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Continental Drift
After his ill-fated pursuit of the American dream, Bob Dubois finds employment on a fishing boat off the Florida Keys where he becomes involved in a plot to smuggle two Haitians into Florida
432 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published February 1, 1985
277 people are currently reading
6455 people want to read
About the author
Russell Banks
103 books1,006 followersRussell Banks was a member of the International Parliament of Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous international prizes and awards. He has written fiction, and more recently, non-fiction, with Dreaming up America. His main works include the novels Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplitter, The Sweet Hereafter, and Affliction. The latter two novels were each made into feature films in 1997.
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September 26, 2023
Let’s start with the unusual epilogue: “Knowledge of the facts of Bob’s life and death changes nothing in the world. Our celebrating his life and grieving over his death, however, will. Good cheer and mournfulness over lives other than our own, even wholly invented lives – no, especially wholly invented lives – deprive the world as it is of some of the greed it needs to continue to be itself. Sabotage and subversion, then, are this book’s objectives. Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.”
Bob, our main character, is a young man (late 20s) growing up in New Hampshire. Although he doesn’t realize it, he's surrounded by examples to avoid – his father, his older brother, his best friend. He repairs oil burners in a dying town in the dead cold of New Hampshire’s winters. He has a wife, two daughters, a crappy car, a crappy house, but a nice boat, (almost paid off) and a woman on the side.
But Bob has a white guy problem: it’s just not enough. His older brother appears to be living the good life in Florida. Both Bob and his money-obsessed older brother seem unrealistically influenced by ads on TV for tropical vacations and Mercedes.
Thus begins the first of two threads of the story. We discover that we have two families seeking better lives in Florida – one family in New Hampshire and one in Haiti. We know from the beginning they will meet in tragedy of almost unimaginable proportion. As hard as it is to believe, we are told that Bob has previously had “no interaction with Black people” even though he’s been in the service.
SPOILER
The novel becomes almost a catalog of the financial holes the unsuspecting pursuers of the American Dream can fall into. And the way we get sucked into stereotypes of how the grass is greener over the state line. A while ago I read an article about a small community of 100 people in Florida who have unsafe water and whose average annual income is $10,000. Try living on that in sunny Florida!
Some quotes I liked:
“When you seek to acquire the love of someone who resembles you, in gender, temperament, culture or physical type, you do so for love of those aspects of yourself, gender, temperament, culture, etc.; but when you seek the love of someone different from you, you do so to be rid of yourself.”
After a white guy shows up waving a gun in the home of a Black family, threatening the father and daughter who live there: “She and her father never speak of the event again, not to each other and not to anyone else. There’s nothing to say about it to each other that is not already fully understood, so they remain silent about it, almost as if it never happened.”
Bob reflects on the role of luck in life: “And luck can’t last a lifetime, unless you die young.”
When this book was published in 1985, James Atlas, a writer and editor for Atlantic magazine, called it “The most convincing portrait I know of contemporary America.” Maybe it was then.
This is my first Russell Banks. I found it a very good read but bit overdone with some of the characters bordering on stereotypes. Bob’s ignorance of Black people seems extreme; his callousness and nonchalance about his extra-marital affairs seems overdone; his brother’s ties with Mafia-type guys and his profanity seem melodramatic as does the way the poverty and the docility of the Haitian immigrants are portrayed. I don’t know exactly what it was but it was almost a DNF for me about a third of the way through. Yet I stuck with it and in the end I was glad I did and I gave it a 4, but really a 3.5 rounded up..
Image of trailer park in Thermal, CA from bbci.co.uk/news
Picture of Haitian boat people posted on Kan'an 48 WordPress.com
Edited, shelves added, spoiler hidden 9/26/23]
Bob, our main character, is a young man (late 20s) growing up in New Hampshire. Although he doesn’t realize it, he's surrounded by examples to avoid – his father, his older brother, his best friend. He repairs oil burners in a dying town in the dead cold of New Hampshire’s winters. He has a wife, two daughters, a crappy car, a crappy house, but a nice boat, (almost paid off) and a woman on the side.
But Bob has a white guy problem: it’s just not enough. His older brother appears to be living the good life in Florida. Both Bob and his money-obsessed older brother seem unrealistically influenced by ads on TV for tropical vacations and Mercedes.
Thus begins the first of two threads of the story. We discover that we have two families seeking better lives in Florida – one family in New Hampshire and one in Haiti. We know from the beginning they will meet in tragedy of almost unimaginable proportion. As hard as it is to believe, we are told that Bob has previously had “no interaction with Black people” even though he’s been in the service.
SPOILER
The novel becomes almost a catalog of the financial holes the unsuspecting pursuers of the American Dream can fall into. And the way we get sucked into stereotypes of how the grass is greener over the state line. A while ago I read an article about a small community of 100 people in Florida who have unsafe water and whose average annual income is $10,000. Try living on that in sunny Florida!
Some quotes I liked:
“When you seek to acquire the love of someone who resembles you, in gender, temperament, culture or physical type, you do so for love of those aspects of yourself, gender, temperament, culture, etc.; but when you seek the love of someone different from you, you do so to be rid of yourself.”
After a white guy shows up waving a gun in the home of a Black family, threatening the father and daughter who live there: “She and her father never speak of the event again, not to each other and not to anyone else. There’s nothing to say about it to each other that is not already fully understood, so they remain silent about it, almost as if it never happened.”
Bob reflects on the role of luck in life: “And luck can’t last a lifetime, unless you die young.”
When this book was published in 1985, James Atlas, a writer and editor for Atlantic magazine, called it “The most convincing portrait I know of contemporary America.” Maybe it was then.
This is my first Russell Banks. I found it a very good read but bit overdone with some of the characters bordering on stereotypes. Bob’s ignorance of Black people seems extreme; his callousness and nonchalance about his extra-marital affairs seems overdone; his brother’s ties with Mafia-type guys and his profanity seem melodramatic as does the way the poverty and the docility of the Haitian immigrants are portrayed. I don’t know exactly what it was but it was almost a DNF for me about a third of the way through. Yet I stuck with it and in the end I was glad I did and I gave it a 4, but really a 3.5 rounded up..
Image of trailer park in Thermal, CA from bbci.co.uk/news
Picture of Haitian boat people posted on Kan'an 48 WordPress.com
Edited, shelves added, spoiler hidden 9/26/23]
October 21, 2024
FINE PENA MAI
La deriva dei continenti.
Per i generi altrimenti detti di lusso – casa, di cui metà affittata a quattro giovanotti – un barchino di 4 metri, e una station wagon Chevrolet che deve ancora finire di pagare ma ha già la trasmissione che fa le bizze, Bob Dubois (pronunciato Duu-boys) ha un debito con la banca di poco più di ventiduemila dollari.
Ne guadagna 137 a settimana. Ha moglie e due figlie piccole. Ha trent’anni e da otto lavora per la stessa ditta riparando caldaie. Ha un’amante. E odia la sua vita.
C’è da stupirsi?
… vivendo la propria vita come la costante anteprima al rallentatore di attrazioni a venire nella quale i momenti noiosi, di passaggio, a bassa tensione sono in realtà le scene cruciali del film.
Il luogo da cui parte Bob Dubois.
Due storie che partono da lontano, sia geograficamente (l’una dal freddo nevoso New Hampshire, l’altra dalla torrida Haiti) che narrativamente (i personaggi delle due linee neppure si conoscono): man mano si avvicinano, cominciano a convergere, finiscono con l’incontrarsi, incrociarsi e sovrapporsi.
Da una parte Bob Dubois, sua moglie Elaine e le due bambine, che nel corso della storia allargano la famiglia quando nasce il maschietto che chiamano Bob jr.
Dall’altra parte la giovane e bella Vanise Dorsinville, il suo piccolo Charles di pochi mesi, sempre in braccio, e il giovane nipote Claude.
Da una parte un uomo di trent’anni che forse insegue un sogno di vita migliore, ma forse, con maggiori probabilità, fugge da una vita deprimente.
Dall’altra parte una giovane che forse fugge dalle conseguenze di un crimine (furto) che non ha commesso, ma forse, con maggiori probabilità, fugge da una vita di stenti e senza speranza.
Haiti dopo il terremoto: ma nel 1979 la situazione di Vanise non è molto migliore.
Banks paragona il fenomeno che spinge gli uomini a spostarsi (migrare?) a quello sismico della Terra.
È come se le creature che in questi anni vivono sul pianeta, gli esseri umani – a milioni in viaggio da soli e in famiglie, clan e tribù, talvolta come intere nazioni – fossero un sottosistema all’interno di uno più grande di correnti e maree, di venti e condizioni climatiche, di continenti alla deriva e masse di terra in movimento che si sollevano, si scontrano, si spaccano.
Metafora affascinante che tutto sommato la sua narrazione sostiene e evidenzia: diventandone in un certo qual modo però anche il limite. Perché personalmente ho sentito la ‘tesi’ alla base del racconto diventare forzatura, e prevedibilità.
La Florida delle Keys dove approdano i due gruppi di personaggi.
Va detto che la seconda linea, quella che parte da Haiti, risulta anche più forzata, appesantita da un gusto del folklore e del pittoresco (il vudù impregna una parola sì e l’altra pure), e credo che oggi lo si potrebbe per certi versi considerare un fenomeno di “appropriazione culturale”.
Questa seconda linea narrativa funziona meno perché si percepisce la distanza tra il narratore, bianco occidentale benestante, e i soggetti narrati, poveri haitiani nerissimi senza futuro e senza speranza. Distanza che il narratore, bianco occidentale benestante, crede di riempire studiando il culto del vudù col quale farcisce ogni spazio (buco?) narrativo, giustifica tutto, muove tutto. A mio avviso il narratore, bianco occidentale benestante, non si accorge che in realtà compie solo una modesta (bieca?) operazione tra l’esotico e il folkloristico, il pittoresco e la cartolina.
Su un aspetto le due linee narrative coincidono sin dal principio: la legge di Murphy. Quella legge che sancisce che se qualcosa può andare storto, lo farà. Banks sembra aggiungere un nuovo assioma: se una cosa andrà storta, altre cose andranno storte, tutto andrà storto.
Queste persone non stanno semplicemente cercando di migliorare il proprio destino, stanno cercando di averne uno.
Il che si traduce in un lungo (480 pagine) elenco di jatture e sfortune, colpi avversi e sciagure: che, quando riferite alla prima linea narrativa, quella con al centro bianchi occidentali compatrioti del narratore (bianco occidentale benestante) fino a un buon punto può anche funzionare e risultare verosimile. Quando invece applicata all’altra linea narrativa, quella haitiana, conduce tutto in un sentiero da telegiornale.
La deriva dei continenti.
Per i generi altrimenti detti di lusso – casa, di cui metà affittata a quattro giovanotti – un barchino di 4 metri, e una station wagon Chevrolet che deve ancora finire di pagare ma ha già la trasmissione che fa le bizze, Bob Dubois (pronunciato Duu-boys) ha un debito con la banca di poco più di ventiduemila dollari.
Ne guadagna 137 a settimana. Ha moglie e due figlie piccole. Ha trent’anni e da otto lavora per la stessa ditta riparando caldaie. Ha un’amante. E odia la sua vita.
C’è da stupirsi?
… vivendo la propria vita come la costante anteprima al rallentatore di attrazioni a venire nella quale i momenti noiosi, di passaggio, a bassa tensione sono in realtà le scene cruciali del film.
Il luogo da cui parte Bob Dubois.
Due storie che partono da lontano, sia geograficamente (l’una dal freddo nevoso New Hampshire, l’altra dalla torrida Haiti) che narrativamente (i personaggi delle due linee neppure si conoscono): man mano si avvicinano, cominciano a convergere, finiscono con l’incontrarsi, incrociarsi e sovrapporsi.
