Driving on the Rim

Thomas McGuane

Nov 2010 · Blackstone Audio Inc. · Narrated by Traber Burns

About this audiobook

The unforgettable voyager of this dark picaresque is I. B. "Berl" Pickett, MD, whose die was probably cast the moment his mother thought to name him after Irving Berlin. Other insults piled on apace thereafter: the spasms of Pentecostal Sunday worship; the social debilitation of following his parents' itinerant rug-shampooing business; the erotic initiation at the hands of his aunt. It's hard to imagine what would have become of him had he not gone to medical school. But there must be meaning to existence beyond professional accreditation, and though scantly equipped, Berl Pickett has been on a mission to find it, despite being charged with negligent homicide in the death of his former lover, a business that lays bare the true benefits of small-town living.

About the author

Thomas McGuane is the author of numerous novels, short fiction, and screenplays, as well as several collections of essays devoted to his life in the outdoors. He earned a BA in English from Michigan State University and an MFA from Yale, where he studied play writing and dramatic literature. He received a Wallace Stegner Fellowhsip to Stanford University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Read by Traber Burns, Erica Sullivan, William Hughes, Alex Boyles, Kevin Kenerly, Kate Mulligan, and Caroline Shaffer