The Gospel of Anarchy - by Justin Taylor (Paperback)

About the Book

Taylor, a new voice that readers--and writers, too--might be seeking out for decades to come ("New York Times Book Review"), proves the critics right in his dark and mesmerizing debut novel.

Book Synopsis

"A feverish, fearless writer." --Christine Schutt, author of All Souls, finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize

"The Gospel of Anarchy is a beautiful, searching and sometimes brutally funny novel. Justin Taylor writes with fierce precision and perfect balance." --Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask

Following his critically acclaimed short story collection Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever, Justin Taylor's mesmerizing debut novel explores the eccentricities, insights, and unexpected grace found in a motley crew of off-beat anarchists, and their quest to achieve utopia in a crumbling Florida commune. In the vein of Chris Adrian, Padgett Powel, and Hunter Thompson, Taylor delivers a shrewd, cerebral, and often wickedly humorous vision of reality on every leaf of the mirthfully absurd The Gospel of Anarchy.

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 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.

Review Quotes

"Whether Taylor is exploring youth, human bonds or fantastical scenarios, he displays a gift for illuminating the connections between the mundane and the grotesque." - Time Out New York
"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." - New York Times Book Review
"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." - Boston Globe
"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." - Time Out Chicago
"The world here is desolate, sexual, and its people are possessed of a brave cheer and do not whine. This is not quaint blue-collar realism but something entirely more honest. There is a debt paid to Donald Barthelme, gratifying to see, and a strange undertow of Philip Roth, which makes for a new literary beast. Mr. Taylor has perfect touch, to frightening effect, does not presume, has power, and promises us new things." - Padgett Powell, author of The Interrogative Mood
"As in his story collection, Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever, Taylor has a natural sense for what makes intelligent young people tick and, occasionally, drop out." - Time Out Chicago
"Taylor, a Brooklyn-based author raised in Florida, writes dreamy recollections of swampy youth" - Village Voice
"Gospel is a beautifully written, insanely intelligent, and ultimately moving novel....You'll be blown away by this book, re-reading it for years to come. " - BlackBook
"These days, all the cool kids write about pharmaceuticals and cognitive science. In his first novel, The Gospel of Anarchy, Justin Taylor makes his attempt to diagnose the mal du siècle by grappling with matters of faith." - New York Observer
"Taylor is an undeniable talent with a contemporary voice that this new generation of skeptics has long awaited--a young champion of literature." - New York Press
"Justin Taylor exposes the fine line between making life choices and living a deluded reality, deftly illustrating how taking things too far or too literally can distort their true meaning and intent." - New York Journal of Books
"For those of us not mired in strange sub-sub-culture squalor, it can be a disconcerting read at times, but its looming questions and cracked worldview are sure to stick around in your consciousness, relentlessly stalking a ground they won't give up anytime soon." - Nylon Magazine
"Remember this name: Justin Taylor. You will hear it again. This young man, who was raised in South Florida, is an irrefutably talented writer. He is audacious, intelligently literate and fizzing with potential." - Miami Herald
"Taylor's writing ... is exceptionally good. Locally, the sentences are incisive and tumbling. But what's even more powerful is the way those sentences accumulate into larger ideas." - BookForum
"[A] thoughtful miniaturist with an intuitive knack for the well-chosen detail....Taylor's noble goal is to remind those of us long past our own difficult youths of the grace and beauty to be found even in a 'bunch of drunkpunks in the armpit of Florida.'" - New York Times Book Review
"If Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children showed upper-class New Yorkers in the not-yet upended world before 9/11, this book does the same for the small-town anarchists, believers and the Burning Man-inclined." - Los Angeles Times
"Taylor interweaves youthful dialogue with religious rhetoric, exploring what would happen if everyone did what was good for everyone, and the corporate world burned to the ground." - Interview
"Once again, Taylor blends the competing heat of religious fervor, threatening politics, and nihilistic sex, yielding dangerous results." - Oxford American
"I've always thought that there was some really interesting narrative terrain in that weird intersection between freeganism and fundamentalism, and I'm glad to see Taylor got there before some schmuck wrecked it." - Matthew Derby, author of Super Flat Times
"A feverish, fearless writer, Justin Taylor delivers 'blessed pleasure' in translating the 'baffling Christ babble' in The Gospel of Anarchy, a novel whose shiftless characters, in search of completion and contentment, must wrestle with that prerequisite of faith: a willingness to believe in the unseen." - Christine Schutt, author of All Souls, finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize
"A cult emerges from a punk/hippie sanctuary in this mordant first novel....Taylor writes sex wonderfully well....[His] nimble analysis of these schisms recalls T.C. Boyle's Drop City..." - Kirkus Reviews
"The Gospel of Anarchy is a beautiful, searching and sometimes brutally funny novel. Justin Taylor writes with fierce precision and perfect balance: the acts and pronouncements of his freegan utopianists may seem hilarious and deranged at times, but Taylor treats their yearning with the seriousness it deserves." - Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask
"A new voice that readers--and writers too--might be seeking out for decades to come." - New York Times Book Review
"Provocative...Writing from various perspectives in a wholly captivating style, Taylor traces the delicate lines between freedom, spirituality, politics, and happiness, depicting a lifestyle both hopeful and flawed." - Booklist
"A brilliant debut novel you have to read." - Details
"Justin Taylor does irony and snark and thwarted idealism uncommonly well." - Huffington Post
"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." - Oxford American
"His short, funky-feverish stories, with their startling turns and unresolved textures, feel a bit like the slightly overwrought Tumblr blog which Don B. would surely maintain, were he alive today." - L Magazine
"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." - Penthouse
"Taylor's flirtations with darkness can be illuminating." - Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Taylor flirts with poetic language, teasing us with lines so lusciously packed that even a tattoo's description can set the page on fire." - Bookslut
"Justin Taylor is a master of the modern snapshot." - Los Angeles Times