Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever: Stories

by Justin Taylor

“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 A collection of prophetic, provocative, and dazzlingly written stories by Justin Taylor, an important new voice in literary fiction and "a new literary beast." (Padgett Powell, author of The Interrogative Mood ) Each story in this crystalline, spare, and moving collection cuts to the quick. Taylor’s characters are guided by misapprehensions that bring them to hilarious, often tragic impasses with reality. A high school boy's desire to win over a crush leads him to experiment with black magic. An assistant at a hedge fund is torn between the girl he loved in college and the older man whose attention he craves. A fast food employee preoccupied by Abu Ghraib grows obsessed with a co-worker. While his girlfriend sleeps, a Tetris player tries to beat his record, nevermind that out their window blazes the end of the world. Fearless and wild, the stories of  Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever  are held together by a thread of wounding humor and candid storytelling that marks Taylor as a distinct and emerging literary talent.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Short Story Collection, Literary Fiction, American

185 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Justin Taylor is the author of the novel “The Gospel of Anarchy” and the story collection “Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever.”

The Millions called “The Gospel of Anarchy” a “bold casserole of sensual encounter and deranged proclamation… Loudly, even rapturously, Taylor succeeds in making the clamoring passion of his characters real, their raw, mercurial yearning a cry for ‘a world newly established.’ In terms of acts of God, The Gospel of Anarchy is a tornado, tearing up the hill where rock ‘n roll and cult meet.”

And the New York Times raved that “Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever ” is a “spare, sharp book” which “documents a deep authority on the unavoidable confusion of being young, disaffected and human. … [T]he most affecting stories in … 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.”

His stories have been published in many shitty literary journals, and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, BookForum and The Believer, among other publications.

He lives in New York.

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yo, Justin! Over here, dude.

Sorry to have to tell you this, bro. I was happy to overlook the obvious points working against you - the quintessential hipster bio, that disturbing glint of naked ambition in your jacket photo, the cover puff quote by a former talent gone seriously awry (Padgett Powell*), the information that you are working on your first novel and that you live in Brooklyn. Because everyone deserves a chance, so I gave you one.

But you blew it, bro. Big time. Turns out you had absolutely nothing interesting to say. Maybe you were just following the advice someone passed on to you in some benighted Creative Writing workshop - the old chestnut "Write what you know". But you know what, if someone did tell you that, they need to be beaten severely around the head with a cluestick. Because it's totally bogus. It encourages people like you, who are not completely without talent, in the misguided belief that the world needs further documentation of the angst-ridden antics of you and your hipster buddies. That more trees need to die so that even more time can be wasted writing about what is probably the world's least interesting and most overexamined cohort.

But here's the thing. It's hard for me to imagine anything duller than yet another fifteen stories in which all the characters resemble you and your friends. I don't care that you didn't manage to sleep with the goth chick . Or how it made you feel. For crying out loud! Don't write about "what you know". Make something up, would you? Better yet, join the Peace Corps. Go teach some kids in China. Help out in Darfur. If you could just stop navel-gazing for a while and turn your talent outward, then maybe, just maybe, you might manage to write something of broader interest.

Because this collection, yet another solipsistic look your hipster friends, is something only a mother could love.

[Larry H · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm becoming more and more a fan of short story collections than ever before. It's funny—what I used to find most problematic about short stories, the fact that I would get invested in characters only to have to give them up within a few pages, I'm starting to enjoy more and more. A good short story collection really gives you insight into many memorable characters and situations, and while there are certain stories you wish to be longer, the collection is often like a buffet—sometimes there will be things you really like and other times you hope the stories will pass quickly.



Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever definitely upheld the buffet notion for me. Justin Taylor is a young writer with tremendous, tremendous promise. There are some absolutely fantastic stories in this collection, which features mostly twenty-somethings as main characters. As you might imagine, some of the stories touch on disillusionment, dysfunction and a general lack of motivation, but many of these stories are beautifully written. Some of my favorites include Tennessee, a story of family dysfunction and the need for belonging; The New Life, in which a teenager turns to the supernatural to try and keep his crush from slipping away; What Was Once All Yours, which combines religion and typical high school behavior with fantastic results; and In My Heart I Am Already Gone, in which a fairly rudderless guy is offered money from his uncle to kill their sick cat. I like that Taylor isn't afraid to draw his characters as complex, flawed individuals. Not all of Taylor's stories work; I am not a fan of really experimental fiction and a few of the stories follow that vein, but many stories are very brief, so it isn't too much of a challenge to muddle through.



