Behind the Scenes
Notes For Teaching Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee
(Melville House, 2007)
Over the past six weeks, I have been teaching a summer semester undergraduate literature course entitled “Reexamining the Body: Race & Gender in American Experimental Fiction.” After a week of introductory material, we dedicated one week (four days a week) to studying a single novel: Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972), Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee (1982), Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School (1978), Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper (2005), and Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee (2007). Each posed a different set of issues, which allowed us to discuss literature as contagion, as colonization, as assault, as enchantment, and as sedation.
To celebrate the last day of class, I thought I would share with you my notes for Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee. These are basically the blueprints for my lectures, or what I use to begin thinking about what I’m going to say in class. In the interest of time, and in the interest of authenticity, I’ve decided not to correct or clean up or organize these notes, but instead share them as they appear in my Word Doc titled “Notes: Tao Lin Eeeeee.” It’s scattershot, sure, but that’s sort of how my brain works.
Notes: Tao Lin Eeeeee
First, present argument: Eeeee Eee Eeee is an extremely smart, extremely provocative, and ultimately indispensable work of contemporary American literature. But it is also a problematic text in terms of both its form and content, and its relationship to, as well as its representation of, race and gender. Why? This is what we hope to uncover.
In terms of the experimental literature aspect of the course, we will investigate the aesthetics, focusing on structure and character as illustrations of what I will call a literature of sedation. The text mumbles, blimps, and shuffles. The hallucinatory mingles with the imaginary to numb and destabilize the sense of reality conjured by the text. Memory recurs and fades away without ever establishing a firm grip. Consistency perpetually comes under suspicion, to the point where contingency threatens to overtake the narrative. Make sure to reestablish that these inquiries are predicated on the assumption of strategy rather than deficiency, so that each item under scrutiny is carefully considered with the utmost respect for the text’s artistry.
In terms of the race and gender aspect of the course, we will look at this text as an example of the tension between absence/presence, as representing a lack of engagement especially with race, despite the fact that the author of the text is Asian-American, and what this absence might signal about our particular cultural/historical moment. Issues surrounding “post-race” should be considered. Compare this book with the other course texts in order to situate it in our ongoing conversation.
Q: Do authors have obligations to their race or gender? Do authors have obligations to other races or genders?
Open with Derrida on absence/presence. Use Paul Fry’s example of the Eiffel Tower. Discuss how absence works to reinforce presence. Idea of the text both creating and being created by absence.
What discursive fields does Eeeee Eee Eeee imbricate? Modernism, Surrealism, Realism, the Absurd, …?
Usher conversations away from symbolism. A dolphin is a dolphin, a bear is a bear. Return to our discussion of surface and depth. (Perhaps share quote from Shaviro’s Cinematic Body about Warhol being pure surface.)
How does anthropomorphism complicate the text?
In terms of Barthes’s distinction between Readerly/Writerly texts, where does Eeeee Eee Eeee situate itself?
In terms of McHale’s division (Modern : Epistemological :: Postmodern : Ontological), where does Eeeee Eee Eeee situate itself?
In terms of the distinction between the Kantian & Hegelian aesthetic paradigms, where does Eeeee Eee Eeee situate itself?
Looking closer:
(i) Structure
The first 109 pages focus on a character named Andrew, but then the narrative diverges: a chapter focuses on bears, two chapters focus on Ellen (the sister of Andrew’s friend Steve), a chapter focuses on dolphins, another chapter focuses on Ellen, and then a return to the focus on Andrew. However, this schema flexes. For instance, around page 80 the narrator leaves Andrew behind to follow a dolphin to Los Angeles to kill Elijah Wood, and toward the end of the book the narrative is hijacked by a pontificating president.
Aside from these narrative focal divisions, there are at least two other strategic structural devices being employed.
First, the order of information. From the start to the finish, Eeeee Eee Eeee loops and jags and presents information non-chronologically and non-sequentially. For instance, we are not made privy to the background of Andrew’s obsession with someone called Sarah until page 98 when we find out that they had only the briefest of exchange despite the fact that for some reason Andrew attaches great meaning to her and to their imagined relationship. The placement of this scene at this moment in the book is a signal of Lin’s strength as a craftsman, because what it does is recalibrate our understanding of Andrew’s character. Until this reveal, readers are left to imagine the deep relationship these two characters shared, their prolonged affair, their commitments to one another — “He feels nauseous. He’ll never see Sarah again” (74). “The gate has a secret pass code. Sarah has a secret pass code. She should. Andrew would stand there for years trying combinations” (87). — and then when we find out that there was no relationship to speak of, that their exchange was superficial — Sarah asks Andrew if she can read some of his stories, which he agrees to email to her, but she never responds; as well, she tells him she will come and visit him in Florida, but after a year of promises she never comes — the reader sees Andrew in a different light. How sad, one reader might think, that this young man seems so smitten with someone he barely knows. Or: how creepy, another reader might think, that this guy is so obsessed over someone who was clearly uninterested in him. Or: how romantic, another reader might think, how truly 19th century of him. However the reader responds, I think it’s fair to say that the level of narrative complexity would have been severely diminished had Lin chosen to tell the tale in sequential order rather than relying on this nonlinear model. Had we known from the start that Andrew and Sarah knew each other only passingly, our reception of his obsession would be calculated differently, and our judgement of the character would most likely be more cynical, I would suspect.
Second, the denial of escalation. Notice how the text resists Freytag’s pyramid: no inciting incident, no rising action, no climax, no denouement. The text convulses along a flatline, moves in time but never intensifies, ignores causality, instantiates a counter discourse to standard teleological assumptions: a text that goes nowhere, builds to nothing, seemingly akin to the disorder and meaninglessness of life…except, consciously diagnoses itself as art by aligning with Pessoa’s assertion, ” ‘Pessoa said art was fun and beautiful because it was useless and had no meaning’ the alien said. ‘And that life is not fun because there is always a goal; you always need a goal each day” (202). A goalless text. A work of art. A counter to life, not a representation of it.
(ii) Tension between action and inaction.
Throughout the opening section of the book, I recognized a pattern of repetition involving the phrase “killing rampage.” According to my calculations, that phrase was used ~20 times: on pages 10, 12, 19 (x2), 29, 30-31, 41, 42, 51, 52, 54, 55 (x2), 57, 61, 65, 76 (x2), 90. Comparing the frequency of this phrase to the infrequency of characters acting, making choices, or even doing anything creates an interesting paradox: as though the characters want so badly to act but don’t know how — recall Mark’s question to Andrew about “how to have fun” — characters seem to not know how to behave or act or function in society. Perhaps they seek the most intensely imaginable action in order to counter their utterly mundane existence? Compare to Janey Smith character in Acker’s Blood and Guts: if Janey mentioned going on a “killing rampage” we could be sure that she would in fact go on a killing rampage. But when Andrew or one of the other characters says it or thinks it, the likelihood of them really going to do it seems minimal.
