Riding with the Ghost
A Memoir
(Sprache: Englisch)
An unflinching memoir from a writer reckoning with his relationship with his troubled father and the complicated legacy that each generation hands down to the next
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An unflinching memoir from a writer reckoning with his relationship with his troubled father and the complicated legacy that each generation hands down to the nextJustin 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. Lauren Groff, author of Florida
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS
When Justin Taylor was thirty, his father, Larry, drove to the top of the Nashville airport parking garage to take his own life. Thanks to the intervention of family members, he was not successful, but the incident forever transformed how Taylor thinks of his father, and how he thinks of himself as a son.
Moving back and forth in time from that day, Riding with the Ghost captures the past s power to shape, strengthen, and distort our visions of ourselves and one another. We see Larry as the middle child in a chilly Long Island family; as a beloved Little League coach who listens to kids with patience and curiosity; as an unemployed father struggling to keep his marriage together while battling long-term illness and depression. At the same time, Taylor explores how the work of confronting a family member s story forces a reckoning with your own. We see Taylor as a teacher, modeling himself after his dad s best qualities; as a caregiver, attempting to provide his father with emotional and financial support, but not always succeeding; as a new husband, with a dawning awareness of his own depressive tendencies.
With raw intimacy, Riding with the Ghost lays bare the joys and burdens of loving a troubled family member. It s a memoir about fathers and sons, teachers and students, faith and illness, and the pieces of our loved ones that we carry with us always.
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Death of an Heir of SorrowsMy father had decided that he would end his life by throwing himself from the top of the parking garage at the Nashville airport, which he later told me had seemed like the best combination of convenience that is, he could get there easily, and unnoticed and sufficiency that is, he was pretty sure it was tall enough to do the job. I never asked him what other venues he considered and rejected before settling on this plan. He probably did not actually use the word best. It was Mother s Day, 2013.
The date was not chosen for its symbolism. If anything, it was a rare instance of inattentiveness, strikingly out of character for a man who, generally speaking, had always been acutely sensitive if not always appropriately responsive to the feelings of others. Even now I cannot quite believe that he would neglect to consider the shadow his action would cast over future Mother s Days for his mother, children, and ex-wife, with whom by this point he was no longer actively acrimonious, though certain wounds of course had not yet healed (and still haven t, and won t). It is impossible for me to imagine how he failed to grasp all this; how, as a matter of courtesy abetted by a desire to avoid further disgrace for his action, he didn t choose the day prior or the day after.
But then, it is not quite correct to say that he chose the day.
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My father had been unemployed for a long time my sister, six years my junior, has almost no memories of him as a working man and he had been sick with tremors that were later revealed, we think, to have been heralds of Parkinson s, though Parkinson s is what is often called an exclusion diagnosis, which means one cannot test positive for it or know with total certainty that one has it; one can only present symptoms that strongly suggest it and, all other reasonable medical possibilities having been ruled out, proceed with treatment as though the diagnosis were definitive.
All this plus, naturally, the depression that had come with the divorce itself, which my parents had each done their share to precipitate, but which my father had not sought and did not accept.
He got a bit of money from the sale of the house and everyone thought he would move back near his parents, to the part of Florida where I grew up. When I say everyone thought that he would do this, what I mean is that we all wanted him to do this and thought that he would, because we wanted him to, and because we felt it was the inevitable next step and expected him to join us in this view, though we knew that such a move was without question the very last thing that he himself would ever want.
Instead of doing what we thought he would, he moved into a modest extended-stay hotel in Nashville, joined their rewards program, and sought to make his money last as long as he could. He had no other aim in mind, as far as I know, besides forestalling the inevitable, which my sister and I each understood to be his move back to Florida but which, at a certain point, we now understand, had come to mean, to him, his suicide.
He grew accustomed to eating no more than twice a day, often less. Smaller portions, cheaper restaurants. Takeout and hot bar. Burger King. Two bananas and a pear. He liked saving the money, wasn t hungry anyway.
It was unsettling, to say the very least, but who was going to lecture a grown man over the phone about how to eat?
He rarely saw my mother during this period, and though at times when they did interact usually on the phone or via email they bickered or rehashed old points of contention, it can be fairly said that she was not what kept him in that city. Certainly, he caused her no more trouble. I seem to recall that on one occasion she had to go to a doctor s appointment and be put under brief sed
My father had been unemployed for a long time my sister, six years my junior, has almost no memories of him as a working man and he had been sick with tremors that were later revealed, we think, to have been heralds of Parkinson s, though Parkinson s is what is often called an exclusion diagnosis, which means one cannot test positive for it or know with total certainty that one has it; one can only present symptoms that strongly suggest it and, all other reasonable medical possibilities having been ruled out, proceed with treatment as though the diagnosis were definitive.
All this plus, naturally, the depression that had come with the divorce itself, which my parents had each done their share to precipitate, but which my father had not sought and did not accept.
He got a bit of money from the sale of the house and everyone thought he would move back near his parents, to the part of Florida where I grew up. When I say everyone thought that he would do this, what I mean is that we all wanted him to do this and thought that he would, because we wanted him to, and because we felt it was the inevitable next step and expected him to join us in this view, though we knew that such a move was without question the very last thing that he himself would ever want.
Instead of doing what we thought he would, he moved into a modest extended-stay hotel in Nashville, joined their rewards program, and sought to make his money last as long as he could. He had no other aim in mind, as far as I know, besides forestalling the inevitable, which my sister and I each understood to be his move back to Florida but which, at a certain point, we now understand, had come to mean, to him, his suicide.
He grew accustomed to eating no more than twice a day, often less. Smaller portions, cheaper restaurants. Takeout and hot bar. Burger King. Two bananas and a pear. He liked saving the money, wasn t hungry anyway.
It was unsettling, to say the very least, but who was going to lecture a grown man over the phone about how to eat?
He rarely saw my mother during this period, and though at times when they did interact usually on the phone or via email they bickered or rehashed old points of contention, it can be fairly said that she was not what kept him in that city. Certainly, he caused her no more trouble. I seem to recall that on one occasion she had to go to a doctor s appointment and be put under brief sed
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Autoren-Porträt von Justin Taylor
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 nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper s, The Sewanee Review, n+1, The New York Times Book Review, and Literary Hub. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Justin Taylor
- 2021, 240 Seiten, Maße: 13 x 20,2 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Random House Trade Paperbacks
- ISBN-10: 0593129318
- ISBN-13: 9780593129319
- Erscheinungsdatum: 04.08.2021
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
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 ReviewTaylor 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
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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)
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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