To say that it is more conventional than F&L is an understatement, and although there is in the book a faint foreshadowing of the later Gonzo-Style and even in this first novel we find one of Thompson’s favorite epithets, “swine,” he manages, here and there, to evoke a quality of tenderness. Thus it begins: “ We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” Considering all that one could say about F&L, two things, for me, stand out: How amazing it is of all the novels translated into film, thousands probably, it is F&L that is closest to the possibility that a movie, yes, can translate the book nearly perfectly and, two, that F&L can be read as an anti-drug screed.īut now to our shot of Rum. A little Key Largo, a little Front Page, a carnival, a probable rape, a possible murder, intermittent sex, and a lot of booze.Īfter his 1967 Hell’s Angels, Thompson’s opus Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was published as a novel in 1978. Semi-autobiographical, it was written in the early 1960s describing and embellishing his stint in Puerto Rico in the late 1950s, but not published until 1998. Thompson’s ashes out of a cannon commemorating a successful life (1937–2005) of folly, passion, genius, infuriation, and glee? The Rum Diary is the Doctor’s second book (his first, Prince Jellyfish, remains unpublished). Good Lord-has it really been over seven years since Johnny Depp shot Dr. F or their own recklessness destroyed them all-children and fools.

The rum diary hunter