(iii) Identity
“Now Andrew just feels like Snoop Dog all the time. No he doesn’t. He hasn’t once felt like Snoop Dog” (74).
—Draw out the repeated use of the “yes I did, no I didn’t” pattern. Contradiction is ubiquitous vis à vis character.
” ‘I feel like how Honda Civics look. That’s why I drive a Honda Civic,’ Andrew says. ‘Just kidding’ ” (30).
—The way the characters identify with other things: objects, celebrities, etc.
“Everyone at work will be trite and cliched. Andrew is trite and cliched. He has nothing to say to anyone. No one has anything to say to anyone, for some reason. Everything is cliched and melodramatic” (77).
—John Cage (Nothing to say and I’m saying it.) Consider this as the battle-cry of Eeeee Eee Eeee.
Sadness. Depression. Loneliness. Alienation. Suicide. = Recurrent themes
Fernando Pessoa is valorized because “he understood the smallness and uselessness of human life, did not believe in such thing as ‘sincerity,’ and knew the possibility of a maid breaking a cup as the cup using the maid to commit suicide” (172). Pessoa actually plays an interesting role in Eeeee Eee Eeee, especially at the end when a character named Shawn admits to a group of people that he’s unfamiliar with Pessoa’s work, which causes the president to ask him to leave the group. The implication being that Shawn is not a member of the tribe and should therefore be ostracized. Shawn’s “otherness” marks him in a way that most of the characters in the book (be they human or animal) are not marked.
In fact, make case in class for reading every character in the book as the same character, because for all intents and purposes there is no difference between Andrew and Ellen, between Ellen and her mother Jan, between the bears and the president, between the dolphins and Andrew’s boss Matt. They all speak the same way and have the same thoughts. They are all depressed and sad and angsty. (Look at the exchange between Ellen and her mother pgs. 145-155)
Argue: names in Eeeee Eee Eeee are merely labels. But this flatness or sameness is not a mistake on Lin’s part, not an error in need of fixing nor a shortcoming; it is actually a very effective strategic device. Instead of using the conventional wisdom that would suggest the need for “well-rounded characters,” Lin presents an illustration of the philosophy he posits throughout the text as evidenced explicitly in this passage: “It’s depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then kill itself in hand-to-hand combat” (27). In other words, the goal of the text is to avoid differentiating characters, to instead conflate and compress characters, to intensify unity to the point where all is one and the same. While this is one of the interesting aspects of the text, it causes a problem for readers looking to examine the role of race and gender.
Notwithstanding the brief mention of “white poeple” on page 101, Eeeee Eee Eeee is seemingly devoid of race. The labels (or “characters”) are hardly described at all, so that they read more like concepts than physical beings. Talking/thinking stick figures. Again, this is not meant pejoratively, but should be conveyed as:
(i) an example of subverting conventional assumptions regarding character and character development
(ii) an attempt to reconfigure our perceptions of the role of character in fiction
(iii) to background the issue of character in order to foreground other, seemingly more important, aspects of the text.
Earlier this year, Lin wrote an article on the future of the novel for The New York Observer where he elaborated his ideas relating to the division between noumenon and phenomenon and how this relates to literature. It would seem that part of Lin’s project is to produce texts that present as closely as possible the ideas existing in his noumenon, devoid of any (what he would see as restrictive) attributes of phenomenon. To put it another way, Eeeee Eee Eeee is uninterested in “the real world.” And therefore uninterested in the real world considerations of race and gender. (We must be careful then with all of those pop cultural references because they are deceiving us: Dominoes Pizza, Target, Honda Civics, Instant Messenger, etc. — these are all props, red herrings attempting to fool us into believing that the text is based in our shred “real world” when in fact it takes place anywhere but here — also beware the geographic locations: Florida, New York City, these labels are misleading) Politics, the book tells us, is a “pretend game” (195). What the book wants us to consider instead are philosophical questions that exist outside the realm of politics: “Why are we born? Why do we die? Where do we go when we die? Where did consciousness come from? Politics does not acknowledge those questions” (194).
Existential inquiry trumps race issues (or cultural politics).
Must consider: to what degree to engage with “existentialism” as a concept. Could make connection to Sartre’s “No Exit,” could make connection to Camus’s Stranger, could even make connection between Eeeee Eee Eeee and the absurdities of Jarry (Ubu Roi), Ionesco (Rhinoceros), Arabal (Guernica), Abby (Zoo Story) et. al. (Thinking especially of the scene where Andrew’s boss calls everyone into his office and they fill up the place and turn off the lights.) Could bring Beckett into the conversation, could show clips from Happy Days. At any rate, would need to point out the rampant overuse of the concept of “existentialism” — remind class that even Sartre, in 1946, recognized the near uselessness of the term in his famous lecture Existentialism Is A Humanism:
Most of those who are making use of this word would be highly confused if required to explain its meaning. For since it has become fashionable, people cheerfully declare that this musician or that painter is “existentialist.” A columnist in Clartes signs himself “The Existentialist,” and, indeed, the word is now so loosely applied to so many things that it no longer means anything at all. It would appear that, for the lack of any novel doctrine such as that of surrealism, all those who are eager to join in the latest scandal or movement now seize upon this philosophy in which, however, they can find nothing to their purpose. For in truth this is of all teachings the least scandalous and the most austere: it is intended strictly for technicians and philosophers.
Seems relevant, but could potentially put us on a slippery slope into an outer atmosphere conversation. Would need to explain the ramifications of existentialism as a “pop-philosophical” concept in our current cultural situation, and would need to show its connections and disconnections vis à vis race.
In an interview at Brightest Young Things from earlier this year, Lin was asked about his position on race:
BYT: One subject you do not talk about in your writing (that I have ever seen) is being Asian, or I guess the Asian American Experience. Are identity politics just totally beside the point?
TL: I don’t know what to say about Asians. I think everyone is “racist,” to differing degrees, in that everyone’s brain will automatically associate information with other information, based on the information they are looking at (for example skin color, bone structure), but I think focusing on race in any manner that isn’t neutral or self-aware probably increases racism. If I wrote a book about being Asian, instead of being a person, I would feel like I was openly doing things to increase my own racism and other people’s racism, I think.
It seems like most people will agree that they would like if they were treated by other people based on what they have concretely done in their life, not what other people have done, with their lives. Focusing on being a person instead of an Asian or an [anything] seems to promote a worldview that encourages people to treat others based on what each person has specifically done in their life, which seems like it would reduce such things as war, racism, unfairness, “hate crimes,” [other things most people feel aversion toward].
