Now, nearly twenty years later, at last we have Durkee's second book, his own reboot, and wow is it worth the wait.
His 2001 debut, Rides of the Midway, is a 1970s coming-of-age masterpiece. part Denis Johnson-ish carnival of the wrecked, part Nietzschean Twilight of the Gods (or Twilight of the Taxicabs).- "Kirkus, Starred Review" The funniest writer you've never heard of, but that may change. A wild and hilarious ride.- "The Washington Examiner" Raunchy and sweet and, at times, psychedelic.- "Garden & Gun" Remarkable. This twenty-year follow up to his debut novel, Rides of the Midway, was worth the wait.- "The Chicago Review of Books" One of the best novels in recent memory.
This is a dark, feverish, and weird tale that remains compelling throughout.- "Bookreporter" Much of what makes Lee Durkee's novel so delightful and surprising is his ability to dig beneath the surface of this funny, well-told odyssey, which channels a Shakespearean tragedy. Lou's excruciating day will make readers cringe, and the recounting of his traumas is more than unsettling. Durkee tackles race and poverty, violence of many varieties, loss and longing, and the power of the imagination. Club" In Lou, Durkee has created a fascinatingly complex character. Follow the air freshener rocking back and forth, taking you under its spell, as Durkee takes you for a ride.- "The A.V. Beguiling, energetic, razor-sharp prose.- "The New York Times Book Review" For devotees of the offbeat and grit lit writers like Larry Brown and Mary Miller.
#THE LAST TAXI DRIVER LEE DURKEE FULL#
Raw, revelatory, honest, full of kindness and anger and sadness and compassion.-William Boyle, author of City of Margins Charming as hell.- "WIRED" Disarmingly honest and darkly comic. Haven't felt this way since reading Jesus' Son and Bringing Out the Dead for the first time.
The novel almost makes other fiction in that Southern tradition seem frivolous by comparison.- "Razorcake" A gonzo ride full of dark humor, philosophical insights, and shrewd observations about the plight of luckless people in the United States.- "Shelf Awareness" A stone cold masterpiece. Decentralized, atomized, and alternately tranquilized and jacked up on cheap beer and meth, this is the world of Beckett, Godard, Robbe-Grillet.- "Full Stop" The Last Taxi Driver is a road novel.
The Last Taxi Driver is a Canterbury Tales for our time. Equal parts Bukowski and Portis, Durkee's darkly comic novel is a feverish, hilarious, and gritty look at a forgotten America and a man at life's crossroads. Shedding nuts and bolts, The Last Taxi Driver careens through highways and back roads, from Mississippi to Memphis, as Lou becomes increasingly somnambulant and his fares increasingly eccentric. Lou is forced to decide how much he can take as a driver, and whether keeping his job is worth madness and heartbreak. With Uber moving into town and his way of life vanishing, his girlfriend moving out, and his archenemy dispatcher suddenly returning to town on the lam, Lou must finish his bedlam shift by aiding and abetting the host of criminal misfits haunting the back seat of his disintegrating Town Car. Meet Lou-a lapsed novelist, struggling Buddhist, and UFO fan-who drives for a ramshackle taxi company that operates on the outskirts of a north Mississippi college town. Hailed by George Saunders as "a true original-a wise and wildly talented writer," Lee Durkee takes readers on a high-stakes cab ride through an unforgettable shift.
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