I had wanted to read this book since I first heard about it, as I had read his other book “Rides of the Midway years ago.
A day in the life of a taxi driver in a fictitious northern Mississippi town- very likely Oxford MS.
This book is hilarious. ( )

The Last Taxi Driver is about a veteran turned taxi driver. The story takes place over one day. The predicaments and characters that he comes across are hilarious like the customer who couldn't find which of his girlfriends to shack up with. I didn't rate it more because sometimes I got a bit lost between characters, but the stories in the novel are entertaining enough to give it a shot. ( )

Amusing story with an interesting cast of characters who are down on their luck...to say the least. ( )

I made it four chapters in, one of which was a detailed description of the senseless killing of a possum. This is meant to be humor, and initially I thought it would be, but by the time I bailed, I was positive I would not find anything humorous about this foray into the dregs of society and human depravity.

It is sad, because the author can write obviously and there were moments in which I connected with both the driver and his fares. The old man he takes home from the hospital and leaves, reluctantly, alone in a trailer without help or food, was touching for me. But, I find it hard to wade through the excessive crude language or the abusive behavior to get to those moments.

Written for someone with a different sense of humor.

DNF at 25%.
( )

A Shade Too Dark

One thing can be said with absolute certainty about Lee Durkee’s The Last Taxi Driver: the state of Mississippi will not be hiring him to write tourist brochures. The humor here starts dark and progressively sinks into a pitch pit with any leftover humor boiled out of it. Taxi driver Lou begins as a keen and funny observer of the down and out of society and then devolves into a soul as wounded and looney as most of his fares, maybe even more so. And then there are the characters who pass in and out of his cab, some repeatedly, an assortment of the dirt poor, sick and infirm, alcoholic, and drug riddled; you can only stand so much before it all blends into a blighted blob you want to rush past.

Lou drives a cab, an old and crumbling Town Car, for the Mississippi All Saints taxi company, owned and operated by the nearly demonic Stella. Lou and Stella have a contentious relationship which revolves around a nearly complete lack of mutual trust. She has an intentional blindspot for her son Tony, a thirties near-do-well and incompetent criminal who menaces poor Lou. Not enough bad for one man, dispatcher Horace seems to have it in for Lou, because he’s always springing one last crazy fare him when he’s at the end of his shift, his back ablaze with pain, and his eyelids half closed. And what’s this poor Job going home to? A tiny apartment and a girlfriend, Miko, who can’t get out of bed due to acute ennui. Adding to his charmed life, Lou published a novel once that went nowhere, and taught in the local college until he mucked up matters so much they fired him. In short, Lou’s probably only a rung up from his sorry lot of fares.

And some of these fares prove interesting, some just sad, and a one or two poignant. However, after a while, about a third into the novel, they and their sorry plights begin to run together until you just don’t want to deal with them or the novel anymore. Probably that’s just how Lou feels.

If you must have your humor very dark and you want to know more about the seamier side of life and you have no fealty to Mississippi, you may enjoy The Last Taxi Driver. If descent into hellacious lunacy is your thing, try the film Taxi Driver (1976), which still sets the bar high on tales of crazy service workers, even today. ( )