Da una parte Bob Dubois, sua moglie Elaine e le due bambine, che nel corso della storia allargano la famiglia quando nasce il maschietto che chiamano Bob jr.
Dall’altra parte la giovane e bella Vanise Dorsinville, il suo piccolo Charles di pochi mesi, sempre in braccio, e il giovane nipote Claude.
Da una parte un uomo di trent’anni che forse insegue un sogno di vita migliore, ma forse, con maggiori probabilità, fugge da una vita deprimente.
Dall’altra parte una giovane che forse fugge dalle conseguenze di un crimine (furto) che non ha commesso, ma forse, con maggiori probabilità, fugge da una vita di stenti e senza speranza.
Haiti dopo il terremoto: ma nel 1979 la situazione di Vanise non è molto migliore.
Banks paragona il fenomeno che spinge gli uomini a spostarsi (migrare?) a quello sismico della Terra.
È come se le creature che in questi anni vivono sul pianeta, gli esseri umani – a milioni in viaggio da soli e in famiglie, clan e tribù, talvolta come intere nazioni – fossero un sottosistema all’interno di uno più grande di correnti e maree, di venti e condizioni climatiche, di continenti alla deriva e masse di terra in movimento che si sollevano, si scontrano, si spaccano.
Metafora affascinante che tutto sommato la sua narrazione sostiene e evidenzia: diventandone in un certo qual modo però anche il limite. Perché personalmente ho sentito la ‘tesi’ alla base del racconto diventare forzatura, e prevedibilità.
La Florida delle Keys dove approdano i due gruppi di personaggi.
Va detto che la seconda linea, quella che parte da Haiti, risulta anche più forzata, appesantita da un gusto del folklore e del pittoresco (il vudù impregna una parola sì e l’altra pure), e credo che oggi lo si potrebbe per certi versi considerare un fenomeno di “appropriazione culturale”.
Questa seconda linea narrativa funziona meno perché si percepisce la distanza tra il narratore, bianco occidentale benestante, e i soggetti narrati, poveri haitiani nerissimi senza futuro e senza speranza. Distanza che il narratore, bianco occidentale benestante, crede di riempire studiando il culto del vudù col quale farcisce ogni spazio (buco?) narrativo, giustifica tutto, muove tutto. A mio avviso il narratore, bianco occidentale benestante, non si accorge che in realtà compie solo una modesta (bieca?) operazione tra l’esotico e il folkloristico, il pittoresco e la cartolina.
Su un aspetto le due linee narrative coincidono sin dal principio: la legge di Murphy. Quella legge che sancisce che se qualcosa può andare storto, lo farà. Banks sembra aggiungere un nuovo assioma: se una cosa andrà storta, altre cose andranno storte, tutto andrà storto.
Queste persone non stanno semplicemente cercando di migliorare il proprio destino, stanno cercando di averne uno.
Il che si traduce in un lungo (480 pagine) elenco di jatture e sfortune, colpi avversi e sciagure: che, quando riferite alla prima linea narrativa, quella con al centro bianchi occidentali compatrioti del narratore (bianco occidentale benestante) fino a un buon punto può anche funzionare e risultare verosimile. Quando invece applicata all’altra linea narrativa, quella haitiana, conduce tutto in un sentiero da telegiornale.
June 6, 2023
"There are songs that have saved lives, and songs that have ended them."--Joshua Poteat
I came to "Continental Drift" in a roundabout way. The book had been lying on one of my bookshelves for years, and every now and then I'd glimpse it and think, "I should really read that;" but then I'd forget about it due to my book-buying mania resulting in a thousand unread books cluttering my shelves and probably necessitating an "intervention" by my friends that will involve me closing my Amazon account and blocking all the other venues where I feed my reading addiction.
What finally prompted me to read the book was a recommendation for it from a book called, "Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread, by former "New York Times" reviewer Michiko Kakutani. I was not a huge fan of Ms. Kakutani's reviews and was surprised by some of the books she recommended in "Ex Libris." One of them was Russell Banks's "Continental Drift."
I had not read a Russell Banks novel since "Cloudsplitter" in 1999, though I've read a few of his books and liked most of them. I have to give kudos to Michiko Kakutani for her recommendation, as it nudged me a bit to pick up "Continental Drift" and actually read the damn thing. I'm glad I did.
Banks seems to have become almost an obscure writer, as many of his books have scant reviews and ratings here on Goodreads. I don't believe I have ever seen a Russell Banks book reviewed during my three+ years on GR.
"Continental Drift" tells two stories that are intertwined near the end of the book. One story is about a young man named Bob DuBois who lives with his wife and two daughters in the gloomy town of Catamount, New Hampshire. Bob fixes oil burners for a living, loves his wife and children and also has a girlfriend on the side he occasionally has sex with. Interesting to me, Bob was raised Catholic and though he has long ago stopped attending mass he seems to feel no compunction about his cheating, no Catholic guilt. I found this a bit unusual. Bob is extremely unhappy with his life, mainly due to living in a dark, snowy town working a boring, low-paying job. The best thing in his life is his family and he loves his wife and kids deeply. Even so, nothing is enough for Bob and one day he has an epiphany that his life in New Hampshire is shit and he and his family must relocate to a warmer clime where life will be better--better pay, better side women and better weather. Bob has a brother in Florida who owns a couple of liquor stores and who has promised to make Bob a partner in his business. Bob's wife doesn't trust Bob's brother Eddie, for good reason, and is hesitant to move the family to Florida and enter into business with him. She goes along, however, and the DuBois family ventures from gloomy Catamount to the land of eternal sunshine.
The other converging narrative is about a poor Haitian family, a mother with a teenage son living with her sister-in law and the sister-in-law's infant child. The mother's husband works in Miami and she hopes to join him there one day. Indeed, all of them want a better life in Florida, a place they've heard a lot about and consider a sort of glitzy paradise that will save them from their penurious, wretched life in down-at-heel Haiti.
Being a lazy reader, at first I didn't like reading a book with two stories that didn't appear to be converging anytime soon. Gradually, though, I came to enjoy reading both tales and not worrying about convergence.
Read Maciek's excellent review if you want a blow-by-blow account of the events in the book. And as an aside, I disagree with the reviewer who said Bob's dissatisfaction with his life was a "white man problem." It is a human problem shared by billions who want more from life than it's currently giving them! Bob's main advantage over the Haitians is that he has the financial means to make the move to Florida and has a brother and an old friend both living there who can help him once he arrives. The Haitians must endure a lot of frustration and psychic pain before they can begin to travel to Florida, stranded on a near-deserted island in the Caribbean and then portaged to the Bahamas, an island where there is a Haitian community and an island much closer to the Promised Land of Florida. Should the Haitians arrive in Florida, in many ways they will have a life that is richer than Bob's, a life of hard work and under-the-table pay, but also a life with a strong, supportive community of fellow Haitian expats. A life unhindered by US immigration since the Haitians and other undocumented residents do the jobs that Americans no longer deign to do.
Continental Drift is a book about dreams going sour, about dreams turning into hideous nightmares. It is about good intentions being trampled upon by life's harsh indifference to one's hopes and dreams. Indeed, it is a tragic tale and probably not a good book to read if you are in a clinical depression. It's overarching message, if one is to be found, is that contrary to one's expectations, life doesn't always work out; good intentions don't always pay off. Changing one's life for an ostensibly better one sometimes ends in disaster, and this devastation can be overwhelming owing to a mixture of bad choices and seemingly ineluctable fate, if one believes in such things. Most of us know this inside, but it is not a possibility most of us want to entertain. I suspect this is true even for those types who make a pro and con list concerning a big life change. The con list may be there but one's eyes are focused mainly on the pro list, the good things that will come if we take the risk and make that big change. Some of us know better, through grim experience, but sometimes things work out well, and no matter how jaded we are, we tend to have hope. Perhaps Hemingway was wrong when he said that life breaks all of us and then we are stronger in the broken places. Perhaps, sometimes, life just breaks us!
Whatever the case, Continental Drift is a worthy read, and I concur with Michiko that you won't go wrong reading these lugubrious, intertwined stories.
I came to "Continental Drift" in a roundabout way. The book had been lying on one of my bookshelves for years, and every now and then I'd glimpse it and think, "I should really read that;" but then I'd forget about it due to my book-buying mania resulting in a thousand unread books cluttering my shelves and probably necessitating an "intervention" by my friends that will involve me closing my Amazon account and blocking all the other venues where I feed my reading addiction.
What finally prompted me to read the book was a recommendation for it from a book called, "Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread, by former "New York Times" reviewer Michiko Kakutani. I was not a huge fan of Ms. Kakutani's reviews and was surprised by some of the books she recommended in "Ex Libris." One of them was Russell Banks's "Continental Drift."
I had not read a Russell Banks novel since "Cloudsplitter" in 1999, though I've read a few of his books and liked most of them. I have to give kudos to Michiko Kakutani for her recommendation, as it nudged me a bit to pick up "Continental Drift" and actually read the damn thing. I'm glad I did.
Banks seems to have become almost an obscure writer, as many of his books have scant reviews and ratings here on Goodreads. I don't believe I have ever seen a Russell Banks book reviewed during my three+ years on GR.
"Continental Drift" tells two stories that are intertwined near the end of the book. One story is about a young man named Bob DuBois who lives with his wife and two daughters in the gloomy town of Catamount, New Hampshire. Bob fixes oil burners for a living, loves his wife and children and also has a girlfriend on the side he occasionally has sex with. Interesting to me, Bob was raised Catholic and though he has long ago stopped attending mass he seems to feel no compunction about his cheating, no Catholic guilt. I found this a bit unusual. Bob is extremely unhappy with his life, mainly due to living in a dark, snowy town working a boring, low-paying job. The best thing in his life is his family and he loves his wife and kids deeply. Even so, nothing is enough for Bob and one day he has an epiphany that his life in New Hampshire is shit and he and his family must relocate to a warmer clime where life will be better--better pay, better side women and better weather. Bob has a brother in Florida who owns a couple of liquor stores and who has promised to make Bob a partner in his business. Bob's wife doesn't trust Bob's brother Eddie, for good reason, and is hesitant to move the family to Florida and enter into business with him. She goes along, however, and the DuBois family ventures from gloomy Catamount to the land of eternal sunshine.
The other converging narrative is about a poor Haitian family, a mother with a teenage son living with her sister-in law and the sister-in-law's infant child. The mother's husband works in Miami and she hopes to join him there one day. Indeed, all of them want a better life in Florida, a place they've heard a lot about and consider a sort of glitzy paradise that will save them from their penurious, wretched life in down-at-heel Haiti.
Being a lazy reader, at first I didn't like reading a book with two stories that didn't appear to be converging anytime soon. Gradually, though, I came to enjoy reading both tales and not worrying about convergence.
Read Maciek's excellent review if you want a blow-by-blow account of the events in the book. And as an aside, I disagree with the reviewer who said Bob's dissatisfaction with his life was a "white man problem." It is a human problem shared by billions who want more from life than it's currently giving them! Bob's main advantage over the Haitians is that he has the financial means to make the move to Florida and has a brother and an old friend both living there who can help him once he arrives. The Haitians must endure a lot of frustration and psychic pain before they can begin to travel to Florida, stranded on a near-deserted island in the Caribbean and then portaged to the Bahamas, an island where there is a Haitian community and an island much closer to the Promised Land of Florida. Should the Haitians arrive in Florida, in many ways they will have a life that is richer than Bob's, a life of hard work and under-the-table pay, but also a life with a strong, supportive community of fellow Haitian expats. A life unhindered by US immigration since the Haitians and other undocumented residents do the jobs that Americans no longer deign to do.
