Justin Taylor's crystalline, spare, and oddly moving prose cuts to the quick. His characters are guided by misapprehensions that bring them to hilarious but often tragic impasses with reality: a high school boy's desire to win over a crush leads him to experiment with black magic, a fast-food employee preoccupied by Abu Ghraib becomes obsessed with a coworker, a Tetris player attempts to beat his own record while his girlfriend sleeps and the world outside their window blazes to its end. Fearless and astute, funny and tragic, this collection heralds the arrival of a unique literary talent.

Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever: Stories

Literature & Fiction

TAYLOR, JUSTIN

Humor & Satire

Harper-perennial

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 libertines 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. In his dark and mesmerizing debut novel, Justin Taylor ("a master of the modern snapshot"Los Angeles Times) explores the borders between religion and politics, faith and fanaticism, desire and needand what happens when those borders are breached.

The Gospel of Anarchy: A Novel

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

A beautifully packaged full-color collection of literary tattoos and short personal essays, The Word Made Flesh is an intimate but anonymous confessional book, in the vein of thought-provoking anthologies like PostSecret and Not Quite What I Was Planning. Gorgeous photographs and candid commentary are collected by authors Eva Talmadge—whose short story “The Cranes” was cited as Notable Nonrequired Reading of 2008 in Dave Eggers’ Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009—and Justin Taylor, author of Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever, and editor of the acclaimed short fiction anthology, The Apocalypse Reader.

The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide

Arts & Photography

Talmadge, Eva

History & Criticism

The acclaimed author of Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and The Gospel of Anarchy makes his hardcover debut with a piercing collection of short fiction that illuminates our struggle to find love, comfort, and identity.
In a new suite of powerful and incisive stories, Justin Taylor captures the lives of men and women unmoored from their pasts and uncertain of their futures.
A man writes his girlfriend a Dear John letter, gets in his car, and just drives. A widowed insomniac is roused from malaise when an alligator appears in her backyard. A group of college friends try to stay close after graduation, but are drawn away from—and back toward—each other by the choices they make. A boy’s friendship with a pair of identical twins undergoes a strange and tragic evolution over the course of adolescence. A promising academic and her fiancée attempt to finish their dissertations, but struggle with writer’s block, a nasty secret, and their own expert knowledge of Freud.
From an East Village rooftop to a cabin in Tennessee, from the Florida suburbs to Hong Kong, Taylor covers a vast emotional and geographic landscape while ushering us into an abiding intimacy with his characters, Flings is a commanding work of fiction that captures the contemporary search for identity, connection, and a place to call home.

Flings: Stories

United States

Harper

Reboot: A Novel

Pantheon

A short biography of J.S. Bach's son Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. Features b/w pictures as well as a complete works list and recording recommendations.

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach

Lulu Press, Inc.

Riding with the Ghost: A Memoir

An acclaimed writer reckons with his relationship with his troubled father--an unflinching memoir in the tradition of Dani Shapiro, Maggie Nelson, and Daniel Mendelsohn When Justin Taylor was thirty, his father, Larry, drove to the top of an airport parking garage to take his own life. Thanks to the intervention of family members, he was not successful, but the incident would forever transform how Justin thinks of his father, and how he thinks of himself as a son. Moving back and forth in time from that day, Riding with the Ghost captures the past's power to shape, strengthen, and distort our visions of ourselves and each other. We see Larry as the middle child in a chilly Long Island family; as a beloved Little League coach who listens to kids with patience and curiosity; as an unemployed father struggling to keep his marriage together while battling long-term illness and depression. At the same time, Taylor explores how the work of confronting a family member's story forces a reckoning with your own. With raw intimacy, Riding with the Ghost lays bare the joys and burdens of loving a troubled family member. It's a memoir about fathers and sons, teachers and students, faith and illness, and the complicated legacy that each generation hands down to the next.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Random House]

An unflinching memoir froma writer reckoning with his relationship with his troubled father and the complicated legacy that each generation hands down to the next "Justin Taylor's relentless, peripatetic, and tender search for reconciliation with his late troubled father blooms into a full-throated song of joy about his own life lived through music, teaching, travel, and literature."-Lauren Groff, author ofFlorida NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS When Justin Taylor was thirty, his father, Larry, drove to the top of the Nashville airport parking garage to take his own life. Thanks to the intervention of family members, he was not successful, but the incidentforevertransformedhow Taylor thinks of his father, and how he thinks of himself as a son. Moving back and forth in time from that day,Riding with the Ghostcaptures the past's power to shape, strengthen, and distort our visions of ourselves and one another. We see Larry as the middle child in a chilly Long Island family; as a beloved Little League coach who listens to kids with patience and curiosity; as an unemployed father struggling to keep his marriage together while battling long-term illness and depression. At the same time, Taylor explores how the work of confronting a family member's story forces a reckoning with your own. We see Taylor as a teacher, modeling himself after his dad's best qualities; as a caregiver, attempting to provide his father with emotional and financial support, but not always succeeding; as a new husband, with a dawning awareness of his owndepressive tendencies. With raw intimacy,Riding with the Ghostlays bare the joys and burdens of loving a troubled family member. It's a memoir about fathers and sons, teachers and students, faith and illness, and the pieces of our loved ones that we carry with usalways.

Self-Help

Death & Grief

Random House Trade Paperbacks

2nd Edition - Published by the author. 
32 Battalion is one of the most extraordinary army units in post-World War II military history. The battered remnants of a beaten guerrilla army, the unit began as a ragtag outfit conducting covert, anti-guerrilla missions behind enemy lines before transforming itself into what became one of the best anti-guerrilla army battalions in the world. By the wars end, the battalion had again transformed itself into a highly effective, conventional, fully mechanised battle group. 
The realities of life during the Apartheid days in South Africa resulted in the call up for National Military Service during the 1970’s and ‘80’s. On completing his training, Justin Taylor graduated as a Signals Officer and volunteered for Border Duty in the operational area of the Angolan-Namibian border and to join the ranks of the then little known 32 Battalion ... the Portuguese speaking soldiers of whom were so feared by their enemies they were known as “Os Terriveis”...“The Terrible Ones”. Drawn from the remnants of an Angolan rebel movement, 32 Battalion conducted secretive, clandestine operations into Angola at a time when South Africa was officially not at war with Angola. Taylor takes you through his 'baptism of fire' on arrival where he was thrust into offensive operations as an inexperienced junior officer responsible for the battalions communications. In pursuit of elusive guerrilla fighters, he details life as an anti-guerilla fighter on missions in the harsh and unforgiving conditions of the African bush and the intricacies of ground-to-air & ground-to-ground radio communications. 
Most notable is his account of the Battle of Savate where, heavily outnumbered, the battalion attacked an enemy brigade deep in enemy territory with the odds stacked against them. Told from the perspective of his role as a junior officer in the HQ, he vividly recounts the horrors of battle with the turmoil of the killing and the loss of close friends and comrades, intertwined with the challenges of maintaining communications with the command and control difficulties of an HQ caught up in the heat of battle. 
His following deployments into the bush were as a seasoned Signals Officer, culminating with his training of the replacement troops at the end of his service, arming them with the skills they would need to meet the standards required of a 32 Battalion Signaller. On completing his military service, he found it difficult adjusting to civilian life back in South Africa having returned from a unique army battalion that knew no colour … “When the shooting starts, it’s not about the colour of a man’s skin next to you that counts, it’s what he is capable of”. And then the disbanding of the battalion with South Africa’s transformation to a democratic society in 1994, and with it the promise of a Rainbow Nation ... it was as if the batten of racial integration had been passed from the unit to the country as a whole. 
What set 32 Battalion apart is that it embraced racial and cultural diversity, which when combined with a culture of mutual trust and respect empowered the battalion to overcome insurmountable odds on the battlefield. As a result, the battalion was rated as the South African Army’s best combat unit since World War II.\n"First and foremost a soldier’s story, it is told without self-aggrandisement and with a balance of sensitivity together with the harsh realities of war. While the factual and detailed insights into the legendary 32 battalion are both intriguing and historically significant, it is in essence a human story. The anguish and emotions experienced by the author are honestly portrayed, which coupled with his wry sense of humour, makes it an easy read and easy to relate to."

A Whisper in the Reeds: 32 Battalion, The Terrible Ones. 2nd Edition

History

Military

JSW Taylor

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