Chad Taylor

Born and educated in Auckland, where his work is largely set, he graduated BFA at Elam and has carried that interest into the strong visual quality of his writing... The fictions often work on the edge of such conventions as the murder story ('No Sun, No Rain'), futuristic fantasy ('Somewhere in the 21st Century') or romance triangle (Pack of Lies, 'Calling Doctor Dollywell'), often through unreliable or unattractive narrators... As these literary norms are subverted, perceptions of reality and identity are challenged.

Strong visual representations, especially of sex and clothing, and filmic treatment with fragmentary and mobile scenes and chronology, provide metaphorical access to these internal concerns.

Chad Taylor (born 1964) is a New Zealand writer.

Chad Taylor is a New Zealand author of novels, short stories and screenplays.

He was born in Auckland.

He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts.

Taylor has also written for film including the original screenplay for the short film Funny Little Guy (1994), directed by Chris Graves.

The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature (1998) described him as:

A writer of uncompromisingly contemporary fictions of transience and shifting realities in the modern city.

In 1998, his novel Heaven was made into a feature film by Miramax.

The film was produced by Sue Rogers, directed by Scott Reynolds and starred Martin Donovan.

He was the recipient of the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship for literature in 2001 and the University of Auckland Literary Fellow in 2003.

His work has been translated in Germany, Italy and France.

Guardian Critic Maxim Jakubowski described Taylor's novel Electric (2003) as "entropy noir" and praised Shirker (2000) for its "existential anomie."

Much more ambitious, and weaving a seductive web of existential anomie, is Chad Taylor's Shirker, a fascinating and obsessive novel from New Zealand with shades of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy.

Ellerslie Penrose, a part-time futures broker, finds a junkie's body in an Auckland dumpster, steals his wallet and embarks on a hallucinatory journey into the shadow life of the dead man.

This brings him into contact with fantasy bordellos, mysterious manuscripts, bizarre antiques dealers, and a sleazy nest of quirky happenstance.

Oddly detached from its subject matter, this is as hypnotic as they come; it's also miles away from the conventions of your average country-cottage crime or pig-headed cop yarn.

One for the connoisseurs.

In May 2003 the NZ Listener listed him as one of "New Zealand's Top Ten Novelists Under 40."

Electric (2003) is set in Auckland during the power cuts that blacked out the city in 1998.

Time Out London selected the novel as Book of the Week on 22 January 2003.

Time Out critic Roger Howard described Electric as a story of chaos and urban malaise:

His setting is a New Zealand you won't see in Lord of the Rings: a city suffering from the same urban malaise as glitzier metropolises on other continents.

Our protagonist, Samuel Usher, is a drug addict who supports himself by recovering data from damaged computers.

He falls in with a couple of drifters who occupy themselves with recondite mathematics.

But the favoured activity for all three involves powders on polished surfaces.

When Jules dies in mysterious circumstances, Usher sets off to find out why.

Thematically, Taylor's concerns are twofold: the infinite extent of digitised culture; and the limitless flood of narcotics (not to mention the global industry behind it).

Electric looks at what happens when chaos rises up to warp these apparently unassailable worlds.

In 2006 he was one of 12 New Zealand authors invited to tour France for Les Belles Etrangeres.

Taylor acknowledged the "noir" label in a 2009 interview:

I’ve basically deconstructed crime novels: I’ve taken aspects of crime novels, rewritten them, taken them apart.

People used to ask me, “What do you write?”... I just don’t know.

But you have come up with a word for what you do.

‘Noir’ kind of fits it.

He appeared at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2012.

He currently resides in New Zealand.

Taylor's style can be described as neo-noir.

His themes include murder and love, sex, reality, identity and life in an intense, urban environment.