A beautifully written book which reads as a collection of intertwined short stories. Taylor has such a gorgeous way with words, this is some of the most stunning prose I have ever read. That being said, I did struggle with the layout of the book a bit, and it felt quite difficult to get through in parts

The book is actually a series of inter twined stories about a group of post grad students as they are about to launch themselves out in the "real world. None of the group are very likeable, or even that interesting, they are all edges and not really friends to one another. I found it all a bit depressing and not as cohesive and well observed as the other book by Brandon Taylor I've read called "Real Lfe" which was also about University friends.

A fascinating and intriguing book composed by short stories about different post grad students. The storytelling and the style of writing are superb.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

A beautifully written book which reads as a collection of intertwined short stories. Taylor has such a gorgeous way with words, this is some of the most stunning prose I have ever read. That being said, I did struggle with the layout of the book a bit, and it felt quite difficult to get through in parts.

This latest release by Brandon Taylor reads less like an elaboration and expansion of those themes and dynamics we can find in his previous works and more like a rehash that sadly doesn’t feel as focused, cohesive, or satisfying as neither <i>Real Life</i> nor <i>Filthy Animals</i>. That is not to say that this was an entirely ‘unsatisfying’ read but since I have come to hold Taylor in high esteem and I ‘just’ expected something <i>more</I> from him. In many ways, <i>The Late Americans</i> suffers from an identity crisis: does it want to be a coming-of-age novel following a group of grad students, friends supposedly, a la <i>Real Life</i>? Does it want to be a series of interlinked short stories like <i>Filthy Animals</i>? Could it be both? Maybe, but <i>The Late Americans</i> struck me as a somewhat clumsy attempt at merging these two different structures. With the exception of Seamus, each character is given one single chapter that favors their perspective. These chapters however felt somewhat unfinished, not quite meandering but unfocused, in a way that the short stories in <i>Filthy Animals</i> certainly didn’t. Not only do the many characters populating this novel all happen to have names that are a rarity, or at least not particularly used, in America (seamus, ivan, fyodor, goran, timo), but most of them seemed to be stuck in relationships with all-too-similar fraught dynamics, share the same area of studies or are in the same field (for instance, we have several dancers), and respond and articulate themselves in a manner that seemed strangely alike. If Taylor had focused on a smaller group of friends, like in <i>A Little Life</i>, as opposed to including a couple of people who are ‘friends’ and then some acquaintances or friends-of-friends, maybe then I would have felt more invested in these characters’ lives and their relationships with each other. While I was making my slow way through this I kept thinking how less impactful Happy Together would have been if it had focused on several dysfunctional couples/people rather than honing in on the perspective of three people.

But before I ramble on about the story, and why it ultimately didn't come together (for me), I want to praise Taylor’s style. His unadorned and exacting language intensifies the oppressive, uneasy, dynamics and situations that he explores throughout his narrative. The people Taylor writes of are lonely, unable or unwilling to express themes, their desires, and their fears, and often end up sabotaging their own happiness or their relationships by pushing people away or by picking up fights with them. Many of them are post-grads or in their late twenties and unsure of how to go from their lives as students, to the ‘real world’. Taylor touches on a lot of everyday issues and worries that preoccupy people in their twenties. Are they okay with the person they are? Is the path they are on the one they really want? What do they want out of a relationship? Taylor’s characters seem to perpetually long for connection but are unable to actually see, listen, and make themselves vulnerable to others. Miscommunication, perceived and real slights, insecurity, and jealousy, all of these add tension to the relationships they have with their friends and lovers. Taylor is unremitting when it comes to identifying and probing his character’s flaws, and when doing so he often adopts a clinically detached tone. Yet, despite the cold and impersonal language, there is also a vulnerability, an intimacy even, in the way he hones in on those feelings and thoughts. I will always love the way Taylor is able to articulate and capture those more opaque aspects of a person’s psyche, allowing, when necessary, for ambiguity. Taylor also has a knack for portraying uncomfortable, stultifying interactions, be it an encounter/exchange between two people or a scene taking place at a party or in a class. The discomfort at times it’s almost palpable, and it isn’t always clear what causes this but this uneasiness between his characters is certainly felt, all of the time. I appreciated how Taylor's portrayals of love and friendship are often unforgiving, in that they contain more moments of ugliness, pettiness, and selfishness than say kinship, trust, and kindness. Like in <i>Filthy Animals</i>, Taylor often draws parallels between his characters and animals, ‘beasts’, in a way that is not dehumanizing but that allows us to glimpse, and feel even, the intensity of what his characters are feeling. In addition to being able to bring his readers uncomfortably close to his characters, Taylor can switch to a panoramic view of the people populating his narrative, so that we see them as ‘mere’ players of a larger game, and we realize just how little control they have, or they feel they have, over their own lives.