I think that’s one reason I would avoid writing about “being Asian.” Another is that if I wrote about “being [abstraction]” I would be ignoring existential issues (such as death, limited-time, the arbitrary nature of the universe, the mystery of consciousness) that I feel affect me most in my life and think about most of the time. Another reason is that it doesn’t seem specific or accurate, to me, to write about “being [abstraction].” I think there are some other reasons.
Very interesting and provocative, if simultaneously problematic in its utopian vision.
In Vice last year Lin said:
I also remember you saying something along the lines of “my favorite writers are usually white and rich or middle class.”
Those people aren’t as affected as much by poverty, having to fight in a war, having to earn money to survive, racism, and things like that. Things that, if solved, will leave you with these other problems: knowing you’re going to die, knowing you’re required to make decisions in an arbitrary universe, knowing that you can only occupy one space at one time (so you can never fully be connected with another person). Which are the things that I like to read about. If someone’s in a war, or needing to work two jobs to survive, they’ll probably be focused on writing about that. And I guess when you’re just focused on making enough money to survive, you aren’t worried about “how do I know what to do if the universe is meaningless.”
The jail scene in Shoplifting From American Apparel is one of the only moments in your work where the ethnicity of characters is prominently noted. Would you say your characters live in a post-racial world?
No. I think that’s just a personal preference, because I don’t want to write about racism. Or those other things mentioned earlier. If I put in a character’s race, some readers would assume, like, “Oh his problems are because he’s being discriminated against.” Or, “He doesn’t know his racial/cultural identity, he’s confused about his racial/cultural identity, which is why he is sad or confused.” To me, their problems are the same as any person’s who is not in a war or working two jobs to survive.
Return to our discussion of privilege. Ask: In what ways might Lin’s evidently self-contradictory statements detract from or enrich his project? (He acknowledges that some people struggle with poverty and racism, but seems to imply that these issues can be suspended under certain circumstances.) Ask: under what conditions, if any, can (or should?) a reader forget about or bracket-off cultural/political dynamics in favor of viewing all people (or characters) as equal? Is it even possible? Is it desirable? Can such a text exist as an unfettered product of the imagination devoid of the reciprocal relationship between noumenon and phenomenon — if so, how; if no, why? How does Eeeee Eee Eeee attempt to negotiate these questions?
***Videos to show:
First, Mumblecore clips
Then:
Eeeee Eee Eeee movie trailer
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-HHw3y7iuo
Look at:
***Extra-textual Affinities:
Contextualize Eeeee Eee Eeee as a node in a network of affinities (assemblage of sedation/numbness/exhaustion), offer suggestions regarding potential examples of resonant lines of flight:
These clips from early Hal Hartley films:
Trust
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omc-LerO92c
Simple Men
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XuLK3JASYw
The Unbelievable Truth
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axiRN5KXXq0&feature=related
This clip of Andy Kaufman reading The Great Gatsby:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL3Dp6Oh3Fw
which could be interestingly pared with Tao Lin reading from his memoir:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjcOK2T0lPo&feature=player_embedded
also pared with Andy Warhol eating a hamburger:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaf6zF-FJBk
and David Tudor performing John Cage’s 4’33”:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HypmW4Yd7SY&feature=player_embedded
also put into conversation with Marina Abramović’s recent MoMa show, The Artist is Present:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASS7xMOM1EE
and Slava Mogutin’s tribute to Marina Abramovic and Ulay’s performance Light-Dark (1977), with Gio Black Peter and Neil Young:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCrNSOy9acU&feature=related
” ‘I also remember you saying something along the lines of “my favorite writers are usually white and rich or middle class. ‘ ”
Those people aren’t as affected as much by poverty, having to fight in a war, having to earn money to survive, racism, and things like that. Things that, if solved, will leave you with these other problems: knowing you’re going to die, knowing you’re required to make decisions in an arbitrary universe, knowing that you can only occupy one space at one time (so you can never fully be connected with another person). Which are the things that I like to read about. If someone’s in a war, or needing to work two jobs to survive, they’ll probably be focused on writing about that. And I guess when you’re just focused on making enough money to survive, you aren’t worried about “how do I know what to do if the universe is meaningless.”
____________
Um, wow. That’s all I got to say.
i enjoyed reading this, can i read your notes on ‘the people of paper’ chris? i love that book.
interesting thoughts, Higgs.
i’d be interested to know how/in what way you are interested in race and gender in art vis-a-vis your stated interest in the inhuman in art.
i enjoyed reading this, and read some things about ‘eeeee eee eeee’ that i was aware of while writing it but haven’t read anyone else mention yet, i think
thank you for posting this
A good friend of mine taught Eeeee Eee Eeee in one of his fiction classes last year. I wonder how similar his blueprints for lecturing were, if at all.
This is cool. Did you/any of your students make anything of the division into various species as a kind of uncanny return of race? Not to say that the different species symoblize specific races or even race in general, but in a book where race is so thoroughly suppressed, the characters are still divided into these distinct tribes and even discriminate against one another on that basis. (I can’t remember how much that happens, quite, but I seem to remember that Andrew has a fear of aliens, for example.)
Cool.
I WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL.
DO WE GET TO WRITE PAPERS FOR CHRIS HIGGS THAT HE WILL GRADE? HOW ABOUT POP QUIZZES?
I enjoyed this. I am going to pass this on to a lot of people I know. I want to see the notes for shoplifting that someone taught as well.
Thanks for this interesting post.
I ‘taught’ “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” (parts, anyway) to semi-literate (sorry, harsh but true) teenagers about a year & a half ago. It was sweet.
This should def be a series
I’d like it too. The People of Paper is amazing.
I’ll second the wow. His language is depleted, but this makes it clear that his mind is as well. It’s amazingly ignorant all the way around. If he hadn’t defined race, then it’s a valid point, but by including “white” he totally negates this validity and just sounds immaturely stilted. I’m sure he’s pleased that the people that like his dreck are also “usually white and rich or middle class”…oh, and under 25.
When the presence of present things discloses absence, do those present things “symbolize” absence?
When the presence of present things discloses absence, do those present things “symbolize” absence?
our public schools are already doing enough to rot youthful minds — i don’t think they need any more gristle in their literary diet.
ooh, what an interesting reading.
Can you elaborate
So now there’s Black Butler and White Lin. Who’s next to be tone deaf. What’s next, Muslim Kitchell?
Here’s a succinct elaboration: One reason Lin’s writing is frustratingly annoying because it is the voice of North American privilege. This now makes more sense in light of the fact that he apparently just reads white authors (assuming all USA) of privilege. This “voice of privilege” is the same reason Rush Limbaugh is frustratingly annoying, and Lin is the liberal side of the same coin.
