Sharp spikes of worry and repression are the heartbeat of this narrative that follows Wallace down the rabbit hole of one of the last weekends of their summer holiday in this quiet town. It’s neither the death of his father nor that of his nematodes that inspires the drag of his feet, but the overwhelming dread that accompanies socializing with his fellow biochemists, a complicated composite of friends and foes. We meet Wallace on a Friday night in his college town, as he’s trudging, begrudgingly, toward an evening hang with friends by the lake.
In Taylor’s stunning debut, “Real Life,” quiet diligence toward one’s goals mutates into a spiral that leaves the mind and body bruised as if survivors of a psychic war zone. A space that demands his full attention, lest he affirm the sense that he was never meant to be there to begin with. Like I was quite recently, and like the novelist Brandon Taylor was once himself, Wallace is a black gay grad student from the South who is mining hope for some better or different life in the haunted halls of a white academic space. Wallace’s father died several weeks ago, but more pressingly so did the collection of nematodes he has been diligently studying all summer in an unnamed university in an unnamed Midwestern town.
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