Hunter Thompson's Rum Diary

Saturday morning was a brilliant, warm one, brought on by the Santa Ana winds, but the winds hadn't arrived yet.  The Pacific was calm and peaceful, the sky was pure blue, and rather than running off to exercise at 8 am I sat down with Hunter S. Thompson's novel, The Rum Diary. The movie has just come out and Johnny Depp plays the main character, a young journalist named Paul Kemp (who is basically HST).  I want to see the movie, but when I saw the book in the window while walking in downtown San Diego, I just had to get it.

The book had been sitting on my desk for a few days tempting me, making me relish the feasting of it all the more. I sat and read, interested, delighted, sometimes amused and laughing out loud, and wondering why he couldn't get it published until 30 years after he'd written it.  He had to be famous first. Plus he had this good friend named Johnny Depp.

I read half of it in the morning, and the other half as the afternoon waned.  It is not a great book, but a good book and a good story that is told in a writing voice that little resembles some of his later writings. There is some poetry of writing in it, certainly, and some well-written passages.  But mostly, it is readable. The Rum Diary takes you on a fun little jaunt to Puerto Rico, with a some foibles and fistfights. There is a petite blonde who is first introduced when he sees her in the airport boarding the plane, and for a while I thought he had forgotten about her --- breaking a cardinal rule of writing when introducing characters. But she was there again, angelic nymphet, coquettishly frolicking  naked in the ocean, and then teasing and flirting throughout the book until the final wildness (which I won't reveal, so I don't spoil the book for you).

So, on one hand, I saw a young writer following the rules, but on the other, breaking them: in an early scene on the plane he (Kemp) beats and old man for trying to take the seat he wanted to save for the blonde.  Then he thrashes him again while hurrying out of the plane to find the fine blonde. Not exactly a "likable character" and this is the protagonist.  And any Creative Writing 101 class, I'm sure (although I've never had one) will tell young writers that they must first create likable characters and then put them into "challenging" situations. But as Tom Robbins says, "in fiction, whatever works, works."  There should be no rules.

I enjoyed the book, from cover to cover, with only a little drag in the middle.  There were a lot of hamburgers and beer and glasses of rum, a lot of eating and drinking scenes, and several fighting ones.  It's a fun story, a little depraved and a lot of drinking -- especially toward the end -- but not near as much boozing as a Bukowski novel.

It is clearly and plainly written, an easy read. There aren't wasted sentences or too many adjectives, although he probably overused the word "savage" and he tended to begin paragraphs too often with "I" -- sometimes 4-5 times on a page.  This is a weakness to me, the sign of a young writer.  But then again, he was young when he wrote it.  On the other hand, I am sure it has been thoroughly scrubbed and edited dozens of times so that the finished book is far from the original manuscript.

The plot-line of the story is simple and well done, and it follows a logical progression while keeping you interested. There is good tension.  The writing may be considered on the "crude" side at times but it is not raw or pornographic -- absolutely not a mention of a private part beyond pink nipples and a muff, and the sex scenes are mostly romantic, nuanced or suggested, and not so much graphic detail.

Here are a few funny and/or notable passages from the book:


The light in gambling rooms is not good for aging women. It catches every crease in their faces and every wart on their necks; drops of sweat between fallow breasts, hairs on a nipple momentarily exposed, a flabby arm or a sagging eye.

*     *     *     *     *

Suddenly she began to howl: at first I thought I was hurting her, but then realized she was having some sort of  extreme orgasm.  She had several of them, howling each time, before I felt the slow bursting of mine.

*     *     *     *     *

I bought a bottle of beer for fifteen cents and sat on the bench in the clearing, feeling like an old man.  The scene I had just witnessed brought back a lot of memories--not of things I had done but of things I failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of my life and I would never get it back.

 

*     *     *     *     *

The waterfront was nearly deserted, the stores were closed, and only the churches seemed to be doing any business. We passed several of them, and in front of each one was a colorful knot of people--tan-skinned men and boys in freshly pressed suits, flowery women with veils, little girls in white dresses, and here and there a priest in a black robe and a tall black hat.

*     *     *     *     *

"If you insist on going by appearances then you'd be better off in some place like Texas."

