The Kentucky Derby

Sorry, I haven’t started to read my next book yet. It just arrived at the library today and I didn’t have time to pick it up. But I did read one of Thompson’s articles, The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved (Scanlan’s Monthly, June 1970). The article was the earliest example of Thompson’s “Gonzo” journalism.

The story starts when Scanlan’s assigns Thompson to write a story covering the Kentucky Derby. One would assume that this would entail interviewing trainers and jockeys and paying careful attention to the race itself. However, Thompson had different ideas. He wanted, “to watch the real beasts perform”; that is, he is more interested in the people watching the race than the race itself. Along with his British illustrator, Steadman, Thompson attempts to strike at the very core of what makes the Kentucky Derby so despicable—“a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis,” as Thompson puts it. Thompson describes the people he saw, criticizing each group heavily, and what he did that day in an effort to get the story. This includes a brief description of the race itself (Thompson devotes a full 5 sentences to it). The article ends with Thompson waking up the day after the race, looking in the mirror at his own desperate and drunken face, and realizing that he embodies everything he hates about the Derby.

This terrible revelation likely reflects the depression and hopelessness Thompson was experiencing at the time. Thompson, as we have seen various times in The Rum Diary, is often haunted by a feeling that his life is being wasted. When Thompson criticized those, “Failed dreams” of the Kentucky Derby, he was really criticizing his own inability to make his dreams reality. Thompson was also likely suffering from a “terminal identity crisis” at the time. He was not sure whether or not his life was on the right track, just as Kemp wasn’t sure if selling out by working with the developers was a move in the right direction.

It was really interesting to read this early example of Thompson’s journalism. I’ll read a load more when I get to Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, which should be an adventure.

Biography

Hunter S. Thompson’s career in journalism started while he was in the US Air Force in 1956. Thompson became the sports editor of The Command Courier, the newspaper of the Eglin Air Force Base. After leaving the Air Force (he resented the lack of freedom), Thompson began migrating from city to city and newspaper to newspaper for several years. During this time, he accepted a job in Pennsylvania, and then moved to New York where he worked for Time Magazine and a small New York newspaper. He was fired from both jobs for insubordination. He then moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico where he wrote for several English-Language newspapers. His experiences there were the inspiration for The Rum Diary. Like Thompson, Kemp is a nomadic journalist whose exploits and independent mindset often led to trouble. After that, he moved to Brazil, then to San Francisco. During this time, he married Sandra Conklin and became a part of the hippie counter-culture of the 1960s.

Thompson had his first literary success with the novel, Hell’s Angels, in 1966. He had been living with the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang for several years leading up to the publishing of the book. Hell’s Angels was a success and brought Thompson’s writing to a wider audience. By the late 1960’s, Thompson’s articles were being published in high-profile newspapers and magazines.

By the 1970’s, Thompson had become disenchanted with the increasing lack of political resolve of the hippies and became increasingly pessimistic about the American dream. Thomson moved to Aspen, Colorado where he ran for sheriff in 1970. Among his campaign promises were the legalization of drugs, outlawing the construction of all buildings tall enough to block the view of the Rocky Mountains, and destroying all the streets in Aspen to be replaced by grassy parks. Thompson narrowly lost the election, but used the experience to gain a job writing for Rolling Stone magazine, a job which lasted him much of his life.

While on assignment in to write a magazine article about a motorcycle race in Las Vegas, Nevada, Thompson began writing the novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a book which paralleled Thompson’s own life in much the same way The Rum Diary had. The book was published in a series of Rolling Stone magazines in 1972. The book focused on the failure of the 1960’s hippie counter-culture and the death of the American Dream. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was representative of Thompson’s new form of journalism: Gonzo Journalism. Gonzo Journalism is intentionally subjective and focuses as much on the process of getting a story as it does on the story itself. For example, a 1970 article about the Kentucky Derby did not focus on the races themselves, but on the corruption of the people attending the event and on Thompson’s actions that day.

