writings. (Of course having seen the crazy interviews and Fear and Loathing, I had to read something).

This book reminded me of a cross between Hemingway's drinking prose rhythm combined with the manic ideas and crazy characters that Heller introduces in Catch-22.

Will make sure to pick another one o Thompson's up soon.

First I just wanted to say it was very good, but I still have to think about it and the story actually really gripped me so I am going to give it the highest marks here. This is a fascinating quite short story that is very well told.

Absolute worth the read

Not a strong work. Many reviews here nail its flaws. I will only share some quotes that stood out

All manner of men came to work for the News: everything from wild young Turks who wanted to rip the world in half and start all over again—to tired, beer-bellied old hacks who wanted nothing more than to live out their days in peace before a bunch of lunatics ripped the world in half.

...

Most people who deal in words don't have much faith 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.

...

Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that wee were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles—a restless idealism on the one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other—that kept me going.