Continental Drift is a book about dreams going sour, about dreams turning into hideous nightmares. It is about good intentions being trampled upon by life's harsh indifference to one's hopes and dreams. Indeed, it is a tragic tale and probably not a good book to read if you are in a clinical depression. It's overarching message, if one is to be found, is that contrary to one's expectations, life doesn't always work out; good intentions don't always pay off. Changing one's life for an ostensibly better one sometimes ends in disaster, and this devastation can be overwhelming owing to a mixture of bad choices and seemingly ineluctable fate, if one believes in such things. Most of us know this inside, but it is not a possibility most of us want to entertain. I suspect this is true even for those types who make a pro and con list concerning a big life change. The con list may be there but one's eyes are focused mainly on the pro list, the good things that will come if we take the risk and make that big change. Some of us know better, through grim experience, but sometimes things work out well, and no matter how jaded we are, we tend to have hope. Perhaps Hemingway was wrong when he said that life breaks all of us and then we are stronger in the broken places. Perhaps, sometimes, life just breaks us!
Whatever the case, Continental Drift is a worthy read, and I concur with Michiko that you won't go wrong reading these lugubrious, intertwined stories.
September 23, 2007
When I finished this book I literally felt as if I had been punched in the stomach. I've only had that happen from literature a few times in my life, and it is truly stunning. It's a stunning novel, in scope, in prose, in personal-is-political, political-is-personal thought.
January 8, 2013
It’s not memory you need for telling this story, writes Russel Banks in the italicized introduction with which he begins Continental Drift: With a story like this, you want an accounting to occur, not a recounting, and a presentation, not a representation, which is why it’s told the way it’s told.
This is an American story of the late twentieth century, writes Banks and he means it: this is a powerful novel of hope and loss set in the recession of the early 1980's, concerned with characters who could not be different but who both strive for something they feel is withing their reach: a different, better life.
The novel begins with the introduction of Bob Dubois, an American everyman: 30 years of age, he has lived all his life in Cattamouth, New Hampshire, working as a repairman for the Abenaki Oil Company since he finished high school. At 30, Bob is married with two daughters and another child on the way. He lives a small duplex in a working class neighborhood and rents the back to four tenants (whom he calls hippies), drives an old Chevrolet and owns a 13 foot Boston whaler he built from kit. He still owes the Cattamouth Loan Company a little over $22,000 in payments for the house, car and boat. A question haunts Bob Dubois, which is relevant to many to us: "I am smart - why I am not rich?"
"We Have a good life", his wife tells him, but Bob longs for more: he wants out of the small New Hampshire town with its snowny hopelesness, where nothing ever seems to change; he longs for a slice of the American Dream for himself. When his brother offers him a job with Florida, Bob thinks that this is his chance to start again. A new hope waits in the unexplored land down south, where ripe oranges hangs from trees all year round and and success wait for those willing to grasp them.
Vanise Dorsinville also longs for a better life: a native resident of Haiti, she longs to escape its instability, poverty and violence, and secure a better future for herself and her baby. She saves up enough money to pay the coyotes to smuggle her to America, the promised land where Haitians have been taken to and prospered: she is aware that the journey is dangerous but is willing to take the risk to get to the city of Miami, where there is a Haitian community which will help her accomodate and start a new life.
For Bob, a native New Englander, Florida is also like a different part of the world: althought still a part of his homeland, The United States, it is so far removed from New Hampshire both geographically and culturally that it might as well be a separate country. Having lived in homogenously white New Hampshire all his life, Bob experiences a true culture shock when he sees so many people of color: hundreds of them, thousands!. In Florida it is Bob and his family who are seen as curiosities, "white folks" and strangers. Elaine, Bob's wife, is amazed, and asks: All those black people working in the fields and everything, they’re not really Americans, right?, to which he replies: I’ve read they’re from Cuba and those kinds of places.
Bank's Florida is a place where people wake up from their dreams, and not fulfill them: as Bob and his family drive through central Florida, their first reaction is of disappointment: they keep their eyes away from the horizon to avoid seeing the flat landscape, spotted with endless franchised stores and restaurants, lonely and isolated neighborhoods which turn into miles of grids of trailer parks, automobile graveyards, vast and disordered, dreary, colorless and indestructible.. As they see more of Florida, the realization that they no longer can return to New Hampshire fills them with fear, as they know that this is their home now. A place where people play dirty to get rich quickly, where violence is commonplace and crime prospers. Bob has made the bed, and he must now sleep in it: as the novel progresses it becomes obvious that he has no succesfully transformed his life but merely lost his past, the job and posessions which gave him a sense of status, in exchange for the life which is slowly spiralling out of his hands among the palm trees and scorching sun.
Right in the introduction Banks writes that the "sad story of Robert Raymond Dubois" will end in the back alleys of Miami, on a February morning in 1981. The ending is indeed powerful and striking, if not unexpected, but the novel is all about the journey: about Bob's life disintegrating further and further, and Vanise's hopes for reaching Miami, and their lifelines intersecting. Banks develops Bob's character with significantly more detail than he grants to Vanise - he seems to try to make up for that with references to Haitian culture and customs, of which there are plenty, but Vanise herself is more of a personification of the general immigrant dream. As he admits in his epilogue, the purpose of the book is to "destroy the world as it is"; this is a strongly ideological work, with an important message. Therefore, his characters never seem to not be controlled by the fate predestined for them by their creator: Bob's life goes out of control almost too neatly in its tragedy, and Vanise is almost saintlike in her complacency: her only active decision seems to be the escape from Haiti, and she remains resigned throughout the rest of the novel
Nevertheless, this is a powerful and important novel about the failure of the American dream and the struggle of the working class, and made me want to read more of Banks's work. Bob Dubois is a fragile character who seems to have been already broken and put back together from different pieces of glass, each shard reflecting on us with our own faces. Like continets we drift and dislodge, and Banks's novel made me grieve for his characters, which are but images of many contemporary lives to whom no one will ever give a platform to voice their woes before they wither away into eternity. With this novel Banks lets them be heard, and they speak loudly and clearly.
This is an American story of the late twentieth century, writes Banks and he means it: this is a powerful novel of hope and loss set in the recession of the early 1980's, concerned with characters who could not be different but who both strive for something they feel is withing their reach: a different, better life.
The novel begins with the introduction of Bob Dubois, an American everyman: 30 years of age, he has lived all his life in Cattamouth, New Hampshire, working as a repairman for the Abenaki Oil Company since he finished high school. At 30, Bob is married with two daughters and another child on the way. He lives a small duplex in a working class neighborhood and rents the back to four tenants (whom he calls hippies), drives an old Chevrolet and owns a 13 foot Boston whaler he built from kit. He still owes the Cattamouth Loan Company a little over $22,000 in payments for the house, car and boat. A question haunts Bob Dubois, which is relevant to many to us: "I am smart - why I am not rich?"
"We Have a good life", his wife tells him, but Bob longs for more: he wants out of the small New Hampshire town with its snowny hopelesness, where nothing ever seems to change; he longs for a slice of the American Dream for himself. When his brother offers him a job with Florida, Bob thinks that this is his chance to start again. A new hope waits in the unexplored land down south, where ripe oranges hangs from trees all year round and and success wait for those willing to grasp them.
Vanise Dorsinville also longs for a better life: a native resident of Haiti, she longs to escape its instability, poverty and violence, and secure a better future for herself and her baby. She saves up enough money to pay the coyotes to smuggle her to America, the promised land where Haitians have been taken to and prospered: she is aware that the journey is dangerous but is willing to take the risk to get to the city of Miami, where there is a Haitian community which will help her accomodate and start a new life.
For Bob, a native New Englander, Florida is also like a different part of the world: althought still a part of his homeland, The United States, it is so far removed from New Hampshire both geographically and culturally that it might as well be a separate country. Having lived in homogenously white New Hampshire all his life, Bob experiences a true culture shock when he sees so many people of color: hundreds of them, thousands!. In Florida it is Bob and his family who are seen as curiosities, "white folks" and strangers. Elaine, Bob's wife, is amazed, and asks: All those black people working in the fields and everything, they’re not really Americans, right?, to which he replies: I’ve read they’re from Cuba and those kinds of places.
Bank's Florida is a place where people wake up from their dreams, and not fulfill them: as Bob and his family drive through central Florida, their first reaction is of disappointment: they keep their eyes away from the horizon to avoid seeing the flat landscape, spotted with endless franchised stores and restaurants, lonely and isolated neighborhoods which turn into miles of grids of trailer parks, automobile graveyards, vast and disordered, dreary, colorless and indestructible.. As they see more of Florida, the realization that they no longer can return to New Hampshire fills them with fear, as they know that this is their home now. A place where people play dirty to get rich quickly, where violence is commonplace and crime prospers. Bob has made the bed, and he must now sleep in it: as the novel progresses it becomes obvious that he has no succesfully transformed his life but merely lost his past, the job and posessions which gave him a sense of status, in exchange for the life which is slowly spiralling out of his hands among the palm trees and scorching sun.
Right in the introduction Banks writes that the "sad story of Robert Raymond Dubois" will end in the back alleys of Miami, on a February morning in 1981. The ending is indeed powerful and striking, if not unexpected, but the novel is all about the journey: about Bob's life disintegrating further and further, and Vanise's hopes for reaching Miami, and their lifelines intersecting. Banks develops Bob's character with significantly more detail than he grants to Vanise - he seems to try to make up for that with references to Haitian culture and customs, of which there are plenty, but Vanise herself is more of a personification of the general immigrant dream. As he admits in his epilogue, the purpose of the book is to "destroy the world as it is"; this is a strongly ideological work, with an important message. Therefore, his characters never seem to not be controlled by the fate predestined for them by their creator: Bob's life goes out of control almost too neatly in its tragedy, and Vanise is almost saintlike in her complacency: her only active decision seems to be the escape from Haiti, and she remains resigned throughout the rest of the novel
Nevertheless, this is a powerful and important novel about the failure of the American dream and the struggle of the working class, and made me want to read more of Banks's work. Bob Dubois is a fragile character who seems to have been already broken and put back together from different pieces of glass, each shard reflecting on us with our own faces. Like continets we drift and dislodge, and Banks's novel made me grieve for his characters, which are but images of many contemporary lives to whom no one will ever give a platform to voice their woes before they wither away into eternity. With this novel Banks lets them be heard, and they speak loudly and clearly.
January 29, 2016
This fine book deserves more than the one-line comment I originally gave it. And probably an extra half-star. For it has lingered.
Bob Dubois is a white working class stiff, with more intelligence than articulation (and more unarticulated intelligence than the people around him), living in the cold ragged little cities of New Hampshire, fixing oil burners. His life is falling apart. And so, like a bird seeking warmth from the sun of life, he drifts south, with his family...to a promised land.... (Florida).
Vanise and Claude live in Haiti, in a dirt poor village. Their lives are such that they were born into the undeveloped ruins of the backside of the world... and so, their lives cannot fall apart. For they have never cohered in the first place. And so, they not only drift, but go to all human ends to flee north..., to the land of milk and honey... (Florida -- crass and commercial and a 'nation' of trailer parks...).
These two stories, which alternate for most of the book, ultimately collide, like continents drifting and colliding and that huge mountain ranges as they do... human time and geological time thus somehow telescoped..., not in the narrative (which is focused on the here and now), but in the metaphoric background that helps to shape, subtly and 'behind the scenes', the motif of this fine novel.
A fine achievement. Banks is a fine writer. Recommended.
Bob Dubois is a white working class stiff, with more intelligence than articulation (and more unarticulated intelligence than the people around him), living in the cold ragged little cities of New Hampshire, fixing oil burners. His life is falling apart. And so, like a bird seeking warmth from the sun of life, he drifts south, with his family...to a promised land.... (Florida).
Vanise and Claude live in Haiti, in a dirt poor village. Their lives are such that they were born into the undeveloped ruins of the backside of the world... and so, their lives cannot fall apart. For they have never cohered in the first place. And so, they not only drift, but go to all human ends to flee north..., to the land of milk and honey... (Florida -- crass and commercial and a 'nation' of trailer parks...).
