Driving on the Rim was published by Knopf in 2010. Dr. Irving Berlin Pickett (“Berl”) is McGuane’s most sustained first-person narrator — a small-town Montana physician whose picaresque life unfolds through a series of episodes that range from broad comedy to genuine pathos.
Berl’s childhood was unconventional: raised by his mother and her lover Gladys (a former rodeo clown), he grew up in a world of gambling, horse racing, and petty crime before discovering a gift for medicine. His practice in the fictional town of Livingston is successful but unorthodox — he prescribes fishing trips for depression, treats the poor for free, and maintains a personal life of such complexity that his medical license is periodically threatened.
The novel covers decades in episodic fashion — Berl’s marriages (multiple), his friendships (volatile), his relationship with his patients (intimate), and his ongoing war with the medical establishment (which considers him a dangerous eccentric). McGuane uses the doctor’s life to explore how a community sustains itself — and how the people who hold it together are often the same people whose personal chaos threatens to tear it apart.
Collecting Driving on the Rim
First edition (Knopf, New York, 2010): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $10–$20
- Signed first: $25–$50
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
The Picaresque Doctor
Berl Pickett is one of McGuane’s most endearing creations: a man of genuine medical skill and zero common sense, whose life reads like a series of barely survived catastrophes. The novel’s episodic structure — childhood, adolescence, medical school, practice, personal disasters — gives McGuane room for the comic set pieces at which he excels, while the Montana setting provides the grounding that keeps the comedy from spinning into pure absurdism.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does McGuane’s later work differ from his early novels? The early novels (The Sporting Club, The Bushwhacked Piano, Ninety-Two in the Shade, Panama) are manic, linguistically extravagant, and often self-destructive in their energy. The later Montana novels are quieter, more controlled, and more compassionate — though no less precisely written. McGuane himself attributes the change to sobriety, marriage to his third wife Laurie, and the daily discipline of ranching.