Drive (Drive #1)

by James Sallis

He’d always marvelled at the force of this docile, silent woman’s attack—as though her entire life had gathered toward that single, sudden bolt of action. She wasn’t good for much else afterwards. Driver did what he could. But eventually the state came in and prised her from the crusted filth of an overstuffed chair complete with antimacassar.

idk wat that last sentence means but cool imagery

“I drive. That’s all I do. I don’t sit in while you’re planning the score or while you’re running it down. You tell me where we start, where we’re headed, where we’ll be going afterwards, what time of day. I don’t take part, I don’t know anyone, I don’t carry weapons. I drive.”

p sure this was like the first line in the movie

“I’m a driver.” “Like for limos, right?” “A stunt driver.” “You mean all those car chases and stuff?” “That’s me.” “Wow. You must get paid good for that.” “Not really. But it’s steady work.”

dialogue line by line in the movie,,... so wierd to see perfect similarities between them despite how overall different they are

In the parking lot he leaned against the Chevy, stood looking off towards the mountain ranges ringing Tucson. Catalinas to the north, Santa Rita to the south, Rincon east, Tucson west. The whole city was a compass. How could anyone ever have gotten so hopelessly lost here?

driver: *just finds out his mom died* driver: thE CITY is A COMPASS

“Mostly I was just trying to get from Monday to Wednesday. Get out of my attic room, get out from under, get out of town.” “That’s a lot of getting.” “That’s ordinary life.” “I hate ordinary life.” “You hate everything.”

edgy

“Take a few more hits off that, boy. Chances are you’ll need them. Probably both of us will, before this is over. You ready?” No. “Yes.”

prose is so Edgy but idk i like it

TV’d been turned on but blessedly you couldn’t hear it. Some brainless comedy where actors with perfect white teeth spoke their lines then froze in place to let the laugh track unwind.

lol

Drinks arrived. Standard paid, adding an oversize tip. Connections everywhere, Driver thought. He identifies with these servers, knows the map of their world. A certain tenderness.

nice line

He remembered the starburst of blood on her forehead, the snail of it down her cheek as she tried to spit out what was in there in the moment before she collapsed. He remembered catching her as she fell—and then, for a long time, not much else. Gang business, the police would tell him later. Some sort of territorial dispute, we think. Irina died just after four a.m.

WHAT THE FUK SHE FKN DIES????????????::

“What are you, some kind of fuckin’ army?” “I drive. That’s what I do. All I do.”

hel yea

If in our lives we have one or two of those, one or two bright segments, Doc thought, we’re fortunate. Most don’t. And the rest wasn’t silence, like that opera, I Pagliacci, said. The rest was just noise.

love the writing, it can be bit too bro edgy sometimes but overall its snappy and badass

Driver, always a watcher and a quick study, picked up a few things from them as well, just as, years later, he’d pick things up from stunt men and fighters in movies he worked on.

eh i kinda prefer the ambiguity of film driver's skill in violence, it leaves more to the imagination abd tbh this reason is kinda lame and unbelievable

“The owner,” Bernie Rose said. “Never have known her name, though I’ve been coming here close to twenty years. Maybe she doesn’t look quite as good in the outfit as she did back then, but….” What she looked, Driver thought, was completely comfortable with herself, a quality uncommon enough anywhere, and one so remarkable in trendy, self-reinventive L.A., as to appear truly subversive.

woke driver