According to Thompson, he was working at the Middletown (N.Y.) Daily Record when the
candy machine cheated him of a nickel. After he smashed it and was fired, he moved to
New York's Adirondack Mountains to begin a novel, living off unemployment checks.
Then a sports editor opening at The San Juan Star grabbed his eye. Thompson was rejected
by managing editor William Kennedy, who went on to win a Pulitzer in 1984 for his
book "Ironweed." But Kennedy predicted that Thompson would write "the great Puerto Rican
novel."
Thompson then covered cockfights on the outlying Puerto Rican island of Vieques for El
Sportivo, which was billed as the Caribbean's Sports Illustrated but turned out to be
little more than a doomed bowling tabloid.
To supplement his income, Thompson worked as a male model for Bacardi Rum and wrote
freelance articles. He lived in a wooden beach shack in Loiza, a community of mostly
Yoruba slave descendants a 25-minute drive from the capital.
"It was the best house on the beach," Thompson said. "I would take some scuba gear and
pick up those big lobsters off the reef with rubber gloves. It was perfect."
He commuted to San Juan on a motorscooter to frequent El Patio de Sam, a local watering
hole still hopping in San Juan's colonial district. For fun, he would shoot rats at the
San Juan dump with a .357 Magnum.
"My only regret is that I didn't run off with the governor's daughter," Thompson said,
unable to remember which daughter of former Gov. Luis Munoz Marin caught his fancy. "I
still have a seashell she gave me in Aruba."
The novel begins with reporter Paul Kemp on an airplane bound for Puerto Rico. He joins
The San Juan Daily News — modeled after the paper that turned Thompson down — in the midst
of financial problems on an island aflame in political turmoil.
Like Thompson, Kemp finds himself trying to balance his job and a cast of imported misfit
colleagues with his appetite for rum and sun.
"I was writing about what it was like to be among vagrant journalists," Thompson said,
confirming that most of the book is based on reality.
"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist," Thompson said. "You have
to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing
about before you alter it."
The book was initially rejected by an agent and got buried beneath Thompson's other projects.
Resurrected 40 years later and published in 1998, it offers a glimpse into Thompson's youth
before the hallucinogenic episodes famously chronicled in "Fear and Loathing."
It came before the spawning of Thompson's gonzo brand of journalism where fiction is, in his
words, truer than any reportage. Today Thompson, 66, has written more than 10 books, writes a
column for ESPN.com and is a regular contributor to Rolling Stone.
He plans his first visit back to Puerto Rico since those halcyon days to act as consultant once
shooting begins in December.
"We're going to come down and take over the island."
