Justin Taylor (2)Besprekingen

"I could use another drink," she says. She only had a few before closing, and then one while she cleaned up. I say I'll have one too and she eyes me, deciding whether to start in on the question of if I need another. I don't, probably, no, I know I don't, but if she doesn't start in--she doesn't--I will have what I want, which is different from what I need: what a surprise.

The characters in Justin Taylor's short story collection are generally young, working menial jobs and are definitely not hipsters living in Brooklyn. From a lonely teenage asked to do something unpleasant by the uncle who had welcomed him into his family, to a guy working at the deli counter who is involved with a married woman, each story looks at all the ways people connect and fail to connect with each other. As in any collection, some stories are better than others, but all are well-written and even the less successful stories are trying to do something interesting.

Judge has nothing to do with this story. He wasn't even at home. We let ourselves in, swiped a six-pack from his fridge, and went back to Joe Brown's. Judge is simply a character on whom I can't help but dwell some. Something pulls my thoughts back his way. He inspires loathing so pure, to be silent about it seems no less a crime than denying love.

I only liked two stories in Justin Taylor's Flings. They were 'Flings' and 'After Ellen'. I liked them the most since characters from the first story do appear in the second one. Everything else in this book was a wash. I don't get the appeal of reading about seriously screwed up people, as depicted in 'A Talking Cure' or a story about whatever the heck it is supposed to be about but I think maybe clementines in 'Adon Olam'. Nothing much made sense and I found this to be a boring collection of stories. Sadly all of the narrators seemed to possess the same voice which is a neat trick since sometimes the narrator was a man or a woman or a teenager, etc.

I swear that for me the only three authors that I have found that can write short stories are Stephen King, Dean Koontz (I really wish he do another Strange Highways book) and Maeve Binchy.

It is an art to be able to tell a story in just a few pages and be able to imbue those characters with personality and depth. It takes talent to make me care about them in just a few short pages and wonder about them after I close the book. This collection did none of those things for me at all.

Please note that I received this book for free via the Amazon Vine Program.

From the back cover:

In landlocked Gainesville, Florida, in the hot, fraught summer of 1999, a college dropout named David sleepwalks through his life — a dull haze of office work and Internet porn — until a run in with a lost friend jolts him from his torpor. He is drawn into the vibrant but grimy world of Fishgut, a rundown house where a loose collective of anarchists, burnouts, and libtertines practice utopia outside society and the law. Some even see their lifestyle as a spiritual calling. They watch for the return of a mysterious hobo who will — they hope — transform their punk oasis into the Bethlehem of a zealous, strange new creed.

The Gospel of Anarchy by Justin Taylor is one of my favorites of 2011 so far. It opens with David, a college dropout working at a call center in Gainesville who is addicted to Internet porn, jerking off and throwing his laptop into a bathtub.

At home there was no conversation. No back and forth. No feigned ease, no modulated voice. No voice, period. Silence reigned. Quiet clicks. The world opened up to me through a small bright window, my personal laptop computer, which was of course too heavy and ran too hot to actually keep on my lap, not that I wanted it there. I had to use a plug-in trackball mouse because I couldn’t get the hang of the touchpad thing. The laptop was barely a year old, still more or less state-of-the-art, and had pride of place on the desk in my living room, where I sat and surfed a wave that never crested, climbed a mountain that never peaked. Curved, oiled, chesty, slick, spread; sometimes I imagined the girls in a kind of march, and endless parade celebrating — what? Themselves, I guess, or me. pg. 9

David is unlikable. He’s the sort of lost that doesn’t really care if he’s found or not. He’ll accept any sort of connection. He’ll follow whatever path in order to get there. When he meets the punk anarchists, he falls in love with their carefree lifestyle. The residents of Fishgut are punks, hippies, anarchists, and anarchristians. After David quits his job, moves out of his apartment, and becomes a resident of Fishgut, the book begins to ramble in an amazing way.

Truth is, these Catholics’ moderateness, and more generally their modernity, is at the heart of what spooks her about them. How the archness and the archaism of their faith seems to fit so snugly in with the regular lives they’re all living right now. What can the gilded crucifix, and the Man hung thereon, mean to the boy who buys sweatshop-produced Nikes at the mall by the highway? To the girl with the sorority pin, or anyone behind the wheel of an SUV? She knows these are cliché questions, straight out of Anticapitalism 101, but cliché or not, the questions are earnest. How can it be that the crucified Christ means so many different things to so many different people all at once? How can He contain it all? pg. 63

The Gospel of Anarchy explores faith and belief — in God, in a mysterious and absent punk-anarchist, in nothing — and how faith and belief can be fleeting, can be found and lost, can mean everything and also mean nothing. For David, this newly found faith in “Anarchristianism” means everything. He lost his girlfriend, dropped out of college, and was working at a job he hated just to pay the bills. When he finds Fishgut, his life suddenly has meaning.

Truly transcendent moments seem to lose something in the re-telling–they tend to be fleeting, and rooted in some feeling of extreme presence: a stronger or better sense of self, or of synchronicity between the self and the universe. When writing is going very well it can feel that way, and this is what Katy has in mind when she goes to the Devil’s Millhopper in chapter two. Art is not a religion, but the making of it and the reception of it can both qualify as devotional acts. - Jonathan Taylor in an interview at The Rumpus

Taylor’s writing is better suited for novel-length works. His short story collection, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever, was good, but it could have been better. You could tell that he had so much more to say, that he had all this potential, but it was wasted on short stories. Taylor finds his voice in The Gospel of Anarchy. If you haven’t already, read this book.

I was extremely disappointed with this collection of short stories. They were written well, for the most part, but there was a lot of potential in them that was never quite realized.

As the title of this collection (also the title of the first story) implies, the main theme running through Justin Taylor's Flings is that of relationships, both sexual and emotional. Friendships, marriages, crushes, and blood relations all come into play in short stories that (for the most part - there are some exceptions) focus on seemingly mundane or commonplace lives and situations, but in doing so clearly demonstrates through characterization and nuance how these events both contribute to and are influenced by the relationships the people create, preserve, abandon, or ignore. Family plays just as important a role as romance does in this collection, as many of the stories deal with the relationships between generations, with divorce and heritage coming into play repeatedly.

Some of Taylor's stories are told in a sweeping, biographical narrative that travels through years - even decades - of history, while others walk us almost minute-by-minute through snapshots of daily lives tormented by loss or, even worse, the distance that sometimes divides those close to one another. Alienation and abandonment, obsession and disenchantment, communication and reflection; Taylor's Flings shuffles us through the myriad of forms that relationships can take, and exposes us to a behind-the-scenes showcase of how our connections to others can either wither or bloom.

If there is a flaw in this collection, it is the inclusion of the story Sungold. With the exception of Sungold, a brilliantly funny piece that is my personal favorite, the stories in Flings are either subdued or dramatic, and the humor (if any) is at best understated. Stumbling into Sungold four stories into the collection leads one to expect at least one or two other pieces of similar tone and lends to a slight feeling of disappointment upon completion. A great story, but ultimately a rather glaring Odd Man Out.

I liked this book very much but did not connect with it as passionately as others have.

Flings: Stories by Justin Taylor, a book of short stories, is interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying. The blurb on the back names Taylor “A master of the modern snapshot” and they might well be right. The book is like a stack of Polaroids, taken by strangers and with no context to explain them. (Think Awkward Family Photos.) They are fascinating, funny, vaguely disturbing, but by themselves, they aren’t enough to tell a story.

As always, I wanted to love the book – I love short stories, in particular, and I always want to love the books I settle down to read – but I found this one easy to put down. That’s never a good sign. While the stories were interesting, they weren’t absorbing and they weren’t satisfying. A good example is Mike’s Song, a story about a divorced father taking his adult children to a Phish concert. There is some hint that the divorce was his fault – probably something to do with his new girlfriend, Lori, who may or may not be cheating on him, based on some misdirected texts – and there is some random reference to a neighborhood boy who committed suicide back when his kids were in their teens. It is most definitely a snapshot. It’s an odd, awkward night with this family, full of tense undertones and secrets no one talks about. I can see why some people might be fascinated with it, the way you can be fascinated staring into a lighted window, watching the family inside and wondering about them, but in the end? I wasn’t drawn in. I didn’t care how it ended — which is a good thing because it doesn’t end, not in the sense that anything is wrapped up and resolved. We learn a few things about them, Mike learns a few things about his kids, but you don’t get any sense of what will come of that knowledge. We walk past the window and on to another one.

One story I felt was much more successful was After Ellen – Scott leaves his girlfriend because she suggests getting a dog and he can suddenly see his whole life stretching out before him. The dog is just the start, the test before they have kids, get a house in the suburbs, a minivan, a carpool, etc., etc., etc. So he takes off, sneaking out while Ellen is at work, taking his half of their stuff, the car, and leaving her a note. He crashes in an expensive hotel with Mom and Dad’s credit card, and eventually finds a new place, a new gig as a DJ, a new girlfriend…and a dog. It goes somewhere. It has some resolution to it.

Now, there may be people who really appreciate these kinds of snapshot stories; apparently, I’m not one of them. The book, for me, was like seeing Waiting for Godot: I spent the whole time waiting for something to happen, feeling like there were clues and allusions that I was missing. There’s a fair amount of graphic sex in the stories that seems sprinkled in at random, more for shock value than anything else; for me, it didn’t seem to serve the story. While I enjoyed some of the writing and found interesting bits in most of the stories, overall, they left me unsatisfied. It was easy to put the book down and walk away because even the stories I finished felt unfinished.½

The Gospel of Anarchy goes from a sexist softcore porn male fantasy tale of dumpster diving Floridian anarcho-punks in Gainesville to magical realism...that centers around a cultish version of anarcho-Christianity...? After taking that turn it gets really boring. Like Jonathan Franzen or Mary McGarry Morris, the writing style is bleak, dystopic, vacant…not so much my thing...if this is a critique or depiction of the vast American suburban emptiness and alienation of sprawl, then ok but it feels sort of cheap, cliched and cynical. The characters are hopeless and don't seem fleshed out. Like, ok, if we live in a giant hamster wheel of chain stores along the interstate…we are still human right? So where is the humanity in this story? As far as dystopia goes, I like Stepford Wives, because at least there is an analysis of power happening. I don't know if the mysticism of this book really gets to anything real. When I looked up the author it seems that he is kind of a poseur who doesn't get it...like alternative rock representing the underground to the mainstream…he lives in Brooklyn and supposedly no one in Gainesville has ever heard of him but he seems to get ok reviews and know a lot of MFA-ified literary people? As much as I hate to give a book a bad review in its entirely, I guess I have to give this one a thumbs down. I really didn't like it. Another reason to seek out punks who write fiction I guess.

Taylor's novel is about a group of anarchists (punks, hippies, etc.) who become anarChristians -- defiers of authority who somehow end up following the biggest authority of all. The idea itself is really interesting. Even the title brings together two contradictory elements, and many reviewers have admitted they bought the book on title alone.

I had a really difficult time judging just how serious this novel was. The descriptions, thoughts, and actions of the anarchists seemed so much like caricature that I spent the majority of the book thinking it was a parody. Looking back I suppose it was in earnest. And if not a parody, then all the long-winded discussions over philosophy, the bad poetry, the railings over people who actually buy food, the existential conversations with no one...are no longer funny, but just incredibly boring. Like sticking your head into a room of high first-year philosophy majors and being forced to listen to their ramblings. All I'm really hearing is "blah blah the man blah blah bourgeoisie blah blah oh man you should hear them live they're so much better live."

That isn't to say the novel was a waste of time. Taylor's writing is masterful and his style unique. He flows in and out of tense and POV mid-paragraph, and he makes it work. It's a style I've never really encountered and I like it a lot. I have a feeling I'll be checking out his short story collection, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever, soon.

You can read my full review here: http://virtualmargin.blogspot.com/2011/09/gospel-of-anarchy-44100.html

Young adulthood is often a search for both self and meaning. As such it is prime ground for literary exploration. Yet while Justin Taylor's The Gospel of Anarchy gives a somewhat different take on the subject it's an exploration that falls short.

The story is built around David's search for self, which brings him into a loose group with an anarchistic bent living in a house they call Fishgut. The story is set in Gainesville, Florida, home of the University of Florida, in the late summer of 1999 and into Y2K. Both the location and time seem a bit odd. While some of the characters, including David, are brought there by the University, from which they have since dropped out, and others are "townies," Gainesville is a far from an hotbed of anarchistic thought. In addition, Taylor admits in a note at the end of the slim volume that this is a composite Gainesville, parts of it describing a city that didn't exist until after 1999. The 1999 setting seems a bit odd also. While the anti-globalization movement would draw significant attention as a result of the WTO protests in Seattle near the end of the year, Gainesville is plainly on the outside of that movement. And while anarchists undoubtedly made up part of the WTO contingent, it was anti-globalization that motivated the crowds, not any particular political theory or philosophy.

But since this is a novel, Taylor can set it when and where he wants. Yet the book still stumbles on other literary ingredients -- voice, character development and motivation.

Although David narrates the first part of the novel, once he moves into Fishgut the perspective for most of the balance of the book switches among the house's other main residents -- Liz, Katy and Thomas -- without a lot of rhyme or reason. There's nothing wrong with switching perspective but it's never quite clear why some parts of the story are seen from a particular perspective. There is not a great deal of differentiation among their voices, with a somewhat distinctive tone occasionally appearing to reflect an emotional state, such as in the midst of sexual acts. What is really surprising is that despite the various perspectives we get, none really allows us to grasp or appreciate the characters as individuals.

Yes, they claim to be anarchists and, yes, a couple have some religious inclinations, but how and why they arrived at Fishgut or their views of life, the universe or anything doesn't appear to be of great moment in The Gospel of Anarchy. As a result, the characters come off more as one-dimensional pieces moving around in setting where anarchism is an atmospheric overtone rather than substantive. Here, the philosophy or political theory seems to "no rules" rather than "no rulers."

David is a prime example. Even though he is the most developed character we're never quite sure what motivates him. Sure, the first part of the book establishes that he has an internet porn "habit" (as opposed to a compulsion or addiction) and hates his job cold calling people for telephone surveys. Granted, that might leave a person feeling dissatisfied and disconnected but why it might encourage them to be drawn to communal living in a run-down house isn't quite clear. Once David meets the people of Fishgut and stays there, he ends up in his own real life porno, an ongoing triad relationship with Liz and Katy. Yet his adoption of Fishgut's lifestyle and almost faux anarchism can't just be for the sex because if that is the pathway to insight, then millions of people are still and forever lost.

The meat of the book involves a grassroots anarcho-mystic-Christic movement that arises because David and Katy create a zine collecting some of the writings found in a notebook belonging to Parker, a long-missing early denizen of Fishgut. While far closer to an examination of self and life than the characters ever seem to engage in, the passages are largely rambling commentary involving philosophy, religion and politics. While this effort gives The Gospel of Anarchy its title, both are so unanchored and adrift they never rise above the level of arguably interesting observation.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)

An unnumbered group of young people, disenchanted with the charms of consumerist conformity, make a life for themselves on the margins of society in this novel. When an aging hippie who lived with them disappears, leaving a mysterious manuscript behind, the group's charismatic center begins a pseudo-religion based on his teachings. That's the basic plot of "The Gospel of Anarchy," with which I passed a few intriguing hours of my life.

I picked up "The Gospel of Anarchy" because of its intriguing title and because I'm attempting to write a novel based in a form of religious anarchy. Taylor's version is good but not great. I enjoyed the novel's vivid descriptions and decent plotting. The story is quite short. At times, the writing swerves towards purple prose when a faded blue would have sufficed, and the characters fail to develop meaningfully enough for me.

The material in the book which represents the "gospel" is probably the most compelling. The ending fizzles out, but I think this is an appropriate symbolic choice, echoing the endings of many such affinity groups.

I appreciated the imagination that went into creating the religion and felt like the narrative respected the religious, the non-religious, and the inventively religious alike. Those who enjoy edgy perspectives on faith would probably enjoy this novel. It actually concerns the political/lifestyle philosophy of anarchy, which is refreshing. More detail in the characters and a deeper web of characters would have kept me more engaged in the book, I think, but overall it is a good read, and I would be tempted to purchase more books by the author.½

When asked by someone earlier to discuss The Gospel of Anarchy, the most lucid thought I had was to describe it as interesting. The plot is virtual non-existent, and the writing embodies anarchy itself. It is confusing, slightly disturbing, and more philosophical than I expected. Yet, in the end is somehow works. It is a novel that forces one to confront one's own biases and expectations of society. It is not one to be read quickly but rather to be enjoyed slowly, evaluating every word and phrase. It draws some unusual conclusions and presents some disturbing images but makes for a decent novel.

Call it my own failings, but I was not prepared for a book that was actually about anarchy. I thought the title was more allegorical; it is not. Once I got over this initial surprise, the story evolves into an exploration of each character's own struggles to find meaning in his or her life. Some follow blindly, with no doubts whatsoever. Others think they understand but find out they do not. Some characters are utterly sympathetic, while others are not. The result is a wild ride through the chaotic world of Fishgut.

Mr. Taylor evokes the spirit of anarchy in his writing. He switches tenses and characters without any warning. Sometimes, he flows into a stream-of-consciousness effect, while other scenes are terse and simplistic. If anything helps one understand what it means to be anarchist, Mr. Taylor's writing in this novel is a great example of making a point not to be bound by the rules of writing.

The Gospel of Anarchy starts out strong, unfortunately fades towards the end and yet finishes strongly. Its failings are that it simply becomes too preachy. When Mr. Taylor focuses on Parker's writings rather than on the actual characters, the story itself loses steam. The novel works best when the reader gets the opportunity to delve into each character.

The Gospel of Anarchy is not for everyone. In his effort to present anarchy and its teachings, Mr. Taylor pushes the boundaries of comfortable reading, leaving even the most open-minded reader squirming in one's seat. Chaotic and at times confusing, he quickly delves into this particular subculture and its exploration of everything and anything. Through the characters' questioning and searching, the reader gets the opportunity to explore his or her own opinions on faith, on politics, and on what it means to follow the rules. For those who can handle the sometimes explicit descriptions and heavily philosophical discussions, The Gospel of Anarchy is a great novel to get someone thinking. I suspect that for a majority of people, however, it is one to skip.

Sometimes you really want to hate a writer.

For example, one reason to hate Justin Taylor is that his name is kinda like Justin Bieber's. The Justin part is the part that gets you. Also he's bound to be a quirky hysterical realist, which (I've always believed) is a trend today, especially among writers of my generation.

Yet Justin Taylor's debut is strong, albeit a bit uneven at points. But Taylor, at 28, brings a maturity in short story composition--a type Carveresque minimalism--that should be envy of every writer. See, for example, the opening of "A House in Our Arms:"
"We made it to New York.
That's how we put it when we talk about it with each other, even though it means something different to each of us, and even though we're both pretty used to it by now, I came straight from school, worked some crap jobs, then landed a decent one. It's at a hedge fund and I hate it, at least theoretically. In practice I find the more time I spend doing it the less I feel one way or the other. It's just what I'm doing, what I do. I work with nice enogh people. They started me out as an assistant but I'm already almost a junior manager. Who knows where I might wind up if I stick around?"

Like Carver, Taylor's narrators are aware of their own life standings. Yet unlike Carver, his characters these are younger people, kids who made it out from college and don't know what to do. Yet again, like Carver, there is a strong sense of floating here: these are stories of people who had the bad end of the deal, trying to figure out what to do. It's about class, yet it's not just about class.

It's concerns floating: the states in-between in a relationship and not, between going home and going to a new place, between the decision of going and staying. For example, in "A House In Our Arms," the narrator contemplates his sexual friendship with his lesbian best friend, while at the same time, sleeping with a man. In "Tennesse" the narrator ends up back with his parents' broken home (his father's lost his job) after trying to find himself and failing. In "Weekend Away" a woman runs away from her current lover after recieving (and not answering) a call from a former boyfriend; when she comes back she tells him: "I know you don't like hearing it but it's true, that's what I was thinking. There are so many places I've never even seen....So why can't I let myself say yes?"

Taylor's world is a world of conflation as well. Violence and sexual desire are the same ("Jewels Flashing in the Night Time); there is a difference between sex with someone you love and someone you might love, but you're not going to do much about it--or there isn't much you can do about it ("Whistle Through Your Teeth and Spit"). What is probably most refreshing about Taylor's writing is that he is fearless when it comes to sex. Compared to the male writers in Katie Rophie's essay, Taylor is pornographer: writing about bisexuality, threesomes, and phone sex; he writes it viscerally and with feeling.

Of course, some might be turned off by this, as well as Taylor's possible use of bisexuality as a metaphor for general confusion, and some of his more experimental works--"Tetris" and "Finding Myself" are almost like prose poems, "Jewels Flashing in the Night Time" reminds me of Daniel Scott's "Fellow Feeling" (his only terrible story in his short story collection) but only slightly better done. Some of his stories also do what stories shouldn't (jumping point of view in "Whistle Through Your Teeth and Spit," as one example), but Taylor proves to be a skilled writer: he pulls it all off. He makes it work. He'll remind you of Carver and Gaitskill, only younger, and not a drunk (not yet anyway) or a prostitute (again, not yet).

At the end, I still hate Justin Taylor. He wrote the book I wanted to write, before I got it written, and he wrote it better than I could have. It is more than enough reason to hate Justin Taylor.½

This was meant to be airline reading, but it's very poor. It's an uneasy mixture of escapism (more or less what I expected), literary pretensions, and selections from history (Hawthorne, Poe). The writing is often full of solecisms, awkward overstuffed tropes, and poorly managed anachronisms meant to sound ancient or portentous (Lovecraft is the model there).

Rick Moody's piece is accomplished and glib. I wonder how quickly the sense of accomplishment fades for a writer like that. Reading it is like watching a sparkler: it's ash in seconds.

Dennis Cooper's piece is a meditation on the asshole of a 13-year-old boy: it is harsh and strident, and reminds me of a critique of "The Exorcist": someone said it was like grain alcohol, very strong but probably not good for you. Is a single strong image really an effective critique?

The rest is often weakly imagined fluff, with the usual one-off lines that sprinkle postmodern fiction and make it seem worthwhile: the moment the President comes on TV and shows people it's OK to eat cockroaches; an apocalypse that happens suddenly at the end of a story, when "a torrent of blood comes crashing through the trees." (Robert Bradley) But Nietzsche's critique of Wagner's reliance on small-scale effects would be pertinent to much of contemporary North American postmodern fiction: it has no sense of larger architecture, it feels that emotions are tiny, sharp things that can only be captured haphazardly, in minute quantities, like pins found in a haystack.½

Mixed bag.

Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor, besides being a book with an incredibly long title, is a collection of short stories, basically about hipsters being unemployed doing unglamourous things. The book is small, topping off at 185 pages. The stories are gritty. Some I related with and some I did not.

Stylistically, Taylor is excellent. The words just seem to flow off the page. This book reminded me a bit of Chuck Palahniuk's writing. The people within are inherently flawed, I don't really care much for the characters, but I still want to know what happens because the words weave a spell.

My favorite story within Everything Here is The Best Thing Ever was Jewels Flashing in the Night of Time which basically involves this guy playing Tetris during the apocalypse. Tetris plus world-ending gets a giant thumbs up from me.

Aside from that, not much for me to say, as this was such a slim book without an overarching plot, or main characters. Just short stories, and if that's what you like, then I say, pick this book up.

"It was so thorough, almost as if he were trying to say that if he could no longer work in an office then by God he would keep such a spotless and ordered home that the family would come to see how his lost job had been a good fortune in disguise." - pg. 47
Story of my life. I currently work one day per week as I'm waiting to hear back about being approved to sub, and my current job doesn't have the budget to give me more hours. Therefore, I clean and read all day. Seriously.

"She is a magic trick and I am either the magician or the crowd" - pg. 155
Sparse, beautiful, me likey.½

An anthology of short stories concerning various ends of the world ... personal, political, religious, ecological. Though it was a Christmas gift from last year, it's been an especially timely read in late 2008, as the economy collapses and dire predictions surround me. The microfiction was less successful, in my opinion, than some of the extended narratives; some of the work here is decidedly experimental and inaccessible. Still, I welcomed the variety of styles and voices on display. Especially notable for me were pieces by Rick Moody, whose narrator is writing a term paper on the commonalities between himself and St. John, author of the Book of Revelation; Shelley Jackson's post-apocalyptic love story; Brian Evenson's hilarious account of his ascendancy to Messiah status, Lucy Corin's astonishing description of eating a salad; Ursula K. Le Guin's apocalyptic hypotheses; and a piece by Hawthorne that reads like satirical humor until the last page, when, as always, he has to be a moralist.

completed 1.1.15, 3 stars