Here’s a succinct elaboration: One reason Lin’s writing is frustratingly annoying because it is the voice of North American privilege. This now makes more sense in light of the fact that he apparently just reads white authors (assuming all USA) of privilege. This “voice of privilege” is the same reason Rush Limbaugh is frustratingly annoying, and Lin is the liberal side of the same coin.
And, this voice is here labeled (and marketed, too?) as “experimental” and subversive, adding to its annoyance.
I’m going to teach a class in the Fall called, “Posturing ‘Experimental’ Writers Who Are Really Boring Conservatives: Ways Some Writers Signal Their Intelligence When They Have None.”
I wonder, Christopher, what your students said about your language (if your notes reflect what you said) re “denial of escalation”–“resists Freytag’s [triangle]…convulses…ignores causality….” Were you anticipating their attitude toward the book?
You mean you haven’t jumped on the Cosby Generation, Post-Racial Bandwagon?
lin´s parents immigrated to america as poor people. lin´s father gradually made it through the ranks and became somewhat rich. then according to some accounts the government fucked him. lin´s parents then moved back to taiwan.
lin is freaking taiwanese.
reading this made me want to read éee…´ again and be a student at your school and take this class. would be sweet if you somehow were allowed to/wanted to tape portions of it.
i mean, tao states he makes like $7000 a year from writing a year. he gets like $1000 advances for every book he writes, lol.
lin can say brain dead stupid ignorant shit because he’s freaking taiwanese and his parents immigrated to america as poor people and his father gradually made it through the ranks and became somewhat rich and the government fucked him and his parents then moved back to taiwan.
First off, why does his nationality matter? His is a conservative (challenging only to those who find him transgressive as compared to the MFA cock and bull taught style) voice of ignorant privilege. He writes like someone who lived in a gated community, which he was.
Secondly Lin’s father wasn’t fucked over by the government. He is a crook and scam artist. Like father, like son. See below.
http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr17469.htm or
Orlando Business Journal for Wednesday, December 18, 2002“The founder and former chief executive of Orlando-based Surgilight Inc. has been convicted by a Brooklyn jury of fraud and money laundering.
According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, J.T. Lin was convicted for manipulating Surgilight’s stock price by stating in press releases that it developed a way to cure presbyiopia, an age-related deterioration of eyesight.
Those statements were false, the SEC maintains.
Shares in Surgilight climbed from about $2.50 to $25 on that information. According to the SEC, which regulates publicly traded companies, Lin then sold off Surgilight shares he controlled for a profit of about $1.5 million. He then wired that money overseas.
Lin stepped down as CEO of Surgilight in August 2001.
Surgilight placed Lin, a former University of Central Florida professor, on leave when he was indicted on the fraud and money laundering charges in April 2002. He remained on the company payroll as a consultant until July 31.
In addition to the criminal case in Brooklyn, Lin and his wife, Suchin Lin, face civil charges for violating laws governing securities trading. The SEC is seeking to recover the $1.5 million in question plus interest and other penalties.
The Lins had previously settled a civil action filed against them involving another laser eye surgery company in September 1998.”
Corporate fraud=”fucked by the government.”
Sounds familiar…
I thought this was very good overall, but you should really think through the implications of this non sequitur:
“representing a lack of engagement especially with race, despite the fact that the author of the text is Asian-American”
(This is a reply not only to MFBomb but to everyone in this sub-thread thing, regarding that quote.)
That’s actually one of the few things Tao’s said that I relate to, although it would have been a lot safer for him to just say, “I don’t like stories with big capital-c Conflicts like War and Poverty, I like stories concerned with existential questions and relationships” (which is really all I think he meant, but maybe he’ll reply and clarify; he’s undoubtedly reading all of the posts on this page).
I agree it’s phrased provocatively, but I don’t see how this one opinion makes him insensitive, or “amazingly ignorant.” To me that quote was simply expressing a preference for certain topics/genres of literature (same as some people only like to read romances or mysteries or whatever), and doesn’t indicate automatically that Tao is racist or privileged in his everyday life, any more than someone who wants to read fantasy novels exclusively must also be fighting orcs or whatever. It’s just a preference, a set of interests…
If someone asked me why I don’t talk about being gay in my writing, which I guess as a white male is the closest thing I can say to parallel the question about being Asian, I think I would give a similar answer, albeit with less ridiculous punctuation. I am pretty sure Dennis Cooper has talked about not wanting to be pigeonholed as a “gay writer,” for example, and I think that’s all Tao was saying, except in regards to his race/nationality.
I feel like time and time again it is argued on this site that fiction shouldn’t have to represent reality, most of you are not interested in “realism,” et cetera et cetera, so why should people’s literature be obligated to include discussions of race, class, etc, if they don’t want them to?
You think people have a problem with his quote because it expresses a supposed “preference for certain topics/genres of literature,” or that people expect Tao Lin to be James Baldwin or Richard Wright because he’s a racial minority?
Please. Give me a break.
There’s a lot of juvenile, stunted ignorance in his quote to unpack at this hour–but I’ll give you one: the idea that underprivileged folks are too busy “fighting wars and poverty” to think about things like, uh, death and the meaning of life, and that privileged people “don’t have to worry about such things” and are somehow better equipped to ponder, uh, death and the meaning of life, is offensive as hell, and no amount of rationalization and rewriting on your end (or his, or his Fan Club) will change this fact.
You think people have a problem with his quote because it expresses a supposed “preference for certain topics/genres of literature,” or that people expect Tao Lin to be James Baldwin or Richard Wright because he’s a racial minority?
Please. Give me a break.
There’s a lot of juvenile, stunted ignorance in his quote to unpack at this hour–but I’ll give you one: the idea that underprivileged folks are too busy “fighting wars and poverty” to think about things like, uh, death and the meaning of life, and that privileged people “don’t have to worry about such things” and are somehow better equipped to ponder, uh, death and the meaning of life, is offensive as hell, and no amount of rationalization and rewriting on your end (or his, or his Fan Club) will change this fact.
I like to imagine you typing these comments in the school library where you work (but have been staying increasingly late since, you tell yourself, you want to finish appending the new “Deadgod” Decimal System labels you printed over the summer, on your own dime, because maybe this will get the kids to read, and the apartment is so cold), and though you know most people won’t ever get the allusions and arguments you’re making—if only they knew how clever you were or at least understood the context for your jokes; if only they’d read a few books on theory, or even (years before that) those encyclopedias you pored over that your mother brought home, one letter a month, from the grocery store—you’re always hoping that you’ll get that perfect reply.
Only you don’t.
So when you receive a bottle of mid-shelf wine at the faculty Secret Santa party (everyone gave alcohol except you, though avoiding the book of Latin riddles you brought charged the Hot Potato-style gifting game with a momentum it hadn’t had since before Carol “I’ve got Fruitcake!” Whittiker’s retirement), you imbibe one night, just a sip, two sips, and then, over a long weekend—you’ve almost finished the new labeling scheme, only now, you realize, maybe the kids would read more if you rearranged some of the shelves?—you give yourself permission to start sipping at school, after hours of course, because you’re a professional, because your Masters in Library Science from the state university means something, because all you ever wanted (you’ve long since finished the bottle now, and you start refilling it with Costco Franzia, the best your educator’s salary can buy) was for these Twittering ingrates to for once, just once, be as excited about a book as they are about the newest status notification on smart phones that cost more than your rent . . .
to toss aside their college-ruled spirals the moment they hear their mother’s car sputtering to a stop and not bothering to close the busted screen door rush to the backseat digging past boxes of generic cereal in the tall brown sacks for that precious hardbound goldmine, crips and clean—
I can understand how, reading that quote the way you did, it seems offensive. I just read it differently.
In my reading, I don’t think he was saying that the “privileged” are “better equipped” to consider the meaning of life, just that they have the luxury of time to do so, that if you have to spend all of your time simply surviving you’re going to have less time to worry about abstract existential concerns than if you have a lot of leisure time.
This rings true to me even from my limited perspective… When I was in retail or whatever and we were super busy, or during finals at school, or whatever, I was so caught up in “Getting Things Done” that I didn’t have as much time to ponder and be depressed, and that’s just my very privileged activities; if I’d been trying to outrun bullets or forage for food or whatever, I think I’d have exponentially less time and energy to spend on pondering and being depressed.
I guess I see the whole quote as more about idleness/comfort leading to time for existential concerns, not privilege, but privilege happens to result in idleness/comfort. If that makes any sense.
That’s all the energy I’ll expend defending Tao, though… I find a lot of other things about him just as terrible as you find that quote.
I agree with your premise that sometimes conservatism masquerades as edginess/experimentation; I would take that class.
There’s no “seeming” about it, sorry. You’re using his quote to launch into something else.
And even your attempts to sanitize the quote don’t really change anything.
The quote is offensive because it implies that the only people who are free to leisurely consider existential matters are rich, white people. It implies that people of color are only sitting around thinking about oppression, that they don’t care about or are unconcerned about existence, etc, as if they are one track minded. It implies that people of color are only poor and toiling, as if people of color aren’t also middle class or wealthy. The list of things wrong with that quotation are endless. There’s nothing wrong with saying I choose to write about [insert topic of choice]. There’s nothing wrong with a writer choosing not to write about race or choosing to believe that the existential somehow transcends race. From my perspective, it was the way his choice of writing topics was framed.
Then you don’t need to take the class. Think of it more like, an intervention.
OK, MFBomb…. Honestly, I never would have posted that thing about Nanowrimo if I knew it would end up like this, I was just talking and then joking around but you just seem so pissed if you want to dis me even when I’m finding a point to agree with you on…. Not really anything I can do to help that I guess, just don’t get it.
Would it be OK if he’d said “I don’t like stories with big capital-c Conflicts like War and Poverty and Racism, I like stories concerned with existential questions and relationships”?
Yes and no. Those two kinds of stories aren’t necessarily antithetical. I think there could be (and there are) stories that do both, tackling Big Issues and existential questions, etc. Ultimately, these things are not exclusive and people would likely resent framing them as such. Why couldn’t he just say, “I like stories concerned with existential questions and relationships?” Why bring race/class/conflict into the conversation at all?
Uh, I wasn’t dissing you at all.
“Then you don’t need to take the class” (i.e. because you’ve already acknowledged the problem).
“Think of it more like an intervention (i.e. for those who can’t see the problem, unlike you).
Uh, I wasn’t dissing you at all.
“Then you don’t need to take the class” (i.e. because you’ve already acknowledged the problem).
“Think of it more like an intervention (i.e. for those who can’t see the problem, unlike you).
OK, sorry. Misread.
OK, sorry. Misread.
What Roxane said–why this bizarre need to even bring up race/class/etc?
It implies that race/class can’t be written about in quiet or “non-confrontational” ways, that the only way to write about race/class is loudly.
Some of the most politically-charged books on race/class ever written were “quiet” and “subtle” and didn’t appear to be Capital C on the surface.
It’s cool. We disagree at times, but I can tell you’re a good person, someone with actual compassion and an interest in humanity, someone who would probably want to say something about the human condition–something that can’t be said for some folks here who would rather smell their own farts.
Roxane and MFBomb (moved up here b/c the box was too small),
I can’t answer for Tao. I just googled that Vice quote and couldn’t figure out its first source. But you brought up an interesting point about race not needing to be loud or overtaking the story or whatever.
I guess I never write about race because I feel like I’m not allowed, like I’ll get it wrong or something, so it seems like it’s always a capital-letter issue to me. I feel comfortable writing straight characters or female characters (well, this is all hypothetical, since I don’t write anymore, but whatever) and I have thought in the past, “Well maybe I’ll just say this guy is African American, we’re all people, what difference would it make?” But then I get a nagging feeling like I’d be missing something or over-simplifying, and so I just avoid mentioning race altogether in almost everything. Which is also a way of missing something/over-simplifying… but it feels like to do otherwise is to risk terrible unintended offense.
I’ve never articulated that before, because even saying it, I feel awful. MFBomb mentioned “Cosby’s post-racial world,” I don’t feel like the world is like that at all. I really related to another comic, Louis C K, when he described talking to some kids who accused him of being mean when he called someone “black.” The kids were taught to go out of their way to not single people out for their color, and so they didn’t mention color at all. That’s what I feel like a lot of the time, like I can use literally any other descriptor for someone except race.
(I guess this wasn’t really related to the quote anymore, but I am so sad right now and just typing a lot. haha “right now”. What I mean is this is just another night.)
replied above
replied above
Thank you very much. and the feeling is mutual
intended my reply affectionately/randomly
My quote stated that based on statistics, based on what I know, I feel that there is a higher chance that rich, white people who write a certain kind of book that people view as “literary” will be focused, to a larger degree than other demographics, on existential matters.
“a higher chance” does not mean that I think people who aren’t white are unable to be middle class or wealthy.
I have no opinion on this matter. I’m simply stating one consideration that happens to me when I think about what authors to read.
