The Last Taxi Driver
By Lee Durkee
Tin House Books $25.95
Reviewed by Glen Young
Lou Bishoff, the first person narrator of Lee Durkee’s new novel The Last Taxi Driver (Tin House Books, 2020), worked as an adjunct, teaching a Shakespeare class to frat boys who paid the material no attention. Still, Lou thought he was a decent college teacher and had found his niche.
Teaching, turns out, was not his thing. For a number of reasons, not the least of which was the nearly tangible disinterest of his students, teaching was no more his thing than was bartending, nor any of the many other low wage jobs he took to pay the bills.
His thing, try as he sometimes might to make it otherwise, is driving a taxi cab.
Lou pilots his failing Town Car in and around Gentry, Mississippi—lost locale dotted by convenience stores, subsidized housing, gas station dining options, and drug rehab facilities—ferrying a host of characters both comic and tragic. He understands the value of delivering little old ladies to doctor’s appointments or recovering addicts to and from rehab facilities. He recognizes too the futility of expecting more from others, though as an aspiring Buddhist he is perpetually hopeful in the face of constant exasperation.
Lou understands nonetheless he has blind-spots. He works hard to push down the bigotry that rises up like a bad Stars and Bars flag. “You listen to enough racist yabber and pretty soon find yourself believing that any black kid holding a 40 is a Vice Lord. You swear off your prejudices but they keep accumulating,” he explains (24).
The success of Durkee’s novel is that while he feigns otherwise—highlighting plenty of bad luck of his own—Lou’s compassion is obvious. In Durkee’s straightforward and fast-paced prose, Lou laments the many trips to rescue rehabbing meth addicts, though he also understands he might be their last best hope of escaping the cycle of addiction, recovery, and relapse.
He also happily ferries Anna, an aged Southern beauty with a passel of kids and grandkids, but no one else to take her where she needs to go. So he takes her to the hair salon, various doctors appointments, and elsewhere. Lou does not, however, charge her for the once a week trips to the liquor store for her whiskey, his way of acknowledging Anna’s calming influence. He believes “being with Anna feels like entering a Zen rock garden” (91).
Lou works for Stella, the disembodied owner of All-Saints Taxi who worries more after her deadbeat son Tony than about the well-being of her drivers or her fleet. For Stella, as long as the fares don’t steal the cars or beat up the drivers, she can forgive whatever other mayhem might occur.
Stella does ask Lou to keep an eye on Tony, something he’s loath to do, but finds he cannot escape in the cramped confines of south Mississippi. The pair’s orbits collide plenty, providing Lou even more opportunity to opine about troubles he has trying to keep all the proverbial plates spinning. He watches Tony, appeases Stella, keeps the customers happy, and worries about his love life and his family life. It’s a lot to keep straight while looking for house numbers and unfamiliar addresses.
Lou might sometimes lack a sense of accomplishment, but Durkee’s prose never lacks purpose. Readers therefore will find plenty to appreciate in The Last Taxi Driver, as Lou offers a lesson on the balance between good intentions and constant disappointment.
Glen Young is a teacher, writer, kayak guide, and house painter. His poetry has appeared in The Walloon Writers Review and the anthologies Beneath the Lilac Canopy and Thoreau at Mackinac. He is a founding member of the Foundation for Teaching and Learning, as well as the Little Traverse Literary Guild. He serves on the board of the Harbor Springs Festival of the Book and the Mackinac Arts Council. He divides his time between Petoskey and Mackinac Island in northern Michigan.