<blockquote>“These sundry interruptions and redactions, all the skirmishes and misdirection. Like a dog finally catching its tail and chewing it down to the gristle.”</blockquote>

Whereas I read <i>Real Life</I>and <i>Filthy Animals</i> over a short period of time, as I found myself invested in the characters’ lives, <i>The Last Americans</i> was less compelling. With the exception of Seamus and Fyodor, I wasn’t drawn to the characters. Timo and Goran, these two guys were very much the same, and their (supposed) friendship only exacerbated my confusion. Then we have the dancers, Ivan and Noah (i think it was them), who are involved with people who, to put it simply, don’t treat them right. Ivan’s partner disapproves of Ivan earning money through pornography, yet he doesn’t seem particularly close or interested in Ivan himself, whereas Noah is with an older guy who resents younger gay generations.
There are three main ‘couples’, and the conflict between them was very much the same. They have different upbringings, different levels of education, different values, and they want different things in life.

Later on, we get two chapters from two women, and these read like a belated inclusion of a female's perspective in this otherwise male-dominated novel. Taylor is more uncertain, and tentative even, when it comes to their characterization, whereas he allows his male characters to be messier.
The character I felt the most invested in also happened to be the one we are probably meant to find least likeable, Seamus. The guy is a sad asshole, a white gay guy with poor social skills who happens to antagonize or set others on edge. Yet, what can I say, I find pathetic characters like Seamus strangely compelling (at one point we get this: "Seamus liked to be used this way. Sometimes he thought the only things he really needed in life were poetry and to be occasionally held down and fucked like dogmeat." and "It was a guy with reddish hair and sad brown eyes. He didn’t look like he belonged to anyone."). He gets two chapters, and I was fooled into believing that because of this we would be given by no means a neat resolution to his arc, but something more satisfying than what we got. Instead, he seems merely forgotten after his second chapter, in a way that was unkind.
A lot of his chapters are sadly wasted on detailing his experiences in this poetry class he goes to. I have said it before, and I will say it again, I am not a fan of creative writing spaces. But I would rather be in one than have to read a fictionalized writing/poetry class/seminar because, more often than not, the authors present us with caricatures of the kind of people that would be in these places. They use meaningless artspeak, usually, they attack the mcs writing or invalidate their work, they feel the need to use performative language to appear morally superior and so on. Sure, in real life, you might get one, two, or even three people, in your class who use buzzwords to appear more enlightened than others and wear edgy tote bags that announce that they don’t give a shit about your ‘fragile masculinity’ or whatever, but a whole class?
I just didn't get the point of those scenes. In a way we are meant to see just how wrapped up in himself Seamus is, how he often expresses himself in a way that riles people up, and of his struggles to produce poems that conform to his peers’ expectations: they see poems as inherently personal and political, a cathartic art form, a way to talk about their traumas and personal experiences, whereas Seamus finds the idea of mining his past or drawing from his own personal experiences as banal (i guess he is more of an art for art’s sake kind of guy). The tension between him and the rest of the class had potential, but Taylor goes too heavy-handed in his characterisation of these women who Seamus calls ‘witches’ (something that is meant to emphasize how childish and on the defensive he is with them but frankly felt fitting). They are insufferable. Horrible even but in a way that comes across as less ‘clever satire’ and more ‘unfunny caricature’…in fact I found Taylor’s portrayal of these women to be devoid of subtlety, worse, mean-spirited even, the kind of sketch that you’d expect from people who will go and on about ‘wokeness’ and ‘man-hating feminist’ who are liable to 'screech' 'stop oppressing me' whenever a totally decent guy is just being nice. Whenever Seamus would open his mouth, sure, sometimes to make some provocative comment, things would just escalate in a less credible way than say the other fights and disagreements that populate this novel. Seamus writes a poem about the war, (i or ii, I cannot recall), about a nun (i think it was a nun), and expresses frustration with the way the other poets in his class elevate and romanticize trauma (i also hate the kind of thinking that leads some to see trauma as character-building or a source of ‘depth’ or ‘specialness’...), this leads to him being accused of being racist, misogynist, victim-blaming, and so on. Sure, traumatic experiences can lead to the production/creation of cathartic art, and this can help someone heal or take ‘control’, or whatever, but here the women are unanimous in their consensus that trauma leads to meaningful art and that if you express negative or critical feedback is you are invalidating the poet’s experiences etc. I think that there was potential to have a discussion about what art is and what art ought to be, but Taylor makes these women into such obvious one-note figures that I had very hard time 'believing' in them, let alone the opinions they expressed. Anyway, ironically enough, as they accuse Seamus of this and that and make disparaging comments about him and his poetry, they are themselves doing the ‘invalidating’.
I just hated these scenes, the women were too cartoonish, in their ganging up on Seamus, one of the only two male poets (at one point one continues to tell him ‘you don’t get to speak to me’). I wanted to learn more about him, to see him at his job where he makes clumsy attempts at talking to his colleagues, to see him outside of that cursed poetry class.
Yet, despite my hating the way Taylor portrayed this class, I did find Seamus to be the most well-developed character. He is very much flawed, lost, and seems resentful of the notion that being ‘privileged’.
I found his two chapters to be compelling, despite feeling uneasy about him or the way he behaves with others.