These two stories, which alternate for most of the book, ultimately collide, like continents drifting and colliding and that huge mountain ranges as they do... human time and geological time thus somehow telescoped..., not in the narrative (which is focused on the here and now), but in the metaphoric background that helps to shape, subtly and 'behind the scenes', the motif of this fine novel.
A fine achievement. Banks is a fine writer. Recommended.
March 1, 2010
When I saw Russell Banks speak at the Brooklyn Book Festival a few years ago, he read a couple of passages from Continental Drift. He prefaced his reading with the comment that while it might seem strange that he was revisiting a book he'd written in the 80s, its themes had been on his mind lately. I can see why. Set in a recession, Continental Drift is interested in things like the cost of pursuing the American dream, the definition of contemporary manhood, and the relationship between the fate of an individual and the fate of a civilization. The passages that Banks read at the book fest outlined the book's elegant "big idea" -- that the currents that push people to pick up their families and homes and look for a better living are a kind of force of nature. These ambitious, meditative passages are some of the book's finest. They're what made me seek this book out, what pulled me into this story and what made parallel protagonists Bob Dubois and Vanise Dorsinville's travails so gripping in the first place. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for this book waned a bit as things unfolded and I spent a little more time with Banks' main characters. Bob (leaving a factory job in New England) and Vanise (leaving hurricane-stricken Haiti) have much to deal with in their quest for a new, better life in Florida, and neither is quite up to the task. Bob ruminates and flounders; Vanise submits and endures. Both are sympathetic characters in their way, but the story progresses (and their fates meet), Bob and Vanise serve the plot a little too well. As a result both are too-readily martyred for Banks' larger message. Continental Drift is a powerful novel about powerlessness, masterfully rendered, one might say. There are diverting subplots, raw scenes of abuse and human weakness, and shifting perspectives but the novel holds steady to its larger concerns through it all. It's a good thing and a bad thing. For all its strengths, in the end this book suffers from being a novel-y novel -- the kind of book that never lets you forget that it's carrying the weight of the world.
Read
June 28, 2020I did not love this; obvs that has nothing to do with relative quality and passion of the writing and whether other people might.
I did not love it because it seemed to me the book revolved around a self-absorbed, stereotypical man in "take" mode, where the standing mystery is why so many women (flat, implausible and unmemorable characters) have sex with him. It's like a protracted fantasy from within the male gaze of entitlement and power, however, this guy's fantasy is sad, empty, defeated, depressed, ignorant, self-defeating, self-sabotaging, doomed...so, not many bright spots.
The islanders and their fates are well-written and interesting, but even their characters seem to exist not to live their own stories, but only to serve our undeserving white male protagonist's. Which, perhaps, is the point of the novel, if the broken white guy is meant to represent broken white dominant culture, and women and disadvantaged nations meant to represent, well, women and disadvantaged nations, being disposable servants to be churned up for no worthy reason. If so, well done! Good portrait of reality. But, we know this is what is, we don't need the picture drawn in symbols, and it's not enjoyable to read; we hope for better, and progress, and growth.
I did not love it because it seemed to me the book revolved around a self-absorbed, stereotypical man in "take" mode, where the standing mystery is why so many women (flat, implausible and unmemorable characters) have sex with him. It's like a protracted fantasy from within the male gaze of entitlement and power, however, this guy's fantasy is sad, empty, defeated, depressed, ignorant, self-defeating, self-sabotaging, doomed...so, not many bright spots.
The islanders and their fates are well-written and interesting, but even their characters seem to exist not to live their own stories, but only to serve our undeserving white male protagonist's. Which, perhaps, is the point of the novel, if the broken white guy is meant to represent broken white dominant culture, and women and disadvantaged nations meant to represent, well, women and disadvantaged nations, being disposable servants to be churned up for no worthy reason. If so, well done! Good portrait of reality. But, we know this is what is, we don't need the picture drawn in symbols, and it's not enjoyable to read; we hope for better, and progress, and growth.
July 27, 2015
On my second reading of this book there was no letdown, no thought of how could I have ever regarded this so highly. I can safely say that this is more than a fine piece of writing, a superb novel that looks into the heart and soul of America, a novel with thoroughly believable, lovingly delineated characters that describes its world with photographic clarity. It is all of that, but also more. This is a book that I truly love, a book that from time to time makes me stop what I am doing and consider its points, its charms, its awesome skill. This along with my other Banks favorite, "Affliction", are the only two books I can think of that I have purchased extra copies of to give to people.
In this second reading, I was more aware of the tragic everyman character of Bob Dubois and how Banks portrays him. Bob is many things, the complex reality that underlies the TV-land construction of the average blue collar Joe. He is basically decent, but flawed - he is willing to commit adultery, break the law, and even kill (but only in self-defense). He is an average man in most ways, and the struggles he experiences go on everywhere. I marvel at the book's seemingly effortless realism, a textbook-worthy example of effective use of details. Simply presenting believable detail is never enough, however. The detail must seem to grow organically out of a good story and interesting characters (and valuable ideas, in the best fiction); those are always the starting point, the raison d'etre for the detail. Not to mention the quality of the writing and the presentation of a unique voice. This book has all of these.
Another thing that came thru for me was the underlying passion. Despite the fact that Bob is in many ways a bumbling blank slate, a man capable of actions that others would find terrible, the author succeeds in making us care about him. It is inescapable that Bob, and his brother and best buddy are all deluded, all attempting to live out an American dream that is fed by a poisonous stream of lust, lies, and greed. Surely this accounts partially for Bob's blankness, his knack for being led into trouble - Banks wanted to show us that he was simply a typical guy who wanted the masculine American dream in all of its contradictory confusion. He wanted unshackled sex and a happy marriage, freedom and stability, attention and solitude, a little respect, but assessed with the only measuring tools he can comprehend. I can think of no other book that succeeds to this degree in which the protagonist is so slow-witted and undistinguished. And yet it is magnificent.
Another key issue is race. Bob and Eddie buy in to that classic brand of racism, still practiced by many, in which the barely comprehended other is demonized and feared. Racism is presented frankly, yet with a humorous undertone. A sophisticated reader cannot help but laugh at Eddie's blanket assessments of Afro-Americans, or at Bob's insecure fantasies concerning the sexual endowments of black men. Bob is not really a racist however, the only racism in him is born of ignorance. To a great extent he is able to go beyond his white bread past by falling for a black woman. In many ways this can be read as a loss of innocence story, as the naive Bob is brought into contact with different races, violence, crime, hatred, and greed.
This is no ponderous, political novel, tho. The book is full of dry New England wit, slighly caustic but still affectionate. Banks's depiction of the character of Honduras is one of the more amusing things I have read. The story moves along nicely, veering smoothly from workaday boredom to moments of romance and lust to events filled with horror and pain, all of it building rhythmically in a downward spiral. Yet none of it comes across as depressing, for the reader is caught up in suspense, superb prose, fascinating descriptions, and finely-milled humor. Reading a book like this reminds me of why I got involved in literature in the first place. It reminds me of all the good things that literature can do, the ways in which it can reveal our lives and worlds thru fictional creations; the way in which the judicious use of 26 symbols on a page can make us think, feel, laugh, dream, and cry, and to feel as if we are improving ourselves by doing so.
In this second reading, I was more aware of the tragic everyman character of Bob Dubois and how Banks portrays him. Bob is many things, the complex reality that underlies the TV-land construction of the average blue collar Joe. He is basically decent, but flawed - he is willing to commit adultery, break the law, and even kill (but only in self-defense). He is an average man in most ways, and the struggles he experiences go on everywhere. I marvel at the book's seemingly effortless realism, a textbook-worthy example of effective use of details. Simply presenting believable detail is never enough, however. The detail must seem to grow organically out of a good story and interesting characters (and valuable ideas, in the best fiction); those are always the starting point, the raison d'etre for the detail. Not to mention the quality of the writing and the presentation of a unique voice. This book has all of these.
Another thing that came thru for me was the underlying passion. Despite the fact that Bob is in many ways a bumbling blank slate, a man capable of actions that others would find terrible, the author succeeds in making us care about him. It is inescapable that Bob, and his brother and best buddy are all deluded, all attempting to live out an American dream that is fed by a poisonous stream of lust, lies, and greed. Surely this accounts partially for Bob's blankness, his knack for being led into trouble - Banks wanted to show us that he was simply a typical guy who wanted the masculine American dream in all of its contradictory confusion. He wanted unshackled sex and a happy marriage, freedom and stability, attention and solitude, a little respect, but assessed with the only measuring tools he can comprehend. I can think of no other book that succeeds to this degree in which the protagonist is so slow-witted and undistinguished. And yet it is magnificent.
Another key issue is race. Bob and Eddie buy in to that classic brand of racism, still practiced by many, in which the barely comprehended other is demonized and feared. Racism is presented frankly, yet with a humorous undertone. A sophisticated reader cannot help but laugh at Eddie's blanket assessments of Afro-Americans, or at Bob's insecure fantasies concerning the sexual endowments of black men. Bob is not really a racist however, the only racism in him is born of ignorance. To a great extent he is able to go beyond his white bread past by falling for a black woman. In many ways this can be read as a loss of innocence story, as the naive Bob is brought into contact with different races, violence, crime, hatred, and greed.
This is no ponderous, political novel, tho. The book is full of dry New England wit, slighly caustic but still affectionate. Banks's depiction of the character of Honduras is one of the more amusing things I have read. The story moves along nicely, veering smoothly from workaday boredom to moments of romance and lust to events filled with horror and pain, all of it building rhythmically in a downward spiral. Yet none of it comes across as depressing, for the reader is caught up in suspense, superb prose, fascinating descriptions, and finely-milled humor. Reading a book like this reminds me of why I got involved in literature in the first place. It reminds me of all the good things that literature can do, the ways in which it can reveal our lives and worlds thru fictional creations; the way in which the judicious use of 26 symbols on a page can make us think, feel, laugh, dream, and cry, and to feel as if we are improving ourselves by doing so.
December 26, 2014
I picked this book to read because it was one of the few I could find set in the Bahamas, and I was headed there on vacation. It is the story of a man unhappy in his dead-end life in New Hampshire, who relocates his family to Florida to work for his brother. There is also a more mystical story of a woman leaving Haiti who is bound to intertwine with Bob at some point, but the how was less expected.
After finishing the book, which I took breaks from because it wasn't really grabbing me, I read more about the author and I think this has some major elements from his own life.
His capture of Florida and the Bahamas is pretty spot-on (Nassau in particular), as well as unhappy people and the decisions they make. I would not call this an uplifting novel!
This little bit made me stop and think:
"'I want... I want...' Men do that to women, use them to remake themselves, just as women do it to men. Men and women seek the love of the Other so that the old, cracked and shabby self can be left behind, like a sloughed-off snakeskin, and a new self brought forward, clean, shining, glistening wetly with promise and talents the old self never owned. When you seek to acquire the love of someone who resembles you, in gender, temperament, culture or physical type, you do so for love of those aspects of yourself, gender, temperament, culture, etc; but when you seek the love of someone different from you, you do it to be rid of yourself."
After finishing the book, which I took breaks from because it wasn't really grabbing me, I read more about the author and I think this has some major elements from his own life.
His capture of Florida and the Bahamas is pretty spot-on (Nassau in particular), as well as unhappy people and the decisions they make. I would not call this an uplifting novel!
This little bit made me stop and think:
"'I want... I want...' Men do that to women, use them to remake themselves, just as women do it to men. Men and women seek the love of the Other so that the old, cracked and shabby self can be left behind, like a sloughed-off snakeskin, and a new self brought forward, clean, shining, glistening wetly with promise and talents the old self never owned. When you seek to acquire the love of someone who resembles you, in gender, temperament, culture or physical type, you do so for love of those aspects of yourself, gender, temperament, culture, etc; but when you seek the love of someone different from you, you do it to be rid of yourself."
