The Late Americans

On its surface, Taylor’s sophomore novel opts for a similar milieu to that of his breakout 2020 debut Real Life—specifically, major Midwestern university graduate programs. But it’s a more expansive affair, a constellation novel with a roster of interconnected characters navigating the emotional, social, and intellectual spectrums of modern living. There’s also a compelling dissonance here: main characters indeed register as apt reflections of the book’s title—Gen Zers navigating a petty, increasingly surreal late capitalist United States within the confines of academia (it’s no accident that these young folks are poets, painters, musicians, and dancers)—but Taylor lends the novel a texture that’s more classical than contemporary (even down to giving his subjects names like Fyodor and Ivan and Seamus). It’s a savvy maneuver that places these people and their artistic pursuits within a literary lineage, reshaping their relationships and struggles. The problem then, and where the book comes up short of Real Life, is in tipping too frequently into mere misery business. Near the novel’s end, one character considers what happiness is to him: “Pushing one another, pulling one another, falling apart, coming together, kissing, hugging, laughing.” This is a fair enough synopsis for the novel, but little of the joy it implies consistently registers.