Decentralized, atomized, and alternately tranquilized and jacked up on cheap beer and meth, this is the world of Beckett, Godard, Robbe-Grillet. THE LAST TAXI DRIVER is a Canterbury Tales for our time. This is a dark, feverish and weird tale that remains compelling throughout. –Sarah Rachel Egelman, Bookreporter 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. In Lou, Durkee has created a fascinatingly complex character. The potential for violence lurks on every page and erupts in assaults sadly mundane and shockingly horrific. Lou Bishoff is a hero for the gig economy. Told from Lou’s perspective, it’s a casual, voice-driven read with smart intimate humor. CJ Lotz, Garden & Gun Executive Editorĭelightful and surprising. John Freeman, Lit Hub Executive Editorīlotted with jet-black humor, The Last Taxi Driver (Tin House) is the lauded authors first novel in twenty years. a future Tom Waits vehicle if there ever was one. Now, nearly 20 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. The funniest writer you’ve never heard of, but that may change. There is depression, dirt, grit, and grist aplenty, but the novel shyly displays a bruised beauty. a comic sweetness and energy underneath that reminds one of Charles Portis. Popping pills and fulminating about the dregs of society, yet incapable of not feeling compassion for the plight of his fellow bottom-feeders, Lou Bishoff represents a masterclass in characterization, a man who recalls elements of Jim Thompson, Flannery O’Connor, Barry Gifford and John Kennedy Toole.–Declan Burke The Irish TimesĪ remarkable one-day picaresque as we follow Lou on a marathon shift through a blasted landscape that’s part Denis Johnson–ish carnival of the wrecked, part Nietzschean Twilight of the Gods (or Twilight of the Taxicabs). a comic masterpiece.–James McElroy The Washington Examiner I loved thisīook and felt jangled and inspired and changed by it.” - George Saundersĭisarmingly honest and darkly comic. Durkee is a true original-a wise and wildly talented writer who knows something profound about that special strain of American darkness that comes out of blended paucity, materialism, and addiction-but also, in the joy and honesty and wit of the prose, he offers a way out. “A wild, funny, poetic fever-dream that will change the way you think about America. New essays and stories: THE GHOST OF AJAX DINER (essay, Garden & Gun), DYING IN THE MATRIX (essay, Lit Hub), LITTLE GREEN MEN (essay, Southwest Review), HOSPITAL RUNS (essay, The Sun), & RIDE OR DIE (novel chapter, Harper’s Magazine).ĬLICK HERE TO READ THE FIRST CHAPTER IN THE APRIL 2020 ISSUE OF HARPER’S MAGAZINEĪWARDED THE MISSISSIPPI ART COMMISSION GRANT FOR NONFICTIONĬlick here to read Lee’s blog or Follow FOR THE LAST TAXI DRIVER: In 2022 Scribner will publish Stalking Shakespeare, a memoir about his obsession with trying to find lost portraits of William Shakespeare. His stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Sun, The Best of the Oxford American, Zoetrope, Garden & Gun, Tin House, & Mississippi Noir. He is the author of the novels Rides of the Midway (WW Norton, 2000) and The Last Taxi Driver (Tin House Books, 2020). He attended Pearl River Junior College, the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of Arkansas, and Syracuse University. Lee Durkee graduated from the Mississippi public-school system and was bussed to various schools throughout the Hattiesburg area.
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