Taipei
by Tao Lin
Vintage, 2013
256 pages / $14.95 buy from Amazon

1. “Paul dreamed something about his cube-shaped room being a storage facility in which he’d been placed by an entity that believed in his resale value.”

2. “He felt like he was trying to remove the surface of a glass bottle by pawing at it with oven mitts.”

3. “‘Nice,’ said Paul staring transfixed at Fran’s delicate and extreme gaze, like that of a skeleton with eyeballs, or a person with their face peeled off.”

4. “Daniel arrived with his friend Fran, 22, whose intriguing gaze, Paul noticed with interest, seemed both disbelieving and transfixed in discernment, as if meticulously studying what she knew she was hallucinating.”

5. “He awoke at night fifteen hours later and, while showering, felt like he lived in a module attached to a spaceship far enough from any star to never experience daylight.”

6. “The book party, like algae, feeling its way elsewhere, moved slowly but persistently from the bookstore’s basement to its first floor, to the sidewalk outside, converging finally with other groups at a corner bar…”

7. “There were times when his memory, like an external hard drive that had been taken from him and hidden inside an unwieldy series of cardboard boxes, or placed at the end of a long and dark and messy corridor…”

8. “Daniel was standing with limbs and neck uncoordinatedly extended, slightly striding in place–the pre-predatory stance of a chained thing that had broken free and didn’t yet know where to direct its vengeance, or what to do generally.”

9. “…watched the police car, or a police car, zoom past in the left lane, with emergency lights on and sirens off, quick and soundless as an apparition or the hologram of itself.”

10. “One the plane, after a cup of black coffee, Paul thought of Taipei as a fifth season, or ‘otherworld,’ outside, or in equal contrast with, his increasingly familiar and self-consciously repetitive life in America, where it seemed like the seasons, connecting in right angles, for some misguided reason, had formed a square, sarcastically framing nothing–or been melded, Paul vaguely imagined, about an hour later, facedown on his arms on his dining tray, into a door-knocker, which a child, after twenty to thirty knocks, no longer expecting an answer, has continued using, in a kind of daze, distracted by the pointlessness of his activity, looking absently elsewhere, unaware when he will abruptly, idly stop.” READ MORE >

what purpose did i serve in your life
by Marie Calloway
Tyrant Books, 2013
200 pages / $19.00 buy from Amazon or SPD

1. A link to Frank Hinton’s review from a few weeks ago.

2. Sex Writer Marie Calloway Addresses Dr. Phil Controversy Live

3. “I started to wonder, and felt relieved that there might be truth to the idea of intellectuals all being frauds. I knew that I certainly was.”

4. Some old links [TRIGGER WARNING: “journalism”]: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

5. I don’t know if Marie Calloway’s writing is unique, but I know I haven’t read anything like it. Have you?

6. “I wondered if maybe men are incapable of understanding something like this as anything other than something that’s meant to get them off.”

7. I’ve been thinking about how subjective the idea of “degradation” is, unless we’re talking about soil erosion or something.

8. 

9. I’d be curious to read a story that was “completely incomprehensible to men,” especially if Marie Calloway wrote it.

10. It’s funny how such clear, direct prose has resulted in so many people missing the point entirely. READ MORE >