Thompson continued to employ this style as he wrote a series of articles for Rolling Stone which described the 1972 presidential campaign of Senator George McGovern. McGovern ultimately won the Democratic nomination, only to lose the presidential election to Richard Nixon. Thompson was a sharp critic of Nixon, seeing him as the embodiment of everything that was wrong with America. These articles were later published in the collection, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972.

That’s essentially everything you need to know to follow the books I will be covering in this blog. If I have time after finishing Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972, I’ll explain Thompson’s later career.

BTW: Yep, that's an ad. I've sold out.

The Rum Diary, in Summary

what is the significance of power? You say that Yeamon was very controlling of Chenault. I think he was control because he had no control over his own life, so to escape he used Chenault.

I definitely agree. Yeamon is a very individualistic character. This suggests inner strength, but also a mistrust and fear of the outside world, which is why he strives to be so individualistic. That fear of the outside world springs from his inability to control others, though he attempts to do so by fighting them and by treating Chenault like a slave. Of course, no matter how much of an individual he thinks he is, his life is impacted by factors beyond his control and that really frightens him.

The Rum Diary ends on chapter 21. Anthony Burgess, in a foreword to his famous novel, A Clockwork Orange, once wrote of his choice to include 21 chapters in that book, “21 is the symbol of human maturity…The number of chapters is never entirely arbitrary,”(Burgess, A Clockwork Orange Resucked,vi). The 21 chapters of The Rum Diary have a similar meaning: the book is about Kemp’s realization of his maturity and his growing readiness to take on responsibility.

A Clockwork Orange contains 3 separate sections, each 7 chapters long. It seems that Thompson has done the same thing, though he did not make the separation as obvious as Burgess did. The first part of the book saw a Kemp who was unsure of what he wanted from life. He lived nomadically, migrating from place to place to seek happiness. In many ways he reminded me of Chris McCandless, seeking individuality and truth. However, Kemp realizes that he is getting older, and he fears that change. He sees that the next stage of his life is coming, and fast. In the second section, Kemp has his run-in with the law, landing him in prison. This makes him realize that he’s not young enough to get away with partying and fighting and that it’s time to grow up and gain some stability; that is why he bought the house and car and got a well paying job from Sanderson. The final part of the book begins when Kemp, Yeamon, and Chenault arrive in St. Thomas. In this section, Kemp watches Yeamon’s life fall apart: he loses his girl, his home, and is made into an outlaw after participating in the murder of his old boss, Lotterman. Kemp, on the other hand, gains a woman and decides to return to New York to live with her. We cannot know what Kemp will do upon reaching New York. We do not know whether he will he continue to live recklessly or begin to settle down. However, we do know that during the second part of the book, Kemp was turned off of his youthful troublemaking and that in the third section, he saw Yeamon’s rebelliousness destroy him. It is safe to suppose that he is finished with that way of life and ready to move on; his journey to maturity is complete.

Rum

In The Rum Diary, Kemp and the others are drinking almost constantly. The recurring presence of rum is significant because for the characters of this novel, rum is an escape from the troubles of life. One thing that Kemp accentuates over and over is the mixed nature of life in San Juan: the hope and beauty of the place at the beginning of a day can be replaced by crushing heat which destroys all joy by midday. As Kemp recalls of his days in San Juan, “Sometimes at dusk, when you were trying to relax and not think about the general stagnation, the Garbage God would gather a handful of those choked-off morning hopes and dangle them somewhere just out of reach…It was a maddening image, and the only way to whip it was to…banish the ghosts with rum,” (191). It is, then, not only the hopelessness of the place which drives the men to drink, but the fact that hope is always tantalizingly present, but it is tortuously wrenched away.

