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Drifter: Stories
'Drifter: Stories' is a massive collection that contains a decade's worth of short fiction by visionary writer David Leo Rice, with work first published in 'The Fanzine', 'The Rumpus', 'Black Clock', 'DIAGRAM' and elsewhere.
'Drifter: Stories' contains:
'The Brothers Squimbop' (First published in 'The Fanzine')
'Egon's Parents' (First published in 'The Last Magazine')
'The Meadows' (First published in 'The Collagist)
'Circus Sickness' (First published in 'Cosmonauts Avenue')
'Housesitter' (First published in 'Birkensnake')
'Living Boy' (First published in 'Black Clock')
'Out on the Coast' (First published in 'The Rumpus')
'In the Cabin up on Stilts' (First published in 'Black Clock')
'The Hate Room' (First published in 'New Haven Review')
'Gmunden' (First published in 'The Collagist')
'The Painless Euthanasia Roller Coaster' (First published in 'Catapult')
'The Brothers Squimbop in Europe'
'ULTRA MAX'
'Jell-O' (First published in 'DIAGRAM')
'Sandman Crescent' (First published in 'The Collagist')
'The Right Town'
'Drifter: Stories' contains:
'The Brothers Squimbop' (First published in 'The Fanzine')
'Egon's Parents' (First published in 'The Last Magazine')
'The Meadows' (First published in 'The Collagist)
'Circus Sickness' (First published in 'Cosmonauts Avenue')
'Housesitter' (First published in 'Birkensnake')
'Living Boy' (First published in 'Black Clock')
'Out on the Coast' (First published in 'The Rumpus')
'In the Cabin up on Stilts' (First published in 'Black Clock')
'The Hate Room' (First published in 'New Haven Review')
'Gmunden' (First published in 'The Collagist')
'The Painless Euthanasia Roller Coaster' (First published in 'Catapult')
'The Brothers Squimbop in Europe'
'ULTRA MAX'
'Jell-O' (First published in 'DIAGRAM')
'Sandman Crescent' (First published in 'The Collagist')
'The Right Town'
- GenresShort StoriesHorror
469 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 15, 2021
5 people are currently reading
117 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 28, 2021
A great book. I'm happy to announce my longer review will be published in Rain Taxi this winter. I'll post a link or more details once they're available.
May 22, 2022
I'm really enjoying a lot of the clever and surprising ideas here, though the writing is more hit-and-miss for me. "The Hate Room", for instance, follows two (well...) drifters, who end up in Japan, win rural property on a TV game show. One of them sets up a room for relaxation, which somehow becomes a hate room. And there are more enjoyable twists as the protagonists work through their predicaments.
My Kindle copy has some distracting formatting problems: quite a few words per page are unnecessarily hyphenated, and there are some sudden and mysterious font changes. This is highly unfortunate; the prose is detailed and deserves close reading.
My Kindle copy has some distracting formatting problems: quite a few words per page are unnecessarily hyphenated, and there are some sudden and mysterious font changes. This is highly unfortunate; the prose is detailed and deserves close reading.
August 3, 2021
David Leo Rice is one of those rare writers that has consumed the literature, thought, music, art and environment from the past and the present and is able to look off into the future and other worlds and project a mirror of our own world in the world of imagination.
Each of these stories is different: they literally take place in different towns, countries and settings, but also touch on such a wide ranging field of topics. And yet they all revolve around the strangeness of this time, the strangeness of being alive in a world that seems warped and geared against itself.
Conflict of interest: I was fortunate enough to be present when this came over the transom at 11:11 press and was similarly fortunate to work with David and be a part of seeing this book into the world. I had never heard of David Leo Rice prior to that time, but finding his work was immensely exciting and we felt that it was important that this book be seen into the world.
Rice is a writer on the rise and I can't wait to see what he comes out with in the future.
Each of these stories is different: they literally take place in different towns, countries and settings, but also touch on such a wide ranging field of topics. And yet they all revolve around the strangeness of this time, the strangeness of being alive in a world that seems warped and geared against itself.
