Drive by Simon Tay
Drive
Yuppies became a term in the early 1980’s, made out of the words; young urban professional + “ies”. We know the type from Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” or Brett Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho”, these young upper middleclass/upper class types with a taste for cultural attractions, a good image and high social status. Originally an American term, but as we can see in the story “Drive” written by Singaporean author Simon Tay also spotted elsewhere in the world.
In “Drive” we follow a man, given no name or age, on a night out for dinner with some friends. The writer uses a 3rd person narrator who can only see the main character’s thoughts and tells the story from his point of view in the past tense. It starts in media res, with the main character excusing himself for being late, which gives the feeling of just being plunged into the story and all through the dinner, the characters, the environment and relations are revealed, playing up to the action in the end of the story with the race.
Our main character has a lot of yuppie traits. He thinks a lot about his boss and work, has a good income (given that he has money for a BeeM) and is very focused on material stuff such as the price of the car and the look and what image they give. Also he seems relatively young, as no one mentions kids and so, which could indicate an age between 25-35 years old. He seems very focused on standing out as better, his girlfriend mistakenly thinks another BeeM is his, which annoy him so he starts to put down the other car, in order to make his own seem superior. ”“It’s got spoilers all over, OK. The one on the boot’s the size of an aeroplane wing. What a thing to do to a BeeM.” It really annoys him that another person at the same parking lot has the same car as himself, because it makes him owning a BeeM less interesting and less unique, which is why he starts putting it down, to restore the status of his own BeeM as the king of the parking lot.
Cars are very much
Yuppies became a term in the early 1980’s, made out of the words; young urban professional + “ies”. We know the type from Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” or Brett Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho”, these young upper middleclass/upper class types with a taste for cultural attractions, a good image and high social status. Originally an American term, but as we can see in the story “Drive” written by Singaporean author Simon Tay also spotted elsewhere in the world.
In “Drive” we follow a man, given no name or age, on a night out for dinner with some friends. The writer uses a 3rd person narrator who can only see the main character’s thoughts and tells the story from his point of view in the past tense. It starts in media res, with the main character excusing himself for being late, which gives the feeling of just being plunged into the story and all through the dinner, the characters, the environment and relations are revealed, playing up to the action in the end of the story with the race.
Our main character has a lot of yuppie traits. He thinks a lot about his boss and work, has a good income (given that he has money for a BeeM) and is very focused on material stuff such as the price of the car and the look and what image they give. Also he seems relatively young, as no one mentions kids and so, which could indicate an age between 25-35 years old. He seems very focused on standing out as better, his girlfriend mistakenly thinks another BeeM is his, which annoy him so he starts to put down the other car, in order to make his own seem superior. ”“It’s got spoilers all over, OK. The one on the boot’s the size of an aeroplane wing. What a thing to do to a BeeM.” It really annoys him that another person at the same parking lot has the same car as himself, because it makes him owning a BeeM less interesting and less unique, which is why he starts putting it down, to restore the status of his own BeeM as the king of the parking lot.
Cars are very much