If you enjoy short stories, I'd definitely recommend this collection. And I look forward to seeing what Justin Taylor accomplishes as his career progresses!

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bought at a used bookstore in (according to the receipt I used as a bookmark) 2017, out of a vague sense that I remembered the author's name from the online lit scene of a few years before (HTMLGIANT, Alt Lit Gossip, Hipster Runoff, all now gathering digital dust), and only read it now. It did in fact take me back to that scene, from which Tao Lin is probably the biggest name (although Taylor seems to have fared well: his most recent novel carries praise from Jenny Offill, Lauren Groff and Joshua Cohen). This collection bears all the hallmarks of the genre, for good and ill. (The title, diegetically introduced as graffiti in the first and last stories, is a good indicator.)

It is, above all, irony poisoned: no-one is ever excited, enthusiastic, or God forbid, sincere; they are 20-something ("CLASS OF 2000", one recalls), drunk and high, rootless; anarchist punk musicians, fast food employees, grad students, hobos. One exception works at a hedge fund: he pines unsuccessfully for a masochistic artist, who will not leave her boyfriend for him, before drunkenly acceding to an older gay man. With the exception of that story (set in NYC), the book's backdrop is the middle-class wasteland of Floridian suburbia (and occasionally Tennessee). One character attempts to learn magic, another becomes obsessed with Tetris during some sort of apocalypse, another (in a disappointingly obvious turn) becomes obsessed with videos of prisoner abuse from Abu Ghraib.

The influence of Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son shaped a generation of writers, who craved glassy eyes and dysthymic monotones as a mark of authenticity. Then the tide turned; the New Sincerity guys got going, David Foster Wallace wrote his essay on television, and it mostly seems to have gone the way of flannel and long male hair.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm still reading these because I don't read a book of short stories the way I read a novel. (I will say that while I'm reading, it's hard not to go on to the next story as if it were the next chapter.) These stories are so vivid, I feel like I'm falling into Harry Potter's pensieve when I start one, and I come out startled and not sure where I am. I checked the book out from the library weeks ago, and I just can't bring myself to turn it in until I finish it.

[PoorAlaska · Rating 1 out of 5]

Justin Taylor must have never met an actual human being in his life if he thinks people act or think the way he writes them to. The plots of his stories are so boring that I hope to God they aren't based on his real life, even tangentially. He writes about sex and women in a way that is not only misogynistic, but implies he himself must have never actually slept with one.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm pretty amused that some of the other reviewers complain about not liking the characters, or the reviews on the back cover. I don't have to like either to enjoy a book.

Justin Taylor's sense of timing in some of the stories is just amazing. And he usually leaves out just enough.

[Theresa]

Not to be a hater but if these stories can get published, then so can yours.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review copy

I sat down this morning to start ANOTHER collection of short stories, this one from author Justin Taylor. After completing it just a short 16 hours later, I was forced to admit two things: One, that I can really do some damage when I buckle down and focus on reading. Two, that I am also starting to enjoy short stories.

They are short and sweet. They get right to the point. There are no long-winded, uninteresting side-stories that pull you unwillingly away from the main plot. They don't have time for that. They are forced to be focused.

If you feel like you just aren't into the characters or storyline, you don't have to feel guilty wasting time on it. It's only a few pages long. And the author has multiple opportunities to catch your interest, to suck you in, to make you a fan.

Justin Taylor, who is currently at work creating his first full length novel, can certainly write. There is no doubt about it. While there are recurring themes in this collection (religion, drugs and sex being a few of the more obvious), each story truly stands alone as far as it's themes and messages are concerned.

In one story, we meet a man who is left to clean up the mess after angels steal his girlfriends soul. In another, a boy plays Tetris while watching as the Apocolypse destroy the world outside his window and his girlfriend sleeps on the floor. Many of Taylor's stories revolve around broken relationships. They are populated by people who are confused, lonely, heartbroken, or just don't care.