What are these unfulfilled hopes? Yeamon, in the beginning, hoped to live on an island paradise and to have a beautiful woman, Chenault, to control. However, Yeamon had that dream wrenched away when Chenault, rebelling against Yeamon’s dominating ways, ran away with another man after a wild party and never came back to him, eventually finding her way to Kemp who she apparently hopes to have a relationship with. For her part, Chenault wanted to live on an island paradise with a man and live an exciting, romantic life. This dream is crushed by Yeamon’s control. Kemp also had various hopes which were crushed. His hope for wealth in the booming Caribbean region was dashed by the reality of the immorality necessary to conduct business there. He had hoped to make money off the developers of Vieques, but ultimately realizes that his own hopes were in fact evil since they led him to destroy the island’s beauty. It is a key part of the death of these dreams that the characters not only fail to realize their hopes, but also that they realize the hopes themselves were immoral: Just as Kemp realized that his hopes were actually immoral, Yeamon ultimately realizes that his attempts to control Chenault were wrong. It is a process which breeds uncertainty; life’s goals on one day become despicable the next day. As Kemp remarks at the peak of his self-disgust over aligning himself with Lotterman (the newspaper owner) and Sanderson (a powerful economic and political figure), “‘I’m tired of being a punk—a human suckfish,’”(185). It is no wonder that these characters are so angry at the world and at themselves. It is even less of a wonder that they kill this pain with rum.

Next week I’m going to do a conclusion for The Rum Diary, then as I wait to get a copy of Hell’s Angels, I’ll give some background info on Hunter S. Thompson, then the week after that, I’ll get right into Hell’s Angels.

Putting on the Brakes

I’m not going to write anything long today because I have SAT subject tests tomorrow and I feel like resting today. The major theme that has been coming up is Kemp’s increasing readiness to give up the free, non-committal lifestyle of his youth for stability. Kemp makes this change clear by saying, “After one night too many sleeping on some stinking cot in a foul grotto where I didn’t want to be anyway…I decided to hell with it. If that was absolute freedom then I’d had a bellyful of it, and from here on in I would try something… a lot more comfortable,”(113). This is a change brought about by the fear that Kemp has experienced as a result of his drunken run-in with the law (see the previous entry). Kemp is aware that the activities of that night have put his very life in danger: his picture was printed in the paper, along with the story of his actions, putting him in danger from Puerto-Ricans who are tired of Whites who think they deserve special privileges on the island. Kemp experiences a nervous breakdown and after calming down, realizes that it’s time to leave that sort of thing behind and get some stability.

Kemp accepts a high-paying job from Zimburger, a wealthy former American General, to write advertisements for a soon-to-be-built hotel development on Vieques Island. However, upon visiting the future hotel site and seeing its astounding natural beauty, Kemp has a pang of guilt. He feels that he has become a part of the corrupt machinery which is consuming Puerto Rico, lamenting, “I was being paid twenty-five dollars a day to ruin the only place I’d seen in ten years where I’d felt a sense of peace,”(134). But although Kemp is duly aware that his new job goes against his morals, he is willing to do it because the money he will receive will pay for his new apartment and car, the two things which Kemp identifies as stabilizing elements which he has decided to seek.

I am curious to see whether Kemp will continue to seek stability. Will he be able to overlook the corruption of his new philosophy for the benefits it brings? We’ll see.

Puerto-Rican Justice

Jake my name is Megan please visit my site and i will come back and visit yours. who knows we might become the best of friends~

Yeah, I often feel that Kemp has a difficult time connecting with his co-workers in a way that might be referred to as “friendship”. He does connect with them on a casual, day-to-day basis, and yet he has a certain contempt for them. “The Daily News was staffed mainly by ill-tempered wandering rabble,”(4), Kemp remarks. Even though Kemp is similar to those men in that he too can be considered to be “ill-tempered” (he beat up an old man, as I discussed earlier) and “wandering rabble” (he has spent his life going from country to country looking for work), Kemp is too disgusted by these men to become a close friend to any of them. Perhaps it is precisely the fact that these men each portray a different ugly facet of Kemp’s own personality which makes Kemp dislike them.

