THE LAST TAXI DRIVER LEE DURKEE DRIVERS

Racists always assume their cab drivers are fellow racists. And I’m white! That’s how racist those punks are. These giant frat boys got out, surrounded my cab, and started kicking the doors etc., while calling me the N word. Like the time I kicked a hoard of them out of my cab for yelling the N-word at this couple. But, as to being afraid, it was mostly the cackles of drunk frat boys who worried me. We also carted the poor people who got kicked out of the local hospital back to their hovels to die. My first cab company specialized in trailer parks and projects and dirt roads. There were times I drove 70-hour weeks–the only way I could eek out a living while saving money for my own car. I drove for two different cab companies in Oxford for a year each and was frequently very frightened. Did crazy things happen? Were you ever frightened? How did getting that job come about? And, finally, how did that experience influence The Last Taxi Driver? Please tell me about your own experiences as a taxi driver yourself. None of these books could be described as commercial ventures. Then there were my Vermont novels, one in which I hideously murdered my real-life jerk of a landlord by having him stuffed, while still screamingly alive, down an ice hole drilled into a frozen lake. I also wrote two books about Elizabethan portraits and a short story collection set in Tokyo told from the point-of-view of nine different Japanese sex dolls. My relationship with writing is an opium-like addiction I enjoyed every day for those 20 years of obscurity during which I wrote two unloved books set in Kathmandu as well as a hip-hop version of Hamlet set to Nas’s Stillmatic. I don’t have much control over what pours out.

But I suspect the real reason I never published a second novel was a lack of practicality in what I wrote about.

My friend Bill at Square Books (in Oxford) used to give me pep talks at the bar at City Grocery in which he emphasized how hard Michael Farris Smith worked, and other well-meaning friends have gently lectured me about drinking or smoking to excess. I have so many answers to this question! Let me explain to you why I failed so spectacularly at publishing for 20 years. I’ll start with the obvious first question: why so long (20 years) between Rides of the Midway, your debut novel, and The Last Taxi Driver, your new release? A former cab driver himself, he now lives in North Mississippi. His memoir Stalking Shakespeare, which recounts his 10-year quest to locate lost portraits of William Shakespeare, will be released in 2021.īorn in Hawaii, Durkee grew up in Hattiesburg and lived in Vermont for 18 years (among other places) before moving back to his home state to escape the harsh winters. In between his novels, Durkee’s stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Sun, Best of the Oxford American, Tin House, New England Review, Mississippi Noir, and other publications. Twenty years after his first book Rides of the Midway made its debut, Lee Durkee has returned with his new release The Last Taxi Driver, a one-night study of the life of Lou Bishoff as he takes stock of the things that really matter, while transporting his final passengers to their own destinations. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 1)

The last taxi driver lee durkee