23 Questions is EL’s new interview series aimed at getting to know established authors as people, thinkers, and creative practitioners, while having fun along the way.
I found Brandon Taylor’s work three years ago, when he wrote in his Substack about trauma plots and the controversial, oft-discussed (brace yourself) A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. While we didn’t agree on whether the book was good or not, what we shared was both a frustration with certain, eclipsing preoccupations swirling around the literary world—the supposition that minority (particularly queer) writers were being forced to cull to the “TenderQueer” aesthetic concerns of a select few—and a willingness to talk about such hard stuff (even if it meant biting the hand a bit). Following his Substack and researching his career thereafter, I found more similarities between us: both Black and gay, and writing about it. Both enjoy our own contrarianism. Both worked/still work for Electric Literature. Both really enjoy museums, sweaters, tennis. All this to say—yes, Taylor’s writing is cool, but I’ve also long thought the person behind it was too. He won’t know this until he reads this introduction, but Brandon Taylor has always been a leading example of the type of writer I strive to be.
I was excited to sit down and talk with him ahead of the release of his latest novel, Minor Black Figures, for Electric Lit’s 23 Questions to get to know more about the author behind the book(s)!
– Jalen Giovanni Jones
Social Media Editor
Electric Literature: Describe your publication week in a six word story.
Brandon Taylor: Hope I don’t miss my plane.
EL: What’s one book everyone should read growing up?
BT: The Redwall books. It’s amazing. Feasts. Battles. Animals talking. Conquest. Arthurian legends. It has everything.
EL: Write alone or in community?
BT: That’s very tricky. If I’m writing actively, alone, preferably behind the door so no one can see all the weird faces I’m making. But writing as a practice? Always in community, for sure.
EL: How do you start from scratch?
BT: I make a list of things I want to do. It always starts with making a list. Every single time, make a list. When you’re overwhelmed, boom, it turns out a list solves everything.
- EL: I do that too! Literally everything has a list: each setting, every character—
- BT: That’s how I wrote my first book—made a list, made a bunch of lists, and then just like rub them together. You crank that out quick—five weeks. That’s the power of a list.
EL: If you were a novel, what novel would you be?
BT: Right now, this book called The Tennis Handsome by Barry Hannah, which I just found out about. It has a gay tennis coach in it, and that’s really my aspiration in life at just this moment.
EL: Describe your ideal writing day.
BT: 11:45am: A huge cup of coffee. Like huge, comically large. Every device on Airplane Mode. Wi-Fi off. A cool 68 degrees. Open window. And I’m good to go.
EL: What’s a piece of writing advice you never want to hear again?
BT: Make it weird.
EL: What’s a piece of writing advice you think everyone needs to hear?
BT: It’s just a draft.
EL: Realism or surrealism?
BT: Realism all day long. Get that surrealism out of here. Get it out of here. Mm-mmm—grow up. We’re done with that! Realism.
- EL: Didn’t you just recommend books with talking animals a minute ago?
- BT: Well, yeah, but that’s different. It’s in a deeply realist historical mode.
- EL: I see.
EL: Favorite and least favorite film adaptation of a book?
BT: My favorite is The Age of Innocence. Martin Scorsese’s—perhaps the best movie adaptation of any adaptation ever. Worst? Probably Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady. It’s so bad, it’s sooo bad. You wouldn’t think it would be, with Nicole Kidman, but it’s sooo bad. And yet I watched it all the way through.
- EL: I mean, Nicole Kidman’s in it.
- BT: It’s a crazy movie, it should be so much better than it is.
- EL: Worth the hate watch?
- BT: I think it’s worth watching. I just think it’s a bad adaptation of that novel, and it’s a bad movie—but it does have its charms.
EL: Edit as you go, or shitty first draft?
BT: Oh, shitty first draft. I always tell my students, draft by any means necessary.
EL: How did you meet your agent?
BT: At one of those five or ten minute speed-dating rounds at Tin House.
EL: Best advice for pushing through writer’s block?
BT: I struggle with this myself, but whenever I have writer’s block, I just tell myself nouns and verbs. Just keep it super simple—write some nouns, write some verbs, short declarative sentences, until you get going again.
EL: What’s your relationship to being edited?
BT: I love being edited. Please edit me. Get in there. Just tear it apart. Let’s go. I’m not precious. I love it. I need it. I crave it.
EL: Write every day, or write when inspired?
BT: Listen, if I had my pick, I’d write every day. I love writing. I’m never happier than when I am writing. But often these days, it’s more right when I sort of have a critical mass of time, and also the impulse to write.
EL: What other art forms and literary genres inspire you?
BT: I love procedurals and procedural crime dramas, specifically British ones and French ones, and Irish small town shows. They’re so atmospheric. And then the usuals: French film and painting. I love painting, and classical music.
EL: I was on the lookout for painting. That’s what Minor Black Figures has throughout.
BT: I love nothing more than going to museums and just staring at huge Turners, or Caravaggios, or small little Bertha Morisots or whatever. I love paintings, but I mostly spend my time watching procedurals. I love a procedural. It’s the atmosphere, the coats.
EL: Favorite procedural, and favorite painting?
BT: Favorite painting, probably Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan by Ilya Repin. I just ordered a phone case with that painting on it that should arrive sometime today. Favorite procedural—I don’t know about favorite, but one I am thinking about the most right now is this one called Unforgotten, about cold cases in Britain. The Brits called it historical cases, instead of cold cases. It’s so good.
EL: Book club or writing group?
BT: In my heart of hearts, book club. And the best writing groups are book clubs. So book club, for sure, I’m a book club girly. I love to read and gossip about made up characters.
EL: The writer who made you want to write?
BT: Pat Conroy is responsible for that. He wrote this book called The Prince of Tides, which was sort of like the Anna Karenina of the South. It’s so sweeping and beautiful and lyrical and lush and gorgeous.
EL: How do you know when you’ve reached the end?
BT: When I’m just moving commas and periods around, and just, like, deleting things. And also, when the most useful drama is over and I’m just dragging it out.
EL: How do you know when an idea is a short story, versus a novel?
BT: When it’s just one idea, it’s a short story. You can’t write a novel with one idea. A Novel needs many different ideas at many different levels, different registers. When there’s only the evolution of one situation, as opposed to the situation giving birth to many different situations and scenes and dramas, then it’s a story as opposed to a novel. I’ve seen many people try to turn stories into novels not knowing that, and it just is one long short story. And I’m like, why have you written a 400 page short story? Ideally, an editor will stop you from doing that. But some editors don’t.
EL: How do you keep your favorite writers close to you?
BT: Constantly rereading. I’m almost always rereading Edith Wharton or Jane Austen or Henry James or Tolstoy. Lately, I’ve been rereading Faulkner. And I have certain of their quotes that I look up and look at again, and I always know where they are. It’s always rereading and revisiting.
EL: Go-to activity when you need to take a writing break?
BT: Tennis all day, every day. I’m playing six days a week. It’s endless. Although right now, I’m playing a video game that one of my students recommended called Disco Elysium, because they figured out that if they make recommendations to me, I’ll feel so moved that they did it that I will take the recommendation.
EL: What does evolving as a writer mean to you?
BT: Surprising myself as much as surprising my readers, but surprising myself and finding new questions, new styles, new techniques, or new voices. Being receptive to the world and changing as I grow as a person.
The post Brandon Taylor Thinks Surrealists Should Grow Up appeared first on Electric Literature.
