September 22nd, 2010 / 12:42 pm
Author Spotlight
Matthew Simmons
Author Spotlight
Well played, Tao.
Included in this issue is an article about Tao Lin by Tao Lin. I’ll update this post with a link when it is live. Or, if you’re the sort of person who might want to do something like this, you could just go ahead to The Stranger’s website and hit refresh for the next few hours.
UPDATE:
Tags: richard yates, Tao Lin
More Tao Lin news. Thank you so so much.
More Tao Lin news. Thank you so so much.
that photo clearly says “I am very smart and this is my serious literature.”
is that the first promo shot of him with glasses
i’m laughing really hard right now at how ballsy this is
You, sir, are welcome!
I love this.
hehe… :)
thoughtful critique of franzen/”freedom”: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/past-master/Content?oid=4939383
The only thing better than the cover is the toothbrush in the coffee mug.
I am ready for ANYTHING!
the article on franzen is hilarious. good follow-up, whoever-is-responsible-for-this. golf clapping.
I have Tao Lin’s Richard Yates (RY) on my bookshelf. It’s next to other Tao Lin books. And those books are next to other non-Tao Lin books.
That’s where the problem started.
Here’s the problem: every time I try to pull RY off the shelf the other books shame me out of it; they say something like: “Really? Seriously, man?”
That’s when I’m forced to look down. Ashamed: I grab something else.
Yesterday I grabbed Handke’s A Sorry Beyond Dreams.
And I read it.
And then it became clear: it no longer made sense to read Tao Lin. Well, not as long as other non-Tao Lin books like Handke’s were next to the Tao Lin books.
I know: the solution is simple. Maybe I should just isolate RY–put it on the coffee table or something–then it’d be easier to pick it up. Or maybe in the dark of night I could get away with it.
But I can’t do it.
I can’t even get that close to RY.
Again: it’s the shame.
And then an article like this comes along and tells me what the non-Tao Lin books on my shelf have been trying to tell me all along: the best compliment I could give Tao Lin is that I leave RY on the bookshelf at all.
And I can’t betray the other books by doing anything more than that.
Sorry, man. I just can’t do it.
Again: it’s the shame.
Maybe you shouldn’t be buying books you’re too ashamed to read?
I think the best compliment you could have given Tao was purchasing the book and putting money into his pocket. It seems to me, especially after reading the BlackBook profile, to be the only input from you he really cares about.
I fist pumped when I saw this.
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20100823,00.html
I’ll never be able to get publicity like Tao unless I go out with Lindsay Lohan again.
Someone should correct me if I’ve missed this, but why hasn’t anyone followed Tao and created ballsy publicity? I know the ‘stunts’ irk some people but it does get the word out. If I’d never heard of Tao this newspaper cover alone would generate massive interest.
while the publicity is effective in creating conversation, i wouldn’t call it ballsy. i’m pretty sure there are several cheesy websites with templates that easily allow you to put your face onto the cover of established publications. not saying this was their method, merely, this seems not too elevated from someone’s “funny” photo album on facebook.
http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/017_03/6361
Pretty much what he said.
BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
this is one of those moments i’m ashamed to be american, and incapable of stopping us from doing this to ourselves.
Yeah this kinda hit the A/S offices like a gut-punch…
don’t ever be ashamed of being american
Ya know, as much as Tao Lin annoys me with his self-promotional shtick, and as puerile, dull and lifeless as his sentences are (seriously, line-by-line, the dude is completely boring and lacking in imagination), I do find it interesting to compare annoyance with Lin to annoyance with a writer like Franzen, who gets all the backing and then some from his publisher.
In other words–sigh–I guess Lin is just doing for himself what many big houses do for a select few writers, and in Lin’s case, he just has to be more viral and aggressive, but it’s all the same, really.
Ya know, as much as Tao Lin annoys me with his self-promotional shtick, and as puerile, dull and lifeless as his sentences are (seriously, line-by-line, the dude is completely boring and lacking in imagination), I do find it interesting to compare annoyance with Lin to annoyance with a writer like Franzen, who gets all the backing and then some from his publisher.
In other words–sigh–I guess Lin is just doing for himself what many big houses do for a select few writers, and in Lin’s case, he just has to be more viral and aggressive, but it’s all the same, really.