Yeamon, Sala, and Kemp walk into a bar. The bar’s manager refuses to serve the three men unless Yeamon repays the tab he has been accumulating, a sum of $11.50. Yeamon, who has recently been fired from the newspaper for fighting with his boss, has no money and instead of paying, tries to leave the bar. This triggers a fight between the three newspaper men and the Puerto Ricans in the bar. The cops come, arrest the three men, and take them to jail. This is a strange role reversal for the men. As whites in Puerto Rico, they are used to receiving special privileges, not being subjected to racism (note that none of the Puerto Ricans involved were imprisoned). As Kemp says, “ Puerto Rican jails were for Puerto Ricans—not Americans,”(97).

It seems as if the Puerto Rican policemen who arrested the three and the court which charged the men experienced a feeling of vindication from getting back at these Americans. After the Americans dominated their homeland, it is not surprising that the Puerto Ricans would want to get back at Americans in any way they can. However, this revenge is short lived: the Americans prove to be too powerful, even for a Puerto-Rican court. During the hearing, Sanderson, an American friend of the paper with ties to powerful officials, threatens to summon Adolfo Quinones, one of the most well-respected men in Puerto Rico, to act as an attorney for the three men. The judge is taken aback, then hastily sets the men’s bail and adjourns court. The bail money is easily paid. It remains to be seen what will happen at the trial, but what has happened at this hearing is a symbol of things to come. I predict that in the end, the three will get off without any punishment at all simply due to the power of the Americans in Puerto Rico. The court’s fear at the mention of Quinones’ name shows that the Americans continue to hold more power than the Puerto Ricans. It is amazing how differently Americans are treated outside San Juan, as opposed to inside the city. Inside the city, they are treated as the elite. Outside the city, they are seen as oppressors. However, at the end of the day, it is the Americans who hold all the power in Puerto Rico.

what about the natives, who want to do something with their lives, what is left for them to do in society?
Not too much, unfortunately. The natives essentially have to decide whether they will stay in the villages, where their ancestors have lived and died in obscurity for generations, or seek new lives by moving to a city or to the mainland USA. As Kemp says, “They heard the word, the rotten devilish word that makes people incoherent with desire to move on…the cheap, hot, hungry world of their fathers and their grandfathers…was not the whole story,”(60). They know that there is a glimmer of hope of a better world outside their villages and, like Kemp fleeing St. Louis, they will risk anything to chase it.

I have previously written about Kemp’s fear of losing his youth. These apprehensions are most visible when Kemp’s co-worker, Addison Yeamon is present. Thompson uses Yeamon to represent everything that Kemp wishes he could be: Yeamon is youthful, free, and has the one thing Kemp has desired most since arriving in Puerto Rico: Chenault, the girl from the airplane.
In the newsroom, Yeamon is known as a wild-man. Sala, a reporter, recounts that Yeamon once, “’Knocked all our drinks in the dirt and flipped the table on some poor bastard who didn’t know what he was saying—then threatened to stomp him!’”(20). Yeamon represents the kind of reckless youth which would lead one to do something like hitting a man with a table and threatening to kill him. Yeamon is entirely self-absorbed and gives no attempt to sympathize with others: the pain that the man in the bar feels never even crosses Yeamon’s mind. Kemp envies this recklessness, seeing it as a feature of the youth which he has lost but yearns to regain. Kemp states that “Listening to [Yeamon], I realized how long it had been since I’d felt like I had the world by the balls…”(23). Yeamon is certainly a man who feels that he has the world by the balls: he is young and strong and can hit people with tables if he wants to because he has his whole life ahead of him to change his path if he so chooses.

