Brandon Taylor On His New Novel, 'Minor Black Figures'

Summary

The Book Review Podcast: Brandon Taylor on 'Minor Black Figures' — Episode Summary

Podcast: The Book Review
Host: MJ Franklin, The New York Times Book Review
Guest: Brandon Taylor
Episode Date: October 10, 2025
Book Discussed: Minor Black Figures

Overview

In this episode, MJ Franklin talks with acclaimed author Brandon Taylor about his latest novel, Minor Black Figures. The novel follows Wyeth, a Black gay painter in New York City, as he grapples with artistic purpose, love, faith, and selfhood. The conversation dives into the novel’s genesis, its themes of art and vocation, the intricacies of the art world, the pressures of being a Black artist, and Brandon Taylor’s observations on contemporary literature.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing 'Minor Black Figures' and Its Protagonist

• Synopsis:
  The novel centers on Wyeth, a Black gay painter struggling with an artistic block in New York. After an unsatisfying art show, he meets Keating, a former seminarian, sparking a summer of wandering, philosophical conversation, and eventual romance.
• Quote (Brandon Taylor, 02:33):
  “Minor Black Figures is about Wyeth, who is a Black gay male painter living in New York City...he's in the midst of an artist block. He doesn't know how to paint the moment, whatever that is. He's in search of the real, whatever that means.”

2. Naming Characters — Literary Allusions

• Wyeth is named after Maria Wyeth in Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, not the painter N.C. Wyeth.
• Keating comes from Anneliese Keating (How to Get Away with Murder) and is a name Brandon has wanted to use for years.
• Quote (Taylor, 03:37):
  “I've always really loved that name. And I have this habit of naming my characters after other characters in other people's books.”

3. Genesis of the Novel

• The book has a clear origin: while under contract to write a different, multi-character novel (Group Shown) that he rewrote (and discarded) multiple times, Taylor realized, after encouragement from his editor, that he didn’t want to continue. He started ‘Minor Black Figures’ during a teaching stint in Paris and wrote the first 100 pages in a three-week hotel stay.
• Quote (Taylor, 06:27):
  “It revealed to me that like, the reason I wasn't able to keep going with the book was because I just didn't want to write it anymore...I threw it out...by the time I'd left [the hotel], I'd written the first hundred pages of the book.”

4. Depicting the Art World & Research

• Taylor discusses his fascination with art world parties and the social ecosystem surrounding artists, critics, curators, and journalists. His research included biographies of Helen Frankenthaler and Lucian Freud, among others.
• He sought to capture both the public glamour and the private vulnerabilities of artists.
• Quote (Taylor, 08:01):
  “I did this deep dive into art biographies and read about so many parties, so many juicy parties.”

5. Form, Scope, and Social Worlds

• The novel opens with a broad social and political sweep, then zooms in on Wyeth—a deliberate attempt to create narrative scale and to reflect the collision of personal and sociopolitical backdrops for art-making.
• Quote (Taylor, 10:47):
  “It's not just, like, his personal stuff. It's the...unique collision of his personal experiences with the social and historical climate that determines what it is to make art at a particular time.”

6. Character Study: Wyeth

• Wyeth is biracial but identifies and is seen as Black. He feels artistically isolated, negotiating between his own aesthetics and the political readings others impose on his art.
• Taylor describes Wyeth’s journey as one of artistic and personal maturation.
• Quote (Taylor, 14:05):
  “It's about two people with a vocation trying to figure out what it means to have a vocation in a world that seems so evacuated of meaning and structure.”

7. Writing Deep Existential Questions in Fiction

• Taylor credits reading Lukács for shifting how he explores existential themes: focus on emblematic moments distilled into narrative scenes, letting social and psychological crises manifest through action and relationships.
• Quote (Taylor, 15:47):
  “For this book, it was...he's in crisis, whatever that means...What are the moments and situations that most keenly express that crisis? And then leaning into full on dramatizing those moments.”

8. Keating, Faith, and Romance

• Keating is a Jesuit in training, also having a crisis of faith. Their relationship—intellectual, physical, and spiritual—is written as an optimistic, romantic comedy a la Nora Ephron.
• Quote (Taylor, 19:17):
  “The romantic comedy is the ultimate optimistic art form because it posits that two people who come to know each other won’t be turned off or repulsed and will, in fact, want greater intimacy.”

9. Balancing Cerebral and Physical Elements

• Taylor stresses the need for vitality, humor, and evolving tone in the narrative, ensuring both serious meditation and sensual humanity.
• Quote (Taylor, 20:30):
  “I guess that's one of the things I wanted to write into the book, was just this sense of falling for someone because of their ideas, because of what they have to say, but at the same time, it is physical.”

10. On Allowing the Novel to Meander and Cohere

• The novel strives for “totality,” combining esoteric discussions, moments of levity, and subplots (including Wyeth’s mother’s mommy blogger ambitions) into a cohesive, authentic whole.
• Quote (Taylor, 21:27):
  “In order to tell the truth with the book, it had to have joking around...these deep dives on Sargent...melancholy over...mommy blogger fame...but all of my delight in it...doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t cohere into the life.”

11. Faith in the Reader and the Form

• Taylor defends novels that challenge the reader, embrace digressions, and resist being trimmed for cinematic efficiency—while ensuring those digressions always serve character development.
• Quote (Taylor, 26:16):
  “Everyone has a thought about, like, well, the contemporary novel can’t do anymore. Okay, maybe. But when you read Dickens...don't you want to try that stuff?”

