Brandon Taylor

This book reconstructs the events leading up to the 1965 death of a three-year-old boy named Dennis Jurgens.

To really grasp the structure of this book, Simone brings in a concept from the writer Brandon Taylor, The Paperwork movie-

Yes

... or in this case, The Paperwork true crime book.

It's enough to keep me chasing that feeling.

Brandon Taylor put it really well in his Substack essay titled I Quit Reading and Almost Died.

He's an author that, like the title suggests, stopped reading for a while for a number of reasons.

Number one, he had a book come out that, in his own words, failed, so he needed to grieve that.

Yeah, I'd say it's the most thought-provoking read for me

this period of time, this quarter, this semester, whatever you want to call it, is Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor.

If you have listened to this podcast probably even just once, you've heard me mention the man.

Love him.

Here they are.

criticism that I'd seen about even writing currently was from Brandon Taylor, just about how a lot of people write things now where it feels as if they're watching it.

We've been trained to watch TV so much and watch films that when people are describing action, it's described the way you'd be like watching like a TV show or something, you know, or how it would happen like if you're watching it on a screen, unless the imagination of you're inside this person's brain.

Like there's just certain things you don't have to describe or get into, et cetera.