November 27, 2011
I was just reading a report in the NY Times about a man suffering from delusions, of how he made it through a rough period in his life and is now doing well with the help of his wife and drugs.
Every one of us is on a chemical continuum from off-the-wall crazy to comatose. This is a good reason for compassion since we play the game of life with the equipment we have, lacking the "right" amount of one chemical and having too much of another. While some may say we determine the course of our lives through rational decision making, I think the decision making is secondary to the physical conditions within our bodies that either drive us or inhibit us. The best we can do is realize our situation, understand our behavior and act with the help of others to live decent lives.
Continental Drift is the story of an average guy with a very active imagination that dreams of a better life and tries to make it happen. His dreams are not wild but they are scary because they are shallow and heavy on the imagery that one can get from watching TV commercials. In other words he has the same dreams of materialism that so many Americans do.
He has no moral center to constrain him, so impulse wins almost every time. Is there a man alive who doesn't fantasize sex with most if not all of the women he sees? But the great majority have more sense than to act on these fantasies that are based on physical drive and have nothing to do with the actual person who is the sexual object of the day.
In contrast to the drift of the main character, Bob Dubois, the women in his life show common sense and his wife has so much of it that I can't help but wonder if the author didn't create her character simply to showcase Bob's actions-for-the-moment.
Bob is so mixed up that his knowledge of the right thing and his desire for the conventional idea of success break to the surface of his consciousness at random. His inability to discover who he is leaves him contemptuous of himself, likely adding to his desire to have intercourse with every woman he meets for self-affirmation. As the author says, Bob's decisions are made only on the basis of circumstances and taboo. If the woman is available, attractive and isn't his sister, he goes for it.
Lying comes easily. He does it a the drop of a hat for even the slightest advantage. His one rule for self-restraint is never to hit his wife or kids and he gets through the story without violating that rule, though in the destruction of their home, he comes very close to doing so.
His wife and kids are incidentals. Though he alternates between thinking he loves his wife and thinking he doesn't, it really depends on whether he needs to think he does according to the situation he finds himself in. There is scarcely a scene in which he interacts meaningfully with his children.
So he is, if we are to believe that each of us is a free will determining the course of our life, contemptible. But seen as a small boat tossed on a large and stormy sea, he is more to be pitied.
The plot of the story, with Bob and family moving south to Florida in search of "success" at the same time Vanise, a poor Haitian woman, is risking her life and that of her baby to flee north to the same state in order to live at all, is brilliant. Bob moves with no moral compass over a landscape where he accepts the common wisdom. Vanise cannot afford to use a moral compass as she strives to move north at any cost.
Bob's brother, Eddie, and Bob's friend, Av Boone, are a bit too flat for my liking. They provide characters to show how easily swayed Bob is and how shallow success can be. They exist to set Bob up for our examination.
Never boring, quite believable and for the most part realistic, Continental Drift is a well crafted novel.
Every one of us is on a chemical continuum from off-the-wall crazy to comatose. This is a good reason for compassion since we play the game of life with the equipment we have, lacking the "right" amount of one chemical and having too much of another. While some may say we determine the course of our lives through rational decision making, I think the decision making is secondary to the physical conditions within our bodies that either drive us or inhibit us. The best we can do is realize our situation, understand our behavior and act with the help of others to live decent lives.
Continental Drift is the story of an average guy with a very active imagination that dreams of a better life and tries to make it happen. His dreams are not wild but they are scary because they are shallow and heavy on the imagery that one can get from watching TV commercials. In other words he has the same dreams of materialism that so many Americans do.
He has no moral center to constrain him, so impulse wins almost every time. Is there a man alive who doesn't fantasize sex with most if not all of the women he sees? But the great majority have more sense than to act on these fantasies that are based on physical drive and have nothing to do with the actual person who is the sexual object of the day.
In contrast to the drift of the main character, Bob Dubois, the women in his life show common sense and his wife has so much of it that I can't help but wonder if the author didn't create her character simply to showcase Bob's actions-for-the-moment.
Bob is so mixed up that his knowledge of the right thing and his desire for the conventional idea of success break to the surface of his consciousness at random. His inability to discover who he is leaves him contemptuous of himself, likely adding to his desire to have intercourse with every woman he meets for self-affirmation. As the author says, Bob's decisions are made only on the basis of circumstances and taboo. If the woman is available, attractive and isn't his sister, he goes for it.
Lying comes easily. He does it a the drop of a hat for even the slightest advantage. His one rule for self-restraint is never to hit his wife or kids and he gets through the story without violating that rule, though in the destruction of their home, he comes very close to doing so.
His wife and kids are incidentals. Though he alternates between thinking he loves his wife and thinking he doesn't, it really depends on whether he needs to think he does according to the situation he finds himself in. There is scarcely a scene in which he interacts meaningfully with his children.
So he is, if we are to believe that each of us is a free will determining the course of our life, contemptible. But seen as a small boat tossed on a large and stormy sea, he is more to be pitied.
The plot of the story, with Bob and family moving south to Florida in search of "success" at the same time Vanise, a poor Haitian woman, is risking her life and that of her baby to flee north to the same state in order to live at all, is brilliant. Bob moves with no moral compass over a landscape where he accepts the common wisdom. Vanise cannot afford to use a moral compass as she strives to move north at any cost.
Bob's brother, Eddie, and Bob's friend, Av Boone, are a bit too flat for my liking. They provide characters to show how easily swayed Bob is and how shallow success can be. They exist to set Bob up for our examination.
Never boring, quite believable and for the most part realistic, Continental Drift is a well crafted novel.
March 25, 2015
After reading 20 books this year that all were 3s and 4s I was looking for something that would really stand out and earn a 5. Reading ‘good’ books is fine but occasionally you want something to really blow you away or make an impact that you will remember. Banks does not disappoint with Continental Drift. His best books are those that tackle the big ideas like the American dream. He sets out to be epic and succeeds with this novel. The book follows two people looking for a better life – a boiler repair man from New Hampshire who moves to Florida and a Haitian woman trying to immigrate to the US. The story is tragic, honest and not very hopeful. Just real life. Great writing, memorable characters, excellent story telling. Banks at his best, right up there with Cloudsplitter.
December 8, 2013
I decided to read this book because it was mentioned in "The end of your life book club" as one of the most depressing reads ever, and I really love a good depressing read. Unfortunately, I realized that I prefer depressing books where the characters are resilient in the face of their struggles. The American family annoyed me - mostly the dad, Bob Dubois. He felt like a complainer who would be forever unsatisfied with his life. The Haitian characters were a bit more interesting but the female also seemed to have no hope. My favorite character was the haitian boy who was the only one to try and solve his troubles.
October 31, 2011
Continental Drift charts the downward mobility of a handful of unfortunate souls in the early 1980’s, amid the shrieking death-cries of late capitalism.
Bob Dubois is a blue-collar radiator repairman. He works his dull job and supports his wife and kids. To take the edge off the day he visits a bar near his work and enjoys the warm affections of another woman. Life is relatively stable, if a bit dreary. Anyway, one night he snaps. It’s a combination of a few factors. Mostly he is feeling guilty about sleeping with his girlfriend when he should have been buying ice skates for his daughter. He’s upset that the skates are so expensive and he’s mad that the store is closing and that he’ll be coming home empty-handed without so much as an alibi. So he throws a fit, and starts punching the windshield of his car until he smashes it in an over-the-top meltdown. It was hard for me to work up much sympathy for the man. I wanted to grab him by the shirt and say, “Why are you acting like such an immature little brat? Get a grip!”
He comes home, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and somehow convinces his wife that what they need to do is make a fresh start in a new state. Bob remembers a summer he spent working on a boat, on the Florida coast and he feels that if he could just get back there, he’d find himself and the happiness that eludes him. Dreams of wealth and leisure glitter temptingly on the horizon.
The ease with which Bob and his wife sell their house and quit their jobs revealed a bit of datedness to the book, I thought. Selling a home in today’s treacherous real estate market would be drama enough to fill these pages. It garners barely a mention here. Walking away from a steady job of 20 years, with two children to support, comes across as far more reckless than courageous. Job security like that doesn't exist anymore, so tossing it away seems unforgivably wasteful. You get the sense of people heading straight off a cliff, whether they know it or not.
But off they go. Of course, the moment the family arrives in their new home, it becomes apparent that their fantasies of the easy life have little bearing on reality. Bob’s brother has given him a job managing one of the liquor stores he owns, but it pays barely enough to pay for their shabby trailer home. The brother is a boorish character upon whom the entire family is now dependent. He’s a quintessential 1980’s man, ruled by a crude, materialistic ethos. There is an unbearable scene in which his wife describes buying a boat, on a lark, as a surprise birthday present for her husband. The couple is dripping with money and it is obvious to everyone but Bob that the man is involved in a serious drug running operation. His ever-expanding business empire looks more and more like a money-laundering scheme as time goes on. Beneath the shiny surfaces of “success” lies a dank world of corruption, greed and doom.
A dislocating culture shock unsettles Bob when his brother forces him to keep a gun behind the register. He wants nothing to do with the thing, but it isn’t long before he finds occasion to fire it, in an unthinkable break with his former self. Claustrophobia, paranoia and fear hang about the characters like a sickening, choking fog, yielding predictably terrible results. Adrenaline is always high, and the characters are always on the cusp or in the throes of catastrophe.
A major theme throughout the book is the fraught, ambivalent relationship between whites and blacks in this southern state. Bob is terrified of the black people that come in and out of the store. He pulls up to work one day and sees a car with two black passengers parked outside and this triggers a frenzied fight of flight response. He breaks out in a sweat, fumbling for the gun before recognizing one of the passengers as the shop’s elderly custodian. This disorienting experience, both for Bob and the reader, further emphasizes the ways in which fear distorts perception and quick second decisions mean the difference between life and death.
The custodian introduces Bob to his daughter, a nurse with whom Bob feels an instant infatuation. There is an element of exoticism about Bob’s attraction to her. Racial differences are highlighted rather than glossed over as they would be in a safer, more politically correct book. Sex is portrayed in hyper-erotic detail, and at the same time, with great humanity and compassion. There is failed sex in this story, but not "bad sex" in the sense of poorly written sex. As bad as it gets, it is never embarrassing for the reader as it is when it is handled with less skill and honesty.
Horror in its many guises is a frequent presence in this novel. Bob's wife goes into unexpected labor while he is getting stoned with his girlfriend in a hotel room. This is the pre-cell phone era, and his wife has no way of reaching him. She has to ask a neighbor to take her to the hospital, leaving her kids at home in the care of a beer-guzzling acquaintance from the trailer park where they live.
When Bob finally arrives back at the house, in a post-coital, inebriated stupor, he is shattered to discover that his wife has had the baby while he was away. He rushes to the hospital to find his wife, dressed in white, baby in arms, saintly and pure, representing all that is good in the world. (The author laid it on a bit thick here, but why begrudge the man’s life-changing epiphany?) He decides immediately to cut off his affair and dedicate himself to caring for his wife and family.
Sadly, this moment of clarity and grace is short-lived. His family seems self-contained, uninterested in him, even against him. He begins to feel like an outsider in his own home. (When he starts breaking furniture against the walls, you can see why.) He has a falling out with his brother and quits his job out of spite at the precise moment he needs his job most. He ends up working on a fishing boat owned by an old friend, a man with whom he has a complicated history. Unspoken betrayals linger in the air between them.
The fishing gig deepens his downward trajectory. Bob finds himself desperate for money, willing to consider dangerous new avenues for profit, such as ferrying refugees from the Bahamas to Florida. It is here that Bob’s story intersects with a young Haitian mother, her child and an orphaned teenage boy whose hellish journey we've witnessed in the novel's parallel narrative.
