Mark Bibbins sent this to me while I was talking to him
I went to the bar with Mark Bibbins after class. He bought my first drink and then he bought my second drink and possibly my third. I don’t remember. I asked him about Gertrude Stein and he told me about Gertrude Stein but no great conclusions were arrived at. No, wait. One great conclusion was arrived at. I came to the realization that when Gertrude Stein said “when painting becomes abstract it becomes pornographic” she was talking about pornography in the 1930s and not the pornography I usually look at. But I’m getting ahead of myself. When we sat down, an actress walked in and Mark recognized her. She walked over to Dean, the bartender, hugged and kissed him. Mark said they were making out. Then the realization happened. Then we talked about money, power, and domesticated animals. Mark has a cat named “The Pagoda.” I remember being amazed at how good the name “The Pagoda” is, yet not acknowledging this in any way to Mark other than a brief nod of my head. I talked a lot of shit about nearly every person in my MFA program in harsh and intolerant ways. I tried to draw a picture of a cat on a napkin and failed and continued to do this over and over. I made Mark do this with me. Justin Taylor appeared. I don’t think he recognized me with my beard on. I made Mark introduce us for fun. We talked about a few things. I talked to another person. It became late. I don’t remember leaving the bar. I took the wrong train and ended up in the wrong part of Brooklyn. I could have easily taken another train and gotten home quickly, but instead I took the train back to where I had originally gotten on and just started over. It took a very long time. I’m going to be blogging here now. Sup with you?
Official Word Made Flesh Book Trailer Now Officially Official (and Live!)
Uncategorized / 33 Comments
September 8th, 2010 / 11:37 am
September 8th, 2010 / 11:37 am
A Few Thoughts on Promotion
A few weeks ago Justin Taylor’s book, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever, was threatening the NY Times bestseller list. It was, like, #1000 in sales at Amazon. My first thought was, HYPE. I thought, “Nah, it can’t be all that good, it’s just a book, who cares, he’s not my friend, I’ll buy it but whatever, HYPE.” I’d seen an ad for it on the back of Book Forum. HYPE.
BUT DAMN. READ MORE >
Worlds Collide!!!! aka “Justin Taylor is Cool”
You know what I love? Waking up to a Google alert that has a story in it called “Justin Taylor is Cool.” Who wouldn’t love that? So imagine my surprise when I clicked through and wound up at something called the Reformation21 blog. It’s a post about me and my doppelganger, Justin Taylor of Crossway Books, a preacher from Wheaton, Ill about whom I’ve blogged many times, and whose awareness of my existence I’ve frequently been given to speculate about. Well it seems all but certain that he knows about me now, and furthermore, this post by Stephen Nichols seems to make clear once and for all that he is not my doppelganger, but rather that I am his. Since it’s a short post it is reproduced in full, but you might as well see Ref21 for yourself.
So here I am thumbing through my latest copy of Paste catching up on the latest Indie and post funk metal ska offerings and there it is:
“Justin Taylor’s first short story collection” . . . “artfully captur[ing] the view of the 2000s.” Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever–great title, despite being riddled with theological problems.
Apparently our Justin, “Editorial Director at Crossway and follower of Christ” by day, is a Brooklyn-living professor of writing at Rutgers on the side.
I knew someday being Justin’s friend would raise my HQ (hip quotient for those not in the know).
Stephen, if you’re reading this- thanks for the shout! And yes, EHITBTE presents something of a theological problem–hardly beside the point, btw. You might think about it as an intentional release of the self-destructive powers of the exponential and the recursive onto Leibniz’s notion that “all is for the best in the best of all possible wolds.” Not that that solves anything- but solving problems is your homeboy’s line of work. Mine is causing them. Seems like we’ll work together splendidly. And Justin, if you’re out there, pleased to meet your acquaintance! I’m really sorry I keep putting out books that have titles that sound like they could be your books- The Apocalypse Reader, and the (forthcoming novel, provisionally entitled) The Gospel of Anarchy. We have things in common! I love GK Chesterton! And Kierkegaard! And I just got my copy of The Axioms of Religion by Hobbes and Mullins in the mail today and am very excited to read it. Let me know if you ever want to chat about the history of American Baptist thought and sectarianism.
Blake Butler—
Our boy Justin has a nice long podcast interview at Breakthru Radio, regarding mostly his on-fire Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever. He also reads a full story from the book for your listening pleasure. If you haven’t caught wind of Justin’s firestorms of praise, and by god, picked up a copy of this beautiful thing, well, you should think about it. It’s every inch the hype portends.
3
Literary Dopplegangers
Justin Taylor and Priestess singer/guitarist Mikey Heppner
Gain some weight. Grow your hair out. Off you go.
(Jimmy Chen blackmailed me into putting this up. Sooooo:
Berobed Jimmy Chen and berobed rapping Buddhist monk Mr. Happiness
Gain some weight. Keep your hair short. Off you go.)
Additional material after the cut. READ MORE >
Matthew Simmons—
Justin is on Electric Literature and the story’s kinda badass. E.g.: “I don’t know dick about Latin but some things are just obvious and sometimes I think that’s what God is: the obvious, resplendent and intractable and dumb.” (Sorry I didn’t notice this sooner.)
Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever
Having heard Justin read a few of the stories from here, and having read others in New York Tyrant, Canteen, and elsewhere, I can say that even if I weren’t friends with Justin, and a labelmate, I’d be pretty fucking excited about his forthcoming book, Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever. You don’t have to listen to me though, here’s 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.”
You can preorder it now. It’s under $10 on Amazon. Or you can go direct to the publisher. Yes. Excited.
Who Is Justin Taylor?
I’m not about to tell you, except for this: Justin Taylor is very dear to me, and I to him. He even dedicated his–wait for it–chapbook to me. No joke. Some days, we are engaged to be married. We’ll have an early-morning wedding, family only, with a luncheon of cold meats and fowls following. But you don’t know me too well, either, so none of that info should really affect what I’m soliciting from you.
Knowing Justin heaps better than any one of you, I always love to read all the inaccurate insults hurled at him by HTMLGiant peeps. But there haven’t been nearly enough this Mean Week, for my liking. I would like to provide one place, right here, to collect all the wild misconceptions, ad-hominem attacks, and elaborate speculations. I’m especially interested in the latter. It seems that people here have especially detailed mental images of who this man is. Please share, right here, at the end of Mean Week. Don’t hold back. It’ll be more fun than hating on Tao Lin (are they really roommates!?!?!), I promise, because Mr. Taylor is more truly our own.
My name has never sounded sexier.
Dead ringer.
I’m not sure how many people know this already, but “Justin Taylor” is–among other things–also the name of a fictional character from the now-defunct TV show Queer as Folk. What’s NOT defunct is the stream of fan-fiction concerning Justin’s relationship with Brian Kinney. There’s tons of it being produced and published, almost entirely on Livejournal. Often times they move the characters into new environments/situations/worlds, such as a sci-fi-ish future or else, as in today’s offering, a high school that’s also somehow “like Muppet Babies.” In the grand tradition of slashfiction, all of this *ahem* literature is known by the collective title of Brian/Justin fiction, or, simply–and perfectly, am I right?–BJ fic. How do I know all this? Uh, own-name Google alert–anybody? Here’s an extract from chapter two of QAF Babies (click anywhere to get swept away to QAFland):
I smile. “Justin. Justin Taylor.”
He repeats slowly, “Justin Taylor.” My name has never sounded sexier.
In response, he asks playfully, “Why shouldn’t I take home ec? Where else will I learn how to cook my man a hearty meal, balance his checkbook, care for all our adopted babies, and darn his socks?”
I stare at him blankly. After a minute or two, he chuckles. “Maybe I just want to ogle your hot ass as you bend over to put cookies in the oven…”
Haut or Not: contributor couplet
Justin Taylor
Of course there’s Barthelme — and Lish, and Brautigan, and Markson — these writers are not knee-jerk ambivalent with form, but better, curious about its malleability. They always nodded to the past, full circle. A hot rating is likely, if not inevitable, but what concerns me more is that pile of rubber bands, the Grateful Dead box set, and the array of book marks. Justin, please don’t tell me you’re one of those bookish hipster kids who wear rubber bands like a bracelet. If those function any way as cock rings, congratulations, your girth is unyielding. I had to google St. Mark’s Bookshop and it’s a pleasure imagining you perusing the shelves (we all love that glue and pulp smell) but must you take a complimentary bookmark every single time? Or are those testament to each book you bought there? As for the Grateful Dead — to borrow a line from my mother whenever she heard Motley Crue coming out of my room, “I can smell them from here.” Free love is okay, free drugs is probably better, but these guys were just annoying. I do give Justin props for boldly fracturing his rubber band bracelet image. Should we ever see Justin with a beard, we’ll know that shit ain’t Walt Whitman. Nah, it’s positively Haight Street. How about this for a c/o Lish title: Will you please take a shower, please?
Also…
Justin, get your ass back to HTMLGiant and get to work.
(Our own Justin Taylor has a post up at Dennis Cooper’s blog, The Weaklings, about X-ing Books.)
(A prize package to anyone who can correctly guess the significance of the image on top of this post. Books and stuff.)
