#driveblogging

'Driver hadn’t developed the capacity for small talk, could never see the point of it. Nor had he ever had much sensitivity to what others were feeling.'

despite these lines, he immediately after chats with a neighbor and opens up a bit about his parents

he really likes Mexican food and is eating it basically any time he's mentioned going out to eat something

he met Shannon in a bar where bikers and muscle car guys hang out, a month after getting to LA

Shannon can speak perfect Spanish and is also a stunt driver, the best in show business before driver comes along

driver lives on Shannon's couch for four months while he starts taking stunt driving jobs

dnfnf I think Shannon just fucking died??? accidentally driving off a canyon On Camera during a stunt

in the book, in the hotel room with Blanche after their heist, he takes a shotgun spread to the arm so bad he can see bone

'The arm hung there, apart from him, unconnected, like an abandoned shoe. When Driver willed it to move, nothing happened.'

as many have said, 'irene' is actually Irina and is latina

Benicio is only 4

driver lies and says he's 20 but he should actually only be like 17 tops right now

Irina and Standard sound separated I think?

driver meets Bernie Rose at a polish place called Warszawa

Bernie has frequented the place for 20 years and mentions he doesn't know the name of the owner, an older woman who wears a miniskirt with no stockings

driver mentally comments that the woman seems 'completely comfortable with herself' which is an uncommon trait in LA

Bernie recommends the duck and driver gets it, and likes it

they talk about where they're going from there: Bernie says he'll probably head back east, Driver says he'll go back to his old life if he can

“Friend of mine claims the story of America is all about the advancing frontier. Push through to the end of it, he says, which is what we’ve done here at land’s end, there’s nothing left, the worm starts eating its own tail.” “Should have had the duck instead.” Despite himself, Driver laughed.

idk why that tickles me so much that the driver laughs here. like he's in the company of a man who should despise him for killing Nino and instead they're just. making jokes about things with each other? idk. the romance of it. Anyway

they walk out to driver's car and chat briefly about how yeah, Driver had a friend who shattered both hips in a crash and started working on cars instead of driving them. this may or may not be Shannon? so maybe he survived and they just never mentioned him by name and I missed that ksfbf

anyway. they go to shake and driver sees moonlight glint off the knife Bernie is about to stab him with and beats him to it, taking it and sticking it in his throat

He’d struck a bit central, away from the carotids and other major vessels, so it took a while, but he’d taken out the pharynx and breached the trachea, through which Bernie Rose’s last breaths whistled. So not too long. Looking into Bernie Rose’s failing eyes, he thought: This is what people mean when they use words like grace.

I'm too gay to comment on driver saying he sees grace in the eyes of a dying man. so I'm not going to say anything. but I'm thinking about it 👀

he dumps Bernie's body off a pier and watches the tide take it

the book ends with him driving away vaguely, but I just wanna. quote the whole thing tbh because it's short and I can

Far from the end for Driver, this. In years to come, years before he went down at three a.m. on a clear, cool morning in a Tijuana bar, years before Manny Gilden turned his life into a movie, there’d be other killings, other bodies. Bernie Rose was the only one he ever mourned.

aaaand that's the book!!! I'll probably make a more coherent post about it another time but I liked it; I think the movie did a good job of putting things back together and adding things where things needed to be added. I liked that the book gave more focus on driver and Standard's friendship and I liked that he held such fondness for his foster parents that he knew he could trust them with the cat and gave them the money as well

seeing his backstory, even with as little as we get, was really interesting and I'll definitely be incorporating a lot of it into my interpretation of the ryan gosling 2011 version of the character