Conflict of interest: I was fortunate enough to be present when this came over the transom at 11:11 press and was similarly fortunate to work with David and be a part of seeing this book into the world. I had never heard of David Leo Rice prior to that time, but finding his work was immensely exciting and we felt that it was important that this book be seen into the world.
Rice is a writer on the rise and I can't wait to see what he comes out with in the future.
April 17, 2021
DYLAN SANG, “SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE, BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS.” THE STORIES OF DAVIE LEO RICE’S DRIFTER SLIP BETWEEN REALITY AND SURREALISM CONTINUOUSLY, SHOWING US HOW THIN THE FABRIC OF REALITY REALLY IS. NO MATTER WHICH SIDE YOU FIND YOURSELF ON, YOU CAN JUST MAKE OUT THE SHAPES ON THE OTHER SIDE. THESE STORIES STACK UP, BRICK BY BRICK, CREATING A LITERARY TOWER OF BABEL, WHERE LANGUAGE AND IMAGE OBSCURE, MUDDYING THE WATERS OF PERCEPTION. YOU CATCH GLIMPSES OF CLARITY AS THE CURRENT PULLS YOU DOWNSTREAM. THE STORIES, WHILE COMPLETE IN THEMSELVES, CREATE A LARGER DIALOGUE WHEN COMBINED. IN HOUSESITTER, A CHARACTER’S FALL DOWN A FLIGHT OF STAIRS IS DESCRIBED, “AND IT WASN’T JUST THE IMPACT OF THE CONCRETE BOTTOM THAT BROKE HER UP...IT WAS EACH INDIVIDUAL STAIR, ONE AFTER ANOTHER AFTER ANOTHER. RELENTLESS.” THESE STORIES HIT YOU LIKE THOSE STAIRS, ONE AFTER ANOTHER AFTER ANOTHER, TRULY RELENTLESS UNTIL YOU HIT THE BOTTOM. LOOKING UP AT THOSE STAIRS YOU CAN SEE JUST HOW FAR YOU HAVE FALLEN, JUST HOW FAR RICE HAS PUSHED YOU. THESE STORIES ARE PACKED WITH MEANING, REALITY AND UNREALITY SHOVED INSIDE “WITH NO WAY OUT AND NO REASON TO LEAVE.” THOUGH YOU LOOK AROUND AT UNFAMILIAR SURROUNDINGS, YOU’RE NOT LOST; YOU LIVE IN MOTION NOW. AND IT’S ALL IN FLUX. YOU’RE MOVED, CONSTANTLY SHUFFLED, UNTIL YOU GET “A SENSE THAT STANDING STILL WAS NO LONGER A GOOD IDEA, IF IT EVER HAD BEEN.” RICE WRITES, “THEY MADE HER FEEL LIKE SHE WAS IN BOTH PLACES AT ONCE AND THUS, SICKENINGLY, IN NEITHER.” THESE STORIES EXIST IN THE IN-BETWEEN. INTANGIBILITY HANGS LIKE A VEIL, BUT WHETHER A BRIDE’S OR A WIDOW’S IS HARD TO DETERMINE.
September 13, 2021
I got to start by being honest that I had never heard of David Leo Rice before he reached out to me to offer a review copy. I am glad he did as I really enjoyed this collection even if I was skeptical after reading blurbs that compared him to powerhouse writers like Bradbury, Brian Evenson, and Thomas Liggoti. I mean those are some serious towers of weird fiction and normally I happen upon voices like that On my own. OK, that is on me not David Leo Rice I may still think those comparisons are a bit strong but this collection is pretty impressive.
The introduction by Matthew Spellberg who I just learned teaches at Harvard did give some good insight into the collection but the poetic two pages about the author and video stores didn’t land with me. His inability to rent R-rated movies didn’t feel like the inspiration for this collection of stories. When I think of video stores I think of trashy movies. That made me think of writers like Bryan Smith or Edward Lee. This book is filled with weird stories but nothing about it is trashy.
These stories are more sophisticated than the R-rated movies the author was not allowed to rent by his parents. These have more in common with the tales of Beaumont or Bradbury that young people happen upon at the library and the parents never know about. The tone reminded me of the types of thing T.E.D. Klein was buying and publishing in the Twilight Zone magazine. Anyone old enough to have read those knows there was a quality to them that matched the storytelling skills that Serling and the California sorcerers brought to CBS.
The book is divided into three sections. HERE – THERE – WHERE. As a structure guy I like that they are different types of stories laid out in sections The first of them HERE appear to be stories that have a hometown feel to them, the section THERE has many stories that take place across the pond in Europe and the last section are plain weird and surreal. Well they all are weird and somewhat surreal but WHERE is dialed to 11 on the unconventional bizarro scale.
My favorite story of the HERE section was the story House Sitter, which was about the title character it was would Richard Matheson would have called off-beat. This was interesting narrative style of being slightly surreal with what seemed to me to be a ghost story. The House Sitter Point of view gives the outsider feel to the strangeness of the home. This paragraph below is where I first raised an eyebrow took note and dog eared a page.
“The screams filled first his room and then every room, like a gas leak. He closed his eyes and pictured the father’s pharmaceutical pad fluttering off across the kitchen floor and away to a place where it would never be found.”
I also enjoyed Snow Boy and found the balance of weird and vivid impressive. Notice here in this one paragraph Rice displays a balance for the surreal and grounded…
“He yawned, scratching the surfaces around him, agitating the wreckage of the dead mind he inhabited: the summer steppe, Tarkov at nineteen. A farmhouse, a family at ease around a broad unsanded table with benches on two sides, bowls and platters in the center, high seats for patriarchs at the head and foot, bottles making the rounds.”
From the wreckage of a dead mind to unsanded tables I like the mix of the surreal and the very physically real. This balance is one of the things DLR does very nicely throughout the book. This is a feature, not a bug. Some parts of the prose are very grounded and give a strong sense of the moments the characters inhabit like this moment from the story Out on the coast which helped that story to feel very grounded.
“The ghosts were like mosquitoes-seasonal, pack animals, given to hanging out by the water. Max swatted at them and dabbed blood on his skin with the edge of his shirt, tasting some of it before it soaked in.”
In the THERE section came one of the most powerful stories if not the best of the collection to was one that perfectly balanced the two tones. Hate Room. Mostly made up of mood and tone as a story that at times felt surreal and supernatural but also vivid and alive. Contrast these two quotes from that story.
“They could hear tonight’s guest throwing himself against the walls and barking, screaming out his hatred for god and his wish to be put out of his misery now.”
“He always entered the Hate Room soberly, steeled for the grim business of cleaning the black matter out, but he always left it in rattled, in more of a hurry than he wanted to be.”
I also really enjoyed the short but powerful “The Painless Euthanasia Roller Coaster.” This one part did so much with so little. It was interesting to me that one of the shortest stories in the collection was one of the most powerful I read.
“Over the course of that day, spent, as all days, wandering the old and drafty streets of the city, from the edge of the university where he’s no longer welcome to the alley of used booksellers whose wares no longer speak to him, Anders comes to see that the roller coaster, and nothing else will be the culmination of his tenure on the planet.”
The best of the WHERE section is Ultra Max. I don’t have much to say about the most surreal stories of the collection. These are stories that you sorta let wash over you like sitting in a tide. DLR has a way with words so these stories are more like reading a flow than story. I am not complaining I enjoyed these more than anything.
The only thing that held me back on this collection was that I didn’t feel much connection to any characters in the book. The nameless Housesitter and Anders the disgraced character from one of the shortest tales were the first two that come to my mind as I thought about this. This type of style is one that is better suited for the short form. It is why we get so many more Brian Evenson collections than novels. This is a minor nitpick as I liked the stories overall.
