Rating: 4* of five The Book Description: “Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake. Later still, of course, there'd be no doubt. But for now Driver is, as they say, in the moment. And the moment includes this blood lapping toward him, the pressure of dawn's late light at windows and door, traffic sounds from the interstate nearby, the sound of someone weeping in the next room....”Thus begins Drive, a new novella by one of the nation's most respected and honored writers of noir fiction. Set mostly in Arizona and L.A., the story is, according to Sallis, ..."about a guy who does stunt driving for movies by day and drives for criminals at night. In classic noir fashion, he is double-crossed and, though before he has never participated in the violence ('I drive. That's all.'), he goes after the ones who doublecrossed and tried to kill him." . My Review: It's 153pp of very noir-y noir. It's got an anti-hero just as antiheroic as you want him to be...he knows how to do everything, drive, fight, drink, kill, pick a noir skill and Driver (no other name) has it.I'm a sucker for that kind of all-rounder. I like Sallis's New Orleans series featuring Lew Griffin, too, but this begins a new-to-me series of noir novellas featuring Driver. I'll be back for more.It's violent, but not graphic. The killings all take place in front of our eyes, but apart from the short and matter-of-fact reports of the means and aftermath of each killing, there's no ghoulish lingering on the pain or the gore. That means the reader's not stuck to the floor of the book in sticky goo, like in many violent novels.It's taut, not verbose. In this age of no thought left unexpressed, no feeling left unaired, no absurdity left unplumbed in the gazillionologies of two-thousand-page forest-rapers, that feels like the first cool breath of autumn after the horrid belchings of summer.Sallis, a serious writer, author of a biography of Chester Himes that's the gold standard on that underknown talent, delivers a happy surprise to the committed reader of darker books and more gritty crime fiction. He brings something fresh to something familiar. He abides by every convention of the genre he's chosen to work in and still gives a take on the tropes that's not hackneyed. The reason is he can write quite simple, Hemingwayesque sentences, and make them sound like he means them in both content and feeling.“What’d you need?" {Manny}"Desuetude." {Driver}"Reading again, are we? Could be dangerous. It means to become unaccustomed to. As in something gets discontinued, falls into disuse.""Thanks, man.""That it?""Yeah, but we should grab a drink sometime.”Well, there it is. If you like that, you'll like Drive, and if not, you won't.PS: Apparently there was a movie made of this book last year. Ryan Gosling and Bryan Cranston starred. I haven't seen it, but the plot summary is enough different from the book that I don't care if I do.
When the best thing I can say about a book is that at the very least I can say I've read it, that’s sort of like saying, “Oh, chicken pox, I had that once! Root canal with Novocain wearing off, yup, I know the feeling. ! Hemorrhoids, and explosive diarrhea, I hear you!”—well, you get my drift…Writer James Sallis's novella, “Drive” reads like something that would be assigned in a freshman English college course: a terrible, post-modern action tale with tons of characters, ever-changing POVs and a time-line all skewed so that important events happen in the middle instead of at the end, therefore losing any impact on the reader, and you don't care when the story's over.It’s also one of the most boring books I've read. Director Nicolas Winding Refn has directed THREE of the most boring movies I've seen: "Valhalla Rising," "Bronson" and “Only God Forgives.” So how did these two artists combine together to make a movie I LOVED?The book and movie are so different; this is one of those rare cases where the movie excelled and the novella fell flat. Ryan Gosling played Driver as a man of few words who forms intense attachments to a select few. The Driver of this book is verbose and has lots of friends. It had to be the retro 80’s style and awesome soundtrack that fooled me into thinking the book would be just as slick and enjoyable as the film. This book belongs in the ninth level of literary Hell, consigned to those who commit treachery, as I was duped into thinking this would be a masterpiece. I purchased this book thinking it was going to be an intense crime-noir; instead it just ended being a crime that made me snore. 1/2 star/F
What do You think about Drive (2006)?
Dopo aver visto il bellissimo film con Ryan Gosling, mi sono precipitata a leggere questo. Mi intrigava la storia di come questo sociopatico eremita, poeta della guida, potesse mettere in gioco tutto per amore. Esistono due tipi di Driver, quello Sallisiano e quello Goslinghiano. Mentre quest'ultimo appare come una silenziosa creatura, che trasuda emozioni solo con gli occhi, l'altro ci viene rappresentato come molto più "duro", più feroce ed espansivo. Se quello cinematografico ha come unico scopo aiutare la donna che ama a rimanere viva, quello del libro non ha di questi problemi, ma deve cercare di districarsi da un lavoro finito male. Dopo i necessari paragoni, mi spingo a dire che il libro è ben scritto e abbastanza fluido (nonostante i salti temporali, a volte non comprensibili). Lo stile è molto semplice, ma incisivo. Una delle poche volte, dove mi permetto di dire che il film sia molto meglio del libro. Infatti, ha sviluppato tematiche più profonde sul carattere dei personaggi e ha modificato la storia in modo sostanziale (e per me in meglio).
—Marnie (Miss Snow)
Drive is stark, brutal, beautiful, and perfect. Language cut to the bone but retaining a beautiful flow.. Emotional, detailed descriptions of food, music and cars while the equally omnipresent violence and death is presented in a matter of fact dead pan. A narrative pitched between 40's noir, 70's cult flick, and a French existential novel. Funny, furious and readable, Sallis should be ranked with, while not quite resembling, American existentialists like McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Lucius Shepard, The Coens, Jim Thompson, and Peckinpah, and world writers like Camus and Borges. This book is a great introduction to the fiction of a writer who I already loved as an essayist and critic.
—Adam
There's an old adage amongst some of us online reviewers that kinda/sorta goes like this: if you have to resort to frequently using words like "perfect," "riveting," "startling," and "stunning," you're more than likely describing what the story isn't for the average person because the average person -- the casual reader, Joe Six Pack with a good in his hands -- tends to find these adjectives descriptive of very specific events in his life ... events like falling in love, throwing the game-winning touchdown pass, and having a child. As a consequence of such overblown rhetoric, James Sallis' DRIVE ends up being memorable only on the grounds that one was duped into believing such a middleground neo-noir tale is destined to be literature's next classic when it'll probably be nothing in the next ten years. Yes, it's "lean," and it could quite probably be read in a single sitting if not in a handful of hours, and, yes, it's full of the pretty-sounding, poetic prose any reader of Sallis has come to expect, but there's little meat on these bloodied bones: Driver sticks to what he does well -- he drives, be it for movie studios or as the getaway driver for a handful of hardened criminals -- but, once he's double-crossed, you find out he's a wealth of other talents in extracting revenge on those who set him up. The grim reality here is that no one REALLY sets Driver up; he simply takes the wrong job at the wrong time, and, as generally happens in noir tales, there's a price to be paid. Driver isn't fond of paying such a price, so he hits back at those he try to take him for a ... well ... er ... for a ride. Unfortunately, unlike some of the other reviewers, I found the narrative extremely difficult to follow, as Sallis attempts to successfully unfold this yarn out of chronology -- think of it as sort of an even hipper, jet set, PULP FICTION type narrative where some events are even told twice ... with the same exact words and from the same point of view. It's a gamble -- a highly calculated gamble -- and I didn't feel it came off very well here. As a matter of fact, it forced me to flip back to the earlier section in the book to make certain I wasn't somehow lost in this 160-page novel. Yes, DRIVE is certainly a noir tale, but it's hardly 'hard-boiled,' as Ohio's ThisWeek tries to make its readers believe. It's been my experience that critics who don't dabble in 'hard-boiled' literature usually do this -- attach the adjective to what they believe is 'hard-boiled' in order to sound relevant -- and this tends to produce a flattening effect: less people question the validity of the description and, instead, pick up the book and read. I give credit to Sallis to creating a inventive modern day noir, but, at this cynical, I give his salivating critics credit for selling more copies than was humanly necessary.
—Trekscribbler