*     *     *     *     *

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to those who can see it coming and jump aside.  Like a frog evading a shillelagh in a midnight marsh.

*     *     *     *     *

The Rum Diary

A Day for Ol' Buk

On Sunday I drove up the coast to San Marino, California, where the Huntington Library held an exhibition of Charles Bukowski's works and life. I thought about how nice it would have been to lay around in the sunshine on the beach and not fight traffic for 6-7 hours, but I reasoned I could do that most any day, and this was an important piece of the history of literature. And I wanted to see how it was presented.

The Huntington 'Library' is actually this expansive campus with long, perfectly-groomed rich green lawns, large trees, and classic statues. It's much more than a library in that it includes several buildings full of art, botanical gardens, and a collection of rare books and manuscripts. If I'd done a little more research, I'd have gone up for a day or two!

I approach these kinds of things with a sort of reverence and respect for the author. I was first going to take the train, then I was looking for someone to take the ride up there with me, but it didn't work out. That was OK, though, since it gave me time to think, and to think about writing. I wasn't the slightest bit bored or lonely; it was satisfying.

This was similar to visiting Hemingway's house on that bluff overlooking Havana, only that was a was a deeper look into Hem's life, home and elevated writing room. To peek at his stocked bar and books and mounted big game was like taking a step back in time. And then to climb the stairs to the study where he wrote, to see the same view that he saw when he was writing great books -- that was almost chilling.

When I pulled into the series of full parking lots, their size hidden by the wooded grounds, I almost expected to see a few spontaneous parties, maybe a tailgate party and kegs of beer, with various smokes wafting about; but no, weaving and circling through the lots I couldn't find a spot and only saw a few young couples heading toward the main building. I backed into a spot that wasn't really a space, and figured it'd be OK.

I was just a little late, and harried, and still I was looking for that bubbling, raucous crowd, but no, there were just families and ordinary citizens.

I bought my ticket at the window asked for directions and quickly overshot the building, but it gave me a view of the beautiful grounds. Doubling back and nearing the exhibit entrance, anticipation sizzled inside me.

The Bukoski exhibit grabbed you when you walked in: a huge poster with his picture and name, and there, encased in glass, was his beaten-up typewriter (or "typer" as he called it), his radio and a stained glass of wine. The the typer was lightly splattered with different paints, as Bukowski did a lot of sketches and some painting too.

I scanned the crowded room. No loud drunks, no smelly bohemian-types, just college students and bespectacled middle-aged couples. One college kid with a hat, maybe an aspiring writer.

Viewing the personal sketches, poem and novel drafts he'd hand-edited, first edition books, his racing forms, postcards, letters, and those from a few dedicated supporters and editors, along with some adoring fans, one got a real personal look into his life. I read every single description of every single item exhibited in the two rooms, which were pretty full of visitors, so full that you had to sometimes wait and shuffle and squeeze by to get to the next exhibited item. Every so often I'd glance around the room, and still, everyone looked perfectly normal. No crazies, no drunks. Just silent study and reverence. Strange.

I've read all his novels, and some of his poetry, but I learned a little more about Charles Bukowski and also about writing by seeing the exhibit. He'd written more short stories than I knew about, and he was busily sending them out to magazine editors. When he found he couldn't get into staid publications like the New Yorker or Atlantic, he hit the smaller ones, and built a following. He also published in mainstream porn magazines like Penthouse and Oui. The point is that he was working, pushing, trying the whole time. Scraping and scratching his way into history, like it or not.

Bukowski never wrote a New York Times bestseller, but he left his mark. He was mostly ignored by academia, but now he has to be dealt with. Sure, he's the hard drinking, brawling, dirty old man, but he did that better than anyone else. In fact, I recently saw him at the top of a prominent 'dirty writers in history' list, ahead of the likes of James Joyce and Philip Roth.

They had some sort of tour and reception and they were going to read some of his work but I can hardly stand it when those pathetic literary gadflies get up and start trying to imitate. I was there to see Buk.

After an hour I went to the bookstore and they had the largest display of Bukowski books, postcards, and memorabilia I've seen. I bought a few things, including a mousepad with a picture of his typer and some postcards that read, "what matters most is how you walk through the fire."

I also bought a small journal book with one of his drawings on the cover.

