Year: 2020
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Language: english
File: PDF, 1 Mo
PDF-Real Life by Brandon Taylor-PDF
Named one of the most anticipated books of the year by Entertainment Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, BuzzFeed, and many others.
A novel of astonishing intimacy, violence and pity among friends in a Midwestern university town, with a new electric voice.
Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern college town where he works tirelessly to earn a degree in biochemistry. A young introverted man from Alabama, black and homosexual, he left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has imposed a cautious distance, even within his own circle of friends - some go out together, some with women, others still feign righteousness.
But over a late summer weekend, a series of clashes with colleagues and an unexpected encounter with a white and apparently straight classmate conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing the currents of hostility and desire long hidden within their community.
Real Life is a novel with deep and lacerating power, a story that asks if it is really possible to overcome our private wounds, and at what cost.
PDF-Real Life by Brandon Taylor-PDF
Critical appreciation? Wikipedia
Real Life was generally well received by critics, including his colleagues Roxane Gay, Garth Greenwell and Danielle Evans,and Jeremy O. Harris wrote a "glowing review" in the New York Times. Eren Orbey, writing for The New Yorker, praised the novel for its description of Wallace's isolation, and for "providing his account with the precision of science and the intimacy of memories." Rather than resorting to satire or seeing his main character complain about micro-aggression, he illustrates "the relentless abrasion of dignity that is familiar to many people of color on these campuses." According to Orbey, if the fact that Wallace is distant from his friends, narrated by "disdainful observations", sometimes reduces even some of his best friends to the kind of schematic creations that appear under his microscope", his judgment is generally correct, and Wallace gets involved in this scheme.
According to Charles Arrowsmith, the title's "Real" also refers to "the insoluble, ineffable and capital of philosophy" and "what Wallace feels is the unknowability of his friends and the impenetrability of his own actions are functions of this kind of Real-ism." These "ambiguities," according to Arrowsmith, "are what makes Taylor's writing strong: his receptiveness to threat in everyday life, subcutaneous sexual vibrations, unconscious motivation." He also admired the fact that Taylor "deftly treats ... of what it's like to be different in an overculture." Slowly, sneakily, he makes a point of noticing that the "whites" undermine the unspoken rule of realistic fiction that race only needs to be mentioned when it is other than white", and that it "reverses with humour" racist tropes. Arrowsmith was less concerned with the "literary conscious" aspects of Taylor's writing and a certain inequality in Wallace's character, but concluded that "with a tighter editing and autobiographical impulse of his system, what Taylor will do next will be worth watching." Good reads
Barbara VanDenburgh, writing for USA Today, chose it as one of nine LGBTQ books to read for Pride Month, and Laurie Muchnick, in Kirkus Reviews, selected him as one of six "gay beginnings to read during Pride Month."