12. Parallel Between Painting and Writing; On Black Art

• Making Wyeth a painter (not a writer) allowed Taylor to richly describe the world and draw parallels with the process of creating Black art under societal (often racialized) scrutiny.
• Quote (Taylor, 28:49):
  “There’s something about painting which feels very close to prose literature, which is that it can never give an exact replica of life.”

13. Debating Art and Race through Dialogue

• The novel addresses how Black artists’ work is mediated by outside perceptions, and Taylor uses character arguments to present a spectrum of opinions, consciously resisting universalizing a single view.
• Quote (Taylor, 33:25):
  “It also felt important...to offer a variety of takes on the idea of what it means to be a black artist. And how is black art evaluated?...the way that I feel about it isn’t the way that this black artist feels or that black artist feels.”

14. Brandon Taylor on Writing, Criticism, and Literary Trends

• Taylor’s critical work and teaching deeply inform his fiction. He notes the influence of reading Zola for a London Review of Books essay.
• He identifies contemporary trends: “loser fiction” (isolated, friendless protagonists), “wrong protagonist novels” (a dull protag searching for a fascinating missing character), the resurgence of campus novels, and neo-gothic suburban fiction.
• Quote (Taylor, 35:55):
  “Loser fiction, where it’s just you guys notice that all your characters are losers. They don’t have friends, they don’t have families...loser fiction.”

15. What’s Next for Brandon Taylor?

• Now writing without a contract for the first time in years, Taylor is considering a tennis novel or a long-gestating Southern Gothic.
• Quote (Taylor, 39:33):
  “I feel like I fought against writing a tennis novel for a long time...I’m gonna give in to the muse.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Character Inspiration:
  “Even in my first book, Wallis is named...after a character in Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth. So I just have this terrible sickness of loving female characters.” (04:26)
• On Romantic Comedy:
  “This is your Nora Ephron moment. Find the bliss. Find the joy in it.” (19:17)
• On the Limits of Black Art:
  “Any black artist making art today, no matter the medium or the form, is confronted with a set of difficulties...our work is measured against some sort of external perception of what real black life is.” (29:15)
• On Literary Criticism and Trends:
  “Friends are coming back. Friends are back 2025.” (36:17–36:19)
• On What the Novel Would Whisper to Readers:
  “That love is possible and you can preserve your own subjectivity.” (40:22)
• Book Recommendation:
  “There’s this wonderful, strange book called Muscle man by Jordan Castro. I think it’s the gayest book of 2025.” (41:21)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Book Introduction and Plot — 02:33
• Character Naming Insights — 03:37
• Origin Story/Paris Writing Retreat — 06:27–07:14
• Art World Research — 08:01
• Narrative Scope, Social World — 10:47
• Wyeth as Artist and Thoughtful Protagonist — 12:25–14:05
• Writing Existential Fiction — 15:27
• Wyeth & Keating: Love and Philosophy — 17:41–19:17
• Physical/Cerebral Balance in Romance — 20:10
• Novel as ‘Totality’ — 21:27
• Faith in the Novel/Reader — 25:58–27:47
• Black Art and Perception — 30:31
• Debate as a Device — 31:39–33:25
• Writing, Criticism, Trends — 34:33–36:41
• Contemporary Novel Taxonomy — 36:50–38:30
• On Future Projects — 38:51–40:07
• Closing Thoughts & Recommendations — 40:11–41:55

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Conclusion

Through a lively, insightful conversation, Brandon Taylor unpacks the craft and concerns of Minor Black Figures—a novel that is both cerebral and deeply human, philosophical but sensuous, and marked by its author’s wit, range, and curiosity about art, identity, and the possibilities of the novel form. The episode concludes with Taylor’s thoughts on the novel’s message—about the preservation of self and the optimism of love—and a hearty recommendation for readers seeking fresh, interesting fiction.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hello, and welcome to the Book Review Podcast. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review. And this week on the podcast, we have an author you've probably heard of if you've been keeping up with literary fiction at all over the past few years. That author is Brandon Taylor. Brandon's first book, Real Life, published in February 2020, right before the pandemic changed life as we know it. And that book went on to become a Booker Prize finalist. He followed that up with two other books, Filthy Animals in 2021 and the Late Americans in 2023. Now Brandon is back with a brand new book, Minor Black Figures. It's a novel about art and race and class and religion and love and New York and so, so much more. He joins us today to discuss. Brandon, welcome.

[C]

Thanks for having me, or I should.

[B]

Probably say welcome back because you joined the Book Review podcast in 2021 to talk about Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are youe? Which you reviewed for us. And then that interview was conducted by Pamela Paul, who was the editor at the time. But we've spoken previously because right before your first book, Real Life, came out, I wrote a profile of for the Book Review that was remote. Now we're in person. Welcome back.

[C]

Oh, thank you. How far we've come. How far we've come, I feel it's.

[B]

Like, it's like that Vanity Fair, Billie Eilish, same interview. Do you know about this?

[C]

Yes, I. Yes.