This second story line has the effect of dwarfing the significance of Bob's and his family's more abstract, existential drama. The horrors of human trafficking make all other concerns seem slight in comparison. Though their circumstances are wildly divergent, the characters are identical in their longing to fulfill their self-constructed fantasy of the American Dream.
There is a scene, which brought to mind the extreme shock and terror of the indelibly traumatic moments in Sophie’s Choice when the mother, with a gun to her head, sends her child to its death. In a chaotic scene of stark horror, the Haitian passengers are ordered to throw themselves and their children overboard, where they are instantly swept away. And there are many other atrocities leading up to these final, shattering moments.
There are so many layers of moral failing in this novel that the narrative finally collapses under its own weight, like a black hole. There is no redemption for any of the characters. I’m not sure if I completely agree with the book’s lofty post-script, but it provides an intriguing meditation on life and literature.
“Good cheer and mournfulness over lives other than our own, even invented lives- no, especially wholly invented lives- deprive the world as it is of some of the greed it needs to continue to be itself. Sabotage and subversion, then, are this book’s objectives. Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.”
Thirty years after its publication, Continental Drift remains chillingly relevant. Human failing and economic disaster feed off one another in an unholy alliance, then and now. This is not to say it couldn't be another way. Perhaps, it is in confronting the ugliness of our human condition that we gain the clarity and will necessary to transform it.
Bob Dubois is a blue-collar radiator repairman. He works his dull job and supports his wife and kids. To take the edge off the day he visits a bar near his work and enjoys the warm affections of another woman. Life is relatively stable, if a bit dreary. Anyway, one night he snaps. It’s a combination of a few factors. Mostly he is feeling guilty about sleeping with his girlfriend when he should have been buying ice skates for his daughter. He’s upset that the skates are so expensive and he’s mad that the store is closing and that he’ll be coming home empty-handed without so much as an alibi. So he throws a fit, and starts punching the windshield of his car until he smashes it in an over-the-top meltdown. It was hard for me to work up much sympathy for the man. I wanted to grab him by the shirt and say, “Why are you acting like such an immature little brat? Get a grip!”
He comes home, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and somehow convinces his wife that what they need to do is make a fresh start in a new state. Bob remembers a summer he spent working on a boat, on the Florida coast and he feels that if he could just get back there, he’d find himself and the happiness that eludes him. Dreams of wealth and leisure glitter temptingly on the horizon.
The ease with which Bob and his wife sell their house and quit their jobs revealed a bit of datedness to the book, I thought. Selling a home in today’s treacherous real estate market would be drama enough to fill these pages. It garners barely a mention here. Walking away from a steady job of 20 years, with two children to support, comes across as far more reckless than courageous. Job security like that doesn't exist anymore, so tossing it away seems unforgivably wasteful. You get the sense of people heading straight off a cliff, whether they know it or not.
But off they go. Of course, the moment the family arrives in their new home, it becomes apparent that their fantasies of the easy life have little bearing on reality. Bob’s brother has given him a job managing one of the liquor stores he owns, but it pays barely enough to pay for their shabby trailer home. The brother is a boorish character upon whom the entire family is now dependent. He’s a quintessential 1980’s man, ruled by a crude, materialistic ethos. There is an unbearable scene in which his wife describes buying a boat, on a lark, as a surprise birthday present for her husband. The couple is dripping with money and it is obvious to everyone but Bob that the man is involved in a serious drug running operation. His ever-expanding business empire looks more and more like a money-laundering scheme as time goes on. Beneath the shiny surfaces of “success” lies a dank world of corruption, greed and doom.
A dislocating culture shock unsettles Bob when his brother forces him to keep a gun behind the register. He wants nothing to do with the thing, but it isn’t long before he finds occasion to fire it, in an unthinkable break with his former self. Claustrophobia, paranoia and fear hang about the characters like a sickening, choking fog, yielding predictably terrible results. Adrenaline is always high, and the characters are always on the cusp or in the throes of catastrophe.
A major theme throughout the book is the fraught, ambivalent relationship between whites and blacks in this southern state. Bob is terrified of the black people that come in and out of the store. He pulls up to work one day and sees a car with two black passengers parked outside and this triggers a frenzied fight of flight response. He breaks out in a sweat, fumbling for the gun before recognizing one of the passengers as the shop’s elderly custodian. This disorienting experience, both for Bob and the reader, further emphasizes the ways in which fear distorts perception and quick second decisions mean the difference between life and death.
The custodian introduces Bob to his daughter, a nurse with whom Bob feels an instant infatuation. There is an element of exoticism about Bob’s attraction to her. Racial differences are highlighted rather than glossed over as they would be in a safer, more politically correct book. Sex is portrayed in hyper-erotic detail, and at the same time, with great humanity and compassion. There is failed sex in this story, but not "bad sex" in the sense of poorly written sex. As bad as it gets, it is never embarrassing for the reader as it is when it is handled with less skill and honesty.
Horror in its many guises is a frequent presence in this novel. Bob's wife goes into unexpected labor while he is getting stoned with his girlfriend in a hotel room. This is the pre-cell phone era, and his wife has no way of reaching him. She has to ask a neighbor to take her to the hospital, leaving her kids at home in the care of a beer-guzzling acquaintance from the trailer park where they live.
When Bob finally arrives back at the house, in a post-coital, inebriated stupor, he is shattered to discover that his wife has had the baby while he was away. He rushes to the hospital to find his wife, dressed in white, baby in arms, saintly and pure, representing all that is good in the world. (The author laid it on a bit thick here, but why begrudge the man’s life-changing epiphany?) He decides immediately to cut off his affair and dedicate himself to caring for his wife and family.
Sadly, this moment of clarity and grace is short-lived. His family seems self-contained, uninterested in him, even against him. He begins to feel like an outsider in his own home. (When he starts breaking furniture against the walls, you can see why.) He has a falling out with his brother and quits his job out of spite at the precise moment he needs his job most. He ends up working on a fishing boat owned by an old friend, a man with whom he has a complicated history. Unspoken betrayals linger in the air between them.
The fishing gig deepens his downward trajectory. Bob finds himself desperate for money, willing to consider dangerous new avenues for profit, such as ferrying refugees from the Bahamas to Florida. It is here that Bob’s story intersects with a young Haitian mother, her child and an orphaned teenage boy whose hellish journey we've witnessed in the novel's parallel narrative.
This second story line has the effect of dwarfing the significance of Bob's and his family's more abstract, existential drama. The horrors of human trafficking make all other concerns seem slight in comparison. Though their circumstances are wildly divergent, the characters are identical in their longing to fulfill their self-constructed fantasy of the American Dream.
There is a scene, which brought to mind the extreme shock and terror of the indelibly traumatic moments in Sophie’s Choice when the mother, with a gun to her head, sends her child to its death. In a chaotic scene of stark horror, the Haitian passengers are ordered to throw themselves and their children overboard, where they are instantly swept away. And there are many other atrocities leading up to these final, shattering moments.
There are so many layers of moral failing in this novel that the narrative finally collapses under its own weight, like a black hole. There is no redemption for any of the characters. I’m not sure if I completely agree with the book’s lofty post-script, but it provides an intriguing meditation on life and literature.
“Good cheer and mournfulness over lives other than our own, even invented lives- no, especially wholly invented lives- deprive the world as it is of some of the greed it needs to continue to be itself. Sabotage and subversion, then, are this book’s objectives. Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.”
Thirty years after its publication, Continental Drift remains chillingly relevant. Human failing and economic disaster feed off one another in an unholy alliance, then and now. This is not to say it couldn't be another way. Perhaps, it is in confronting the ugliness of our human condition that we gain the clarity and will necessary to transform it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 10, 2025
De este escritor americano leí el año pasado Los abandonos, que me gustó muchísimo, y esta nueva novela también me ha encantado. ¿Por qué? Pues porque es ficción pura y dura. Una historia creada de cero con personajes que te crees, con un arco narrativo que evoluciona y que te sumerge en una realidad que no es la tuya. La historia que Banks contaba en Los abandonos sigue conmigo un año y medio después. De vez en cuando me descubro acordándome de su protagonista, Leonard, y pensando qué hubiera hecho yo en su lugar. Sé que Deriva continental y la historia de Bob y Vanise van a permanecer conmigo mucho tiempo. Esa deriva que da nombre la novela es la de dos personas que abandonan sus vidas, las dejan atrás y, de alguna manera, se dejan llevar al mismo tiempo que intentan conseguir una meta. En el caso de él, de Bob, un manitas de 30 años, casado y con dos hijas, que vive en New Hampshire, arrastra a su familia a Florida en busca de otra vida, de éxito, de dinero. Instalados allí nada sale como lo había imaginado y poco a poco van hundiéndose. Vanise es haitiana, tiene un bebé, y se lanza al mar en un barco para intentar llegar a las costas de Estados Unidos impulsada por el miedo.
Deriva continental es una historia de desilusión y de aspiración, pero sobre todo de supervivencia y desesperanza. Son dos aspiraciones diferentes. La de Bob está impulsada por el descontento vital y la búsqueda de un ideal de vida mejor que ni siquiera él mismo entiende. La de Vanise, su hijo y su sobrino viene impulsada por la desesperación y el miedo y no buscan algo mejor, solo quieren sobrevivir la siguiente hora, el día siguiente. No hay un futuro mejor al que aspirar.
Es una novela fabulosa, dura y triste, pero que creo que hay que leer. Es pertinente ahora mismo. Banks, además, es un escritor increíble.
«Cuando no intenta representar, cuando es él mismo, tiene una cosa curiosa, alegre, amistosa, o bien muestra un rostro cerrado, duro, irritado. Lo uno o lo otro, con pocos matices intermedios. Como esa oscilación entre abierto y cerrado, entre buen humor e irritación, entre amabilidad o crueldad, es abrupta y aparece sin transición gradual hacia la frialdad, la cólera, etc. Los extremos parecen, en efecto, extremos, opuestos, incluso a pesar de que, como el propio Bob lo siente y entiende, el camino de sentirse un hombre feliz a un hombre infeliz solo comparte un ligerísimo matiz».
Deriva continental es una historia de desilusión y de aspiración, pero sobre todo de supervivencia y desesperanza. Son dos aspiraciones diferentes. La de Bob está impulsada por el descontento vital y la búsqueda de un ideal de vida mejor que ni siquiera él mismo entiende. La de Vanise, su hijo y su sobrino viene impulsada por la desesperación y el miedo y no buscan algo mejor, solo quieren sobrevivir la siguiente hora, el día siguiente. No hay un futuro mejor al que aspirar.
Es una novela fabulosa, dura y triste, pero que creo que hay que leer. Es pertinente ahora mismo. Banks, además, es un escritor increíble.
«Cuando no intenta representar, cuando es él mismo, tiene una cosa curiosa, alegre, amistosa, o bien muestra un rostro cerrado, duro, irritado. Lo uno o lo otro, con pocos matices intermedios. Como esa oscilación entre abierto y cerrado, entre buen humor e irritación, entre amabilidad o crueldad, es abrupta y aparece sin transición gradual hacia la frialdad, la cólera, etc. Los extremos parecen, en efecto, extremos, opuestos, incluso a pesar de que, como el propio Bob lo siente y entiende, el camino de sentirse un hombre feliz a un hombre infeliz solo comparte un ligerísimo matiz».
February 25, 2018
Starting tonight? Rescued from the transfer station of course.
Getting further in not too excited so far. The cosmic digressions are sort of interesting but Bob is not. We're back in loser-ville a la Richard Russo, Denis Johnson, Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff. So far I like all of them better...
- Is this dirty realism?
- I guess this will be a story about American culture,. We'll see how well he gets it.
- Why no college for Bob? The explanation's a bit lame. He NEEDS to have not gone to college. It happens... Like Updike's Rabbit.
