{"product_id":"everything-here-is-the-best-thing-ever-stories-isbn-9780061881817","title":"Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever: Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“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 \u003cem\u003eEverything Here Is the Best Thing Ever\u003c\/em\u003e 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.” — \u003cem\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA 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 \u003cem\u003eThe Interrogative Mood\u003c\/em\u003e)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEach 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFearless and wild, the stories of \u003cem\u003eEverything Here Is the Best Thing Ever \u003c\/em\u003eare held together by a thread of wounding humor and candid storytelling that marks Taylor as a distinct and emerging literary talent.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003eJustin Taylor's crystalline, spare, and oddly moving prose cuts to the quick. His characters are guided by misapprehensions that bring them to hilarious but often tragic impasses with reality: a high school boy's desire to win over a crush leads him to experiment with black magic, a fast-food employee preoccupied by Abu Ghraib becomes obsessed with a coworker, a Tetris player attempts to beat his own record while his girlfriend sleeps and the world outside their window blazes to its end. Fearless and astute, funny and tragic, this collection heralds the arrival of a unique literary talent.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“The world here is desolate, sexual, and its people are possessed of a brave cheer and do not whine. This is not quaint blue-collar realism but something entirely more honest. There is a debt paid to Donald Barthelme, gratifying to see, and a strange undertow of Philip Roth, which makes for a new literary beast. Mr. Taylor has perfect touch, to frightening effect, does not presume, has power, and promises us new things.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePadgett Powell, author of The Interrogative Mood\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The characters in Justin Taylor’s stories may be lost, unmoored, out of control, but their creator is astonishingly sure-handed. He unerringly locates the center of these centerless lives, and discerns the shape of their shapelessness.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDavid Gates, author of Jernigan\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Taylor’s superb debut short story collection is explorative and fresh with well-crafted empathic characters....Each story is spare and clean and speaks the truth in beautiful resonant prose.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Beautiful lines leap from the pages, and we gladly enter Taylor’s vivid world, even as it transforms what we know about ourselves and others into something slippery and ever-changing.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePenthouse\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Taylor’s characters would like for time to both speed up and slow down - an impossible, inevitable wish that makes the moments he captures worth savoring.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookForum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“These stories of Gen Y, told with panache, dark humor, and technical flash will delight short fiction fans of all ages.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Dazzling...Taylor deftly captures the peculiar rhythms of the American vernacular.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSEE Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The book I keep comparing his collection to is another debut, Philip Roth’s \u003cem\u003eGoodbye, Columbus\u003c\/em\u003e....a fantastic debut collection.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePank magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“These stories...shine with tenderness, humor, and genuine insight.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBrooklyn Rail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A young author’s nearly perfect collection of short stories....leave[s] you amazed at the power of Taylor’s art and his ability to capture the heartbreak and hope for redemption that is the essential undercurrent of life.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBlogcritics.org\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The characters in Justin Taylor’s stories may be lost, unmoored, out of control—though they stubbornly refuse to despair of their own survival. But their creator is astonishingly sure-handed. Neither a sentimentalist nor a facile purveyor of emptiness, he unerringly locates the center of these centerless lives, and discerns the shape of their shapelessness.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDavid Gates, author of Jernigan\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“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.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePadgett Powell, author of The Interrogative Mood\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In his first book of short stories, Taylor hones a dark-humored and character-themed collection in the tradition of Mary Gaitskill’s \u003cem\u003eBad Behavior\u003c\/em\u003e or Denis Johnson’s \u003cem\u003eJesus’ Son\u003c\/em\u003e.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eOxford American\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“These short fictions by Justin Taylor give such a convincing account of the rough crossing of young adulthood that they practically induce seasickness. For his youthful protagonists, identity—emotional, intellectual, sexual—is unstable, constantly in motion.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Taylor flirts with poetic language, teasing us with lines so lusciously packed that even a tattoo’s description can set the page on fire.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookslut\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Justin Taylor does irony and snark and thwarted idealism uncommonly well.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHuffington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I’ll be surprised if we don’t find two standout pieces from this collection in prize-winning anthologies of 2010 short stories....Do we sense some sort of new fictional frontier?” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePaste Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“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 \u003ci\u003eEverything Here Is the Best Thing Ever\u003c\/i\u003e 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.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The most affecting stories in \u003cem\u003eEverything Here Is the Best Thing Ever\u003c\/em\u003e 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.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Whether Taylor is exploring youth, human bonds or fantastical scenarios, he displays a gift for illuminating the connections between the mundane and the grotesque.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTime Out New York\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“There’s something of a frustrated chuckle at play, which is how Taylor manages to avoid … cynicism and imbue his characters with that slight glimmer of hope.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTime Out Chicago\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Justin Taylor is a master of the modern snapshot.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper Perennial","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44887937810661,"sku":"NP9780061881817","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780061881817.jpg?v=1730227778","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/everything-here-is-the-best-thing-ever-stories-isbn-9780061881817","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}