Book Review — "Filthy Animals" by Brandon Taylor
It has been five weeks since I finished Filthy Animals, and I have not stopped thinking about it yet. The moment NetGalley told me I’d been approved to read it early, I nearly screamed with joy. Over the last few years, Brandon Taylor has become one of my favorite authors. I started following him on twitter first; he probably caught my attention while going on about a period film we both admire. Then I read one of his short stories. And then I read another. And I’ve been trying to keep up since—which has proven difficult because he’s so damn prolific! But not only does he write a lot, he writes excruciatingly well: As the preeminent voice in the genre of sweater literature, Brandon Taylor is truly one of our finest storytellers.
His novel Real Life was the best book of 2020. Since reading it last June, it’s been my go-to book recommendation. There’s an uncanny intricacy to the way Taylor pens his stories. Every clause is a stitch in a magnificent garment, so tightly knit and full of complexity. Taylor earned every accolade he received for Real Life.
He brings that same level of craftsmanship to Filthy Animals, a collection of linked and standalone stories. If you’re a fan, you may have already read an earlier version of these entries. For instance, I read “Proctoring” back in 2017 when it was published in Joyland as “French Absolutism.” But don’t let that compel you to skip. Taylor has reworked and fine-tuned these narratives so they flow and build upon one another.
I’ve heard it said that Tennessee Williams never stopped rewriting his plays, even after they’d premiered on stage or been adapted into film. He knew he could always do better, masterpiece or not. Brandon Taylor gives me a similar vibe.
This in no way means his work is over-written. On the contrary, Taylor demonstrates just the right amount of restraint. He also manages to strike a chord with paragraphs as seemingly innocuous as:
She did not sleep with Lenny. But she did sit with him until the Daytona was over, and then she went home. He had been right about the walk back to her place. It was easy, and it was beautiful. She walked along the street that ran parallel to the stream, over a small bridge. She stopped to look through the trees that opened over it, and high above everything, the moon. It was cool then, and she wrapped her jacket around herself. When she got home, she lay awake in bed for a long time, and then she made a profile on a dating website. She had been thinking about that feeling she’d had when Peter had asked her to marry him, that sudden recognition of what she’d felt all the time they’d been together, the reason that she couldn’t with Lenny, the sharpening resolution with which she saw herself. When the website asked her what she was interested in, she selected women and not men.
These nine unassuming sentences from “Anne of Cleves,” more than any other block of text in Filthy Animals, hit me the hardest. Because this is pretty much how I came out to myself. It’s almost eerie…
In February of 2015, my 13-year-old dog Rocky died. I mourned for months. The following August, after I’d decided that I was done being alone, I made a profile on OkCupid (shut up). When it came time to designate whomst I was interested in, I clicked men without a second thought. I was 23 and had been sexually inert virtually my entire life. I, perhaps weirdly, had not really actively thought about my orientation (it’s complicated). But in that moment—answering that very simple question—I told myself.
So, that story is a personal favorite. I also love “Anne of Cleves” because it allows Brandon Taylor to show off his scholarly knowledge of Tudor England. It’s kind of funny, I think his tweets are the reason I got into it, too. In fact, I bought a book a few years back called A Brief History of England, and I devoured it. (I found the section on Edward II the most engrossing.) Taylor mainly sticks to Henry VIII’s wives in this story, and he does so in a clever and romantic and rather queer way.
The queerness of Brandon Taylor’s writing cannot go unmentioned. There is a certain delicacy with which he crafts these characters; he’s especially adept at capturing the frail and the broken. Their inner struggles and fears ring true. Every character seems to be navigating through a difficult or momentous time in their life, and many of their hardships involve some fraught form of human connection, or a lack thereof. A yearning for closeness paired with a concern of the consequences such intimacy may bring. This is a concept that I think a lot of queer folks can relate to, particularly those of us who came into our own while living in the geographic middle of the country.
I find Brandon Taylor’s work so inspiring. Reading him makes me want to do the kind of writing I always mean to do, but never accomplish. It’s been a years-long struggle. Mostly with finding the motivation to even do it. I’ll sit down to write—and then it’s like someone pulled the plug on my brain, which hurts because I’ve had stories baking in my mind for a long time that are about to burn. Oddly enough, three of them are linked stories following a trio of gay men as they come in and out of each other’s lives over the course of a decade.
After Real Life, I decided that I was willing to read anything Brandon Taylor wrote. And after Filthy Animals, the feeling remains. And I’ll likely never stop following him on twitter because he’s not only one of the best follows, but he also just seems like a swell individual. He’s the type of person I’d love to get a dark roast coffee with on a snowy morning and discuss Isabella of France or Eleanor of Aquitaine or, hell, Anne of Cleves. That’s not something I can say about very many people.
