{"id":16606,"date":"2015-09-21T12:27:18","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T16:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=16606"},"modified":"2015-09-21T16:27:03","modified_gmt":"2015-09-21T20:27:03","slug":"thomas-mcguane-the-driver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2015\/09\/21\/thomas-mcguane-the-driver\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas McGuane: “The Driver”"},"content":{"rendered":"
Click here<\/a> to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker<\/em> webpage. Thomas McGuane's \"The Driver\" was originally published in the September 28, 2015 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/pre>\n
\"\"<\/a>It’s always wonderful to see Thomas McGuane show up in The New Yorker<\/em>, though I’m a bit surprised to see a new one by him show up so soon after the publication of his latest collection earlier this year, even if it is quite short. I guess he’ll just keep them coming, which is fine by me.<\/p>\n
Please join in the conversation below! Let us know how you felt about the story or McGuane in general.<\/p>\n
Here are Adrienne’s thoughts to kick it off!<\/p>\n
I live in a rural town out West and today was \u201cditch-day.\u201d I could not curl up with this story, hold it in my hand, and let the print dazzle me. I had to listen to it on SoundCloud as I traipsed through short, slicing yellow grasses, willing the irrigation water to move further across the orchard.<\/p>\n
This rather uninspiring activity allowed me to be more than \u201cwowed\u201d by McGuane\u2019s obvious mastery and skill. I became consumed. I found metaphors, themes, connections, imagery, and methodology galore!<\/p>\n
Now I know I am an optimist and I like to cheer for almost any story, but there was so much going on in this short piece that I listened twice, and even ignored the ditch for twenty minutes to read it through one time.<\/p>\n
Spencer\u2019s silence in school elicits a meeting between his mother, the \u201ctallest person in the room and very thin, with unblinking blue eyes,\u201d the principal, and the struggling boy, himself. Special ed is the proposed solution, and Mrs. Quantrill responds by insisting that some time in Bavaria will \u201ccure\u201d her son.<\/p>\n
The narrator takes us to their car for the mother\u2019s hen-pecking and elitist soliloquy. Only when we reach the end of the paragraph do we realize that she has forgotten her son! She was so wrapped up in her own judgments and thoughts, her own superiority, that she has not even seen<\/em> her child! It is here, also, that we discover our narrator is third person omniscient, not limited, as we might have supposed.<\/p>\n
In this story, we are introduced to the concept of things not always being what we think they are based on our limited perspective<\/em>. \u201cSubsequent investigation\u201d is often necessary.<\/p>\n
Spencer starts walking, now that he\u2019s alone. Home? We don\u2019t now know. Just that he has decided to walk. And here we meet \u201cthe driver\u201d — at this point, I had forgotten the title and was so wrapped up in the neat little \u201ctricks\u201d McGuane had already employed.<\/p>\n
The interchanges between the driver and the boy further show that things are not always as they appear. The driver has a schema that is challenged. He tries to do the right thing. And there are evidences of \u201ctoo quick to judge\u201d in the resulting events.<\/p>\n
The ending of the story isn\u2019t in the last sentences of the last <\/em>paragraph. It is in the last sentences of the first<\/em> paragraph. Spencer inherits the house and\u00a0has it \u201cdemolished\u201d and turned into a storage unit facility. Are things what they appear, even here? Is the demolition due to an \u201cacting out\u201d of an older, neglected Spencer? Or is it an acceptable, adult decision by a man who wants to move on?<\/p>\n
Again, I am just enthralled with the craft of this story. There is so much more here to talk about! If only there wasn\u2019t a ditch to watch!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week\u2019s New Yorker<\/em> story is Thomas McGuane’s \u201cThe Driver.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,252],"tags":[560],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-16606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-yorker-fiction","category-thomas-mcguane","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/McGuane-The-Driver.jpg?fit=690%2C939&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-4jQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16606"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16625,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16606\/revisions\/16625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16606"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}