Riding with the Ghost is a memoir about fathers and sons, teachers and students, faith and illness, and the complicated legacy that each generation hands down to the next. You can order your copy anywhere books are sold. I especially encourage you to support your local independent bookstore, directly if you can, or via Indiebound or Bookshop.org .
“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 Review
– Electric Literature‘s Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2020
– Kirkus’ Best Memoirs of 2020
– Largehearted Boy: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2020
– Dennis Cooper’s “Mine For Yours: My favorite fiction, poetry, non-fiction, film, art, and internet of 2020.”
– Parnassus Books (Nashville): “Thanks for the Memoirs,” Best of Staff Picks 2020
“As a memoirist, Taylor is thoughtful, measured, and unflinching” — Full Stop
“Though the subject matter is weighty and knotty, Taylor’s approach is light; he has a knack for unobtrusive description (referring to staying at a chain hotel as being “like falling asleep inside a piece of clip art”) and sudden flashes of cutting insight (“How do you save a drowning man who doesn’t want a life preserver?”). This is an astute and balanced memoir that finds grace in appreciating another’s pain.” — Publishers Weekly
“Taylor 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, “29 Summer Books You Won’t be Able to Put Down”
“One of the year’s most impressive books.” —Largehearted Boy (and don’t forget to check out my RwtG playlist)
“Rich detail and humor relay the pain, music, laughter, work, and struggle inside a close yet scarred family.” — Parnassus Books Staff Pick, “Great New Reads for August”
“Though Taylor has previously published two well-received collections of short stories as well as the thematically ambitious novel The Gospel of Anarchy (2011), this memoir sets a new literary standard for his work, as he aims higher and reaches deeper. Here, the author shows the precision and command of tone that has informed the best of his stories, but there’s something more at stake—for both the writer and his readers.” —Kirkus (starred review)
“In telling the story of two interwoven lives across several decades, Taylor explores questions of family legacies, masculinity and chronic depression.”—Inside Hook, “8 Books You Should be Reading this July”
“[T]his 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
“I loved this memoir. It looks directly and bravely at a father’s suffering, but also at his ambition and sharp mathematical mind. It has gorgeous reflections on the joy of teaching. It makes room for lightness and long drives.” — Megha Majumdar, via twitter
“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
“Riding with the Ghost is a moving and profound portrait of the courage it takes to survive crucibles: financial, emotional, physical, and more. I was mesmerized by the dramatic opening and propelled to the end by a writer who, page-by-page, proved a worthy guide. It’s a book full of revelations and insights, written with a spare style and candor that calls to mind the great Raymond Carver.” —Mitchell S. Jackson author of Survival Math
“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 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