Heading back I got slightly lost at first, then got on the freeway and soon I was ensnared in 10 mile per hour L.A. traffic. It didn't much matter though, since I was pretty satisfied with those 90 minutes I spent to peer into the life of a modern writer whose popularity is growing, now almost 20 years after his death. That's the sign of a true artist.

When I got back home in Mexico, I sat in my recliner, sipped a dry martini, and wrote six poems in my new Buk journal. And I hardly ever write poetry!


 

Henry Miller and "Tropic of Cancer"

I finally read "Tropic of Cancer" last week. Great book. Very interesting in terms of style, that is, mixture of styles, unique blending of autobiography and fiction, and also his resultant influence on the next generation of writers.

Some of the book is very direct, stream-of-consciousness realism, including details of sex, pussies and dicks. Even v.d. (Funny, they worried about gonorrhea and syphilis back then, and had unprotected sex with hookers. It was a crap shoot.) At other times it is surreal and flowery stream-of-consciousness existentialist prose that evokes great imagery. I'm not doing it justice since there are other styles and influences interwoven into the work too. It's impossible to name them all and to do so would reduce Miller's work.

What I find really interesting is it was his first book, originally published in Europe 1934 when Miller was 43 years old. Rather old for a writer (I was 45!). He went to Paris in the late 1920s, the roaring 20s, and wrote the book when he was in his late 30s and early 40s. He didn't have much formal training in writing, he read a lot and was mostly self-taught. He got through by taking a succession of toiling jobs, including proofreader for the Chicago Tribune. He went to Paris with no money to become an artist in middle age. He had no money. Just a love of art. And he was a painter too! How cool is all that?

The book was finally published in the U.S. in 1961, which led to a series of obscenity trials. Crazy. They tried to make him out to be a commie.

When you read the book you can feel that there is something great in it, and it keeps you reading. But it doesn't follow any traditional form, or have any kind of traditional or expected plot development. It drove home what I was trying to say last summer when I did a book reading/signing in Berlin and got into a (labored) discussion of the state of literature today. I say just write, do it, and throw out conventions. Invent, create, push the limits, do something different, create new language. (Shakespeare create thousands of new words!) That's the only way anything new will ever develop. In Berlin, I got myself caught in a web of English majors, you know, those non-producing perfectionists who have memorized all the proper uses for the semicolon and all. But they've never written a book, or if they have, they've never published it. They have never put themselves out there to be devoured. So what, really, do they know?

I could see direct linkages from Henry Miller to Bukowski, although little has been made of it. It seems obvious to me. He was a GREAT influence. It starts with the frequent use of harsh words that shock, like "cunt" or "turd" and goes on to be autobiographical and very direct about drinking, sex, and men and women. Bukowski went farther, to the point where sometimes he was beyond disgusting, simply pornographic. But he makes me laugh! There's actually some delicacy or sensitivity in Miller's writing and Bukowski just throws that out the window.

Also, having read Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" and Kerouac's "On the Road" last summer, they are fresh in my mind and I found Miller to be the father for some of their (the Beats') writing, most especially Kerouac's autobiographical stream-of-consciousness style and the freaky surreal stuff that Burroughs gets in to, talking about protoplasm and all. Only Burroughs goes farther so as to sometimes be just plain crazy. I mean, he repeated himself in "Naked Lunch" several times and he jumped all over the place, which reminded me of those types of paintings that are so fucked up and nonsensical the artist has to explain what it is. And I prefer art that I can just look at and appreciate on an intuitive level, art that doesn't require that much thought to see its beauty or genius.

Henry Miller led this extraordinary life, after growing up in Brooklyn and spending time in New York, he lived in Paris and eventually moved out to the California coast in Big Sur and lived to be 88. George Orwell wrote of Miller, "Here in my opinion is the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past. Even if that is objected to as an overstatement, it will probably be admitted that Miller is a writer out of the ordinary, worth more than a single glance; and after all, he is a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceptor of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses."

It's Tough Serving Two Masters

Chekhov started his career as a doctor. When he began to write, he was pulled in two directions until his short stories started selling and he was able to be a full-time writer. Later, when reflecting on that period, he wrote of how difficult it was to "serve two masters."

