The Last Taxi Driver by Lee Durkee

 


In his book on writing, Sol Stein eloquently states: "Writers of fiction are masters of evoking emotion, whereas writers of nonfiction are adept at conveying information. The best authors are able to do both: they wrap facts in compelling stories."

As The Last Taxi Driver makes abundantly clear: Lee Durkee is indisputably a master of the craft, a novelist capable of evoking an entire range of emotion and folding a skillet full of Southern-fried facts into his riveting storytelling.

After I finished reading The Last Taxi Driver, I immediately turned to the first page and read the novel a second time. I also listened to the crackerjack audio book narrated by Patrick Lawlor. Dang, I didn't want to leave the author's taxi (actually a Lincoln Town Car) and I didn't want to leave Mississippi. The story is that good.

The Last Taxi Driver published in 2020 and is Lee Durkee's second novel. His first novel, Rides of the Midway, hit the bookstores twenty years back when Lee was one of those promising young writers. What's a novelist to do when it takes him two decades to write his next novel? Answer: Drive a cab in his home state of Mississippi. Well, Lee certainly accumulated oodles of experience. And it shows - so much packed into 230 pages.

We're talking very autobiographical here. The tale's narrator is cabbie Lou Bishoff (you gotta love the short slide from Lee Durkee) based in the fictional college town of Gentry in North Mississippi. Gentry, what a hoot, what irony, as most folks are anything but gentry; nope, the gaggle of locals Lou drives around features, among others, an ex-con, a couple of methheads and a gun-toting slubberdegullion who happens to be the son of the owner of Lou's cab company.

And here's the key: Lou's narrative voice is so powerful and contains such energy and drive, it's as if we're inside Lou's skin as he sits behind the wheel. You do more than just read about Lou's heart-wrenching odyssey; you live it.

Lou's a former college English professor, favorite subject Shakespeare, who was fired some time back for headbutting a dude at a neighborhood bar. Bit by bit, Lou lets us in on the reasons why he lives with seething rage - he was the victim of various forms of abuse both as a kid and in high school, his son nearly lost his life after being hit by a car, as soon as he moved to Vermont at his wife's request, she divorced him, he's in a painful relationship with his current girlfriend, Miko the poet, and, last but hardly least, he's forced to endure an unending barrage of shit at work (see below).

And Lou is a deep, complex guy - like the author, he has a novel to his credit, he's a fan of Shakespeare, he has this thing about Big Foot and UFOs, he studies Buddhism (Lou claims to be the world's worst Buddhist), he wants to be kind and loving.

Let me emphasize one important point: The Last Taxi Driver is VERY FUNNY. I laughed out loud on nearly every page. You want entertaining? You want lively? This is your book.

Each of the novel's seventeen chapters carries a down dog Ole Miss title. I'll zero in on three -

STINK BOMBS
“Pardon my French, as my fares like to say, but you'd be freaking amazed by the smells that enter my taxicab. The numerous funks, farts, fumes, burps, breaths, bombs, and auras – odors that defy description – my least favorite among them being the putrid, seaweddy stench of frat-boy spit cups.” Lou's sensitive nose extends far beyond physical odors – he also sniffs out those guys saved from having to work a crap job since they are born into money. Sorry, Lou, it's a tough lesson, but your now dead father's words still ring true: Whoever told you life was fair, kid?

Lou's reflections on a fellow employee: “Zeke, the driver I'm picking up, is about forty years old and sometimes takes his daughter out with him at nights. His daughter is ten and must help considerably with tips. And his daughter is about the only reason you'd tip Zeke, who looks like a redheaded version of the Unabomber and wears bright superhero tee shirts that coalesce over his beer belly like poured oil.” We get to meet an entire string of women and men who ride in Lou's Lincoln. Among Lee Durkee's strengths - he gives us just the right telling details to make them memorable.

IDIOT SON
“At the end of today's conversation, I hang up exhausted and then crack open another Red Bull to stay awake. Red Bull should be sponsoring my cab the way they do race cars and those daredevils in wingsuits. As I sip my tasty energy drink, its label held toward the car camera, I'm still mulling over what Stella said, specifically the question she asked right before we hung up. Trying to sound casual, she'd asked if I'd heard from Tony recently.”

Stella is the owner of the cab company. Tony is her son. Tony deals drugs and doesn't shy away from violence. Tony was sent to a Kansas City prison. Here's Lou on Tony: “He's not an adult, even though he's mid-thirties and has three kids by some long-suffering woman he calls his baby mama. Tony has a cop-shaved head of black fur that tops off at six two. Like the overgrown chimp he greatly resembles, he is muscular with long arms and legs and almost no truck, as if he's composed only of limbs. His clothes are modeled on prison attire, and he often uses the phrase my nigga in referring to me, a man two decades older than him and equally white.” As might be expected, in typical Tony fashion, Tony muscles his way into Lou's cab during our Shakespeare-loving hero's forty-eight hour saga.

GRACELAND
“Hell no.” She crosses herself before picking up my phone with two fingers like it's infected with Ebola. “I might as well be from Mars the way everyone keeps staring at me. Chrome? Who the fuck uses Chrome, dude? Mississippi goddamn. Hey, you're not going to take me into the woods and do God knows what to me while some retard plays a banjo, are you? Seriously, what the fuck?”

These are the words of Samantha, a busty LA chick who came to a Mississippi rehab center since the center said they specialized in sex addiction. Samantha projects every single Deep South stereotype onto Lou: she calls him Billy Clyde; she's shocked when Lou plays Beethoven; she can't believe Lou has an air freshener in the shape of Shakespeare. The exchanges between Lou and Samantha count as among the funniest in the book.

Again, these are short snips from just three chapters. Much more awaits a reader, including Lou confronting an armadillo (thus the critter illustrated above), a UFO sighting and Lou making a radical transformation. How exactly? For Lee Durkee to tell.

The Last Taxi Driver - highly, highly recommended.


American author Lee Durkee