The greatest symbol of Yeamon’s virility, however, is his beautiful girlfriend, Chenault. Having a beautiful girlfriend like Chenault is a symbol of a man’s youth and strength. It shows that a man is so amazing and manly that he is able to attract a woman who has plenty of men to choose from. Kemp has wanted Chenault since he first saw her on the plane to San Juan, but knows that because Yeamon represents the ideal of man better than he does, he can never have her. After seeing Chenault and Yeamon playing on the beach (it is not clear whether the two are playing or making love in the scene, but if they are meant to be playing, it is certainly narrated in a way meant to suggest the physical act of sex), Kemp remarks that, “The scene I had just witnessed brought back a lot of memories—not of things I had done but of things I had failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost…”(37). Kemp takes Chenault’s love of Yeamon as yet more proof that Yeamon is young and strong, while he, Kemp, is growing old and impotent. This is why witnessing the scene reminds Kemp of missed opportunities: seeing Yeamon’s youth displayed so clearly has forced Kemp to think back to his own youth, which he sees as wasted time.

Why would Kemp admire Yeamon when he is so crazy and reckless? Yeamon certainly does not display many qualities which would traditionally be described as “admirable”. And yet the symbols of youth Yeamon possesses are so potent that Yeamon, who any reasonable person would view with disgust, is an object of envy to Kemp. Yeamon is a character Thompson created to embody every ideal Kemp wishes he could return to. Therefore, observing the characteristics and actions of Yeamon is an excellent way to explore Kemp’s innermost emotions and values. It seems clear that Kemp is not done pursuing Chenault. It will be interesting to see how he overcomes the barriers which aging has set before him in that pursuit.

Fear and Loathing in San Juan

“Some people feel that growing older makes you wiser, why does kemp feel like it is going to be the end of the world when he does lose his youth?”

Yeah, it definitely says a lot about the person Kemp that he is entirely unable to see the benefits of aging. Kemp is not at all interested in things like learning and becoming wise. All he cares about is doing things. His greatest fear is dying without having left a mark on society, which is why he left Missouri for New York and New York for Puerto Rico. He goes wherever there is some faint glimmer of hope that he can make his mark on the world. Kemp simply does not see the wisdom that comes with aging as something that can aid him in that quest; all he wants to do is keep running towards fame and never slow down. And he believes that aging will force him to slow down.

“…why did you pick this topic?”

I had watched a documentary about Hunter S. Thompson and he seemed like a really interesting guy. I have some videos at the bottom of my page that will give you some idea of what I mean. The one with the motorcycle tire in the thumbnail is especially interesting. I also knew that he wrote about politics, individuality, and insanity, which seemed like topics I would enjoy reading about.

Even though the News is based in Puerto Rico, its relationships with the locals is generally not one of understanding.

As an English-language newspaper, the News is staffed by white Americans and most of whom, like Kemp, have recently moved to the island. The Americans who work for the newspaper see themselves as superior to the natives, who appear unsophisticated and poor in comparison. Therefore, Whites in San Juan are portrayed as being bigoted towards the natives whenever the two interact. As soon as Kemp arrives at the headquarters of the News, he sees evidence of these tensions. Pulling up in front of the Daily News headquarters, Kemp sees, “a gang of about twenty Puerto Ricans, attacking a tall American in a tan suit,”(14). These Puerto Ricans are later revealed to be union members on a wildcat strike (that is, a strike that is not officially sponsored by any union). The American’s fight with the union members is symbolic of the larger struggle which has traditionally taken place between the haves and the have-nots. Whether it’s the French Revolution, a writer’s strike, or Puerto Ricans fighting Americans, it’s always the same theme: the oppressed hate the privileged and vice-versa.