[B]

So for anyone listening who doesn't know, every year they interview Billie Eilish. And through that all together, you get to see an artist's evolution. So I'm excited to talk to you, learn about your new book, hear about what you've been up to, which is quite a lot. But to get started, let's talk about your new book, Minor Black Figures. Can you just give us a brief setup, spoiler free, but tell Us. What is this book about?

[C]

Mine of Black Figures is about Wyeth, who is a black gay male painter living in New York City. And we encounter him at the start of a sort of hazy late summer scenario where he's in the midst of an artist block. He doesn't know how to paint the moment, whatever that is. He's in search of the real, whatever that means. Indeed. And after, after going to a terrible art show, or he thinks it's a terrible art show, he encounters another young man whose name is Keating. And then he very quickly discovers that Keating is a former seminarian. And then they spend a summer walking and talking about God, about art, about politics, about the meaning of life, all.

[B]

Just the light stuff.

[C]

All the light stuff. All the light stuff. So that's what it's really about. It's about art, it's about love, it's about faith, and it's about what happens when you encounter a priest at a bar one hazy summer night in New York City.

[B]

Count me in. I'm hooked. I'm hooked. I have one silly quick question, but Wyeth, his name, is he named after N.C. wyeth the painter?

[C]

I mean, that seems like the obvious choice. And in fact, I didn't really think of that until a friend pointed out to me, like, the fact that I've written about a painter and I've named that painter Wyeth in America, in New York, of all places. But no, he's named after Maria Wyeth from a Joan Didion novel, from Play It As It Lays. I believe it is. And. And I've always really loved that. I've always really loved that name. And I have this habit of naming my characters after. After other characters in other people's books.

[B]

I kind of love this. Is Keating named after anyone?

[C]

Well, he's named that name. I've been trying to stick on a character for a long time, but really that name first came to me from watching how to Get Away with Murder. Anneliese Keating, it's one of my favorite characters, and I just love that name. I'm gonna slap that name on.

[B]

It's a great name.

[C]

Even in my first book, Wallis is named, people thought it was like Wallace Stegner, but it was, in fact Wallace named after a character in Ann Patchett's Commonwealth. So I just have this terrible sickness of loving female characters.

[B]

What is it that, like, Lady Gaga says where it's not afraid to reference or be referenced? Is that Lady Gaga?

[C]

Yes, I love that. Yeah, that's me. That's Me out here riffing, referencing.

[B]

Well, with that out of the way, I just wanted to officially ask a more serious question, which is this book, I'm wondering what, where did the inspiration come from? Can you tell us about that first seed of an idea, what that was that then later evolved into this book, Minor Black figures. What was the start?

[C]

Sure. This book, unlike some of my other books, maybe this book has like a really definite starting place because I was under contract to write a different book. And that book was called Group Shown, was gonna be about a Midwestern art museum in the Midwest. And it was gonna be like big, multi character cast, decades spanning. And I kept writing 137 pages of that book and throwing it away over like a period of five years. I even got a fellowship at the New York Public Library to research that book and to work on it. And after a period about like five years, I was just like, really stuck. I had 137 pages again. And I was getting on a plane to go teach in Paris in summer of 2023 and. And I was like, I cannot rewrite this book one more time. And so I sent the 137 pages to my editor and I said, I'm getting on a plane. I won't have WI fi for eight hours. Can you read this and tell me if it's good or bad? Just so that I know. And by the time I'd landed in Paris, my editor had written me a really long, really beautiful email that essentially was like, you've never written better. The writing is so good. I love this book. I love it so much. And that was like, super clarifying for me because I. Because it revealed to me that like, the reason I wasn't able to keep going with the book was because I just didn't want to write it anymore.

[B]

Interesting.

[C]

So I threw it out.

[B]

So you get this letter that says, this is great. You never. And you're like, it's gotta go.

[C]

Yeah. Well, I was just like, I don't want to write this book anymore. And I threw it out and did my teaching. And then at the end of that period, I thought, okay, I'm going to check into a hotel and I'm going to book it for three weeks. And by the end of that three weeks, I want to have the next thing going. I was like. I was like, what am I interested in? And I thought I'd written a couple books that were kind of severe and I wanted to describe things again and I wanted to write about light and I wanted to write about a priest. And I thought, what's going to let me do that? And I thought, painters. If I write a painter, I'll get to describe stuff just in the sort of natural course of things. And so I sat in that hotel and by the time I'd left, I'd written the first hundred pages of the book.

[B]

What an origin story. That's kind of incredible.

[C]

I mean, utter insanity. It's. Oh, thank you so much for saying that. I've written like 137 of the best pages I've ever written. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm gonna like, take the. And I told my editor, I was like, I'm throw this away. And he said, leap, I'll catch you. And I'm really thankful for that because an editor is not often gonna be like, no, this is so good. But he was like, go for it. I got your back.

[B]

And so then making Wyeth a painter was a way to get to write and describe. But then also it, when we see it in this book, the art world itself is so robust and rich and full and varied. Can you talk to me a little bit about your deep dive into the art world and how you brought that to the page?

