The Gospel of Anarchy

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The Gospel of Anarchy (Original) Pub. Date: 2/8/2011 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

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.)

Kirkus Reviews

A cult emerges from a punk/hippie sanctuary in this mordant first novel from the author of the story collectionEverything Here Is the Best Thing Ever(2010).

Like other college towns, Gainesville, Fla., is a haven for alternative lifestyles. David is slow to catch on, but in his junior year, everything changes for this liberal arts major. A relationship ends; he loses interest in his courses; he stays home masturbating before his laptop, then throws it in the tub in self-disgust. Salvation comes when he runs into two Dumpster divers, Thomas and Liz.He knows Thomas from their suburban Miami childhood. They take him back to Fishgut, their dilapidated house with its floating population of punks. There he meets Katy, and his emancipation is complete. He's dropped out. She's a generous earth-mother type, as willing to share her body with this newcomer as with her girlfriend Liz. (Taylor writes sex wonderfully well.) She's also a self-styled Anarchristian, happily blending anarchy and Christianity, unlike those uptight Catholic students at the church reception they attend for a goof (and for the free food). What really fires Katy up is her discovery of a notebook buried in their yard. It belonged to Parker, Fishgut's mysterious founder. Katy takes its religious and philosophical ramblings as the ultimate truth, the Gospel. David, now her ardent disciple, edits it with her into a pamphlet, perfect for the Millennium (the story is set in 1999). Not everyone is sold; Thomas, an atheist Jew, leaves Fishgut for the Battle of Seattle after maliciously inserting a line of bull into the Gospel. Taylor's nimble analysis of these schisms recalls T.C. Boyle'sDrop City, but he lacks Boyle's sense of direction. That might have taken us to Parker, who remains an enigma, while Katy's further development stalls. Excerpts from the Gospel serve as filler, and momentum drains away among a variety of voices.

Taylor nails The Scene, but at the expense of the story.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780061881824
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 2/8/2011
Edition description: Original
Pages: 240
Sales rank: 1,160,863
Product dimensions: 7.80 (w) x 5.36 (h) x 0.60 (d)

Meet the Author

Justin 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.

Customer Reviews

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9252609

Posted October 9, 2011

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Occasionally compelling but essentially a pseudo-intellectual pile of crap. It was all I could do to force myself to get to the end. When it ended 7 pages before I expected it to my day was made.

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