To be honest, his stories are populated by the exact same people I used to sit back and watch destroy themselves in high school. People who were just outside my social circle. Friends of my friends. Faces you recognized from party to party. They were the kids in the background, dropping acid or smoking pot, curling into the fetal position and crying when they had a bad trip. Hitting on everyone, sometimes on anyone, but not willing to commit when their overtures were returned. Or turning suicidal and stalkerish when their love-calls were ignored.

A very quick read, a must read for people who are already fans of short stories.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is probably more like a 3-star book, but it's my own attitude that takes off another star; I've reached the end of my rope with it. If you're wondering what people mean when they derisively refer to "MFA fiction," look no further than this book. All the hallmarks are here: A lot of promising stories peter off into abstraction and irony, that tendency to flip the switch just when a story is moving into genuine emotion, and the obvious homages to our postmodern forefathers (Barthelme, in this case) without really touching on why Barthelme was so good in the first place.

The problem is that the New York lit-crit echo chamber will fawn all over this book, so you can expect more of this from Taylor in years to come.

[Mike Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Openhearted like open all night, honest and going for it. Stories of the admittedly carbonated and flavored by corn syrup, but unapologetic and casting for a durable humanity, a huggable faith.

[Alison Hardtmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I could use another drink," she says. She only had a few before closing, and then one while she cleaned up. I say I'll have one too and she eyes me, deciding whether to start in on the question of if I need another. I don't, probably, no, I know I don't, but if she doesn't start in--she doesn't--I will have what I want, which is different from what I need: what a surprise.

The characters in Justin Taylor's short story collection are generally young, working menial jobs and are definitely not hipsters living in Brooklyn. From a lonely teenage asked to do something unpleasant by the uncle who had welcomed him into his family, to a guy working at the deli counter who is involved with a married woman, each story looks at all the ways people connect and fail to connect with each other. As in any collection, some stories are better than others, but all are well-written and even the less successful stories are trying to do something interesting.

Judge has nothing to do with this story. He wasn't even at home. We let ourselves in, swiped a six-pack from his fridge, and went back to Joe Brown's. Judge is simply a character on whom I can't help but dwell some. Something pulls my thoughts back his way. He inspires loathing so pure, to be silent about it seems no less a crime than denying love.

[Matthew Brady · Rating 4 out of 5]

funny & heartbreaking, exactly what I was hoping it would be.

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the downsides to short story collections by a single author is that, if there are a number of stories with similar plots and aspects, they can all blur together in your head. You read the last story, then look at the table of contents and wonder how you possibly read all of these, when you can't remember a single thing that happened in any one of them until you read their opening lines again. Sometimes the stories are all distinctive enough so this isn't a problem, and usually there are at least a few notable stories to keep you from feeling too confused about what all the stories were about.

Then there's Taylor's Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever, in which I have three out of fifteen stories starred because I enjoyed them, while the rest I expect I'll never read again. The characters aren't particularly interesting, much less inspiring of emotional resonance; their plights revolve around relationships that are as boring as they are predictable; the details of their lives add more to the word-count than to character depth; and when anything does happen in any of these stories, it's only in the last few pages, and not nearly meaningful enough to slap me in the face and get me interested again.

Occasionally, Taylor dips into slipstream territory, with a couple stories about what could be the end of the world approaching outside, a tale of angelic kidnapping, and a short piece reminiscent of Lydia Davis about doppelgangers of a sort - these entries, while not perfect, at least add a thrilling detail to the world that Taylor handles with appropriate gravity and subtlety. As for the majority of his stories, however, I count this as a collection worthy of keeping on my bookcase, but only as a model of how short stories shouldn't be written.

[D.W. Lichtenberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book both because I'd heard it was great (the hype around it was big, at least) and because I was genuinely interested from a business/cultural point of view as to why it was so popular, a first book of short stories by a relatively unknown author whose main connection to the indie lit world was through HTMLGiant.com and the (somewhat insular) Brooklyn scene.

There were some real gems in this collection, and Taylor is obviously a talented writer with more to come. But there was ultimately nothing in these stories that stood out amongst the scores of other mfa-style short stories that are published in very good literary journals throughout the country. And as a cohesive whole, the stories did not necessarily illuminate each other or take on more complexity.