[C]

Yeah. I was always so interested in art world parties because it's often an easy target for caricature in film and tv. When they want to show, oh, someone's an elite or whatever, they'll have them go to a gallery show. There's that sort of Sex and the City reboot and just like that, which sort of makes much of Charlotte's involvement in their art world. And some of those are my favorite scenes, honestly, they're like so dishy. And I myself have found myself going to a lot of gallery parties just living in New York. You sometimes your friend texts you, hey, do you want to go to this? And you in fact do, because it's Thursday and there's nothing else to do. But I thought, okay, there's that part of it. But I also want to dig deeper here and just figure out what are people thinking and feeling when they leave the party and when they go home. And so I went to the past. I read this really wonderful book called Fierce Ambition by Alexander Nimirov. It's a biography of Helen Frankenthaler. I read Ninth Street Women, which is another really great biography. I read a lot of biographies. I read the multi volume series of biographies about Lucian Freud. And because I was interested in like the artists lives. Yes, but I was interested in like the Social network of it all. I was interested in how the journalists fit together with the reviewers and how they fit together with their critics and how they fit together with the artists because they're often friends and all this other stuff. And so a lot of it is informed by my own sort of gad flying about parties. But it also came from. I did this deep dive into art biographies and read about so many parties, so many juicy parties.

[B]

It sounds like fun research, too. Like, you mentioned Sex in the City. Now you're getting to read about parties that happened in the past. Real parties. You were watching fictional parties.

[C]

Yes. And not the mess. The mess of their personal lives. And how it would, like, spill over into the public was so delicious. It was insane, but really fun.

[B]

You just mentioned something that I found really interesting I wanted to follow up on, which is you said the word social world. And that is something that I think comes through the start of this book immediately. And I want to read, I guess, from the first chapter. Is it always weird to hear someone.

[C]

Read that to you? I'm looking forward to it, actually.

[B]

You write, that summer they threw bombs and made signs for peace. They went into the streets and the parks and the squares, the same as they had done two years before and three years before that and six years before that and three years before that, which, of course, meant that they had never really left the streets and the parks and the squares in the first place. There was a president in Washington and nine Supreme Court justices. There was a war in Europe. There was not yet a war in America because America fought its wars elsewhere. And it goes on. And you immediately start by creating this social, political scene. You mentioned wanting to write about painting and seeing. But then this is how we start creating.

[C]

I really struggled. Not struggled. Maybe that's not the right word. But the book had a different opening, and it started much more in scene. And it started with Wyeth complaining about this bad art show he'd been to. And I was just, I need more scope. I need more scale. Because if this is gonna be a book about a painter struggling to make art, I have to dig deep down into the roots of that struggle. And it's not just, like, his personal stuff. It's the fact that it's the unique collision of his personal experiences with the social and historical climate that determines what it is to make art at a particular time. And I can't smuggle that in if I'm starting with him just in scene. And I wanted it to also reflect what it is to, like, try to take Stock of your time and your era. And how can I do that if the book isn't also willing to admit those things into itself? So I went back and I rewrote the opening with this grander, almost Dickensian sweep, because that is what Wyeth is trying to capture. He's trying to capture the moment, and so he's gonna be looking at the moment. And if the book is a record of all that he sees and feels and experiences and what he thinks of it, then I've gotta show the reader that as well.

[B]

If you wanna show someone swimming, you have to create the water.

[C]

Yes, precisely. That's so good.

[B]

You mentioned sweep. And you do get that sense of. Yeah, here's the scene overall, and almost I feel like I'm not in film at all, but I feel like you could see the camera zoom down. Here's the scene and it zooms into Wyeth. And for the purposes of this conversation, I would like to also zoom into Wyeth. Can you tell us a little bit more about this character? Who is he? Tell us more about him.

[C]

Yeah, Sir. Wyeth is black, biracial, but for his purposes, he is black. And he grew up in Virginia, and he's always wanted to be an artist, but he's always also felt estranged from basically everyone around him. And he goes to art school at a really pivotal time in American history. He goes to art school around the murder of Tamir Rice. And so that is the form, normative, social backdrop of his aesthetic education. And almost from the very beginning, he feels this clash between his aesthetics and the political valences that are being projected onto his work by his peers, white and black. And so he's never felt quite sure about what to do, how to resolve this tension between the aesthetic and the political. Many such cases. So many such cases. And so now he's molted into adulthood, he's out of grad school, he's first living in the world, and he is in search of meaning, but he isn't sure that meaning exists in the world anymore. And he isn't sure that he wants the things that he wants for the right reasons. And so he's always turning them over and inspecting his ambitions and his motivations in this, like, sometimes, like, endlessly recursive, self defeating spiral.

[B]

I found Wyeth to be so smart and searching and hurt and messy and determined. He felt so full as a character. You, you mentioned at the start that you wanted to write about painting and seeing and priests, and yet you just described Wyeth you mentioned all of these very deep existential ideas.

[C]

When I think about what the book is about at its, like, simplest level, to me, it is about two people with a vocation trying to figure out what it means to have a vocation in a world that seems so evacuated of meaning and structure. And can you pursue a vocation in a. Like the one we have now? Is it possible to sell out in a world that is already bought and sold by the sort of various powers that be? And I think, yeah, Wyeth, as a painter, is at a crisis of faith in what it is that he's doing because he feels like he's come to the end of one form of value in his painting. You know, he loves to paint these various tableaux where he inserts black people. And he. At the start of the book, we find him losing faith in that as, like, an artistic practice. And he's like, well, what else is there? And he's like, should I try to be political? And he's, what does it mean to be political in your art? And I feel like I've been told my whole life that I shouldn't be political in my art, that my art should just be about beauty and truth and expressing all this other stuff. And he just, like, doesn't know what to make of any of it. Right. And so the book is charting his, in some sense, the end of his artistic naivete and his development into a mature artistic consciousness, which is also just the maturation of a person. Like how we all reach that end of the very late adolescence when we finally just have to stand up and be an adult in the world. And that is like, a singularly harrowing moment that comes for us all.

[B]

How do you put that in a novel? This is so conceptual. And I said the word existential before I say it again. Existential. And yet this is a novel. We have a story and we have this character, and we have their own journey. Can you tell me a little bit about your process of having that conversation in this form?

[C]

Yeah, well, so my process used to look very different. It used to just look like I would just write scenes and then try to extrapolate from that some deeper meaning or whatever. But in between writing my last novel, the Late Americans, and writing this book, I read a great deal of political, social and literary theory, especially this one critic, Georg Lukasz. And Lukash, his whole program of realism is that it's all about distilling things down to their most emblematic moments. And so taking the existential and then trying to Figure out what is the moment in this character's life that most clearly and keenly and most urgently expresses all of their problems. Because that is the place where in expressing that character's particular urgencies, you are also expressing the particular urgencies of their time. And so for this book, it was, okay, he's in crisis, whatever that means. I don't want to write a woo woo mushy book. What are the moments and situations that most keenly express that crisis? And then leaning into full on dramatizing those moments, he's gotta be looking at his bad paintings and being, this is not enough. And then he's gotta go into the world and see some art he hates and be like, that's not it either. And then he's gotta encounter someone who's gonna press him on all of his ideals in all these different ways. So when he's in the studio, the people pressing him are his friends, his peers, his studio mates. While he's not always in the studio, right. He's got this other job as an art restorer. And so those people will press him from one angle. And then he meets this guy who he maybe feels something really intense for. And that's gonna be a different set of questions, I guess. Like, I was trying to just demonstrate how the social process works its way out through our relationships. Cause, like, ultimately, to me, a novel is about relationships.

[B]

And you just mentioned he has this relationship with someone else. He meets this guy and I wanna pivot to talk about him cheating.

[C]

I've had this long standing fascination with Catholicism. I'm obsessed with Catholicism. And I read a lot of European history. And so you cannot read about European history and not read about Catholicism. And I was, I'm just gonna go for it. I'm gonna write about a Jesuit. I'm gonna go for it. Who's gonna stop me? I'm gonna write about a Jesuit and I'm gonna, like, put him in this novel. And so the guy that, you know, at the same time that Wyeth is having a crisis of faith in a more secular way, there's this guy who's trained his entire life to be a priest, who's also having a crisis of faith. And they meet and they intersect in the city at this very particular moment in time. And they pressurize each other in these really interesting ways. But writing Keating was just an excuse to, I don't know, write my own version of a Nora Ephron movie maybe. I love romance novels and I love romantic comedies. And I'd always wanted to write one. And I thought, this is gonna be my chance to write my favorite genre of story where people walk and talk themselves into love, where they talk about all the sort of heady questions while giving each other a little bit of a hard time, and come to know each other better through their riffing and their banter and in knowing each other better, aren't totally turned off by what they see. And I think, like, the romantic comedy is the ultimate optimistic art form because it posits that two people who come to know each other won't be turned off or repulsed and will, in fact, want greater intimacy. And I think that is the most optimistic statement about the human condition that we have. That's wild. And it's the opposite, I think, of all my other books. And so when writing this, I was, I'm gonna get to write two people walking around New York City and talking and falling in love. What is not to like?

[B]

Ugh.

[C]

And so whenever I was deep in an edit or deep in a revision, struggling, I was, this is your Nora Ephron moment. Find the bliss. Find the joy in it.

[B]

I kind of love this because I feel like the Keating and Wyeth relationship just did feel so fun. You mentioned they're walking around and talking, but they're also having these deep philosophical conversations over so many cigarettes, and then they're making out, and then they're talking about religion and art, and then they're smoking again and they're making out again, and then they go away and then they're thinking about each other and then they come back. And what I loved about that relationship, in addition to it just being very fun to read, is that it added this other texture to this book where this book is so cerebral and they have such a physical chemistry in addition to that cerebral and spiritual bond.

[C]

Yeah. I'm so glad that you. That you feel that way, because certainly in my own life, some of the most intense relationships that I've had, romantic or platonic, have come about because I've had one of those all night first conversations with someone where you're talking about everything under the sun and you're turning over all the rocks and you're like, oh, my gosh, that's so funny. You're so funny.

[B]

I love this.

[C]

I can't get enough of this. I want to talk to you again and again and again. And so to me, I guess that's one of the things I wanted to write into the book, was just this sense of falling for someone because of their ideas, because of what they have to say, but at the same time, it is physical. But that the two often go together, they often feed each other, and that an initial physical spark is sometimes deepened when you discover, oh, this person knows so much about French lit. Or like, this person knows so. Yeah. Like, when you find out there's weird stuff. Oh, this person knows so much about this random corner of the world. And I love that.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Tell me more.

[B]

They know so much about French lit. And that is so attractive.

[C]

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Or the wrist. Oh, your wrist is so. Oh, like it's. Yeah.

[B]

What were you thinking about as you were balancing those two approaches and those two tones in the novel? This. I guess you mentioned you wanted to write a light book, but then Wyeth is really grappling with pain and a lot of heavy stuff, too.

