Riding with the Ghost

May 25, 2020
A writer grapples with the legacy of his father’s depression and his own shadow self in this lucid memoir of connection, family, and loss. Taylor (The Gospel of Anarchy) kicks off with a riveting account of his father Larry’s attempted suicide in 2013 at a parking garage, which reverberates with pity, helplessness, and sarcasm (“he was pretty sure was tall enough to do the job”). From there, Taylor shifts to the story of his family in southern Florida, where his parents’ “working-class romance” turned problematic as the intensely intelligent Larry’s career prospects narrowed due to his belligerence and a “massive, killing pride.” Describing his own halting passage from being a squatter punk to an inconsistently employed but generally content writer, professor, and husband, Taylor finds more empathy for Larry’s depression as he sees its longer arc and parallels to his own life. 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.

Starred review from May 1, 2020
A memoir about coming to terms with the life and death of a father, a man who no longer wanted to live. 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. In 2013, his father "had decided that he would end his life by throwing himself from the top of the parking garage at the Nashville airport." He felt that unemployment, divorce, depression, Parkinson's disease, and other signs of poor health had left him with no reason to live. He was saved at the time by family intervention--the author, who had distanced himself, played a minimal role--but never again found much reason to live before dying, alone, four years later. In this deeply reflective, sensitive narrative, Taylor not only explores the last decade of his father's life, but also the aftermath, when he and his family were forced to pick up the pieces and find a way forward. "The silence since he has been gone is unimaginable," he writes. "It terrifies and unsettles, but also--I won't mince words here--exhilarates and relieves...I'm not saying I'm glad he's gone. I am saying that I feel the absence of his suffering just as palpably as, for so long, I felt its presence. A storm has passed, a calm prevails: the 'peace' of the apt platitude." His father's isn't the only ghost with whom he must come to terms, and there's plenty of additional insightful observations about the stories we tell ourselves and the differences between the way we shape a story and the way we live our lives. A greater literary achievement than Taylor's impressive fiction.

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