After reading this book, my most valuable take-aways are about the nature of success in the literary fiction world. Taylor published with a major house, with a somewhat traditional approach to promotion, mixed with a huge online presence amongst writers that surely got him a lot of press and branded his book as something new and exciting. There's nothing in these pages that calls out to his audience to champion this book as young, new, a voice of a generation, but the publicity and attention around the book led me to have those expectations and go out and purchase the book. It's a lesson an indie writer like myself needed to be taught and brings up a lot of further questions.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

"She was worrying that the oak tree might come through her ceiling, wood obliterating wood, like a miracle running backward" (2).
"The shallow hole was surrounded by salvaged chairs and shaded by a blue canvas canopy they'd stolen from some resort because property was always already theft anyway, and plus they had really wanted that canopy" (17).
"Not having cable wasn't a statement. Maybe the statement was being made by the people who paid out a monthly portion of their slave wages for endless infomercials and Wolf Blitzer" (19).
"He lifted her and carried her through the rain like a husband with a wife or a monster with a cherished victim" (23).
"She popped in a Marilyn Manson tape. Excluding that noise, we rode back to our neighborhood in silence" (28).
"But I don't know that I ever totally believed that explanation, even though I was the one who made it up" (91).
"The Leah in my head is very impressed" (115).
"But probably we will never again meet face-to-face, in real life.
I mean, if I knew he was going to be somewhere I wouldn't go.
Real life. What a funny concept. When I think about it--This is it! Happening! Now! Andnowandnowandnow!--" (128).

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like I owe this a review? I felt shy about doing one at the time I read it (September '10), but here we go:
I read almost every story twice. This collection is great, and for those who are skeptical of my biases, I read this before that and it blew me away, so there. My favorite story in EHITBTE, and one of my favorite (favorite seems weird to say about things that are good because they make you uncomfortable, so let's say one of the best) stories I've read anywhere, is "Jewels Flashing in the Night of Time." Hits you in the gut from the opening paragraph, and it messed my head up maybe permanently (to me that's a good thing). The meat slicing; the description of her being lifted, spun, and pushed; "this is what you wanted, right."

Other favorite scenes: Leah at the fridge, the end of "The New Life," the adult realization it's not about if either of you come, liking being a regular, quoting David Berman and "she was a girl again," when you realize he sort of wants to fuck his cousin, and more.

Get a taste for free then go buy it:
"Tennessee" http://www.fiftytwostories.com/?p=1112
"Estrellas y Rascacielos" http://www.fiftytwostories.com/?p=1720

[Amanda Davidson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this on the recommendation of a friend--first encounter: found and read two stories from the collection online. Thought: he's taking everything he has and flinging it at the page! Exciting, vital, honest, a punk analysis that was inside and outside that point of view all at once, a suburban perspective that was similarly (and queasily) compassionate and ridiculous. Gave me vital feeling of wanting to get it all down, all my own clashing, ridiculous, serious, contradictory worlds. Wonder if part of excitement arose from context, as I read them while at Ida, in a structure with screen for walls and lush woods all around, or in a barn with compost smells wafting in, and the Tennessee hollow big and green outside. Read rest of book in a big gobble between Brooklyn and upstate NY. Excited for bisexual content on a major press. Did not find total high octane energy throughout the collection. Will revisit and review impressions.

[Jeff Talbott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's where I wish goodreads had a half-star - this is more than a 3-star book, but it's not a 4-star-er... This collection of shorts from an incredibly talented twenty-seven year old shows so much promise that it almost carries you over the spots where you can't help but notice yourself reading a twenty-seven year old's first collection of shorts. Writing with a spare, slective pen, Justin Taylor could turn out to be a major voice - even in the most lackadaisical of the stories here he can turn out a lean, unexpected sentence that just takes your breath away. He captures the disaffected voice of young people on the brink of no longer being young unlike anybody I've read in the last couple years. If that voice isn't always in service of the most propulsive narrative, it hardly seems the point. This guy is someone to watch.