If I look at statistics and it says a certain ethnic group has an average income of $12,000 and a certain other ethnic group has an average income of $100,000…I feel able to deduce, to some degree, even if that degree is like 2%, that there is a larger chance, even if that increase in chance is like 2%, that the $100,000-income demographic will write about existential issues, in part because they will be less distracted by worries about how to pay rent, how to care for their children, etc.
This is simply a consideration I have in order to be more efficient in finding authors that I like to read.
“…it implies that the only people who are free to leisurely consider
existential matters are rich, white people. It implies that people of
color are only sitting around thinking about oppression, that they don’t
care about or are unconcerned about existence, etc, as if they are one
track minded. It implies that people of color are only poor and toiling,
as if people of color aren’t also middle class or wealthy.”
I don’t think my quote implies that. I conveyed myself using language like “greater chance” and “more likely” not “only” or other all-or-nothing indications.
You use statistics and pie graphs and census data to determine what authors to read? God. How lifeless and cold. Robotic. Why not be a computer programmer or something, instead of an artist?
And do “statistics” even matter? How is it “more likely” that someone dealing with poverty and war wouldn’t have time to consider philosophical questions? Why quantify “time” so rigidly? The argument that “more free time”= more time to ponder existential questions doesn’t even make sense; it’s a non-sequitur, unless you think people are static beings (as opposed to dynamic, you know, like the best characters in fiction with any semblance of heart and soul) who can’t do multiple things at once.
good job.
sincerely,
the other half of our interracial marriage
sincerely,
the head cheerleader/quarterback’s GF
“there is a larger chance. . . that the $100,000-income demographic will write about existential issues that I’m interested in reading. . . in part because they will be less distracted by worries about how to pay rent, how to care for their children, how to survive violence, how to survive disease/injury without money or health-insurance, etc.”
I am puzzled by your use of “distracted”. I would think that the concern of someone who faces [various nasty issues] for existential questions would be *mediated through* those issues, not “distracted by” them. Seems to me that if someone whose big immediate concerns are which party to go to, whether to fire his agent, how to get in [whoever’s] pants, etc. is able to contemplate existential questions through/despite those concerns, someone whose big immediate concerns are survivalistic could likewise still contemplate existential questions through/despite that different set of concerns. What is it about paying the rent that is inherently more “distracting” (different from “pressing”) than deciding whether to buy a new iphone or stick with the old one?
If anything, it seems to me a lot likely that one will find oneself asking “What am I here for? Is there even any point to all this?” in the midst of tedious, poorly-compensated labour. The questions, too, grow more serious–you don’t *need* a reason to keep living a life of leisure.
“Seems to me that if someone whose big immediate concerns are which party to go to, whether to fire his agent, how to get in [whoever’s] pants, etc. is able to contemplate existential questions through/despite those concerns, someone whose big immediate concerns are survivalistic could likewise still contemplate existential questions through/despite that different set of concerns. What is it about paying the rent that is inherently more “distracting” (different from “pressing”) than deciding whether to buy a new iphone or stick with the old one?”
__________
Or, what is it about deciding whether or not to buy a new iphone or stick with the new one that distracts one from considering “solved” issues like poverty and war? Is a writer required to consider poverty and war (and race or class) in an essay about where to find the best Wifi? No.
But to suggest that the privileged writer who writes an essay about where to find the best Wifi is “freed” from such issues like poverty, war, race, class, etc. is idiotic, myopic, and–most insultingly–demonstrates that Lin lacks a basic understanding of fiction, which is why Joshua Cohen was dead on in his review when he suggested Lin transition from “fiction” to blogging/transcribing full-time.
*Edited….sorry:
Or, what is it about writing about deciding whether or not to buy a new iphone or stick with the new one that distracts one from considering “solved” issues like poverty and war? Is a writer required to consider poverty and war (and race or class) in a piece about deciding whether or not to buy a new iphone? No.But to suggest that the privileged writer who writes such a piece is “freed” from issues like poverty, war, race, class, etc. is idiotic, myopic, and–most insultingly–demonstrates that Lin lacks a basic understanding of fiction, which is why Joshua Cohen was dead on in his review when he suggested Lin transition from “fiction” to blogging/transcribing full-time.
The Commission’s complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, alleges that Dr. Lin and his wife, Yuchin Lin, reaped over $1,700,000 in ill-gotten gains from manipulating the common stock of Surgilight. According to the complaint, the Lins artificially inflated the market price of Surgilight stock tenfold (from approximately $2.50 to over $25 per share) through a series of false and misleading press releases issued by Surgilight.” (from: http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr17469.htm)
wow. that sound familiar to anyone else?
LOL.
hey mfbomb, how is your htmlgiant commenting ass doing today? hope that strangers don’t say shit like this to you if you have a wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend/person/partner/whatever and want to support them on the internet. was going to put more thought into this comment but i’m on vacation and i feel happy and i just want to like, encourage you to be nice to other people…yeah…unless your comment was tongue-in-cheek-y…in which case, lol at both of us…i don’t know…
No, it wasn’t tongue-in-cheek, and your attempt to paint me as the bad guy is laughable, when we all know there’s more to this routine than “spousal support.” Hopefully, one day you put some actual soul behind that verbal talent of yours. No one over the age of 25 cares about how “bored” you are. You’re actually a hell of a lot more talented than your husband, who writes sentences like: “He walked in the bathroom. He pissed in the commode. He flushed the commode. He looked in the mirror. He left the bathroom.”
Save yourself before it’s too late.
Hi. Thought I’d join in, since I was the interviewer for the Vice piece, and there were some questions as to where the initial quote came from. The quote about preferring “writers who are white and rich or middle class” is from a conversation I remember having with Tao when he visited an intro creative writing class I was teaching at Columbia in, I think, 2008. I don’t remember the exact context, or how it came up, but my best guess would be that it originated from the Q+A portion of the visit, when I asked him, among things, about the issue of race in his writing, because I was interested in how he didn’t write about it overtly as opposed to many other prominent writers of color I had read, such as Sherman Alexie or Junot Diaz.
OK, so I just searched my hard drive for my notes from that day. Here’s what I asked him (probably slightly paraphrased and shortened when I asked him in person, back in 2008):
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-[Question/prompt:] When I read writers from so-called 'different' or 'minority'
backgrounds, I often find certain concerns with using race as a way to explain
or not explain certain phenomena. For example, I think writing by Sherman Alexie consistently deals with
race this way. Titles like 'Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian at Woodstock Who Saw Jimi
Hendrix Play the Star-spangled Banner' are plays on this idea, but in the way
they play with them, they are also address the existence of such matters. Sherman Alexie’s 'otherness' is [in]
constant tension with his perceived reader’s 'whiteness,' and there is a
powerful paradox between his feelings of inherent separation and his conflicted
desires for unity.
