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Rides of the Midway
"With this eruptive debut novel, Lee Durkee…has just kicked in the door of Southern literature." ― Salon Meet Mississippi teenager Noel Weatherspoon: ghost-seeing insomniac, endearing dopehead, wanna-be erotic photographer, and possible Baptist faith healer. Noel, who prefers The Exorcist to Ecclesiastes , must navigate a world of Bible-thumpers, born-again Christians, and a stepfather who bears an uncanny resemblance to Billy Graham. Darkly comic and lyrically moving, Rides of the Midway introduces a formidable talent in contemporary fiction.
322 pages, Paperback
First published February 14, 2001
17 people are currently reading
245 people want to read
About the author
Lee Durkee
6 books73 followersLee Durkee's novel THE LAST TAXI DRIVER (Tin House Books) was named a Best Book of the Year in three countries in 2021. He is also the author of the novel RIDES OF THE MIDWAY (WW Norton, 2001). His memoir STALKING SHAKESPEARE, which chronicles his hilarious and irreverent two decade obsession with finding lost portraits of William Shakespeare, will be released by Scribner Books in April 2023. His stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Sun, The Oxford American, Zoetrope, Garden & Gun, Tin House, & Mississippi Noir. He lives in North Mississippi.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
July 24, 2012
I love this book. It's one of the books that made me want to write.
August 10, 2021
What the hell did I just read? This is one of those times I would kill to be a member of a book club so I could discuss this with someone.
Noel is a flawed and complex character and his voyage of self discovery is a brutal and tragic one, and blackly comic. There aren't any easily likeable characters here. At times, one wonders if Durkee is on a mission to paint the most fucked up people in the universe.
If I had to try and give voice to my thoughts on what this about, I'd say it's about the inability of religion to comfort and encompass the human spirit.
From a reader's point of view, the book rambles on like a corrupt version of something written by John Irving. It is a savage read.
Noel is a flawed and complex character and his voyage of self discovery is a brutal and tragic one, and blackly comic. There aren't any easily likeable characters here. At times, one wonders if Durkee is on a mission to paint the most fucked up people in the universe.
If I had to try and give voice to my thoughts on what this about, I'd say it's about the inability of religion to comfort and encompass the human spirit.
From a reader's point of view, the book rambles on like a corrupt version of something written by John Irving. It is a savage read.
February 24, 2009
A wild ride that takes the reader through mercy killing, crazed religious fanatics, drug use, a pestering ghost, a failed sex life and more. A great novel that takes a peek at the life of a teenager who's not just merely out of control but in need of some love and direction.
December 21, 2022
4.5 ⭐️
Given to me by a friend who loves this book, Rides of the Midway was unknown to me. Less than 48 hours after I started, I can say the same thing…loved. I’m sure there are other books but I can’t remember ever reading a bildungsroman like this. And like one with the protagonist of Noel Weatherspoon. Loved how Lee Durkee creates in Noel a child/teenager/college kid that is a perfect encapsulation of a boy growing up in 70’s Mississippi. Of course, I don’t know that for a fact, I’m a kid of Long Island in the 80’s. This was original. This was hilariously funny. And it brought a “I don’t want this to end” vibe. Absolutely loved.
Given to me by a friend who loves this book, Rides of the Midway was unknown to me. Less than 48 hours after I started, I can say the same thing…loved. I’m sure there are other books but I can’t remember ever reading a bildungsroman like this. And like one with the protagonist of Noel Weatherspoon. Loved how Lee Durkee creates in Noel a child/teenager/college kid that is a perfect encapsulation of a boy growing up in 70’s Mississippi. Of course, I don’t know that for a fact, I’m a kid of Long Island in the 80’s. This was original. This was hilariously funny. And it brought a “I don’t want this to end” vibe. Absolutely loved.
December 9, 2007
Everyone should read this.
January 20, 2021
Lee Durkee’s Rides of the Midway is highly underrated. Sure, as many reviews and descriptions point out this a solid southern coming of age novel, but it’s so much more. Life and death, love and sex, spirituality and agnosticism, truth and lies, good and evil are all masterfully woven into a commentary on living amidst the societal definitions of masculinity. All of this rolled into a fucked up little book about sex, drugs, and grief. This one will thrum in my mind for a good long while.
August 18, 2019
I liked the idea that this kid could communicate with ghosts.. but that is pretty much the only thing I DID like about it. I thought it was very juvenile. Durkee only wrote about things interesting to a 13 year old boy and I don't believe many 13 year old boys would pick this up anyway. The ending didn't make sense to me either.. probably because the kid was still acting juvenile. I think Durkee would be a decent writer if he either wrote about adult characters OR wrote young adult books that aren't so out there.
should-i-evens
April 10, 2008Suggested by George Saunders (Harper's Bazaar Interview with George Saunders, June 2001).
September 26, 2020
It seems to me it would be virtually impossible to get inside the mind of a troubled teenager growing up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in the late 70s and early 80s, without having been one. Durkee’s novel, his first, succeeds masterfully in doing so. I surmise, therefore, that Durkee must have drawn on his own experiences to write this book, a gripping coming of age story.
Noel Weatherspoon isn’t ultimately much different from any other mixed-up teenager. Of course, like all teenagers, he has his own personal and unique set of anxieties, neuroses, and anti-social preferences. Noel smokes dope and hates his stepfather. He craves sex, but clumsily fails when the opportunities arise. Standard teenage boy stuff. Noel’s unique additions to the menu include a sense of being haunted by the ghost of his MIA father, and guilt he suffers when a boy he collides with in a baseball game goes into a coma.
I question how autobiographical this book can truly be. Noel, though not stupid, doesn’t strike me as someone who could develop into a novelist. I suspect Durkee has combined his own youth with that of others he knew in Hattiesburg. In any event, he has produced an excellent coming of age novel. Interestingly, the climax of the book, which immediately precedes Noel’s escape from his family and home, is the death of his brother Ben. I wonder whether Durkee was deliberately drawing on Look Homeward, Angel.
Noel Weatherspoon isn’t ultimately much different from any other mixed-up teenager. Of course, like all teenagers, he has his own personal and unique set of anxieties, neuroses, and anti-social preferences. Noel smokes dope and hates his stepfather. He craves sex, but clumsily fails when the opportunities arise. Standard teenage boy stuff. Noel’s unique additions to the menu include a sense of being haunted by the ghost of his MIA father, and guilt he suffers when a boy he collides with in a baseball game goes into a coma.
I question how autobiographical this book can truly be. Noel, though not stupid, doesn’t strike me as someone who could develop into a novelist. I suspect Durkee has combined his own youth with that of others he knew in Hattiesburg. In any event, he has produced an excellent coming of age novel. Interestingly, the climax of the book, which immediately precedes Noel’s escape from his family and home, is the death of his brother Ben. I wonder whether Durkee was deliberately drawing on Look Homeward, Angel.
December 16, 2024
I searched this book out after reading Durkee's memoir Stalking Shakespeare, a book about his personal search and analysis of portraits of Shakespeare that were painted around the time when he lived. I liked his writing style and wanted to see what how his fiction stacked up against his nonfiction. The synopsis of this book, his first novel—which is basically a coming-of-age story about a haunted boy—seemed interesting. And it was, although it became darker and darker as the pages turned, to the point where I wanted to follow it quickly to the end, both to find out what happened, ultimately, and to just get to the end of it. He is a good writer, but the emotional toll it took to read it was almost too heavy to bear.
