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Justin Taylor

The Gospel of Anarchy: A Novel Paperback – February 8, 2011

by Justin Taylor (Author)

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“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.

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publication date

February 8, 2011
Dimensions

5.31 x 0.58 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0061881821
ISBN-13

978-0061881824
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Editorial Reviews

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.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

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

Review

"You'll be blown away by this book, re-reading it for years to come." - Black Book

"The Gospel of Anarchy is a beautiful meeting of Don Delillo, Philip Roth and Aaron Cometbus." --Vol. 1 Brooklyn

"[A] beautiful book about human weakness and our desire to connect and grow,
our need for something bigger than ourselves." --Devourer of Books

"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)

"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

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.

About the Author

Justin Taylor is the author of Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever, a New York Times Editors' Choice. He edited the acclaimed short fiction anthology The Apocalypse Reader, and co-edited The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide. The Gospel of Anarchy is his first novel. He was born and raised in Florida, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can visit his website at justindtaylor.net .

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial; Original edition (February 8, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0061881821
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0061881824
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.58 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,580,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,383 in Humorous American Literature
- #30,829 in Humorous Fiction
- #46,061 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction

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Top reviews from the United States

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(3.5 stars) "What would anarchy look like if we just started calling it truth?"

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 10, 2011

We do love our literary bad boys and Taylor jumps into the mix with his protagonist, David, in 1999 Gainesville, Florida. A recent college drop-out with a soul-killing job, the sterile walls of David's on-campus apartment yield no clues to his interior life- or lack of. Loneliness has driven the twenty-one year old to the flickering screen of his laptop, where he has mastered the Zen of pornography, the "gleeful gilding of the filth" simply one more scam of web sites and prurient appetites, the parade of faceless women as unsubstantial as their virtual names, ghosts trapped in cyber-space. As David wanders the streets of something, anything, he stumbles upon a pair of dumpster divers, ex-students who lead him to their house, Fishgut, and temporary nirvana.

Inside, David's chronic state of alienation from the world and himself finds temporary reprieve, a loose-knit band of hippies, punks and anarchists who breach the boundaries of religion, politics and the false prophets of their world. As Katy, a kind of earth mother libertine, runs her fingers through David's hair and that of her lover, Liz, David can barely keep from crying: He realizes how long it's been since he's been touched. For all the intellectual distractions, political diatribes and search for God in an indifferent world, it is the human contact that feeds David's soul. Katy and Liz provide that contact in excess. From the David's biting commentary on the labyrinthine and deceptive temptations of pornography to the ultimate betrayal of a girl he really cared about, David's demoralization is complete, his psyche ready for the chance encounter at the dumpster.

David wallows in this nest of rebellious ideas and dirty sheets, tangentially intrigued by the quest to comprehend the Divine, testing his commitment to abandon while living in filth and dining on stranger's discarded garbage. This parallel existence meets his needs- for a time. But even this anti-world evolves, made smaller in its familiarity, albeit wrapped in drug-fueled intellectual pursuits. Absorbed into the bohemian laxity of Katy and Liz's easy affection, anarchy turns complacent, people coming and going on impulse, their putative "leader", a mysterious hobo who has long since moved on, remembered only by a tent left in the back yard. While David transitions from one dimension to another, in thrall to the changed parameters of his existence and rapturously indulging in the wonders of the flesh and the mind, Taylor leaves the reader behind to languish with the long-gone hobo's empty tent. Taylor is certainly a writer to watch. But in the end, it is the title I like best. Luan Gaines/2011.

5 people found this helpful

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Nortka01

Could be great

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 23, 2011

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This novel had the ability to create an amazing character and/or an amazing story from the plot alone.

The novel is very compelling, and keeps the reader engaged all the way to the quick, ambiguous end. It was like climbing a mountain and falling off a cliff.

I am looking at other writtings from J. Taylor to see if he hit the mark on his short stories.

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bobdog

should have been better

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 31, 2011

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With this authors obvious talent and the fascinating topic I was surprised how it fell a little flat--- With that being said it is a worthwhile read

2 people found this helpful

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Points

The Novel of the Year

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 22, 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 by a shared disdain for late-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 by the emotional states of its characters. The narrative structure is egalitarian, giving intimate access to the minds of several different denizens of Fishgut, and Taylor expertly modulates and organizes these different voices.

If you're looking for a thoughtful, character-driven page-turner, but you're unmoved by the preening sentimentality of modern fiction, 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.

3 people found this helpful

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TempoTurtle31

Amazing read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 31, 2017

My favorite book I have read in years. Read through multiple times, finally bought my own copy. Can't wait till read through again. Captivating story, great character development, and just an overall amazing novel. Couldn't recommend this more! Also, Justin Taylor's other book, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever, also amazing, it's a collection of short stories. Check it out.

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Mingo Bingo

great writing, not so great plotting, but a writer to keep an eye of for

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 25, 2011

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Gainesville, Florida 1999. David works in a job he hates; regurgitating the same script over and over again, asking recent hospital patients about their experience. Returning to his identikit condo he tries to lose himself in internet porn groups. Leaving work one night he takes a short cut home and bumps into a young punk couple as they raid a dustbin behind a food store. Initially threatened, he soon recognises Thomas from his school days. Thomas takes David back to his squat for a party and introduces him to the group of anarchists who live there.

The squat, named Fishgut, is the present focus of the punk/anarchist scene - a drop in, a party house and home to the mysterious empty tent of Parker. When two of the residents believe they have shared a dream after an evening of drug abuse and dig up the ground beneath the tent, they find a note book of Parker's thoughts. Fueled by drink and marijuana, the group of punks read the book, digest the message and begin a new form of revolutionary worship - Christi-anarchy.

Built up from Bible verses and Anarchist thinking, the new religion spreads, the congregation grows, with Parker's tent becoming a shrine and a place of worship. The cornerstone of the faith being the messianic return of Parker and the subsequent collapse of Capitalism. As their belief becomes more and more manic, the house and residents spiral towards an inevitable fall.

The first point I want to make is that he is a very talented writer. The prose is fantastic and stylised, reminiscent of early Don DeLillo. The book exhibits one of the best examples of third person omniscient I have read for a long while. The narrative for the main part takes the form of the collective thoughts of the group, the impression being of floating around in a joint consciousness, dipping into the thoughts of individuals when required.. At times he switches into the first person narrative of the main character David and this works less well. The effect of a group whole is so compelling that the characters aren't brilliantly delineated, they become much of a muchness and while this is effective it makes it difficult to recognise the David of the first person as the same David of the third person.

The overall concept of The Gospel of Anarchy is something we have seen before. Most successfully in Fight Club by Palanhuik. What Taylor brings to the party is the power of his writing and the riff on community. He has addressed something of great interest to me; the need for human beings to believe in something. Taylor draws heavily on Kierkgaard's philosophy; in terms of alienation, individuality and the abstraction of money, but particularly in the concept of a leap of faith. At the beginning of the novel David spends much of his time in the closed world of internet porn chatrooms and the way in which he shamelessly throws himself into Fishgut in the same way as he did with the smut, gives the impression that it could have been anything or anywhere that became the object of his idolation.

Equally effective are the broader religious references he applies to the novel. I couldn't help but think about the nature of orthodoxy and heresy, and how Anarchism could be considered the heretical part of the modern political playing field. And of course the house's adoption of Parker's skew whiff religio-political meanderings is deeply heretical.

Where the book fails is in the more obvious Judeo-Christian imagery it employs and in the vagueness of Parker's doctrine. Taylor has lifted much of Parker's thoughts from the legendary anonymous Anarchist group CrimethInc, but there is not enough of it to make them credible and so the belief in something so insubstantial seems forced and unrealistic. The other problem is one of narrative structure. The plot is episodic and some of the jumps in time jolting. The denouement is somewhat unsatisfactory and the majority of the characters aren't fully rounded enough for us to really care what happens to them.

Over all the novel feels like a stepping stone between a good short story writer and a good novelist. Taylor is certainly one to watch for the future and I predict his next novel to be a corker, but The Gospel of Anarchy isn't quite there yet.

Amazon Customer

pasable

Reviewed in Mexico 🇲🇽 on January 13, 2015

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No me resulto novedoso ni en temática ni en la proseguir del autor . Bien pueden saltárselo. Vale la pena .

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