An acclaimed writer reckons with his relationship with his troubled father--an unflinching memoir in the tradition of Dani Shapiro, Maggie Nelson, and Daniel Mendelsohn
Justin Taylor is the author of the short story collections Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and Flings, and the novel The Gospel of Anarchy. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Sewanee Review, n+1, The New York Times Book Review, and LitHub. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
“Taylor’s memoir is an admirable quest to answer a question that,
for many children of parents who struggle against darkness, is
almost unanswerable. ‘How do you save a drowning man who doesn’t
want a life preserver?’ . . . It’s a story told with
heart and deep self-reflection, steeped in philosophy and questions
about faith.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Taylor jumps back and forth in time, treading carefully and
precisely through the delicate territory of his father’s suicidal
depression, never veering into the sentimental as he works toward
understanding.”—BuzzFeed
“This is a book about life, dedicated to the joining of what’s been
separated—the Jewish past and the American present, art and
academia, fathers and sons—which in these pages become as mutually
reliant as lyrics and music. This, come to think of it, might be
the secret form to which all of Justin’s work aspires: that divine
recombined form of story and memoir called ‘song.’”—Joshua Cohen,
Jewish Currents
“As a memoirist, Taylor is thoughtful, measured, and
unflinching.”—Full Stop
“One of the year’s most impressive books.”—Largehearted Boy
“Justin Taylor’s relentless, peripatetic, and tender search for
reconciliation with his late troubled father blooms into a
full-throated song of joy about his own life lived through music,
teaching, travel, and literature. Riding with the Ghost is
gorgeously layered and deeply felt.”—Lauren Groff, author of
Florida
“An atmospheric, openhearted memoir of great range and ambition.
Like his literary hero Denis Johnson, Taylor fearlessly swings from
the gutter to the stars and back again in this precisely observed
meditation on love and loss.”—Jenny Offill, author of Weather
“In propulsive readable prose, Justin Taylor does something that
most people would find impossible: He delves through grief and
trauma to find the true story of his own troubled, brilliant
father, and to trace the ways that his father’s influence shaped
and warped his life and his family. Without being at all polemical,
Riding with the Ghost has much to teach us about masculinity,
patriarchy, and family in America.”—Emily Gould, author of Perfect
Tunes
“From the East Coast to the West Coast to the Gulf Coast, Riding
with the Ghost is a classic American road narrative, an intimate
portrait of a father, the story of an artist’s coming-of-age, a
statement of faith, and a requiem for all those who have touched
our lives yet left too soon. Justin Taylor is a master storyteller,
and his voice resounds.”—Sarah Gerard, author of True Love
“In this deeply reflective, sensitive narrative . . . there’s
plenty of additional insightful observations about the stories we
tell ourselves and the differences between the way we shape a story
and the way we live our lives. A greater literary achievement than
Taylor’s impressive fiction.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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