Review of 1971 Novel The Drifters by James A. Michener.
I love this book because my grandma read it while she travelled.
And I read it now as I travel. 24 years old and finally bold enough to write ‘artist’ on the immigration form when they ask for my profession/occupation, yet still unsure of how to be one in the professional sense.
I first realised I was meeting real life Drifters when I became a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago in October. Every day I met new people drifting through Spain just like those I read about. The celestial cowboy escaping America. The well inked Italian learning to love again. The Jedi I never spoke to but steadily steadied on. Mr. AT, The Landlord who walked for the joy of walking.
To be a pilgrim was to reject so much of what the real world demands of us. To be a pilgrim was to live in the actual real world disconnected from what we were not naturally connected to and focus on the literal next step.
To be a contemporary pilgrim was to realise that the Camino De Santiago ends, whether you are ready for it or not.
The ‘some-sort-of-chemist’ returning home too soon because his wallet runs dry. The small town Swiss Mayor on his final solo adventure before he must be in full time care of his disabled son. The fishermen who will pause his dream because the family business demands his help.
I recognised these Drifters of today as I read about the Drifters from the 1970s.
James Michener writes the story of a group of young people who leave their homes and go to Torremolinos, on the Costa del Sol- Coast of Sun, in the south of Spain.
Each with their own reasons, they begin a sort of pilgrimage with an unknown destination.
To dodge the draft.
To drop out of school and wait for real inspiration.
To migrate south for better weather.
To go into hiding.
To spite their parents.
The narrator is a man in his 60’s. This man, Mr Fairbanks, is asked by the parents of these young people to mentor them into returning home. He learns from them and they from him.
This story gifts to me a pride in my general youthful uncertainty and in particular how I am to make amends with the overwhelming complexities of this world we all live in.
This novel articulates the nobility in testing what is assumed. The nobility in rebellion, in dissatisfaction, in playing, in rejecting the normal, easy, way.
There is integrity in searching and finding just as much as there is integrity in searching and not yet finding.
Mr Fairbanks realises “It was the adults that surrender young and make a virtue of their unproductivity… These were the dropouts that concerned [him] most.” Pg 373. The failure was not in the misdirected ambition of youth that disappointed him, it was those who “Aspire to nothing and achieved less.” pg 373.
Although I’m not 100% aligned with this idea but the sentiment soothes my restless mind.
I love the book because I lived it. I think it is a good book because that was possible.
To be a traveller and a drifter is an experience not unique to one time or one generation.
There will always be a younger generation of drifters who think deeply about how to fix the world’s problems. They will always be paralysed in how to action their ideas. As described in the book, these young people from all parts of the globe with intelligence of all sorts of alternative education (rarely sources of traditional education… such as books) gather together in the dank communal fourth floor hotel room in Marrakech “smoking hash and dreaming of the better world they were supposed to be making.”
Two friends and I sit on the edge of a bed at a housewarming party in early December. Drunk on cheap red wine we argue about the morality of Sea Shepherd pirates and the impossibility of effectively protect the sea and its creatures without compromising on competing values.
Is the pressure to be productive on a global scale by nightfall on your 20th birthday a universal experience?
Is the feeling of disappointing whoever or whatever is implying this expectation a universal experience?
I love this book because I understand it, though I sort of wish I didn’t.
I see the same deep dissatisfaction plaguing young people today as it did in the 70s. (I see it in myself).
I see the same distraction.
The same indulgence.
The same drifting.
I see the nobility.
But I also see the tragedy.
It’s all summarised in this final line. “But now I believe that men ought to inspect their dreams. And know them for what they are.”
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