- A downtown Sears? Where?
- Bob's early on rant(after banging a barfly and spacing out in Sears) is pretty good.
Moving on and alternating with sympathy and disgust for clueless Bob. I get it! He stands for all the clueless people in our society. The ones who wear their Ray Rice jerseys to football games and the ones who think it's OK to whip a 4-year old with a switch and leave marks. No doubt we'll be seeing AP jerseys in the Patriots game tomorrow. Anyway... it's tough to not be disgusted with the whole of humanity. I suppose the author's point will be that the problem is embedded in our culture - and he's right - but individuals are responsible for their choices and Bob keeps making bad ones.
- Again with the stretching of credulity. Getting paid in cash? Had Bob not heard of the IRS and prison???
- Big brother Eddie - now there's another archetype(racist, gun-loving), the go-get-um hustler. Any doubt that Bob will be brought down by his "trust" in his older brother???
Moving along into the middle now and Bob has switched mentors. What's the big difference between Eddie and Ave? Both are obviously untrustworthy and unworthy of Bob's attention. Again... the plot requires that Bob be endlessly unresourceful and f'ed up.
- so many breast references - is the author a Playboy fanboy?
- reminds me of Franzen in its arbitrary incompleteness.
- enuf sex scenes and sex talk already. It's important - we get it!
- on the other hand, he does get that sex can provide a temporary feeling of peace and completeness.
- Bob chasing the maybe-Cornrow? Really? Bob is the author's puppet!
- everyone seems a bit young for all the serious doings. maybe they should all be about five years older - in the Bob story at least.
- a message/theme here: a brutal life breeds brutal people. Culture is the foundation for all the weirdness here. Does human nature breed culture or is it vice versa?
- I'm beginning to "get" that this is a very ambitious novel. It's going pretty well so far but the Vanise story is still more compelling. I assume the two threads will be coming together on the ocean somwewhere.
- The writing is kind of affectless, like Woolf and Carver, but effective - detached.
- reminds me a bit of "Fiskadoro".
- The emergence of Claude, Charles and Vanise from the hold so close to the bright life of Nassau is a great scene!
- The raping reminds me of "Lonesome Dove" - brutal culture=brutal men.
And so I'm finished after skimming the last 50 or so pages. I just ran out of both goodwill and patience for the book and the writer. Once again... TOO MANY WORDS! See... Cavalier and Clay, Tree of Smoke, The Stand, Already Dead, Gilead, Home, Them etc. Too much authorial exposition... At the end there's a bit about how RB wanted to take the role of storyteller with his arm around the reader's shoulder and be an explainer of everything. He's enlightening us I guess. Blah-blah-blah... At the end I had to bring my rating down to 2*(rounding down from 2.5*). I was doing fine about halfway through but as Bob continued on his author-induced endless quest to be the most clueless human on the planet I had to give up hope. There's so much I could write about how over-rated this book is(see East of Eden) and all else wrong with it. How about some notes...
- Ted and Yaz on the same team together? NO!(maybe in spring training - that's all)
- Bob's a sex addict I think...
- This book is all about MEN. The female characters are "important" but cardboard. Well... for that matter Eddie, Tyrone, Ave and Bob are all pretty cardboard as well.
- Why all the untranslated Creole? Why all the mumbo-jumbo voudou stuff?
- Uh-Oh - "his conscious understanding of his own sexuality" ICK! This is a NOVEL dude! Stop telling us stuff - a good writer brings it out by showing us.
- Too much time is spent inside Bob's unlikely 31-year-old thoughts. This is a literary presumption/conceit.
- MUST everything Bob does turn to shit? I guess so if that's what the author requires.
- And so to the ending - straight out of "Lord Jim"...
Was out walking when it occurred to me that Mr. Banks may have ripped off John Updike. Bob DuBois seems to be suspiciously similar to Updike's Rabbit Angstrom. Both are white, lower middle/blue collar Northeast losers who make an endless series of stupid decisions. Both are afflicted with sexual compulsiveness and both ultimately pay for their untreated low self-esteem and lack of self-respect(although it takes a lot longer for Rabbit's dopiness to catch up with him). Updike's writing ability puts him in a different and higher universe than Banks.
Getting further in not too excited so far. The cosmic digressions are sort of interesting but Bob is not. We're back in loser-ville a la Richard Russo, Denis Johnson, Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff. So far I like all of them better...
- Is this dirty realism?
- I guess this will be a story about American culture,. We'll see how well he gets it.
- Why no college for Bob? The explanation's a bit lame. He NEEDS to have not gone to college. It happens... Like Updike's Rabbit.
- A downtown Sears? Where?
- Bob's early on rant(after banging a barfly and spacing out in Sears) is pretty good.
Moving on and alternating with sympathy and disgust for clueless Bob. I get it! He stands for all the clueless people in our society. The ones who wear their Ray Rice jerseys to football games and the ones who think it's OK to whip a 4-year old with a switch and leave marks. No doubt we'll be seeing AP jerseys in the Patriots game tomorrow. Anyway... it's tough to not be disgusted with the whole of humanity. I suppose the author's point will be that the problem is embedded in our culture - and he's right - but individuals are responsible for their choices and Bob keeps making bad ones.
- Again with the stretching of credulity. Getting paid in cash? Had Bob not heard of the IRS and prison???
- Big brother Eddie - now there's another archetype(racist, gun-loving), the go-get-um hustler. Any doubt that Bob will be brought down by his "trust" in his older brother???
Moving along into the middle now and Bob has switched mentors. What's the big difference between Eddie and Ave? Both are obviously untrustworthy and unworthy of Bob's attention. Again... the plot requires that Bob be endlessly unresourceful and f'ed up.
- so many breast references - is the author a Playboy fanboy?
- reminds me of Franzen in its arbitrary incompleteness.
- enuf sex scenes and sex talk already. It's important - we get it!
- on the other hand, he does get that sex can provide a temporary feeling of peace and completeness.
- Bob chasing the maybe-Cornrow? Really? Bob is the author's puppet!
- everyone seems a bit young for all the serious doings. maybe they should all be about five years older - in the Bob story at least.
- a message/theme here: a brutal life breeds brutal people. Culture is the foundation for all the weirdness here. Does human nature breed culture or is it vice versa?
- I'm beginning to "get" that this is a very ambitious novel. It's going pretty well so far but the Vanise story is still more compelling. I assume the two threads will be coming together on the ocean somwewhere.
- The writing is kind of affectless, like Woolf and Carver, but effective - detached.
- reminds me a bit of "Fiskadoro".
- The emergence of Claude, Charles and Vanise from the hold so close to the bright life of Nassau is a great scene!
- The raping reminds me of "Lonesome Dove" - brutal culture=brutal men.
And so I'm finished after skimming the last 50 or so pages. I just ran out of both goodwill and patience for the book and the writer. Once again... TOO MANY WORDS! See... Cavalier and Clay, Tree of Smoke, The Stand, Already Dead, Gilead, Home, Them etc. Too much authorial exposition... At the end there's a bit about how RB wanted to take the role of storyteller with his arm around the reader's shoulder and be an explainer of everything. He's enlightening us I guess. Blah-blah-blah... At the end I had to bring my rating down to 2*(rounding down from 2.5*). I was doing fine about halfway through but as Bob continued on his author-induced endless quest to be the most clueless human on the planet I had to give up hope. There's so much I could write about how over-rated this book is(see East of Eden) and all else wrong with it. How about some notes...
- Ted and Yaz on the same team together? NO!(maybe in spring training - that's all)
- Bob's a sex addict I think...
- This book is all about MEN. The female characters are "important" but cardboard. Well... for that matter Eddie, Tyrone, Ave and Bob are all pretty cardboard as well.
- Why all the untranslated Creole? Why all the mumbo-jumbo voudou stuff?
- Uh-Oh - "his conscious understanding of his own sexuality" ICK! This is a NOVEL dude! Stop telling us stuff - a good writer brings it out by showing us.
- Too much time is spent inside Bob's unlikely 31-year-old thoughts. This is a literary presumption/conceit.
- MUST everything Bob does turn to shit? I guess so if that's what the author requires.
- And so to the ending - straight out of "Lord Jim"...
Was out walking when it occurred to me that Mr. Banks may have ripped off John Updike. Bob DuBois seems to be suspiciously similar to Updike's Rabbit Angstrom. Both are white, lower middle/blue collar Northeast losers who make an endless series of stupid decisions. Both are afflicted with sexual compulsiveness and both ultimately pay for their untreated low self-esteem and lack of self-respect(although it takes a lot longer for Rabbit's dopiness to catch up with him). Updike's writing ability puts him in a different and higher universe than Banks.
June 23, 2018
When I went to graduate school for writing, I learned that there are grad school books and authors. These are the authors or titles you likely have never heard of before entering an MFA program, but you're going to hear about them before they let you leave. During my two years there, no unknown name came up more than Russell Banks. Three of my four mentors highly pushed his work to me. Each pushing a different title (one mentor recommended two or three different titles). At the time, I did read The Sweet Hereafter, which I enjoyed somewhat, but Banks didn't grasp my attention enough to completely reel me in. It has been eight years since I read that novel, so I felt it was time to give Banks another shot. This time he certainly reeled me in.
I had to look back on my review of The Sweet Hereafter to recall why I didn't love it. Apparently, I thought Banks was ineffective at accurately giving voice to his characters. I find this surprising, because this was certainly not a problem in Continental Drift. I actually thought Banks did a marvelous job giving voice to his characters. Maybe that was the case with my first outing with Banks. Maybe I'm just a much different reader now.
Continental Drift is one of the most—if not the single most—American novel I've ever read. It's the story of people from different backgrounds who are struggling to get ahead. Each believes there is hope in a dream that is unequivocally American. The strength of these characters and the believability Banks lends to their situations are two of the largest components to this novel's excellence. These are characters who genuinely believe they're good people despite the evidence to the contrary. This is the heart and soul of America.
This is a novel that can be disgusting, depressing, or offensive to its reader. It puts on display a cross-section of the American people, their selfish justification and their pompous dream. I've never heard Continental Drift among the list of contenders for the title of the Great American Novel, but I certainly believe there are few novels more American than this. Banks is an author I will assuredly return to.
I had to look back on my review of The Sweet Hereafter to recall why I didn't love it. Apparently, I thought Banks was ineffective at accurately giving voice to his characters. I find this surprising, because this was certainly not a problem in Continental Drift. I actually thought Banks did a marvelous job giving voice to his characters. Maybe that was the case with my first outing with Banks. Maybe I'm just a much different reader now.
Continental Drift is one of the most—if not the single most—American novel I've ever read. It's the story of people from different backgrounds who are struggling to get ahead. Each believes there is hope in a dream that is unequivocally American. The strength of these characters and the believability Banks lends to their situations are two of the largest components to this novel's excellence. These are characters who genuinely believe they're good people despite the evidence to the contrary. This is the heart and soul of America.
This is a novel that can be disgusting, depressing, or offensive to its reader. It puts on display a cross-section of the American people, their selfish justification and their pompous dream. I've never heard Continental Drift among the list of contenders for the title of the Great American Novel, but I certainly believe there are few novels more American than this. Banks is an author I will assuredly return to.
October 10, 2014
Even most of the people who didn't like this book keep saying it is well-written in their comments. For me, this is the biggest problem. I could stomach more of Bob Dubois in my life if the writing were no so unbelievably turgid.
I also am finding that Bob's solidness as a character -- he is, for me at least, fully realized and present for the reader -- makes it all the more... what, frustrating? I'm kind of wanting to say offensive, actually ... that the Haitian characters are so clearly Haitian first and people second. It'd be one thing if ALL the characters were stereotypical, but when only the non-white ones are, it's hard to get through.
