The Late Americans

Informationen zum Autor Brandon Taylor Klappentext INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE , ELLE, OPRAH DAILY, THE WASHINGTON POST, BUZZFEED AND VULTURE Erudite, intimate, hilarious, poignant . . . A gorgeously written novel of youth's promise, of the quest to find one's tribe and one's calling. Leigh Haber, Oprah Daily The Booker Prize finalist and widely acclaimed author of Real Life and Filthy Animals returns with a deeply involving new novel of young men and women at a crossroads In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. Among them are Seamus, a frustrated young poet; Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicate her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who didn't seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection. These four are buffeted by a cast of artists, landlords, meatpacking workers, and mathematicians who populate the cafes, classrooms, and food-service kitchens of the city, sometimes to violent and electrifying consequence. Finally, as each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former livesa moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered. A novel of friendship and chosen family, The Late Americans asks fresh questions about love and sex, ambition and precarity, and about how human beings can bruise one another while trying to find themselves. It is Brandon Taylor's richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life. Leseprobe 1. The Late Americans In seminar, grad students on plastic folding chairs: seven women, two men. Naive enough to believe in poetry's transformative force, but cynical enough in their darker moments to consider poetry a pseudo-spiritual calling, something akin to the affliction of televangelists. Outside, the last blue day in October. Snow in the forecast. They discuss "Andromeda and Perseus," a poem submitted by Beth, who has reversed the title of the Titian painting in order to center Andromeda's suffering rather than the heroics of Perseus-rapist, killer, destroyer of women. "The taking is as brutal as the captivity," says this squat girl from Montana. The poem spans fifteen single-spaced pages, and contains, among other things, a graphic description of period sex in which menstrual blood congeals on a gray comforter. This is designated "the Gorgon's mark," in relation to "the iron stain" left on Medusa's robes following her decapitation by Perseus. Around they go, taking in the poem's allusive system of images and its narrative density, the emotional heat of its subject matter, its increasing cultural salience re: women, re: trauma, re: bodies, re: life at the end of the world. "I love the gestural improvisation of it all-so very Joan Mitchell," says Helen, who had once been some kind of Mormon child bride out in a suburb of Denver, and who now lives above a bar in downtown Iowa City, writing poems about dying children and pubic lice. "I mean, like, so sharp, diamond sharp. Could cut a bitch, you know? God." Noli, nineteen, child prodigy. Disappointing her parents. Poetry instead of, what, medical school, curing cancer? "Totally. So raw, though. So visceral." "And heightened-" Mika, twenty-eight, Stevie Nicks impersonator in her bangles and boots and gauzy drapery. "-charged-up, high-voltage shit-" Noli again, so talkative today. So chatty. "Voice, voice, voice." Here, Linda, black from Tulsa. Braids. Glossy, perfect ski...

Autorentext

Brandon Taylor

Klappentext

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE, ELLE, OPRAH DAILY, THE WASHINGTON POST, BUZZFEED AND VULTURE
**
“Erudite, intimate, hilarious, poignant . . . A gorgeously written novel of youth’s promise, of the quest to find one’s tribe and one’s calling.” —Leigh Haber, Oprah Daily

The Booker Prize finalist and widely acclaimed author of Real Life and Filthy Animals returns with a deeply involving new novel of young men and women at a crossroads**

In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. Among them are Seamus, a frustrated young poet; Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicate her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who “didn’t seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection.” These four are buffeted by a cast of artists, landlords, meatpacking workers, and mathematicians who populate the cafes, classrooms, and food-service kitchens of the city, sometimes to violent and electrifying consequence. Finally, as each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives—a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered.

A novel of friendship and chosen family, The Late Americans asks fresh questions about love and sex, ambition and precarity, and about how human beings can bruise one another while trying to find themselves. It is Brandon Taylor’s richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life.

Leseprobe

1. The Late Americans

   In seminar, grad students on plastic folding chairs: seven women, two men. Naive enough to believe in poetry's transformative force, but cynical enough in their darker moments to consider poetry a pseudo-spiritual calling, something akin to the affliction of televangelists.

   Outside, the last blue day in October. Snow in the forecast.

   They discuss "Andromeda and Perseus," a poem submitted by Beth, who has reversed the title of the Titian painting in order to center Andromeda's suffering rather than the heroics of Perseus-rapist, killer, destroyer of women.

   "The taking is as brutal as the captivity," says this squat girl from Montana.

   The poem spans fifteen single-spaced pages, and contains, among other things, a graphic description of period sex in which menstrual blood congeals on a gray comforter. This is designated "the Gorgon's mark," in relation to "the iron stain" left on Medusa's robes following her decapitation by Perseus.

   Around they go, taking in the poem's allusive system of images and its narrative density, the emotional heat of its subject matter, its increasing cultural salience re: women, re: trauma, re: bodies, re: life at the end of the world.

   "I love the gestural improvisation of it all-so very Joan Mitchell," says Helen, who had once been some kind of Mormon child bride out in a suburb of Denver, and who now lives above a bar in downtown Iowa City, writing poems about dying children and pubic lice.

   "I mean, like, so sharp, diamond sharp. Could cut a bitch, you know? God." Noli, nineteen, child prodigy. Disappointing her parents. Poetry instead of, what, medical school, curing cancer?

   "Totally. So raw, though. So visceral."

   "And heightened-" Mika, twenty-eight, Stevie Nicks impersonator in her bangles and boots and gauzy drapery.

   "-charged-up, high-voltage shit-" Noli again, so talkative today. So chatty.

   "Voice, voice, voice." Here, Linda, black from Tulsa. Braids. Glossy, perfect skin. She went to UT Austin, did a PhD in physics at MIT. Finished. Or dropped out. Either way, here in Iowa with the rest of them. In some kind of tension with Noli, also black, also brilliant. Not …