Something about your work that is interesting to me is that
I feel like in a lot of ways the concerns are post-racial. Like
Alexie, and like just about everything else I’ve read, from any author, the
characters are often sad or angry or frustrated or depressed or alienated, but
not because they are black, or Asian, or even blue-collar or whatever. You don’t try–at least [not]
explicitly–to link these things to explanations for these emotional states. Very rarely, at least in the stories I
have read, are the ethnicities of the characters discussed. I wonder if you could talk about this
some. I think this might be a
philosophical question, but you’re free to talk about this any way you want.
[Next question/prompt:] Anecdote about walking with black friend in Times
Square [and somebody, who happened to be black, offering him a rap CD, but not offering me one.] Do you ever find yourself
being asked by people who are Asian to write more about being Asian? Do you ever find yourself feeling like
you should write more about being Asian?"
Again, I don't remember exactly everything he said, but this was the general frame for the exchange.
Also, since this seems to be what everyone's talking about, I don't actually find Tao's statement to be offensive. It's certainly surprising and more provocatively phrased than is probably prudent, but I think his explanation makes a lot of sense. Obviously you're free to disagree with me on that, but I'm not sure calling someone "amazingly ignorant," "lifeless," "cold," or "robotic" is exactly the most thoughtful (or polite) way to talk about someone's reading preferences.
Jesus Christ, I’ve suddenly realized I was sucked into yet another pointless
Tao Lin/MH discussion.
And the most annoying thing is, Chris Higgs just said, “skool’s in session,” tossed a bunch of unedited notes against the wall w/ random Youtube videos, mentioned “experimental” a few times, and left the classroom.
Hey, thanks for taking the time to add context, that was interesting. And I like your magazine.
Hey, thanks for taking the time to add context, that was interesting. And I like your magazine.
James,
I’ve read your post carefully, and I don’t see how it changes his response–at all.
Sorry.
why does everyone h8 tao lin s00 much? he just spends more time thinking about the bigger questions than most people… he can’t help it, it’s just the way he is! <333 tao, h8 others!!!
I don’t agree with “lacks a basic understanding of fiction” simply because I think Tao’s fiction is pretty damn interesting despite [whatever]. But yes, the position makes no sense.
Well, whether or not a work is “interesting” is often the final litmus test, so touche.
But I think there is a possible connection between his stance and the common complaints against his work (e.g. “one-note,” lacking dynamic qualities).
I’m also curious why some find his work “interesting”–why are people interested in a writer who hates words and has no imagination?
One thing I’ve noticed about Lin’s fans and many writers of his (and my) generation is that they…well…hate language. Perhaps this is a symptom of spending too much time on the Internet, watching too much TV, but fiction is not the Internet or TV (no amount of pomo-posturing will ever change this fact, and when it does, kiss fiction goodbye). Inserting gmail chats in a story or novel is about as dull and mundane as it gets. Where’s the imagination in that?
What are people anti-imagination these days?
What’s artful about the style in “Richard Yates,” a novel taken-up by huge chunks of deadpan, unimaginative declaratives? (:)
“He did this, he did that, he went there, he looked up, he looked down, they did this, they did that, etc etc. etc.”
What this, a novel, or a documentary film?
And that stuff is endless in “Richard Yates” and contributes to my belief that his “stance” might be related to an “uninteresting” style that doesn’t take full advantage of an array of fiction techniques.
Full circle: it’s interesting to me, then, how one can trace his politics back to his aesthetic choices.
Actually, you know what, I take it back. I find his *poetry* plenty interesting and would have no problem telling you why, but I haven’t really looked into his fiction seriously enough to have much of an opinion on it. Maybe I wouldn’t find it up to much after all, who knows.
Still, if we’re talking attitudes toward representation (in general), I think it makes a lot more sense to disregard what he writes in his fiction and just talk about the attitudes he’s laid claim to here. It’s complicated enough already without bringing in all the different reactions one can have to his creative output, and the “he sucks” “no he doesn’t” merry-go-round that entails. One needn’t be at all interested in him as a writer to care about the implications of the claims he’s made.
MFBomb, it wasn’t meant to change his response–one thing I suppose we can all agree with, his response and subsequent responses speak for themselves–merely to give some background, since postitbreakup (I think) had mentioned looking for the quote.
I suppose there is a certain desire on my part to also show that Tao wasn’t talking race without being asked about it first–it wasn’t as if someone was like, “Who are your favorite writers” and Tao responded, “My favorite writers are white and rich or middle class,” but something more winding.
Thanks.
Okay, makes sense. To be clear, I don’t think the quote makes Lin a bigot. I just think it’s yet another example of how most people can’t discuss race or class. I’d say that 95% of Americans–regardless of ethnicity or class–are unable to discuss these issues without sounding completely stupid. And, to discuss race or class in this way–abstractly–one needs to have put his or her nose in relevant books–yes, it comes down to reading books. Sorry if that’s harsh, but it’s no accident that this country rarely has intelligent conversations on these issues.
T:
I see what you’re saying, and inasmuch as this discussion comes down to personal taste and personal experience, it’s pretty much moot.
But I wonder if the capability to thoroughly address existential crises is a) at all impeded by the immediate will-to-live actions necessitated by war and poverty, as so far as I can tell this is what you presume, b) if in fact those situations facilitate a more in-depth examination of those crises than financial or social stability, or c) if they really aren’t that mutually exclusive at all.
I lean toward b) and c). Some examples to buck the trend, i. e. relatively well-off/successful in a dominant-culture/conventional way books whose writers have managed to speak meaningfully about war alongside existential questions: Brian Turner’s Here, Bullet; Vollman’s Rising Up and Rising Down, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee. Turner attended the U of Oregon MFA program; Vollman has the guts and resources to pursue years-long investigative journalism projects; Cha was on her way as a budding academic before she was murdered. These aren’t necessarily the best examples. They’re just closest to me on my bookshelf right now. Also Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl contains innumerable existential explorations and considerations, voiced by someone both 1) on the lowest possible rung of the social hierarchy in that historical period and b) during a time of terrible political turmoil. There’s Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front; R. was conscripted into the army during WWI and wounded, and AQOTWF never seemed to lack meaningful questions, both implicit and explicit, to me. And Steinbeck–he might not have been poor in the migrant laborer sense of the term (Salinas was certainly not rich or even middle-class by any standard), but he worked in the fields alongside them some summers when he was young and scraped together odd jobs to make a living once he was out and about.