[C]

I think I was just in pursuit of what Lukash, borrowing from Hegel, calls the totality. And I wanted to symbol a totality of a life, which is to say that it. I felt that in order to tell the truth with the book, it had to have joking around with his friend Bernard and them riffing on Jane Eyre and the trope of the tragic mulatto. At the same time, it had to have these deep dives on Sargent, and it had to have this methodical researching process. He goes in search of a lost artist as well. And it had to have that. And it had to have the melancholy over watching his mother's burgeoning mommy blogger fame.

[B]

The details of her story are very amusing and painful. Painful.

[C]

But I will say that I did delight in getting to think of this woman who's. Anyway, it also had to have this love story at the center of it. Right. And that it had to have all of that. And I think in some ways, the book was me assembling various things that I found a great deal in pleasure in contemplating, like French cinema and painting and light changing on a wall and methodical processes of, like, art restoration. But all of my delight in it, that doesn't mean anything if it doesn't cohere into the life. Right. And so the hardest part was just looking for all of the places where the seams could come together in a way that felt true and authentic and letting the book meander and find its own shape, because otherwise it's gonna feel like, quite forced if I'm gluing this disquisition on Sargent on top of a long thing about lithography or whatever.

[B]

We'll be right back.

[A]

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[B]

And we're back. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review, and I'm talking to the author, Brandon Taylor about his new book, Minor Black Figures. In this book, you are reading this story and you're just swept up in Wyeth's life and his challenges and the development of this relationship. And then you do get long passages about classical music or meditations on art. And what I really appreciated is that it felt like this was a book that really respected the reader, that didn't hold the reader's hands as it introduced them to a variety of interesting, thoughtful topics and interesting meditations on art. And I feel that something about that just felt very refreshing just to feel that respect radiating through the pages. And yet I feel like, that also, in a way, is a type of bravery, of saying, will the reader follow me down this path?

[C]

I agree that it is a faith in the reader, and it is a faith in the novel as a form. I think we're in a moment where everyone has an opinion about the contemporary novel and what ails it and what plagues it. And we're always complaining about it being made ever sleeker and ever more efficient and ever more cinematic.

[B]

But at the same time, the novel is dead. Fiction is over.

[C]

If it's dead, why are we still complaining about, like, they're all. They're all. Everyone has a thought about, like, well, the contemporary novel can't do anymore. Okay, maybe. But when you read Dickens, when you read Zola, when you read Flaubert, when you read George Eliot, when you read Jane Austen, don't you want to try that stuff? Like, when you look at the 19th century novel, it's so much more varied and so much more alive and so much more, much stranger than I think people remember. And I was reading a lot of Zola right around the time that I was getting ready to write this, and I thought, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna remind myself and readers of all that a novel can be and what it can do. And there were moments where my agent, like, with the opening, my agent was like, maybe we make it more efficient. Maybe we get in scene sooner. The line. I think I've written about this elsewhere, but the line I told her was, well, it is a novel. The reader should have to read it. And reminding readers that, oh, yeah, a book can contain all these really wonderful trap doors that drop you down inside. And. But I do think having faith in the reader is one thing, but also respecting the reader and respecting their attention. So that even if you're getting a disquisition about Sargent, you're learning something about Wyeth and how he sees the world and that it will influence how he interacts with the world going forward. And so I have great faith in the reader that they're going to follow me. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. I hope they will. Come with me. I'm not gonna hold you for too long, and it's gonna be worth it. And I think it was about making every discursion feel worth it.

[B]

We are now in my favorite territory, which is the state of the novel and the defense of the novel. And that leads me to a question that I had, which is, so Wyeth is a painter. He has a lot of literary Thoughts, though, and a lot of thoughts about music. But Wyeth is a painter. However, reading this, it felt like this was also a commentary on the criticism and responses and reception to your books that you've received. Is that fair to say? Yeah. One of the things that Wyeth is really grappling with, for instance, is whether or not people feel like his portrayals of real life feel real, and he wants to figure out how to paint real life. And that phrase comes up a lot. And that is also the title of your first book. So I felt like there's a way that the book is inviting you to make those comparisons. And I'm wondering why write about this, the philosophy and ethics of art making and art perception through painting, rather than making Wyeth a writer?

[C]

Yeah, first of all, it was just I wanted to write about a painter. I'd written some books that were very severe, and I allowed myself a very minimal descriptive budget. What's gonna let me execute the most description? I just need to describe stuff, because, again, I've been reading these 19th century novels which are full of description. I was like, you can't do you. In order to smuggle that in, you need a reason. I was like, a painter would give me a great pretext for it. But I also think the reason that it's painting and not prose is like a similar reason that it's painting instead of photography. I mean, there's some photography in the book, but there's something about painting which feels very close to prose literature, which is that it can never give an exact replica of life. And so at the same time, it's not trying to do that. It's only ever offering a sort of very subjective view of the world. And those resonances feel so dear to me as a thinker and as a. As an artist. And so for that reason, as well as my sort of venal desire to write about the materiality of painting, but it also just feels like any black artist making art today, no matter the medium or the form, is confronted with a set of difficulties. And that our work is measured against some sort of external perception of what real black life is. And so even if you're a fantasist, they're reading it for the commentary on black life, even if you yourself have no commentary to make therein. And that tension feels alive no matter the genre or the form. And so I think part of the reason it's painting is that it was the most expedient because it let me describe stuff. And also, I still get to pursue These questions, which are so active in my own life, in a way.

[B]

And can we dig into some of those questions? And specifically, I want to pose the dilemma and frustration that Wyeth has as it appears in the book, which is Wyeth wants to paint beautiful, lush scenes of people wearing sweaters, fraught relationships, considering things. And he is painting stills from movies, and instead of. And he swaps the white figures from those stills with black figures. That's one thing that he's doing. But one of his frustrations is that he could paint anything and people will feel differently about it because not of what's in the painting, but who he is as a painter, which is to say a black painter. And there's a really rich conversation in the book with that. Wyeth has a series of ideas, other characters talk to him about it, challenge him on that. Can you talk to me a little bit about just that conversation as it appears in the book, about race, about perception. We talked about the ethics of art making, but also about the ethics of perceiving art, too.

[C]

This is a great example of a thing we were talking about earlier, which is like, how do you put it in a novel? Right. Because these are ideas that I've wrestled with, that I've grappled with for a long, long time. Yeah. I could put it in a book where he's just sitting moodily thinking about what it means to be a black artist. Yeah. But nobody. Nobody wants to read.

[B]

We need to make this readable and interesting.

[C]

Yeah. Well, also, that's an idea that lives in isolation from the world. And that might make an interesting philosophical treatise, but how does it intersect with this guy's life? Also, how does it arrive out of his. His lived experience? And so the best way to do it is just have him argue about it with other people. And so, as you say, he talks about it with a lot of people. And it also felt important to me that. To put into conversation, because I can have an idea about why people project various things onto my art, and I can walk around thinking that that is a correct idea about that. But the minute it's in conversation, it is then in conversation with someone else's ideas and someone else's perceptions, and it is therefore challenged by those alternative reads. And it forces me to rethink sometimes my own motivations for thinking that. And so it felt important also just to offer a variety of takes on the idea of what it means to be a black artist. And how is black art evaluated? How is black art judged? How is it perceived? Even in the world. Because the way that I feel about it isn't the way that this black artist feels or that black artist feels. And so it would have felt false to write a book about this character lamenting the perception of black art if the text itself didn't admit that this is just one perspective. I can't say this is a book about him yearning for his subjectivity if I don't do a great job of showing these external limitations of that subjectivity, because then it's universal. So you've got to put it in a context and like the easiest way, just to have them argue about it, which I love.

[B]

I love an argument that distills what's happening in this book, which is big, philosophical, lofty conversations. Let's have people argue, let's talk about art, let's have a painter, let's talk about fraught relationships with a hot priest.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Well, I could ask you questions about this novel all day, but I have a few panned out questions I want to make sure to get to. I want to pivot and talk to you about just writing and your career at large. We alluded to it earlier, but you are up to so much. You are an author, you are a professor, you are a critic, and you've written for places including the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, you mentioned the Sally Rooney Review. You are an acquiring editor, you have a very popular substack. You're doing so much. And I. And I feel because of that, you have a very unique vantage point on the literary world and the books industry. And I just wanted to ask about that. And I guess to start, I was wondering, have any of those other jobs impacted your writing or are they just completely separate for you?

[C]

Well, I think definitely my criticism that I write because it means that I'm reading a lot and I'm reading a lot of criticism. And I'm trying to. Before I offer an opinion about a book, I want to be versed in its themes and its ideas and its ideologies and its tradition. So that involves a lot of background reading. And that has come in a big way. Most obviously is the case. This piece I wrote for the LRB about Emile Zola's Rougon Makar, which is this 20 novel cycle. And so I had to read 20 Zola novels casual. And when you read that much of an author, he does leach into the groundwater. And so reading this book back, there's so much Zola, his fingerprints are all over it. And so it's like a really Obvious case. Teaching also influences my thinking. The teaching sometimes leads to criticism. I will notice a thing in my students work and I'll try to figure why is it like that. And that will lead to criticism. And sometimes the criticism leads to quirks in my own writing. And so it is a wild ecosystem.

[B]

One thing that I noticed and really appreciated is I think it was for Bookforum you reviewed Intermezzo and in the middle of that review you mentioned that in books by European authors they have friends, the main characters, and there's a social world. And in books by American authors they do not. And while reading this minor Black figures, I noticed the r social world. You mentioned it in this interview. And so that for me as I was reading I was thinking about that.

[C]

Symbiotic relationship as I was writing it, I was also thinking about that as well. I've now indoctrinated my students into this where I call it loser fiction, where it's just you guys notice that all your characters are losers. They don't have friends, they don't have families, they don't know their neighbors, they don't even live in a neighborhood. They just live in a sort of totally secluded three dimensional space. And now they've started giving their characters friends again. So friends are coming back.

[B]

Friends are back 2025.

[C]

I know, I mean, but it's what it was wild. Cause I'd read Intermezzo and I'd read all these other books by Irish and European authors and oh, this person's afraid of their neighbor finding out this thing about them. When was the last time I read an American novel with a neighbor in it? Isolated, anxious losers, Loser fiction.

[B]

Loser fiction is a phrase that will.

[C]

Stick with me for a long time.

[B]

I guess going off of that. What else are you now I'm just picking your brain. But what else are you noticing in books these days? What excites you? What are you seeing?

[C]

I'm working on a perhaps too long article, Rachel Cusk and her sort of literary descendants and what Autofiction was basically. And it does seem that we're at the end of that mode and that we're entering this rejuvenation of this multi decade spanning family saga. So that's interesting to me. I feel like the sort of after a period of experimentation, going mainstream in American literature, we're sort of reverting to a more conservative form. And what can be more conservative than the multi decade, which is a novel form I really love. And so that's the thing I've noticed most also there is a raft of novels that I called wrong protagonist novels where they.

[B]

What are those?

[C]

It's a novel in which a character who's not very interesting goes in search of like a more interesting character who has gone missing, died. They're trying to figure out what happened to this person who was infinitely more interesting than them. And so it's a lot of novels about podcasters, novels about detectives, novels about a woman in search of her missing insert mother, sister, friend, whatever. And I find that genre of novel really interesting. It's almost true crimey. But the book should just be about that more interesting person.

[B]

But it's not, say the title of the genre again.

[C]

More wrong Wrong protagonist novels.

[B]

Yeah, so we have wrong protagonist novels. We have loser fiction. Talk to me about your taxonomy.

[C]

Those are like the two most obvious kinds that you just see a ton. Weirdly enough, I feel like campus novels are coming back. Where were you guys? When I was writing real life, I needed to feel like I was in the midst. I think neo gothic is coming back as well. The sort of suburban gothic where it's often like a woman in a house and there's something odd about it.

[B]

I'm laughing because when put this way, these sound so silly, But I love all of these types of novels.

[C]

Oh, sign me up. A novel about a misanthropic guy living in an apartment building. He doesn't know any of his neighbors. I'll read 400 pages. I cannot wait for the sequel.

[B]

Well, given all of the various types of novels, can we know, Are you working on anything next? And is it a radically different type? Is it one of these types of novels?

[C]

You know what? I signed my first book contract in 2018. It was a two book deal. And then in 2020, I signed another two book deal, which means that for the last seven or eight years, I've always known what the next book would be, or I knew that my next book would have a home, but now I don't. And so I'm finding out what it is like again to write fiction in absence of a structure or a contract or whatever. And so I'm getting to know myself again in a way. But the thing that I feel like I fought against writing a tennis novel for a long time. And over the summer, I feel like I finally just got worn down. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna give in. I'm gonna give in to the muse. And so I'm tinkering with the beginnings of a tennis novel.

[B]

That's so exciting. Both knowing how much Tennis. You play. You write about tennis quite a lot in my. My brain. Challengers is. There's so much tension and possibility. And tennis as a sport.

[C]

Yeah. It's inherently narrative, and it's. Right now I'm sort of shuttling between two ideas which I won't give away, but I'm curious which one will win out. My next novel might be a tennis novel or, like a Southern Gothic, which is another book I've been working on for seven years and just keep putting away.

[B]

And those are so different, those types. Southern Gothic, tennis novel.

[C]

Yeah, I know. No, it's. The mind never rests.

[B]

Well, before we go, I just have a few last questions really quickly. If minor black figures could whisper something from the shelf to a reader who's passing by, what would it say to them?

[C]

Oh, that's such a good question. Because there's the Theodore Dreiser in my heart, the sort of social novelist in my heart wants, you know, to whisper, what is it like to preserve your own sort of weird subjectivity in this world that's trying so hard to homogenize us? But then the sort of swoo. Meg Ryan and me wants people to pick it up and be like, oh, this is a book that swoons where love is possible. And I did write a swooning scene in the book that I. When I read it, I was like, I finally wrote a character being slept off their feet. Those are my two. Those are my two little whispers that love is possible and you can preserve your own subjectivity.

[B]

And then my last question is, are you reading anything good these days? Do you have anything that you want to recommend?

[C]

Well, I'm reading Madame Bovary, which. Hot take. So good. So I'm reading Madame Bovary because I'm teaching a class on ideology and fiction. But for contemporary novels, there's this wonderful, strange book called Muscle man by Jordan Castro.

[B]

I don't know this.

[C]

It just came out, and I think it's the gayest book of 2025. It's about a professor who gets stuck in a long faculty meeting, and all he wants to be doing is lifting at the gym. And it's so smart on all of our sort of contemporary anxieties around masculinity, but also, like, what it means to be in the humanities, which is a rapidly fraught space. And it's so funny, it's so smart. It's so light on its feet, and it's like Thomas Bernhard meets a Jim Meme Instagram account. It's exquisite. I love it so much.

[B]

This sounds so good readers. Go check that out. And also go check out Mine Are Black Figures by Brandon Taylor. Brandon, this has been incredible. Thank you for joining us.

[C]

Oh, thanks for having me. And we can't wait to come back.

[B]

That was my conversation with Brandon Taylor about his new book, Minor Black Figures. I'm MJ Franklin, an editor here at the New York Times Book Review. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.

[A]

As the holidays approach, get prepped for all your hosting and decorating needs with Wayfair. Wayfair. From dining tables and chairs that bring the whole family together to extra sheets and towels that make guests feel comfortable, Wayfair is your one stop. Shop for everything home this season. Transform your space into an entertainer's dream. Get everything you need to host all in one place at Wayfair. Plus, Wayfair ships everything fast and easy right to your door. Shop all things home [e-mail] that's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, every home.