The city of San Juan itself is a metaphor for this division between Americans and Puerto Ricans. It is on a peninsula jutting into the Atlantic to the North, as though trying to flee from Puerto Rico to Florida. This separation becomes very clear to Kemp on his first trip outside of San Juan. Describing his excursion outside of San Juan, Kemp narrates,“…the sea on my left, a huge swamp on my right…past wooden shacks full of silent, staring natives, swerving to avoid chickens and cows in the road,…and feeling for the first time since leaving New York that I had actually come to the Caribbean,”(36). Compare this to Kemp’s description of Americanized San Juan, “On the other side[of the road] were homes that once looked out on the beach. Now they looked out on hotels…”(12-13). The rapid development of San Juan signified in this passage is a sharp contrast to the static nature of the main body of Puerto Rico, which continues to be poor and almost “uncivilized” in comparison. San Juan feels like a city where Americans were forced to go, against their will (the growth of San Juan was triggered by the establishment of a U.S. Naval Reservation there), and then figured that as long as they were there, they may as well make it as close as possible to home, so they shoved away the uncivilized nature of the place and then simply plopped a modern American city onto the island. And the Americans continue to hate the backwardness of Puerto Rico which is why they are portrayed as hating the natives so much. It will be very interesting to see how Kemp will come to view the natives. Will he grow to hate them for being uneducated and uncivilized or will he hate the Americans for oppressing them? A clear answer has not surfaced yet, so it will be important to keep watching.

Beating Up Old People and Chasing Girls

The Rum Diaries has what may easily be the greatest opening chapter of any book I have ever read. In that chapter, Paul Kemp, the protagonist, is on board a plane to San Juan, Puerto Rico where he has accepted a job on a local newspaper. In the airport, he spots a beautiful blonde woman and is ecstatic to discover that she will be boarding his flight. Kemp grabs his seat on the plane and saves a seat next to him, hoping to attract the girl. However, to his chagrin, just as the girl is coming to sit next to him, an old man sits down in the seat, resisting Kemp’s efforts to kick him out. Upon landing, however, Kemp sees one more chance to talk to the girl. He will remain in his seat until she walks by his seat, then get out and walk with her. However, the old man again ruins the plan as he impatiently tries to push his way out of the plane. Infuriated, Kemp pins the man against the window, screaming wildly at the “ ‘…crazy old bastard,’ ”(9), attracting the panicked reaction of the co-pilot and stewardess, who break up the fight. None of this gains him any favor with the blonde girl. As Kemp puts it, “Few girls look with favor on a man of my stripe, a brutalizer of old people,”(10).
This is a humorous situation of course, but it is symbolic of a larger struggle which Kemp faces. The old man is a symbol of aging, frustration, and decline, while the woman is a symbol of the fun and glory of youth. At the center of the conflict between these two factors is Kemp’s realization that he is growing old. It saddens him to think of the loss of his youth because he realizes that those years were his prime, and yet at the same time, he feels that they were fruitless and wasted. Reflecting on his lost youth, Kemp laments about, “…wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of [his] life and [he] would never get it back,”(37). The old man on the plane impeding Kemp’s attempts to hook up with the blonde is a symbolic way of saying that the approach of old age impedes men from getting the glory which is associated with youth. And yet, just as Kemp’s squabble with the old man actually revolted the girl, trying to resist the fact of aging only makes it harder to attain happiness.
Another example of Kemp’s insecurity regarding the loss of youth is revealed as he recalls why he left his original hometown of St. Louis, Missouri for New York City. “‘St. Louis Gives Young Men The Fear… [Kemp] doesn’t give a good shit for St. Louis or his friends of his family or anything else…he just wants to find some place where he can breathe,’ ”(60). Even before setting out on his own, Kemp saw that his life was about to be wasted in Missouri, where he could never amount to anything. So he fled the certainty of anonymous death in St. Louis for a faint glimmer of hope that he could attain greatness in New York. It is the same reason Achilles chose to die in a burst of glory instead of living a long, happy, and nameless existence. Yet Kemp is in a more difficult position than Achilles because he does not know if glory awaits him in New York. His flight to the city could result in the same anonymity he faced in Missouri. All Kemp knows is that if he sees hope, he will do all he can to reach it.
Kemp’s fear of aging will likely play a major role in the plot of this novel. It is a trait which pervades his character and reveals itself constantly in his actions. And yet Kemp is not old, but still has a few years of youth. It will be interesting to see if he is able to gain the glory he has always desired.