October 27, 2020
I absolutely loved every single thing about this book. It read just like Chuck Palahniuk. The story was a straight up ballad of a boy through a very unique hard time. The satire, the seriousness, the paranormal, layered with EXCELLENT sarcasm. It really doesn’t get better than Rides Of The Midway. If you need a different novel that gonna stimulate the untouched corners of your brain than please read this book immediately. A pleasure guilty and tame; the perfect story for a prude or punk. It’s really insane how a story can touch so many parts of you at the same time. We live in a time where things are taken a little too seriously and this tongue and cheek trip really is what I needed.
May 3, 2024
Really enjoyed this one -- as with Durkee's other novel, The Last Taxi Driver, it was a pleasant find, with unusual plot twists and off-beat characters, yet containing enough relatable moments to avoid the 'weird for weird's sake' feeling. The arc of Noel's character in this one, as he drifts from enlightened child to vagabond teenager, is an amusing one. Would read again.
March 23, 2022
This had its moments - about many dark subjects, so probably not the best selection for me now … but then I heard Kamper Park, and my ears perked up … then Hattiesburg, Richburg Hill, PRC, Pascale’s Pizza. Turns out that the author grew up in Hattiesburg.
February 6, 2020
Phenomenal sense of place and character. A force of a book - a smooth read and darkly funny.
May 11, 2020
Good coming of age story
November 3, 2022
3.5 stars rounded up
A strange but interesting story. I enjoyed this book very much.
A strange but interesting story. I enjoyed this book very much.
December 5, 2008
Rides of the Midway is a dizzying spectacle. In the course of a chapter you'll be shrieking with delight, getting a bit queasy, or feeling confused and wondering which way is up.
You could expect nothing less following early years of Noel Weatherspoon, a.k.a. Moon Man, Mongo, Spoon, or (his favorite) Wasted as he grows up in rural Mississippi.
He's a former promising baseball player, until an overaggressive charge home left another boy in a living state of death, an accident from which Noel is never quite able to recover. But did accident leave him with something else? He may be touched by the divine; is he pre-cognizant and can he heal as well as destroy?
Throughout his teen years he becomes a wanna-be pornographer, a drug-dealer, a boy-toy, and in one LSD hazed night, the catalyst for a town's plunge into paranoia about Satanic cults. Noel is never a fully innocent or sympathetic character, yet you'll probably find yourself pulling for him.
Durkee proves that he has a deft hand with comedy as well as tragedy, sharing a gift for describing rural southern life with the alternating charm and wallop of Daniel Woodrell. He also deftly weaves in the more mystic and fantastic elements of boyhood - ala Graham Joyce's The Tooth Fairy.
You could expect nothing less following early years of Noel Weatherspoon, a.k.a. Moon Man, Mongo, Spoon, or (his favorite) Wasted as he grows up in rural Mississippi.
He's a former promising baseball player, until an overaggressive charge home left another boy in a living state of death, an accident from which Noel is never quite able to recover. But did accident leave him with something else? He may be touched by the divine; is he pre-cognizant and can he heal as well as destroy?
Throughout his teen years he becomes a wanna-be pornographer, a drug-dealer, a boy-toy, and in one LSD hazed night, the catalyst for a town's plunge into paranoia about Satanic cults. Noel is never a fully innocent or sympathetic character, yet you'll probably find yourself pulling for him.
Durkee proves that he has a deft hand with comedy as well as tragedy, sharing a gift for describing rural southern life with the alternating charm and wallop of Daniel Woodrell. He also deftly weaves in the more mystic and fantastic elements of boyhood - ala Graham Joyce's The Tooth Fairy.
April 25, 2016
Every now and then I read a book that doesn't quite grab me, and yet I get a sense that it may actually be better than I perceive it to be. This might be one of those. Or not.
It's either:
A) a brilliant Greek tragedy set in the modern world, or..
B) just one young character's excruciatingly beyond-PG13 romp in a drug and booze addled self-sabotaging stupid-fest.
Tomato, tomahto. I'm not sure which. (But I'm leaning towards B.)
