The Drifters

The Drifters by James Michener

The Drifters is one of those books that was wonderfully captivating for about the first third of the story. The second third was merely “good”, whereas the last third was mostly laborious.  This isn’t a completely foreign trait of the works of James Michener.  If you could use one word to describe the majority of the books in Michener’s catalog, that one word could be “long”.   I’ve read many of James Michener’s books, and whereas the majority of his works I would recommend, he simply packs his books a tad too thick, and this book is a prime example of how he could have maybe shaved off 100 pages or so and ended up perhaps telling a better story.

This book was written in 1971 about the hippy culture that takes place in the year 1969.  One might be tempted when picking this book up 50 years later, to worry that it might be somewhat dated. Fortunately I didn’t feel this way at all.  Had this book been written sometime in the 21^st century as opposed to “when the events were actually happening”, it would have been equally as effective when describing the culture, the people and the places.

The first six chapters of this book (each approx. 50 pages) each focus on one teen-aged adult. These teens are bright kids, yet they are obviously disillusioned by their worldly surroundings.  For some, this disheartening attitude is relevant to the times (Vietnam, The Draft, Race Riots) whereas for others, it comes more from some sort of internal strife.  We read about these young peoples’ situations, and aren’t surprised at the end of each chapter when they simply need to “get out” of their current environment.  All six end up in the resort community of Torremolinos, Spain, where they live in a bit of a squalor surrounded by various other hippies.  Quite naturally, the six quickly bond as friends (as well as casual lovers – this is 1969 remember).   

As we progress through these initial six chapters, we meet a seventh character who has a history with some of these youths; a sixty-year-old financial advisor named Charles Fairbanks.  This individual seems very much out of place with a host of 19-year-old disheveled kids, yet he’s there with them most of the time during the novel.  His purpose seems mainly to decipher and filter the moods of these restless spirits so people closer to his age can have a better understanding of tomorrow’s future leaders.   I found it interesting that James Michener, himself, was about the same age as Charles Fairbanks when he wrote this novel, and one has to wonder if this is the author’s subtle way of submersing himself into his created story.

Well, about halfway through this book is when the story begins to get a bit silly and unbelievable. For whatever reason, our six hippies get restless and decide to basically go globetrotting. The latter half of the book has them travelling to Portugal, South Africa and Morocco among other places.  Can we honestly believe that six kids would have the funds to just drop everything and relocate to another continent? Yes, some of these kids have more money than the others, but it simply seems far-fetched. Of course, 60 year-old Fairbanks manages to somehow show up and reunite with the cronies as well.  I mean, **I** have trouble getting six friends to agree on what movie to go see at my local cinema.

In addition to the six kids, there are other various minor characters that pop their heads in from time to time as well.  Again, it seems a bit of a stretch, for example, when “Groovy Clive” somehow shows up out of the blue in places like Mocambique and reunites with his buddies and shares with them a sack full of new record albums with the latest music for everyone to sit around and “dig”.  This seems more of an excuse for James Michener to educate his readers of the popular music artists of the time rather than focus on telling us an interesting story.

And this does seem to be Michener’s weakness.  He takes us away too many times from our story. He seems more interested in pontificating about the history and describing the geography of these new places rather than really moving forward with any type of character movement and development.  True, Michener is the “King” of the Geographical novel, but these distractions seemed mostly out of place here.   I felt like had his characters stayed in Torremolinos, we could have had a more satisfying story without jumping all over the globe.

There are a lot of “generational gap” discussions as well, and fortunately Michener handles these interactions with kid gloves.  These kids are not spoiled idiots, contrary to what many of their elders thought at the time, but they do have a lot more questions than they do answers.  Of course, they’re not always right with the answers they DO come up with, and this is an example where one can look back on this 50 year-old novel and see where many of the ideals of the ‘glorious 60s’ simply didn’t work.  Especially when it comes to drugs.  As expected, there are a lot drugs in this book.  When combined with the filth, foul, and poverty of the living conditions, you can almost smell the dirt, the acid, and the BO as it seeps through the pages.

This was overall a good read. I imagine one would view it with a different lens reading it in 1971 than they would in 2020, but in either case it’s a great history lesson with some well-developed characters and ideals throughout.  Yes, as mentioned, it drifts (pun partially intended) for the last third of the book, but the pros far outweigh the cons.  This is also a good diversion from James Michener’s popular “Geographical” novels as well.