Drifter: Stories is a smart high-class collection of weird fiction. Sometimes horror, sometimes dark humor, and always the product of a fresh voice. OK David Leo Rice you have my attention now and hope my readers will check out. Leave the comparisons aside, I know why we do it but I am not super comfortable with this time. All that matters is David Leo Rice is a writer with a voice and talent worth exploring.
The introduction by Matthew Spellberg who I just learned teaches at Harvard did give some good insight into the collection but the poetic two pages about the author and video stores didn’t land with me. His inability to rent R-rated movies didn’t feel like the inspiration for this collection of stories. When I think of video stores I think of trashy movies. That made me think of writers like Bryan Smith or Edward Lee. This book is filled with weird stories but nothing about it is trashy.
These stories are more sophisticated than the R-rated movies the author was not allowed to rent by his parents. These have more in common with the tales of Beaumont or Bradbury that young people happen upon at the library and the parents never know about. The tone reminded me of the types of thing T.E.D. Klein was buying and publishing in the Twilight Zone magazine. Anyone old enough to have read those knows there was a quality to them that matched the storytelling skills that Serling and the California sorcerers brought to CBS.
The book is divided into three sections. HERE – THERE – WHERE. As a structure guy I like that they are different types of stories laid out in sections The first of them HERE appear to be stories that have a hometown feel to them, the section THERE has many stories that take place across the pond in Europe and the last section are plain weird and surreal. Well they all are weird and somewhat surreal but WHERE is dialed to 11 on the unconventional bizarro scale.
My favorite story of the HERE section was the story House Sitter, which was about the title character it was would Richard Matheson would have called off-beat. This was interesting narrative style of being slightly surreal with what seemed to me to be a ghost story. The House Sitter Point of view gives the outsider feel to the strangeness of the home. This paragraph below is where I first raised an eyebrow took note and dog eared a page.
“The screams filled first his room and then every room, like a gas leak. He closed his eyes and pictured the father’s pharmaceutical pad fluttering off across the kitchen floor and away to a place where it would never be found.”
I also enjoyed Snow Boy and found the balance of weird and vivid impressive. Notice here in this one paragraph Rice displays a balance for the surreal and grounded…
“He yawned, scratching the surfaces around him, agitating the wreckage of the dead mind he inhabited: the summer steppe, Tarkov at nineteen. A farmhouse, a family at ease around a broad unsanded table with benches on two sides, bowls and platters in the center, high seats for patriarchs at the head and foot, bottles making the rounds.”
From the wreckage of a dead mind to unsanded tables I like the mix of the surreal and the very physically real. This balance is one of the things DLR does very nicely throughout the book. This is a feature, not a bug. Some parts of the prose are very grounded and give a strong sense of the moments the characters inhabit like this moment from the story Out on the coast which helped that story to feel very grounded.
“The ghosts were like mosquitoes-seasonal, pack animals, given to hanging out by the water. Max swatted at them and dabbed blood on his skin with the edge of his shirt, tasting some of it before it soaked in.”
In the THERE section came one of the most powerful stories if not the best of the collection to was one that perfectly balanced the two tones. Hate Room. Mostly made up of mood and tone as a story that at times felt surreal and supernatural but also vivid and alive. Contrast these two quotes from that story.
“They could hear tonight’s guest throwing himself against the walls and barking, screaming out his hatred for god and his wish to be put out of his misery now.”
“He always entered the Hate Room soberly, steeled for the grim business of cleaning the black matter out, but he always left it in rattled, in more of a hurry than he wanted to be.”
I also really enjoyed the short but powerful “The Painless Euthanasia Roller Coaster.” This one part did so much with so little. It was interesting to me that one of the shortest stories in the collection was one of the most powerful I read.
“Over the course of that day, spent, as all days, wandering the old and drafty streets of the city, from the edge of the university where he’s no longer welcome to the alley of used booksellers whose wares no longer speak to him, Anders comes to see that the roller coaster, and nothing else will be the culmination of his tenure on the planet.”
The best of the WHERE section is Ultra Max. I don’t have much to say about the most surreal stories of the collection. These are stories that you sorta let wash over you like sitting in a tide. DLR has a way with words so these stories are more like reading a flow than story. I am not complaining I enjoyed these more than anything.