[Hannah Garden · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my 500th Goodreads book! And it is a good one. It's got that stripped down quality I like to find in short fiction, that nice low Carvery hum--matter of fact and yet not immune to beauty, a cool little cage of oddities and sadnesses and brutalities and accidents and disappointments. If you were a teenage Floridian who got fucked up too much like a dirtball or mini sociopath junior because everything was boring and weird and then you moved to New York and just tried to get fucked up like a normal grownup and hang out with whoever because everything was so hard and weird, these stories will probably float your boat pretty good. Also you will likely also like it if neither of those things is true about you and but rather you simply enjoy super good short stories. Also holy SHIT Padgett Powell blurbed it, that is BAD. ASS.

[LaRaie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. No thanks. I couldn't make it all the way through, honestly. If the first story wasn't bad enough (second person, mundane, generally unappealing, weak) I had to read about some gross guy vaguely sniffing his cousin's underwear after he drowns her cat. I felt icky and unsatisfied. Is this what the author was going for, that feeling of remorse you get after having a bad make out session with someone out of boredom? Well, maybe that's the whole damn point. But I don't want to revisit those kinds of moments in my life. I would sooner just read a good book.

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor, besides being a book with an incredibly long title, is a collection of short stories, basically about hipsters being unemployed doing unglamourous things. The book is small, topping off at 185 pages. The stories are gritty. Some I related with and some I did not.
Read the rest of my review here

[Cathleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I put this down more than once, and after a few days I would pick it up and try again. I just can't do it anymore. Most of the reviews gush about the author's clean and evocative prose, and I might even agree. However, I refuse to subject myself any longer to a string of stories that mistake shock value for depth.

[Alexandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Immature twenty-something man rambles about drinking and sex with a strange nod to Henry Miller.

I picked this book up at a book swap, interested enough to take it home after reading the blurbs comparing the writing to that of Philip Roth and (!!) Donald Barthelme. I don't get the hype.

[Griflet · Rating 1 out of 5]

Everything here is not the best thing ever.

[Alyssa DeCerce · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting writing style but creepy

[Shelby]

DNF. I love Flings, but this first collection of stories is truly awful.

[glasses like clark kent · Rating 1 out of 5]

underwhelming

[mia · Rating 1 out of 5]

just because you technically CAN write a book, doesn’t necessarily mean you SHOULD. some of the stories in this book were alright, but the way the author writes about women is just fucking creepy. why was it necessary for the literal first page to describe panty-shots, and for the second story to have a guy sniffing and stealing his kid cousins underwear? and then for almost every tale after that to follow this gross trend? every story includes some kind of remark or situation that feels downright predatory, and none of the characters feel real or give the audience any kind of space to form an emotional connection to. it simply felt like he was writing these scenes for the fun of it, and not because they lead anywhere plot-wise, which feels degrading and insulting. this book to me is the equivalent of people thinking just because they have a lot to say they’d make a good podcast host, which is unfortunate for the rest of the human population, but i digress. the writing itself is not necessarily horrible, but the content and general tone make me unable to appreciate any subpar prose on any given page, and i simply cannot fathom why there are so many creepy and gross comments about women in all but one or two stories :/

[Emily Jelinek · Rating 1 out of 5]

There were 3 stories from the collection that I found pretty interesting and nearing enjoyable, but unfortunately the collection overall wasn’t for me. The writing style seemed too sparse and quick, like he wanted to hit the high points with an overview instead of fully diving in. That being said, I’m not sure I would have enjoyed a deep dive. I just did not like the content of the stories. After many of them I found myself asking, “but what was the point? What was I supposed to have gained from that?” There were a few times I definitely connected with his writing and I do think he’s very talented and even worth the read if for no other reason than to be exposed to a unique writing style and story telling technique. I am glad I gave this book a try, but I personally don’t think I’ll be searching out more of his work.

[Smiley III]

'Everything Here' is ... for gosh sakes, good!!!

Like the sustained, mind-quiet state you're supposed to sustain writing fiction ... it's not some other medium ... dispassionately noticing, emotionally and culturally, how the impacts affect the minds and bodies of the characters ... Justin Taylor's 'Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever' charts us a court to where were living, anyway, but never noticed ... "Hey, I'm like that, but it's different over here [locale-wise]" ... Adding to the cannons of William Gibson, DeLillo, and Pynchon but more like anarchists' fiction ... great!