Tales Out of School

by Benjamin Taylor

Recounts the coming-of-age of a gay fourteen-year-old as viewed through his eyes and those of each member of his priviliged, eccentric family

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Gay Fiction, Queer, Gay

283 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1995

About the author

Benjamin Taylor is the author of a book of essays, Into the Open, and two novels, Tales Out of School, winner of the Harold Ribalow Prize, and The Book of Getting Even, a 2009 Barnes & Noble Discover Award Finalist, a 2008 Los Angeles Times Favorite Book of the Year, and a Ferro-Grumley Prize Finalist. In October 2009, The Book of Getting Even appeared as El Libro de la Venganza in Spain, where it was named a best book of the year by El Pais. In November 2010, Viking Press released Saul Bellow: Letters, edited by Taylor. Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay, a travel memoir from Marian Wood Books, is scheduled for 2012. Taylor is a graduate of Haverford College and Columbia University where he earned the doctorate in English and comparative literature. He has contributed to magazines including Bookforum, BOMB, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The New Leader, The Georgia Review, Raritan, and others. A longtime member of the Graduate Writing Program faculty at The New School, he has also taught at Washington University in St. Louis, the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, Bennington College and the Graduate Writing Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann]

An exceptionally fine novel by a very talented writer, I have read it at least twice and would read it again. The synopsis by concentrating on Felix and his journey to self knowledge reduces the extraordinarily rich complexity of this family saga. It is so much more than the tale of the sexual awakening of a 14 year old boy. That story, though important, is but a part of a much greater tapestry of the whole Memhel family, father, grandfather, grandmother, mother, aunt and uncle, all are there, all are essential to building up this tale of a family's rise and fall. Although it probably won't mean anything to most people today this novel is heir to the tradition of the 'Magnificent Ambersons' by Booth Tarkington, you might also be reminded of 'The Great Gatsby' because most of the characters have no chance of a second act and we leave Felix at to early a stage to really know if he will even have a first act.

A fine, thoughtful, beautiful novel, which deserves to be better known.

[Open Loop Press]

Benjamin Taylor is a writer in full control of the tools available to a practitioner of the language arts. His prose is elegant, his language intoxicating; the stories he tells are rich in detail, full of import, and of intricate disposition. His techniques have been assembled over a lifetime of reading: Nabokov, Bellow, Hemingway, Cather, Isherwood, Woolf. From these and others he has learned unconventional dialog, the trick of presenting action by catalog, the appropriation of history and science, psychology and religion, all of which he brings to bear in the creation of “fully fleshed and blooded” characters. It seems possible to descend from the “L” to a corner in Chicago and encounter Gabriel Geismar from Taylor’s latest novel, “The Book of Getting Even,” walking slowly past, musing over the material composition of the cosmos:



It was simultaneously dawning on the three or four best cosmological minds: the multiverse, universes budding from one another, a profusion of universes without beginning or end, our own the merest upstart in the myriad. Universes without beginning or end — this bright idea, with its reintroduction of eternity, infinite regress and infinite progress, universes forever abounding, whispered to Gabriel that perhaps he hadn’t come so far from Terpsichore Street after all since, soberly considered, he was only putting eternal Nature where the eternal God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob used to be.” (Pgs. 85-86)



One might even chance upon the magical puppeteer from “Tales Out of School” who, on one’s way home in the afternoon, might approach with his spelling board and introduce himself:



“Old? He was older than old. With a neck as skinny as a cart shaft; and bug-eyes, signifying pathos; and nowhere the trace of a smile.
“Who are you, mister?” Felix asked at the corner of Post Office and Twelfth. He in particular, and Galveston in general, were interested to know.
The ancient of days said nothing, unbuckling his grip instead and taking from it a little board furnished with the letters of the alphabet. S-c-h-m-u-l-o-w-i-c-z, he spelled, pointing to each letter in turn. I—a-m—S-c-h-m-u-l-o-w-i-c-z.” (Pgs. 121-122)



Taylor’s characters are made for a particular time and place, but they embody what persists in human experience, regardless of context: the pain of youth, the pleasure of tenderness, the bewitching impulse to create. In this last he is as much a student as he is a teacher. Every sentence is expertly wrought, designed to wake the brain, combining, as the best writing does, meaning with music and artifice with import. From such language he builds authentic albeit imagined worlds wherein satisfying, sometimes painful, dramas unfold, proving that in contemporary literature one finds, even on a single page, the artful, the imaginative, the credible and the fantastic.

— Carlin M. Wragg, Editor
Open Loop Press

[Mars Mergenthal]

At the beginning all i could think was “this is not what was described in the blurb, can we get to the point”, but I soon found myself falling in love with the writing, detailed in all the right spots. The characters and relationships, the parallels, the foreshadowing, the symbolism: all of it came together to create a beautiful novel with no true right or wrong.
I took off a star due to the fact that I was left with some questions, and I feel a little unfulfilled by the ending, but the novel overall was amazing and I would implore B. Taylor to write more.

[Dana Nucera]

Odd little book. Not quite sure how to convey my thoughts on this one. I liked the characters, but felt the story wasn't really going anywhere. It lost me with the religious ramblings. And it lost my interest with the mystical edge to it. Not sure what that was all about, maybe it just went over my head. But I did finish the book due to it being so short.

[Jeff]

The premise promised more than the novel actually delivered. I couldn't find myself really caring about any of the characters, and I set it down when I was done with a "So what?" I will say, though, that the lyrical writing style worked quite well in some places - but unfortunately it was more often irritating than not.

[Gayle]

didn't like the book at all.