To keep things going economically, to provide capital and time to invest in my writing, I research and publish information technology reports. It's been my primary career for over 25 years, but I really wish I could devote all my efforts to my novels, plays, screenplays, essays and poetry. (yes, poetry, but I will not publish it until I'm dead and gone!).

I was complaining about how serving two masters scatters my mind, how it frazzles me and prevents me from going all out as a writer. But a friend of mine listed all of the horrific life situations many famous writers overcame, and as he went, I realized, really, I ain't got it so bad. I mean, I live by the Pacific Ocean and also have a place in the beautiful mountains of central Mexico. In the last year or so, I've been to three Cuban cities, seen plays on Broadway, went to Las Vegas, San Felipe, La Paz, Cancun, Puebla, Chouloula, Ensenada, and seen bullfights in Tijuana, Mexico. My compatriot writers had it pretty tough: John Fante went blind and dictated his last few books and screenplays; Thoreau and Walker Percy had tuberculosis, which weakened them, causing Percy to write mostly lying down, and sending Thoreau to an early grave; William Burroughs was a lifelong heroin addict; Carson McCullers spent her life in depression; Hemingway was most assuredly bi-polar and an alcoholic, as was Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Bukowski, Capote, Tennessee Williams, Kerouac and many others; Poe was a flat out nutcase; Wilde was sent to a cold, damp prison, even Shakespeare was a pothead.

So you just have to play the hand you're dealt, and do the best work you can. And the craziness, the strain, the strife and struggle can be a great influence on the art itself.

How Should You Write?

Aspiring writers must search for their voice. Test, try, experiment, adjust. Finding a voice can be one of the most arduous tasks for a writer, but once it appears and sharpens, (and only then), should a writer go about producing published works aggressively. That's not to say that a writing voice cannot evolve, it most certainly must as the writer grows, learns and develops.

For me, sitting down and writing my Hurricane Katrina book in 3 1/2 weeks crystallized my voice; at least it sent me well on my way.

Today, short bursts, as found in blogs, can help shape a writer's voice too. Sometimes you shouldn't think too much -- just let it flow.

Generally, I prefer an economical style, where significant effort is put into writing concise sentences that convey powerful meaning without wasted words. But also, sometimes, a long, flowery sentence is called for: it is the only approach that will fit for the art of the story, and its rhythm is called for at precisely that point in the work.

Bukowski, if you read his novels, opines that a sentence should be as short and full of punch as possible. He believed that all those extra adjectives and long sentences and paragraphs merely mask the fact that a writer can't find the precise words they are looking for, so they hope the reader will somehow find the meaning the writer intends in a puffy, vague sentence.

If you read Hemingway, his prose is noticeably terse and efficient, but now and then he departs from his usual style. F. Scott Fitzgerald does it naturally and perfectly, only using a few extra words when they are absolutely needed, to add to the richness of the story and lyricism of the sentence and paragraph. Flaubert and Checkov are also economical in their use of prose.

That is not to say that there is only one way to write. Take Tom Robbins, for instance. He developed his own style. He leans toward using long sentences and fabulously obscure words. But it works. And as Robbins said, "In fiction, there are no rules. That's what I have against 'teaching writing' in academia. In fiction, what works, works."

And take Kerouac: he found his voice by writing quickly, nonstop, tapping his brain (and some amphetamines at times) to rattle out stream-of-consciousness truths. Of course, he meticulously revised his work, although he didn't let that fact out much.

A writer should try different approaches. William Burroughs even experimented with physically cutting out words and sentences and moving them around, pasting them where they really didn't belong -- all in the interest of discovering a new way to construct words. I believe it is the writer's responsibility to use words in ways they have never been used, or even to invent new words or forms of words. Hey, Shakespeare did it. Supposedly he used a vocabulary of 20,000 words, some of which hadn't been invented yet. The average person might have a vocabulary of 4,000-5,000 words.

Another unique writer was John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces), who had a brilliant style all his own, full of juicy descriptions that hit the mark. No one can imitate his work!

You should go out and find your style, your voice. And you do that by writing, writing, writing. But the absolute worst thing you can do is to try to imitate another writer. That only makes for pathetic reading.

So, what is a writer? One who writes (not one who quotes others' writing or simply talks about writing).