While there are some funny bits, and while the narrative is certainly entertaining (and painfully frank) enough, I didn't get quite the meaningful punch I wanted at the end to make all the angst and torpor and bad decisions worth the investment. I wanted there to be meaning to it all, and I couldn't quite find it.
Which either means it isn't there, or it was just situated quite far over my head. Meaningless paint splatters, or Jackson Pollock? Potato, potahto.
Three stars (and a question mark)
(UCBC rating 3.0)
It's either:
A) a brilliant Greek tragedy set in the modern world, or..
B) just one young character's excruciatingly beyond-PG13 romp in a drug and booze addled self-sabotaging stupid-fest.
Tomato, tomahto. I'm not sure which. (But I'm leaning towards B.)
While there are some funny bits, and while the narrative is certainly entertaining (and painfully frank) enough, I didn't get quite the meaningful punch I wanted at the end to make all the angst and torpor and bad decisions worth the investment. I wanted there to be meaning to it all, and I couldn't quite find it.
Which either means it isn't there, or it was just situated quite far over my head. Meaningless paint splatters, or Jackson Pollock? Potato, potahto.
Three stars (and a question mark)
(UCBC rating 3.0)
April 15, 2009
This is a wild ride of a coming of age novel. It reminded me of 'The Catcher in the Rye' and also of the south where I live. In fact, I live in Poplarville, MS. :) That made the novel all the more enjoyable.
It is shocking and funny by turns. I laughed and felt like crying. Durkee has a few memorable lines in the style of Vonnegut. There is one about the ketchup bottle farting near the end that is so inappropriate in a scene right after a death that it put me in stitches. :)
I also tore through this in two days. Well done, and I hope to find more novels by Durkee.
It is shocking and funny by turns. I laughed and felt like crying. Durkee has a few memorable lines in the style of Vonnegut. There is one about the ketchup bottle farting near the end that is so inappropriate in a scene right after a death that it put me in stitches. :)
I also tore through this in two days. Well done, and I hope to find more novels by Durkee.
February 20, 2015
I stumbled across this book in the library stacks, then devoured it in two days. It's a coming-of-age book unlike any other I've read. Our hero, Noel ("It means Christmas," he says once), has raging hormones, humungous guilt, the ability for astral travel, moral indignation that instantly ignites in violence, an unquenchable appetite for alcohol and drugs, and a nuanced sensitivity to grace. Durkee writes uncommonly well and some moments are laugh-out-loud funny. I want to know what happens to Noel! Then again, maybe I'm best left wondering as he rides into the sunset. leaving home for good.
May 9, 2007
I actually know Lee, the author of this book, though I haven't talked to him in a long time. As crazy as I am about the man, he's not the reason I love his book. It's wicked good. If you like Rule of the Bone (Russell Banks) or Jesus's Son (Denis Johnson) you will love Rides of the Midway.
August 21, 2007
This fine book was written by one of my bookstore coworkers, but I didn't love it just for that. We had an interesting debate in my bookgroup as to whether it was funny or sad... let me know what you think!
August 15, 2013
This one was really awesome. I felt the author was real about Noel, believable characters throughout as well. Finished this in 2 days, anticipating Noel's shenanigans the whole time. I would have loved to have stumbled upon a person like Noel while I was growing up. Read this book!
July 10, 2015
This book came highly recommended to me. Even George Saunders liked it. (And I LOVE George Saunders.) But this book did not do it for me. Nope. Uh uh. So I quit early on. Too many great novels out there to read...
February 4, 2008
Mississippi teenager coming of age with many twists and turns that make you unsure whether to gasp in horror or laugh.
April 24, 2009
Kept me interested the entire read. I honestly adore coming of age novels.
May 22, 2010
Nope. Don't do it.
July 7, 2010
This book iz crazy and confusing at times but really good!;)
October 11, 2010
One of those books that make you afraid to read anything else for at least a month, for fear that it won't measure up. Holy crap.
December 16, 2010
Excellent attention to detail in a book surrounded by melancholy. Great writing.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews