What is Justin Taylor reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Justin Taylor, author of The Gospel of Anarchy.

His entry begins:

I hate to be the guy who talks about the book nobody else can read yet, but yesterday I read the galley of Rebecca Wolff's novel, The Beginners, which is out from Riverhead in June. The prose is incredibly lush, even hypnotic--and the story has this great dreamy pull to it. I actually forced myself to stop about thirty pages out from the end, because it was two o'clock in the morning and because I wanted to prolong the experience some, but when I woke up today the first thing I did was grab it off the nightstand and finish. It reminded me of Jenny Offill's Last Things (another book I read in a day, give or take) and one of Wolff's blurbers mentions Mary Gaitskill, which makes sense as well, but it's truly its own strange thing. I'm very much hoping to have the chance to write about it when it comes out.

A new book that you can actually get your hands on right now is...[read on]

Among the early praise for The Gospel of Anarchy:

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

"A brilliant debut novel you have to read."
--Details

"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."
--LA Times

"With fluidity and zest, Taylor dramatizes the dynamics of a socially invisible subculture."
--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."
--Brian Evenson, Bookforum

Learn more about the book and author at Justin Taylor's website.

Taylor edited the acclaimed short fiction anthology The Apocalypse Reader, and is the author of Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever, a New York Times Editors' Choice. The Gospel of Anarchy is his first novel.

The Page 69 Test: Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever: Stories by Justin Taylor.

Writers Read: Justin Taylor.

--Marshal Zeringue