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The Gospel of Anarchy
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(3 Votes)From Publishers Weekly
Among the malcontents in Taylor's narrow debut novel (after collection Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever) is David, a Gainesville, Fla., college dropout with a dead-end job. After destroying his computer, he chances upon a pair of dumpster divers who appear to have more going on than he does, and so he follows them to a rundown punk house called Fishgut and quickly adopts the lifestyle, growing a beard and engaging in a relentless bout of three-ways with a couple of punk girls. They go to church together (partly for the free food) and end up forming their own cult based on the inscrutable writings of an anarchist named Parker who has disappeared from Fishgut. The Fishgut inner circle grows smaller and crazier as the crew pushes their new religion with a popular zine, though the events don't seem to build so much as pile up. Taylor can set a scene, but he takes his characters and their screwy subculture so seriously that you'd think he, himself, was a convert. With little attention paid to finding direction, the novel, like its characters, simply drifts. (Feb.)
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From
Taylor follows up the story collection, Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever (2010), with a provocative debut novel depicting a Gainesville, Florida, swallowed by its university and an ever-developing string of chain stores and apartment complexes but in which a small but zealous group of anarchist punks rebels against corporate corruption and government oppression by rooting through dumpsters and stealing in order to survive. Enter David, a college dropout with nothing going for him but a dead-end telemarketing job and a porn addiction. Determined to shake his apathetic lifestyle, David runs into an acquaintance who invites him to Fishgut, a dilapidated house full of ruffians and hippies with utopian dreams of a world without rules. Quickly sloughing off his former self, David enters a dizzying new life of sexual liberty, drug- and alcohol-induced philosophizing, and rock and roll as he and his housemates await the return of Parker, a so-called Anarchristian whose left-behind journals serve as their gospel. 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. --Jonathan Fullmer
21/07/2011
Justin Taylor is something of an anomaly among the emerging group of what I hesitantly call "internet writers." He isn't an experimentalist, an anti-emotional minimalist, or what's known as a "sentence writer." He's a storyteller. He also could be the best American writer under 30.
His debut novel, "The Gospel of Anarchy," like Denis Johnson's debut novel "Angels," gives a stunning representation of a segment of society previously untouched in literature; in this case, it's a group of punks, hippies and assorted dropouts living together in a dilapidated flophouse in Florida named "Fishgut." There's all the sex, drugs and rock & roll you'd expect from a novel about modern twenty-somethings, but Taylor has much deeper goals in mind than simply exhibiting some youthful hedonism. The book is about a group of friends unified capitalist American society. But the central paradox is that when a fringe group decides to construct their own moral code, it can end up just as ostracizing as the conformist structures most free-thinkers seek to escape. In that sense, Taylor's novel can almost be read as a kind of Henry James for impoverished libertines, although the influences of writers like Don DeLillo and Flannery O'Connor are more apparent in the text.
It's clear Taylor is very intelligent and well-versed in Western and non-Western literary canons, but the book is wisely guided driven page-turner, but you're unmoved by the preening sentimentality of the likes of David Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer (or even if you really enjoy those writers and just want something different,) I urge Justin Taylor upon you. His talent is formidable, and a decade from now, a lot of readers will wish they would have had the opportunity to track his development.
30/04/2011
I read an advance-copy of this book eagerly. I was immediately taken in old story about young radicals: they are foolish innocents taken in - what's more critical in for our society is to realize what lessons we have to learn from those who believe "another world is possible."
31/03/2011
I have to just come right out and say it: this book is incredibly strange. I wouldn't have picked it up myself if I'd read a summary first, but I was intrigued like feel to it (either dream-like or acid trip-like, I'm not too sure which) which was interesting but also caused me to lose focus very easily.
Also, I just plain didn't like any of the characters. And I couldn't relate to any of them either. I felt no connection with them, I honestly couldn't have cared less what happened to them, they were just words on the page to me. And for me, that's bad because I absolutely need some type of connection with the characters in a novel to enjoy said novel.
The writing in The Gospel of Anarchy was really beautiful, though, and the tense switching around thing would be kind of cool if you were able to follow it (most people probably would be, I clearly had difficulty). And just because I didn't like the book doesn't mean you won't. Even though I didn't enjoy this book, I will say that if you like creative novels with solid writing and don't mind profanity when you read, you may want to give The Gospel of Anarchy a try.
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 Reclaiming the Center: Confronting Evangelical Accommodation in Postmodern Times Justin Taylor, Millard J. Erickson, Paul Kjoss Helseth |
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