A review by mlrio
The Drifters by James A. Michener

5.0

This is the kind of book that some people will love and some people will abandon after forty pages. I just happen to belong to the former category. I think what's so brilliant about it is actually the same thing that a lot of less enthusiastic reviewers have expressed their distaste for: namely, that it's a story about six young people coming of age in a volatile decade narrated by a sixty-year-old man. It could be easy to get hung up on Mr. Fairbanks' old-fashioned prejudices, but I think the juxtaposition between him and his band of adolescent vagabonds--and their unexpected rapport--are actually what make the book such a fascinating read. Neither Fairbanks nor the titular drifters can be remotely objective about the issues they clash over (sex, drugs, music, religion, Vietnam), and it's exactly that incompatibility of ideologies that made the late sixties/early seventies such a tumultuous time. Michener renders that universal identity crisis in vivid, precise, and often hilarious prose. But what really kept me reading were the people: the characters who populate the story are sometimes endearing, sometimes infuriating, but presented with such keen and uncompromising detail that you can't help hearing their stories and feeling some kind of kinship, even if it's just the conviction that you've met someone exactly like this somewhere in your life before. Lastly, of course, it's an epic adventurous travelogue in high Michenerian style. As someone who has spent much of the years between 18 and 25 rambling around the world with not much more than pocket change to live on and has always prized art, music, and cultural experience above steady paychecks, I couldn't help loving a story like this.