Drive by James Sallis

Set mostly in Arizona and L.A., Drive is about a man who does stunt driving for movies by day and drives for criminals at night. Sallis combines murder, treachery and payback in a sinister plot with resonances of 1940s pulp fiction and film noir. Told through a cinematic narrative that weaves back and forth through time and place, the story explores Driver's near existential moral foundations, intercut with moments of bloody violence.

I've never read anything like this, stylistically. I really enjoyed it.

The book feels like an hour-long drive where occasionally you get flashes of pretty scenery but most of the time it's just soil and dust. I wonder how this book was written. Did his index cards get shuffled? Did he have an impossible deadline to beat? I liked the premise set up for the main character well enough that I tagged along until the last page, but by then the whole thing still felt undercooked. Maybe the only reason I liked the character to begin with was that he seemed like a student of the Tao Te Ching, which I am trying to be.

But hey, it wasn't that bad. It's a quick read, time I could afford to waste. And it did try to redeem itself at some point.

This is what people are talking about when they use words like grace.That moment, that morning, came vividly back to him whenever he thought of it. But soon suspicion set in. He understood well enough that life by very definition is upset, movement, agitation.

—-

“Think we choose our lives?”“No. But I don't think they're thrust upon us, either. What it feels like to me is, they're forever seeping up under our feet.”