Reboot - by Justin Taylor (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A raucous and wickedly smart satire of Hollywood, toxic fandom, and our chronically online culture, following a washed-up actor on his quest to revive the cult TV drama that catapulted him to teenage fame ... David Crader is a has-been. A former child actor from the hit 90s teen drama Rev Beach, he now rotates between his new roles as deadbeat dad, part-time alcoholic, and occasional videogame voice actor. But when David is summoned to Los Angeles by Grace, his ex-wife and former co-star, he suddenly sees an opportunity for a reboot--not just of the show that made him famous, but also of his listless existence. Hollywood, the Internet, and a fractured nation have other plans, however, and David soon drinks himself to a realization: This seemingly innocuous revival of an old Buffy rip-off could be the spark that sets ablaze a nation gripped by far-right conspiracies, toxic fandoms, and mass violence. Reboot is a madcap and eerily prescient speculative comedy for our era of glass-eyed doomscrolling and 90s nostalgia--a tale of former teen heartthrobs, online edge lords, and fish-faced cryptids, perfect for anyone who still agonizes over Angel versus Spike, lives in fear of the QAnon mom next door, or has run afoul of a rabid 'stan' and lived to tell"--

Book Synopsis

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR - A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

A raucous and wickedly smart satire of Hollywood, toxic fandom, and our chronically online culture, following a washed-up actor on his quest to revive the cult TV show that catapulted him to teenage fame

"A performance of wit and rigor"--New York Times Book Review

David Crader is a has-been. A former child actor from the hit teen drama Rev Beach, he now rotates between his new roles as deadbeat dad, recovering alcoholic, and occasional videogame voice actor. But when David is summoned to Los Angeles by Grace, his ex-wife and former co-star, he suddenly sees an opportunity for a reboot--not just of the show that made him famous, but also of his listless existence.

Hollywood, the Internet, and a fractured nation have other plans, however, and David soon drinks himself to a realization: This seemingly innocuous revival of an old Buffy rip-off could be the spark that sets ablaze a nation gripped by far-right conspiracy, climate catastrophe, and mass violence.

Reboot is a madcap speculative comedy for our era of glass-eyed doom-scrolling and Millennial nostalgia--and yet it's still full of heart. It's a tale of former teen heartthrobs, striving parents, internet edgelords, and fish-faced cryptids, for anyone who has looked back on their life and wanted--even if but for a moment--to hit "reset."

Review Quotes

"[Taylor's] book is, in part, a performance of culture, a mirror of America complete with its own highly imagined myths . . . . It's a performance of wit and rigor freed of the familiar polarizing semantics, making legible . . . just how much conspiracy theory and pop culture have fused. Not just QAnon and Russiagate, but Kate Middleton and Birds Aren't Real."
--New York Times Book Review

"Taylor also demonstrates the broader public costs of living inside narratives, especially the most polluted ones -- antisemitism, QAnon, lizard people. . . . Though 'funnier than Don DeLillo' may seem like faint praise, Reboot wrings brilliant laughs from the absurdity of David's predicament, and the way Hollywood and internet language can seem like foreign tongues, something human-adjacent but not quite human . . . . What are we missing while we marinate in this nonsense? That's Taylor's sharpest joke."
--Washington Post

"Justin Taylor has a knack for depicting our modern moment with a wisdom that often only comes from hindsight....David's situation asks big questions about who we are as a culture, what we value, and the things that bring us together and tear us apart. You know, like teen soaps."
--Town and Country Magazine

"Taylor's fluency, intellectual nimbleness, and playful sense of humor call to mind the work of David Foster Wallace; the reader can easily imagine David Crader's video game adaptation of Infinite Jest. An affecting character study and excoriating indictment of the way we live now."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Justin Taylor's apocalyptic Reboot pulls off a feat few novels of our online present manage: reading it actually feels like tapping into the internet's best celeb gossip, fiercest fandom outrages, and wildest conspiratorial rabbit holes."
--Publishers Weekly

"An introspective literary look at contemporary entertainment, families, culture, and the never-ending search for connection."
--Booklist

"Reboot is a hilarious and thoughtful romp through our culture of endless rebooting--with detours into toxic online fandom, climate change, conspiracy theories, and more..."
--Lincoln Michel, author of The Body Scout

"For all the talk of an Other America--that underground country whose president is Trump and whose capital is Florida--we have precious few novels of its condition, and none as powerful, passionate, whacked-out, and pathic as Justin Taylor's Reboot." --Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Netanyahus

"A hilarious portrait of how our culture's insistence on making everything a reference to something else has destabilized reality and our ability to make meaning." --Isaac Butler, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The Method

"A laugh-out-loud, bingeable romp, that rare, bang-up novel as big-hearted as it is ambitious, written by a writer at the height of his wild gifts."--Tracy O'Neill, author of Quotients

"Justin Taylor is cursed with equal portions of modesty and genius. What inevitably results is a multilayered masterpiece about a paradox." --Nell Zink, author of Avalon

"Reboot is the perfect 21st century novel--ecstatically funny and heartbreaking." --Daniel Hornsby, author of Sucker and Via Negativa

About the Author

JUSTIN TAYLOR is the author of the novel The Gospel of Anarchy, the story collections Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and Flings; and the memoir Riding with the Ghost, His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Bookforum, and the Oxford American. He is a contributing writer to The Washington Post Book World and the director of the Sewanee School of Letters. He lives in Portland, Oregon.