Episode 620: Lee Durkee - The Last Taxi Driver
Hailed by George Saunders as \u201ca true original\u2014a wise and wildly talented writer,\u201d Lee Durkee takes readers on a high-stakes cab ride through an unforgettable shift. Meet Lou\u2014a lapsed novelist, struggling Buddhist, and UFO fan\u2014who drives for a ramshackle taxi company that operates on the outskirts of a north Mississippi college town. With Uber moving into town and his way of life vanishing, his girlfriend moving out, and his archenemy dispatcher suddenly returning to town on the lam, Lou must finish his bedlam shift by aiding and abetting the host of criminal misfits haunting the back seat of his disintegrating Town Car. Lou is forced to decide how much he can take as a driver, and whether keeping his job is worth madness and heartbreak.
Shedding nuts and bolts, The Last Taxi Driver careens through highways and back roads, from Mississippi to Memphis, as Lou becomes increasingly somnambulant and his fares increasingly eccentric. Equal parts Bukowski and Portis, Durkee\u2019s darkly comic novel is a feverish, hilarious, and gritty look at a forgotten America and a man at life\u2019s crossroads.