<blockquote>“But no one had a happy childhood. No one had a good life. Human pain existed in a vast supply, and people took from it like grain from a barn. There was pain for you and pain for you and pain for you— agony enough for everyone. The pain of his childhood was of such a common source that it embarrassed him. Perhaps it was this that he resented in the work of his peers. It wasn’t that their lives were worse than his or that his life was better than theirs— it was that they all had the same pain , the same hurt, and he didn’t think anyone should go around pretending it was something more than it was: the routine operation of the universe. Small, common things— hurt feelings, cruel parents, strange and wearisome troubles.”</blockquote>

The other character that stood out was Fyodor. He is a ‘townie’ who works at a ‘leaner’ in a beef plant, and he is in an on-and-off again relationship with Timo, who Fyodor describes as “irritatingly middle class” and who often picks fights with Fyodor over his job, how unethical it is, and so forth. The two are in a love/hate relationship, drifting apart, arguing over petty nothing-things, breaking up, missing each other, getting back together, and reverting to the same tired cycle where neither feels understood by the other. Sadly Fyodor is also forgotten even if we glimpse or hear of him in later chapters.

<blockquote>“Loving people was hard. It was difficult sometimes to believe that they were good. It was hard to know them. But that didn’t mean you could just go on without trying. What he believed was that love was more than just kindness and more than just giving people the things they wanted. Love was more than the parts of it that were easy and pleasurable. Sometimes love was trying to understand. Love was trying to get beyond what was hard. Love, love, love.”</blockquote>

The other lads, well. With the exception of the two girls, whose povs felt strangely ‘sanitized’ compared to the men, read very much too samey. I had a hard time distinguishing these guys from one another, and this wasn’t helped by the way they seem to use the same imagery or vocabulary to evaluate and understand the world around them, their sense of self, the currents of their relationships, sexual and non, and so forth. I just wished the novel could have focused on a smaller cast of characters, maybe switching between Fyodor and Seamus, or focusing on an actual group of friends because the whole dancer group did not strike me as actual friends.

While I do appreciate how Taylor explores power dynamics, codependency, alienation, loneliness, destructiveness, ennui, race and class disparities, as well as his cutting social commentary. As always he demonstrates a penchant for those inscrutable, occasionally petty, sometimes nasty feelings and urges that lead fights, heartaches, and misery. Yet, Taylor's critique of academia and his observation on the 'real world', lacked the urgency and depth of his other works.

Brandon Taylor writes what is in essence, a set of bleak interlinked short stories in what is disturbingly unsettling, meandering and claustrophobic storytelling, revolving around a collection of Iowa City University MFA post-graduate students, who in all honesty have little to recommend them, and at times it is hard to distinguish between them. They jar, with sharp edges, reflected in the style of the anachronistic prose, we are given a glimpse of who they are, primarily gay men focusing on different forms of the arts, their backgrounds, financial constraints, conflicts, thoughts, jobs they may hold, and the challenges confronting them.

In this coming of age novel, there are issues of class and race, and the links and connections between the students, their differing perspectives, the interactions of this loose group of flawed friends and lovers, and oh, yes, there is a lot of sex, if very little in the way of intimacy, as they come together, and move on. The cloud hanging over them is the imminent precarious and uncertain future that stretches before them, where identities become more solidified and more permanent, where decisions must be made as they enter the realities of the world outside. This is not a cosy or easy read, I felt discomfort, having to grit my teeth, to ensure that I completed the book.

However, whilst I might not have enjoyed the novel, it is thought provoking and human, and no doubt, it will resonate when it comes to particular types of university students, homophobia, attitudes to the arts and academic world, chaos, the sex, the fear, the intensity and tensions, trauma, suffering, lack of stability, living arrangements, violence, abuse, and the precarious nature of lives. This may not be a read for everyone, but for the right reader, it is likely to prove to be a worthwhile experience. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

The Late American reads as a collection of intertwined short stories, rather than your traditional novel, and for this collection of characters I think the format works wonderfully. The characters are fatally human; toxic, frustrating, passive agressive, but also really quite real. I didn't particularly like any of them, and I never really got the vibe that any of them particularly liked each other, but seeing these short snippets of their lives worked well, where I think a full novel really wouldn't have.

Overall, it's hard to really know what to say of the book. I did enjoy it. It's quite bleak, a bit miserable, but the prose itself was wonderful, and I enjoyed reading it for Taylor's skill with dialogue.