How fascinating and entertaining it would be if, in 1959, aged 22, Hunter S Thompson had taken himself off to, say, Puerto Rico, drunk his weight in rum each day, humped all night and sat under a parasol and written a novel.
Well, he did. It lay buried and forgotten in the damp basement of his fortified Colorado ranch until a friend dug it up. It's called 'The Rum Diary' and it's well worth the wait . . . a fascinating glimpse of a seemingly innocent time before the turmoil of the 60s. There's alcoholism, police beatings and finely drawn characters, but most impressive is how Thompson captures the tension that builds on a tropical island where men sweat 24 hours a day.
With Thompson's trademark combination of fear and loathing, and characteristically embattled prose style that bristles full of dark hyperbole and wary invective, along with a warped humour and a genuine grain of something like integrity, this wild, witty, angry, cynical and sarcastic book will make your life seem boring by comparison.
