Author Brandon Taylor Shares His Top Five Recent Obsessions

I play quite a lot of tennis in New York, and when the U.S. Open descends on the city, everybody develops tennis fever. There were incredible feats at the U.S. Open this year, especially on the women’s side. There is nothing like seeing it unfold in person. I am perhaps the world’s greatest Novak Djokovic
hater, but, after watching him play live, it must be said that he is one of the great geniuses of our time. Even though he’s on the decline, Djokovic cracked his opponent Learner Tien like a pecan. Djokovic figured out Tien’s game and made it look trivial. I’ve never seen problem-solving like that in real time on a tennis court executed at such a high level. Even though Tien is a brilliant player, he is never going to be as good as Djokovic. I could see exactly why in his strokes and his court sense, and that was kind of heartbreaking.

I was so immediately entranced when I walked into Susan Rothenberg’s recent exhibition, “The Weather,” at Hauser & Wirth. One of my favorite works by Rothenberg has a red field with the black outline of a horse and, like so many of her paintings, she’s playing on early figuration, on the primitive and the primal. It looks like something is baked into it, like a red clay disc, and the horse appears to be almost in flight with how much it’s moving. There’s something so simple about her works, yet they’re profoundly rich and moving.

The city becomes enthralled with seeing films during the New York Film Festival. This year, I’m looking forward to seeing After the Hunt, starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, and Ayo Edebiri, as well as the new Kelly Reichardt movie, Mastermind. It offers the chance to get tickets to some of the most exciting films of the back half of this year and the front half of next year. It seems like all the public discussions are buzzing around movies and directors, and it makes the city feel more communal—like it’s possible to sidle up to a stranger and talk about the movies. I love moments like that, when it feels like we’re all on the same page and we can all talk about art.

One of my students bought me a copy of The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The 1967 novel is set in Moscow and opens with a writer and an editor talking in a square. A mysterious stranger approaches them, claiming to have been present at the moment when Pontius Pilate had Jesus sentenced to death. As he’s telling them the story of how it all happened, the narrative flashes back to the present, and he tells the pair that one of them is going to die today. This stranger keeps popping up in various people’s lives throughout the book and causing chaos. It slowly becomes evident that this devil has been implicated in all these events. The book is so immensely pleasurable to read, and I find myself surprised every three pages.

I was invited to a screening of Oliver Hermanus’s new film, The History of Sound, starring Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal. It follows an ethnographer who reunites with a man he met at conservatory after returning from fighting in World War I. When he’s invited to record songs and folk music in Maine, they go on a romantic journey together. I have qualms about the love story, as well as the portrayal of the history of folk music. Without giving it away, however, the last 15 minutes of the movie make up one of the best endings, and obliterate all my complaints. It’s the gay movie of the year!