Finally, Bob's sex life, which is everywhere in evidence and fully detailed, again always and only from his perspective. I have a hard time understanding why all these women sleep with him; perhaps digging into that psychology could have made for a more interesting read. As it is, I just feel that as a female reader I'm already excluded from the narrative, so thanks anyway, but that'd be a no on the multiple sex scenes for me.
All in all, I'm not sure it's going to be worth my while to finish this book, not while I have such a big stack of things to read that I have a chance of actually liking. How many pages do I need to give it before I tell it that's enough?
I also am finding that Bob's solidness as a character -- he is, for me at least, fully realized and present for the reader -- makes it all the more... what, frustrating? I'm kind of wanting to say offensive, actually ... that the Haitian characters are so clearly Haitian first and people second. It'd be one thing if ALL the characters were stereotypical, but when only the non-white ones are, it's hard to get through.
Finally, Bob's sex life, which is everywhere in evidence and fully detailed, again always and only from his perspective. I have a hard time understanding why all these women sleep with him; perhaps digging into that psychology could have made for a more interesting read. As it is, I just feel that as a female reader I'm already excluded from the narrative, so thanks anyway, but that'd be a no on the multiple sex scenes for me.
All in all, I'm not sure it's going to be worth my while to finish this book, not while I have such a big stack of things to read that I have a chance of actually liking. How many pages do I need to give it before I tell it that's enough?
July 13, 2012
With this book I became a complete fan of Russell Banks' writing. It's not the pleasant family households he writes about. But, he writes a true description of how we are.
I remember a line from Mike Nichols, the playwright. He said something like this: How are we really? How do people really react in situations. That's been my tapline towards reading ever since.
Russell Banks writes down to the bone of our truths. How the hell does he know how so many types of people do react.
His subjects drive me crazy though. The main character is a bored married man in his thirties. He dreams of a bigger life but he does nothing to create one. He's married with three kids to a woman that in his small way he does love. He has affairs. His family and he are getting by.
He has an enormous temper tantrum - a frightening one actually. And his loving wife suggests a move.
He's so daft though that he gets played- by relatives, by best friends.
He corners himself in the end, of course.
Not an admirable character in the bunch. But, it's Bank's writing that got me. His writing rings true to me.
I remember a line from Mike Nichols, the playwright. He said something like this: How are we really? How do people really react in situations. That's been my tapline towards reading ever since.
Russell Banks writes down to the bone of our truths. How the hell does he know how so many types of people do react.
His subjects drive me crazy though. The main character is a bored married man in his thirties. He dreams of a bigger life but he does nothing to create one. He's married with three kids to a woman that in his small way he does love. He has affairs. His family and he are getting by.
He has an enormous temper tantrum - a frightening one actually. And his loving wife suggests a move.
He's so daft though that he gets played- by relatives, by best friends.
He corners himself in the end, of course.
Not an admirable character in the bunch. But, it's Bank's writing that got me. His writing rings true to me.
January 9, 2012
Given that Russell Banks has written so many books and had several of them turned into well-known movies, I am amazed that I hadn't read anything by him before now. I am going to have to make up for lost time! What an amazing wordsmith. In the span of a single paragraph, his prose describes a character in such a way that the reader feels like he not only knows who the character is, but what makes him tick, his dreams and aspirations and his failures. I was constantly struck by the sheer beauty of the words on the page. The story was actually kind of bleak, yet the feeling I had as I read it was one of exhilaration. A powerful tale of sin and atonement and redemption and a great introduction to this American Master.
March 10, 2012
This novel did nothing for me. I never cared a whit about any of the characters, including (and especially) Bob the main one. Why would I? He just drifted though life, making one dumb mistake after another and bringing nothing but unhappiness to himself, his poor wife and innocent young children--not to mention just about everyone else he came in contact with.
The Haitian characters never came alive for me. In fact, they only took away from the narrative for me. It was obvious the two plots would interconnect. In fact, much of what happened was quite obvious.
I believe Banks is a good writer. This book just left me cold.
The Haitian characters never came alive for me. In fact, they only took away from the narrative for me. It was obvious the two plots would interconnect. In fact, much of what happened was quite obvious.
I believe Banks is a good writer. This book just left me cold.
April 27, 2020
Continental Drift is very nearly a literary masterpiece. Had I read this novel when it hit the bookstores in 1985 when I was 27, every bit of its truth about the world and my future self would have been invisible. Today at 62, it screams at me in the themes, stories and characters of this finely crafted, still acutely relevant novel. For at age 27 I was not yet a man, and CD is nothing if not a soul-searing depiction of the male gender's struggle to surrender youth for adulthood. What Banks makes so unequivocally clear in Bob and Eddie DuBois and best friend Ave Boone is that the battle is unwinnable. Men like me who bare the scars of this mighty tug-of-war - broken marriages, addictions, financial chaos, inner restlessness, depression, broken dreams - that is to say all but the very few, cannot help but see ourselves in these three men. CD tells us the very best we can hope for is an uneasy truce between our inner boy and its grown-up counterpart. In the book's parallel story of child-like Haitians yearning for and embarking on a quest for a mythical America, Banks makes no distinction between the foolishness and devastating fates of the Haitian boat people and these three average white men. My copy of CD has enough dog-eared pages marking passages of rare eloquence to vault it within an eyelash of masterpiece. Only the final few pages make the miniscule distance separating it from that distinction. Here, it is as if Banks, like a fading front-runner ran out of steam mere furlongs from the finish line. Hurried and undetailed, these final pages stand in stark contrast to the mastery preceding them.
October 8, 2016
Wow, I HATE that. I plucked this book off the shelf thinking I hadn't read it, but as soon as I began to turn the pages, I realized that why yes, I have.
And Banks is a writer to be looked forward to, no matter how dark, miserable and depressing his stories become. This is another winner. In fact, sooner or later I will read it again.
His epic Cloudsplitter is my favorite of his works (and a full five stars from me!). This collection isn't quite up to that standard, but then it's a nearly impossible standard to meet. What we have here are a series of tales set, as is almost always true, in New Hampshire. Banks doesn't shrink from exploring life among the down-and-out working class, and that adds to the challenge of spinning convincing tales; when one's protagonist is wealthy, it is easy to solve his problems with private jets, for example, or a voyage to Europe. These people are made of the grit of the rocky soil, and when winter comes, a dream of a life in a warmer place turns to spit and ashes. (I had a bit of trouble relating to anyone wanting to live in Florida, but then, I have never lived in New Hampshire, either).
I won't add spoilers because this is worth reading. If your troubles are piling up on you and you want to put them in some perspective, read Banks' Continental Drift. It will most likely make your own concerns look paltry, a gift in and of itself, however bittersweet.
And Banks is a writer to be looked forward to, no matter how dark, miserable and depressing his stories become. This is another winner. In fact, sooner or later I will read it again.
His epic Cloudsplitter is my favorite of his works (and a full five stars from me!). This collection isn't quite up to that standard, but then it's a nearly impossible standard to meet. What we have here are a series of tales set, as is almost always true, in New Hampshire. Banks doesn't shrink from exploring life among the down-and-out working class, and that adds to the challenge of spinning convincing tales; when one's protagonist is wealthy, it is easy to solve his problems with private jets, for example, or a voyage to Europe. These people are made of the grit of the rocky soil, and when winter comes, a dream of a life in a warmer place turns to spit and ashes. (I had a bit of trouble relating to anyone wanting to live in Florida, but then, I have never lived in New Hampshire, either).
I won't add spoilers because this is worth reading. If your troubles are piling up on you and you want to put them in some perspective, read Banks' Continental Drift. It will most likely make your own concerns look paltry, a gift in and of itself, however bittersweet.
June 6, 2024
I think if Banks had put half as much effort into writing the story as he did describing the protagonist's cock (!!!), then we might have gotten somewhere!! Honestly, it was by turns tumescent, squishy, soft, hard, wanting! Wtf Banks, are you writing a fictional novel or soft porn??? And his obsession with black women's bodies?! That's just weird. Then to make the ending some sort of self-serving preachy bullshit about immigrants and their plight?? Eugh, shut up man.
The story was a shit show. The characters were arseholes. This was a waste of my fucking time.
Don't even bother.
The story was a shit show. The characters were arseholes. This was a waste of my fucking time.
Don't even bother.
March 5, 2008
This book, with its two converging storylines, was profoundly moving in its tale of two downward-spiralling lives. These are not beautiful losers, rather one tale of someone who continually fucks his life up worse rather than appreciating what he has and one tale of someone who grasps at the only straws on offer only to find the cure worse than the disease. This is not a feel-good book.
April 15, 2012
This book got me going right away with its pretentious "invocation" and I never recovered. The writing is insufferably grand and serious, the characters unrelatable caricatures, and the story (or as much as I could read of it) depressing, predictable, and, in places, gratuitously pornographic. If you can't tell, I didn't like it. I understand other people do though, so there you go.
September 7, 2021
This RB book is everything the previous RB "RotB" was not: entirely convincing plot/character(s), command of settings/tone, contrasting storylines converging with friction all the way till the all too believable ending that is what it is.
October 30, 2017
Due storie, intrecciate nel finale: quella di un americano insoddisfatto che cerca qua e là nel suo paese una vita migliore per sé e per la sua famiglia, e quella di un’haitiana disperata che lascia la sua isola e viaggia, bimbo in braccio, verso quello stesso paese, pure lei alla ricerca di una vita migliore per sé e per il suo piccolo. L’America però promette molto... ma non sempre dà, e se dà vuole molto in cambio: “nulla è gratis nella terra della libertà”.
Le due storie, dolenti e pesanti, sono raccontate con cura, ma anche con una certa freddezza, quali esemplificazioni romanzate di analisi antropologiche e sociologiche: quella sui fenomeni migratori, soprattutto, che vede gli uomini spostarsi sulla terra come fanno, di solito più impercettibilmente, le placche continentali, gli uni come le altre spesso alla deriva, e a cozzare contro dure realtà.
Le due storie, dolenti e pesanti, sono raccontate con cura, ma anche con una certa freddezza, quali esemplificazioni romanzate di analisi antropologiche e sociologiche: quella sui fenomeni migratori, soprattutto, che vede gli uomini spostarsi sulla terra come fanno, di solito più impercettibilmente, le placche continentali, gli uni come le altre spesso alla deriva, e a cozzare contro dure realtà.
October 29, 2015
I read this book while in the middle of Rabbit Run and I. Could not help but notice the similarities. In fact this review may as well apply to Rabbit Run.
It's a terrible thing to go from being something to being nothing! A terrible thing for a man to endure, to be nothing after having been something. Life is grudging in what it gives, so take whatever it gives as if that's all you're ever going to get.
This is a hard pill to swallow, especially to Bob Dubois, who looses everything that's close to his heart: his wife, his daughters, his job and his brother. That is what he had to endure in this life. Life never handed him any choice, it didn't ask him what to take or to leave.
A very depressing novel. You can bet that I was afraid for myself and my life.
It's a terrible thing to go from being something to being nothing! A terrible thing for a man to endure, to be nothing after having been something. Life is grudging in what it gives, so take whatever it gives as if that's all you're ever going to get.
This is a hard pill to swallow, especially to Bob Dubois, who looses everything that's close to his heart: his wife, his daughters, his job and his brother. That is what he had to endure in this life. Life never handed him any choice, it didn't ask him what to take or to leave.
A very depressing novel. You can bet that I was afraid for myself and my life.
October 19, 2014
This is my third experience with Russell Banks. This book, which apparently was his first to receive critical acclaim in the 1980s, may not be everyone's cup of tea. In it, Banks experiments with the narrative point of view. But it works for the subject: a sweeping tale of the intertwined destinies of Bob Dubois, an everyman whose life slowly unravels, and Vanise, a Haitian refugee. The language is as lush and dense as the landscapes of Haiti and Florida, and quite appropriate to the scale of the tragedy that befalls the characters.
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