"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. ( )

I was extremely disappointed with this collection of short stories. They were written well, for the most part, but there was a lot of potential in them that was never quite realized. ( )

Sometimes you really want to hate a writer.

For example, one reason to hate Justin Taylor is that his name is kinda like Justin Bieber's. The Justin part is the part that gets you. Also he's bound to be a quirky hysterical realist, which (I've always believed) is a trend today, especially among writers of my generation.

Yet Justin Taylor's debut is strong, albeit a bit uneven at points. But Taylor, at 28, brings a maturity in short story composition--a type Carveresque minimalism--that should be envy of every writer. See, for example, the opening of "A House in Our Arms:"
"We made it to New York.
That's how we put it when we talk about it with each other, even though it means something different to each of us, and even though we're both pretty used to it by now, I came straight from school, worked some crap jobs, then landed a decent one. It's at a hedge fund and I hate it, at least theoretically. In practice I find the more time I spend doing it the less I feel one way or the other. It's just what I'm doing, what I do. I work with nice enogh people. They started me out as an assistant but I'm already almost a junior manager. Who knows where I might wind up if I stick around?"

Like Carver, Taylor's narrators are aware of their own life standings. Yet unlike Carver, his characters these are younger people, kids who made it out from college and don't know what to do. Yet again, like Carver, there is a strong sense of floating here: these are stories of people who had the bad end of the deal, trying to figure out what to do. It's about class, yet it's not just about class.

It's concerns floating: the states in-between in a relationship and not, between going home and going to a new place, between the decision of going and staying. For example, in "A House In Our Arms," the narrator contemplates his sexual friendship with his lesbian best friend, while at the same time, sleeping with a man. In "Tennesse" the narrator ends up back with his parents' broken home (his father's lost his job) after trying to find himself and failing. In "Weekend Away" a woman runs away from her current lover after recieving (and not answering) a call from a former boyfriend; when she comes back she tells him: "I know you don't like hearing it but it's true, that's what I was thinking. There are so many places I've never even seen....So why can't I let myself say yes?"

Taylor's world is a world of conflation as well. Violence and sexual desire are the same ("Jewels Flashing in the Night Time); there is a difference between sex with someone you love and someone you might love, but you're not going to do much about it--or there isn't much you can do about it ("Whistle Through Your Teeth and Spit"). What is probably most refreshing about Taylor's writing is that he is fearless when it comes to sex. Compared to the male writers in Katie Rophie's essay, Taylor is pornographer: writing about bisexuality, threesomes, and phone sex; he writes it viscerally and with feeling.

Of course, some might be turned off by this, as well as Taylor's possible use of bisexuality as a metaphor for general confusion, and some of his more experimental works--"Tetris" and "Finding Myself" are almost like prose poems, "Jewels Flashing in the Night Time" reminds me of Daniel Scott's "Fellow Feeling" (his only terrible story in his short story collection) but only slightly better done. Some of his stories also do what stories shouldn't (jumping point of view in "Whistle Through Your Teeth and Spit," as one example), but Taylor proves to be a skilled writer: he pulls it all off. He makes it work. He'll remind you of Carver and Gaitskill, only younger, and not a drunk (not yet anyway) or a prostitute (again, not yet).

At the end, I still hate Justin Taylor. He wrote the book I wanted to write, before I got it written, and he wrote it better than I could have. It is more than enough reason to hate Justin Taylor. ( )

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.

Stylistically, Taylor is excellent. The words just seem to flow off the page. This book reminded me a bit of Chuck Palahniuk's writing. The people within are inherently flawed, I don't really care much for the characters, but I still want to know what happens because the words weave a spell.

My favorite story within Everything Here is The Best Thing Ever was Jewels Flashing in the Night of Time which basically involves this guy playing Tetris during the apocalypse. Tetris plus world-ending gets a giant thumbs up from me.

Aside from that, not much for me to say, as this was such a slim book without an overarching plot, or main characters. Just short stories, and if that's what you like, then I say, pick this book up.

"It was so thorough, almost as if he were trying to say that if he could no longer work in an office then by God he would keep such a spotless and ordered home that the family would come to see how his lost job had been a good fortune in disguise." - pg. 47
Story of my life. I currently work one day per week as I'm waiting to hear back about being approved to sub, and my current job doesn't have the budget to give me more hours. Therefore, I clean and read all day. Seriously.

"She is a magic trick and I am either the magician or the crowd" - pg. 155
Sparse, beautiful, me likey. ( )