The only thing that held me back on this collection was that I didn’t feel much connection to any characters in the book. The nameless Housesitter and Anders the disgraced character from one of the shortest tales were the first two that come to my mind as I thought about this. This type of style is one that is better suited for the short form. It is why we get so many more Brian Evenson collections than novels. This is a minor nitpick as I liked the stories overall.
Drifter: Stories is a smart high-class collection of weird fiction. Sometimes horror, sometimes dark humor, and always the product of a fresh voice. OK David Leo Rice you have my attention now and hope my readers will check out. Leave the comparisons aside, I know why we do it but I am not super comfortable with this time. All that matters is David Leo Rice is a writer with a voice and talent worth exploring.
March 19, 2021
A carnival of the uncanny; a circuitous drift through worlds made and unmade, real and unreal, fluxing madly into landscapes, myths, and rituals. Rice's stories are full of portals, many leading to places of profound contradiction, destruction, and rebirth. The portals render themselves as dreams, rooms, foggy highways, and basements overflowing with Jell-o. On the other side, characters are greeted by the complex and seedy unrealities of a dead and dying world—one which may make us all unknowable, outcasts. Drifters.
One is greatly rewarded by following Drifter wherever its serpentine path might lead them. Whether following grifting brothers, a traveling circus, various caretakers, filmmakers, and grief-stricken parents, these stories gesticulate and vibrate their intentions, only making them known once you are thoroughly within them. These worlds are strange, yet no less real than our own—marked with the signposts of our era, fed by our anxieties and ambitions, realized in a murky subconscious. Drifter is a hallucinogenic, heady ether, one which will leave you smiling, reeling, and wobbling—unsteadied in a newly revealed world.
One is greatly rewarded by following Drifter wherever its serpentine path might lead them. Whether following grifting brothers, a traveling circus, various caretakers, filmmakers, and grief-stricken parents, these stories gesticulate and vibrate their intentions, only making them known once you are thoroughly within them. These worlds are strange, yet no less real than our own—marked with the signposts of our era, fed by our anxieties and ambitions, realized in a murky subconscious. Drifter is a hallucinogenic, heady ether, one which will leave you smiling, reeling, and wobbling—unsteadied in a newly revealed world.
October 1, 2021
David Leo Rice's DRIFTER collapses time and history, rewires memory, and fuses the sleazy with the spiritualized. It's one of the most exciting books I've encountered in ages. Stories like "The Brothers Squimbop" and "The Hate Room" reminded me of the liberating possibilities of fiction as a way of reckoning with 21st-century dread while sidestepping direct commentary, histrionics, or manufactured nostalgia. It's often both flat-out bonkers and deadly serious, and I find myself squinting at the pages, wondering how Rice pulls this off. But it's better to let the mystery be—and just be thankful for this companion to the head-static that comes with being alive today.
July 14, 2021
Pretty sure David Leo Rice is from another dimension. There's no other explanation for how good the stories in Drifter are. Unsettling, eerie, absurd, and truly original.
June 28, 2021
Every increment worse the world gets, Rice's books get better. So there is that to look forward to, as we try to live in the middle. Imagine you are a seven year old child and you are about to be shown a double feature of Cronenberg's Dead Ringers and Flying Lotus' Kuso. In that case, you'd be a good two or three times more ready for what was about to happen than your adult self is here. So do your best to strap in.
November 19, 2022
Really startling and original stuff here, even if some of the territory (post apocalypse) has become familiar. There's always humanity in the strangeness, a hint of possible redemption for the fallen, and glimpses of what used to be 'normal.'
September 19, 2022
Delightfully Deranged . Enjoyed the diversity of this collection. The author has developed a real voice and I look forward to the first novel.
August 28, 2023
Very well written but I have less of a taste for some speculative/fantastical aspects than most, and some of these stories lost me. Others were very good indeed.
September 30, 2021
Review in the Southwest Review: http://southwestreview.com/that-weird...
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews