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Overview
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.
Synopsis
Each story in this crystalline, spare, oddly moving collection cuts to the quick. Taylor's characters are guided by delusions and misapprehensions that quickly bring them to impasses with reality. Moving through this collection the reader will meet a young man who has reasoned away certain boundaries in relation to his budding, girl cousin; a high schooler whose desire to win back his crush leads him to experiment with black magic; a man whose girlfriend is stolen by angels; and a Tetris player who, as the advancing white wall of the Apocalypse slowly churns up his driveway, decides that Death is a kindness.
Fearless and funny, Taylor imagines this and more, in a collection that paints a dark picture of his generation -- one that is upwardly mobile yet adrift, fumbling for connection but hopelessly self-involved. And it's all held together by a thread of wounding humor and candid storytelling that marks Taylor as a distinct and emerging literary talent.
The New York Times - Todd Pruzan
…if you find yourself struggling to memorize the name of "Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever," at least try to remember the name of its author, Justin Taylor. This spare, sharp book—Taylor's debut collection—documents a deep authority on the unavoidable confusion of being young, disaffected and human…the most affecting stories in Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever are as unpredictable as a careening drunk. They leave us with the heavy residue of an unsettling strangeness, and a new voice that readers—and writers, too—might be seeking out for decades to come.
Editorials
Padgett Powell
"Mr. Taylor has perfect touch, to frightening effect, does not presume, has power, and promises us new things. There is a debt paid to Donald Barthelme...and a strange undertow of Philip Roth, which makes for a new literary beast."David Gates
"The characters in Justin Taylor’s stories may be lost, unmoored, out of control, but their creator is astonishingly sure-handed. He unerringly locates the center of these centerless lives, and discerns the shape of their shapelessness."Pank Magazine
"The book I keep comparing his collection to is another debut, Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus....a fantastic debut collection."Boston Globe
"These short fictions by Justin Taylor give such a convincing account of the rough crossing of young adulthood that they practically induce seasickness. For his youthful protagonists, identity—emotional, intellectual, sexual—is unstable, constantly in motion."Oxford American
"In his first book of short stories, Taylor hones a dark-humored and character-themed collection in the tradition of Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior or Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son."Paste Magazine
"I’ll be surprised if we don’t find two standout pieces from this collection in prize-winning anthologies of 2010 short stories....Do we sense some sort of new fictional frontier?"New York Times Book Review
"The most affecting stories in Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever are as unpredictable as a careening drunk. They leave us with the heavy residue of an unsettling strangeness, and a new voice that readers - and writers, too - might be seeking out for decades to come."Bookslut
"Taylor flirts with poetic language, teasing us with lines so lusciously packed that even a tattoo’s description can set the page on fire."Brooklyn Rail
"These stories...shine with tenderness, humor, and genuine insight."Los Angeles Times
"Justin Taylor is a master of the modern snapshot."Huffington Post
"Justin Taylor does irony and snark and thwarted idealism uncommonly well."Time Out New York
"Whether Taylor is exploring youth, human bonds or fantastical scenarios, he displays a gift for illuminating the connections between the mundane and the grotesque."Penthouse
"Beautiful lines leap from the pages, and we gladly enter Taylor’s vivid world, even as it transforms what we know about ourselves and others into something slippery and ever-changing."BookForum
"Taylor’s characters would like for time to both speed up and slow down - an impossible, inevitable wish that makes the moments he captures worth savoring."Pank magazine
“The book I keep comparing his collection to is another debut, Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus....a fantastic debut collection.”Time Out Chicago
"There’s something of a frustrated chuckle at play, which is how Taylor manages to avoid … cynicism and imbue his characters with that slight glimmer of hope."Blogcritics.org
"A young author’s nearly perfect collection of short stories....leave[s] you amazed at the power of Taylor’s art and his ability to capture the heartbreak and hope for redemption that is the essential undercurrent of life."Los Angeles Times
“Justin Taylor is a master of the modern snapshot.”Penthouse
“Beautiful lines leap from the pages, and we gladly enter Taylor’s vivid world, even as it transforms what we know about ourselves and others into something slippery and ever-changing.”Time Out New York
“Whether Taylor is exploring youth, human bonds or fantastical scenarios, he displays a gift for illuminating the connections between the mundane and the grotesque.”Boston Globe
“These short fictions by Justin Taylor give such a convincing account of the rough crossing of young adulthood that they practically induce seasickness. For his youthful protagonists, identity--emotional, intellectual, sexual--is unstable, constantly in motion.”New York Times Book Review
“The most affecting stories in Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever are as unpredictable as a careening drunk. They leave us with the heavy residue of an unsettling strangeness, and a new voice that readers - and writers, too - might be seeking out for decades to come.”BookForum
“Taylor’s characters would like for time to both speed up and slow down - an impossible, inevitable wish that makes the moments he captures worth savoring.”Oxford American
“In his first book of short stories, Taylor hones a dark-humored and character-themed collection in the tradition of Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior or Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son.”Bookslut
“Taylor flirts with poetic language, teasing us with lines so lusciously packed that even a tattoo’s description can set the page on fire.”Time Out Chicago
“There’s something of a frustrated chuckle at play, which is how Taylor manages to avoid … cynicism and imbue his characters with that slight glimmer of hope.”Paste Magazine
“I’ll be surprised if we don’t find two standout pieces from this collection in prize-winning anthologies of 2010 short stories....Do we sense some sort of new fictional frontier?”Huffington Post
“Justin Taylor does irony and snark and thwarted idealism uncommonly well.”Brooklyn Rail
“These stories...shine with tenderness, humor, and genuine insight.”Todd Pruzan
…if you find yourself struggling to memorize the name of "Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever," at least try to remember the name of its author, Justin Taylor. This spare, sharp book—Taylor's debut collection—documents a deep authority on the unavoidable confusion of being young, disaffected and human…the most affecting stories in Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever are as unpredictable as a careening drunk. They leave us with the heavy residue of an unsettling strangeness, and a new voice that readers—and writers, too—might be seeking out for decades to come.—The New York Times