[Hi, this is Stephen Tully Dierks. I interviewed Tao Lin re his second novel, Richard Yates. This is part two of the interview. You can read the first part here.]

Are there any other artists with whom you’d like to collaborate, either directly or indirectly?

I would like to draw the album art for any band that I like. I would like to be the cover artist for an issue of McSweeney’s or Best American Non-Required Reading.

I think I feel like not collaborating on writing things at this point, unless it is a letters-type thing, like hikikomori with Ellen Kennedy.

Haley Joel Osment states in the book that Nobel Prize winners used to be depressed existentialists and now they are sociologists. Could you expound on this idea?

I think he was being sarcastic to a large degree. He maybe had some vague idea that people like Camus, Hermann Hesse, Sartre used to win the Nobel Prize and that there has been some kind of change, and that different kinds of writers now win the Nobel Prize, ones focused more on how people are like within a culture or a society, rather than within the universe, maybe, in that the “write-ups” about them seem, to Haley Joel Osment, to always mostly focus on their political or gender-issue or cultural themes (Haley Joel Osment assumes, though, that that’s just the journalists “doing their thing” and not an accurate portrayal of the writers; for example many articles connect Kafka to Prague rather than to “existential issues” or something).

Who do you think Haley Joel Osment would say is his favorite Nobel Prize winner for literature?

Maybe Knut Hamsun.

By what writer do you feel most interested in reading a review of Richard Yates for what venue?

Maybe a 5000-word review by Dennis Cooper that is somehow in New York Times Magazine (don’t think they publish reviews).

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[Hi, this is Stephen Tully Dierks. I interviewed Tao Lin re his second novel, Richard Yates.]

STEPHEN: Potentially, every aspect of this novel unsettles one’s preconceived notions, from the use of title to character names to the treatment of charged themes (statutory rape, child abuse, etc.) to the notion of fiction versus non-fiction. Did you make a conscious effort to do these things, and did you have a goal or desired effect in mind?

TAO LIN: I focused, if anything, on not doing anything—or, rather, on not doing anything “extra” (the prose style, tone, perspective, focus, content of Richard Yates probably will, either as a side-effect of the aforementioned or the current “cultural climate” or the amount of preconception of the specific person reading the book, cause some preconceived notions to be unsettled, but I think any book that exists will unsettle preconceived notions, depending on who is reading it)—that I would perceive as “attempting to unsettle preconceived notions,” I think, by avoiding the defense or support of any of the characters’ behaviors, except that which the characters sometimes expressed naturally, within the narrative.

I didn’t include sentences conveying that in different contexts—for example [various cultures/subcultures over the past few thousand years]—a 22-year-old having sex with a 16-year-old, a person killing oneself, or someone vomiting food would not be notable. I didn’t want to attempt to include anything like that for any of the possibly “controversial” topics.

It doesn’t seem taboo to the “literary mainstream” of America, at this moment, to write about confusion, depression, meaninglessness, or uncertainty, and those are the things I feel focused on in Richard Yates, in my view.

What was the writing process like for this book? What is the history of its composition?

I wrote a short story in an early version of the final “prose style” of Richard Yates ~February/March 2006. Different drafts of that short story are published on bear parade and in an issue of Noon. That story is, to a large degree, about the character referenced in Richard Yates as “headbutt girl,” and I think I originally wanted Richard Yates to include maybe 3000 to 5000 words before where Richard Yates currently begins. I began writing things that are in Richard Yates, in different form, ~June/July 2006. I worked on it “idly” (maybe 1-6 hours 70-80% of days) until ~March 2008 when I worked on it “pretty hard” (maybe 2-6 hours 90-95% of days), until ~August 2008 when I sold shares in its royalties, gaining $12,000, and stopped working at my restaurant job, and worked on Richard Yates “very hard,” 6-12 hours ~98% of days, until ~October 2008. I felt it was finished. I emailed it to my publisher. They read it and said some things about it. ~December 2009 I worked on it 6-12 hours a day ~15 consecutive days. I felt it was finished. I emailed it to my publisher. They felt it was finished. ~February 2009 I asked them if I could work on it again. They said I could. I worked on it 6-12 hours a day ~25 consecutive days. I felt it was finished. ~November 2009 I worked on it 6-12 hours a day ~20 consecutive days. I felt it was finished. ~February 2010 I worked on it 6-12 hours a day ~20 consecutive days. I felt it was finished. Galleys were printed June 2010. I asked if I could work on it again. They said I could. I worked on it ~50 hours in a ~80 hour time period. I emailed it to my publisher. There were a few more emails where I changed 4-10 more non-typo things. The final draft was completed July 6 2010. A few more changes were made July 9 2010 to the PDF of the final draft.

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As Jonathan Franzen solemnly graces the cover of TIME magazine, we got to thinking who of his peers were also deserving of a cover on other magazines, and what those magazines might be. Here are our top picks: