Customer Reviews

Drift: A Novel

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I found this to be a lively and engaging read. The city of San Diego (sometimes viewed as America's blandest city) is as much a character in the novel as are the various people wandering through the city and through their lives - trying to make sense of the world. Various characters are always seraching for something - whether it is beauty or another fix or the capacity to forget. One of the strongest aspects of this novel is the way that it reaches out beyond the two central characters to tell of a multitude of stories - of the cities new immigrants, homeless people, suburbanites, academics. In that sense, the novel reflects that which is best about cities in general - the way different types of people are always rubbing up against each other.

"Drift" is Jim Miller's first novel. His previous publications include "Better to Reign in Hell: Inside the Raiders Fan Empire" (with Kelly Mayhew) and "Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See" (with Mike Davis and Kelly Mayhew).

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The central narrative of "Drift" concerns a romance between teacher Joe Blake and his former student, Theresa Sanchez. Many other narrative strands are introduced, serving to locate Joe and Theresa within a web of social (class, ethnicity, etc.) relations, and to generate the illusion of urban simultaneity. The central narrative is quite effective; the sense of these character's seeking a better life through mutually shared extremes of experience is skillfully drawn by Miller, without lapsing into overt sentimentality or pathos: the desperate nature of their social realities is presented as a concrete fact, yet it never overdetermines their autonomy and presence as individuals.

There is also a fairly long section concerning Joe's "drift" through urban San Diego that climaxes with a sublime appreciation of urban ambience via its architecture that is very well done, and is quite evocative of the sorts of guided experiential epiphanies that Situationist theory might indicate.

Also very skillfully handled is the inclusion of a Left social history of San Diego (this in italicized passages strategically located throughout the text), which provides a specific context of historical agency in which to locate these various narrative strands, and also in a sense accomidates Jameson's critique of the uniquely ahistorical nature of contemporary society, of which San Diego, a city sleepwalking through time, is an almost absurdly postmodern example.

Reading the novel does suggest some questions regarding intended audience; it would be far too easy, in my appreciation, to regard "Drift" as of a species of local novel, one in which the setting is so suggestive as to overwhelm the more universal aspect of its core themes and concerns. That said, there are some intensely felt pleasures to be found here for local readers: a pround sense of place generative of a way to "read," understand and act within these sometimes seemingly oblique, ephemeral and sun-dazed urban spaces.

I loved this novel. Miller tells a poignant tale of a city and its drifting people; it's a wonderful mixture of philosophy, musings interwoven wth fascinating bits of little known San Diego history. Poetic, passionate, and transcendant, Drift is a truly unique, beautifully written book that includes art and photography--a rare, literary find.

I had the pleasure of seeing Jim Miller read from Drift accompanied by a jazz trumpet one night. Imagining a slow-tempo jazzy soundtrack, kind of moody and introspective, is almost impossible not to do while reading Drift. It is meditative and insightful, yet there is something on every page that makes you chuckle.

Drift is fascinating because of its expirimentation with perspective; we get to see a lot of what Joe Blake and Theresa Sanchez are thinking, stream-of-conscience-like (and without an overly self-conscious narrator that sometimes "invades" S-of-C-like books) but also other characters that subliminally inter-twine with each other throughout the narrative as well.

In a set of chapters, for example, two separate people -- an older man and an older woman -- experience the same city, some of the same places, on the same day, even crossing paths -- yet they have totally different experiences and feelings.

This book is great for procrastinating during mid-terms, reading for sobriety, remembering not to take yourself too seriously...etc.

Highly recommended.

I was excited to read Jim Miller's "Drift" but was extremely disappointed. I needed to read the book for a class, and couldn't even force myself to finish it. I was bored through 90% of the chapters. Apparently, the person who sold me the book on Amazon wasn't into it either, the pages are crisp after about half the book...