Still, the thing that bothers me more than anything–and I catch myself doing this, too, as I respond–is the classification system this way of looking at literature implies. Any one person’s financial or political situation doesn’t seem to me, really, to have an entirely decisive bearing on their ability to deal with these so-called existential issues. In fact, I’d posit that being at war or going hungry forces one to examine more viscerally and immediately those issues; you’re worried about staying alive, sure, but you’re also thinking damned hard, and probably because of that. Upper-class navel-gazing (not necessarily a value judgment) can be done well, but often it’s not, if only for the reason that there are no direct consequences: if you don’t make your mind up, you’re not going to starve or be shot tomorrow. You’ll wake up, maybe get on Gchat, maybe go to Starbucks and flirt with the barista unsuccessfully before driving to work at your ad agency where you can think about death from a safe, clinical distance. This is a dig, and an overgeneralization, of course–but sometimes not by all that much.
These are the prerequisites for authors that I beeline to, who interest me: the combination of intelligence, talent, and either the possession of something to say or the ability to make up something worth saying. Race, scenario, financial situation, political situation, social environment–those things are all scenery, all addendums. A side note on this subject: Lapham’s Quarterly put out an interesting graph on the adjusted incomes of some famous writers: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/visual/charts-graphs/day-jobs.php. Re: existentialism, I think the Kafka example speaks for itself. He certainly wasn’t rolling in gold at the end of the day.
– A.
Exactly MFBomb, and in a perfect world Jennifer Egan just read your post and threw a copy of Goon Squad out the window.
How about calling his writing “homogenous”? Is that accurate or thoughtful enough?
All very interesting–seriously–but the writers you mentioned actually cared about style and imagination.
Tao Lin doesn’t care about style and imagination.
Tao Lin is not a writer–he’s a published author. There’s a difference. Writers care about style and imagination.
I’ve heard good things about Egan’s book, actually.
In “RY,” though, the gmail chats add little to nothing. You know the lazy kid in every workshop who uses dialogue to convey background information because he’s too lazy to write it out in exposition? Too lazy to shape otherwise mundane “information” via an interesting authorial voice? Same thing.
[…] Christopher Higgs on ways to teach the novels of Tao Lin. […]
Regarding the Egan book, two words: Powerpoint section.
This is Wallace on Bret Easton Ellis, but is applicable about Lin:
“I think it’s a kind of black cynicism about today’s world that Ellis and certain others depend on for their readership. Look, if the contemporary condition is hopelessly shitty, insipid, materialistic, emotionally retarded, sadomasochistic, and stupid, then I (or any writer) can get away with slapping together stories with characters who are stupid, vapid, emotionally retarded, which is easy, because these sorts of characters require no development. With descriptions that are simply lists of brand-name consumer products. Where stupid people say insipid stuff to each other. If what’s always distinguished bad writing—flat characters, a narrative world that’s cliched and not recognizably human, etc.—is also a description of today’s world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.”
Damn, that’s beautiful.
I had the same thought initially, but so many people I’ve trusted said she was able to pull it off…haven’t read it myself, though.
And the most annoying thing is, Chris Higgs just said, “skool’s in
session,” tossed a bunch of unedited notes against the wall w/ random
Youtube videos, mentioned “experimental” a few times, and left the
classroom.
____________
Um, wow. That’s all I got to say.
Also, you are a professor somewhere, aren’t you? Does a single one of your students like you? What is your reputation around campus? Has any of your students read your comments on this site and then dropped out of your class?
No, I’m not a “professor”–still a grad student, but, as I’m sure you know, “Guest,” grad students can teach.
Are you one of these types who thinks people who happen to teach aren’t allowed to have opinions outside the classroom, even–gasp–strong ones?
Most of my students likes me and I can’t even remember the last time I had a beef w/ one. Maybe, like, 2006? I doubt they’d care, really–they probably have more important things to worry about than what I’m posting on some stupid message board. Plus, I don’t think getting testy on a meaningless message board has anything at all to do with how I perform a job, one where I consistently score above 4.0 on evals.
And please tell me what’s wrong with expressing dismay at a post on a site where contributors are paid money to offer content and the author basically threw up disorganized notes on a screen and left Dodge? I also thought it was pretty clear that my post was sorta tongue-in-cheek and me admitting that I was stupid to get sucked into yet another shitstorm, but perhaps that was over your head–you know, the part where I basically criticize and implicate myself in the very same post.
I am fascinated by this, as of late, oft-repeated sentiment that contributors are paid some kind of regular wage.
I was under the impression that contributors were paid. If not, my fault, and I’ve never used that sentiment before. I could easily remove the line and my point would remain the same.
I don’t know. It is very late at night and I am just forfeiting at this point. Teaching or not, tongue-in-cheek or not, that seemed to me like quite a disrespectful cheap shot/projection of your “strong opinions” toward Chris, despite his open statement that this post is a complete unedited scattershot. I encourage strong opinions, but I personally do not commend expressing and defending those opinions in such a fiery, inflated, and outright rude manner as the one that you have never let settle at these comment sections. You are consistently over the top with your attitude and I actually do believe that offering your thoughts and feelings with such a scathing, outrageous aura of angst and snootiness would/should in fact effect how you handle an entire group of also strongly opinionated students. At least whenever you visit HTMLG, you certainly are a Bomb and I cannot fathom how you manage not to explode just the same while interacting with others in person. You are one of the many, many folks on this planet who despise every facet of Tao Lin’s being. We know and we accept. We understand your position even if we happen to disagree. Now please, please stop projecting your oddly irate demeanor onto others who deserve not to be treated so scornfully and please, please calm yourself just once in a blue moon.
No need to forfeit–I will concede that it was a cheap shot. I also admit that I can lose my cool online and be a bit abrasive.
However, your claim that I’m completely “over-the-top” in every post is hyperbolic. I have several posts on this thread that don’t come close to fitting your “over-the-top” characterization, as well as hundreds of others since I began posting about a year ago. I’ve also been approached by several of the site’s contributors (informally) to provide potential content, so I can’t be that bad, huh? I will not apologize to anyone for knowing my shit, for being able to hang with anyone, anytime, anywhere, and–most importantly–for refusing to participate in some “this is sweet, bro, really interesting, bro” back-patting culture that precludes any semblance of critical inquiry.
I think there was a discussion here not too long ago about how “passion” online is often misconstrued. People who are super-passionate online, of course, must be giant, hairy ogres in real life who eat babies. The obvious cheap-shot or two aside, my passionate opinions on Tao Lin–expressed online–must mean that I’m some seething lunatic and psychotic in my personal and professional life, right? Or, that instead of just getting lost in the moment of the actual discussion, I wake up every morning thinking, “hmmm, who shall I upbraid on the Internets today?”
Here’s the thing: I never bought into this online thing as being “real life.” It’s the Internet. We all create personas online to a degree, and many of us have online personas that are completely different from who we are in “real life” (some don’t, of course, but it cuts both ways). I’m consistently baffled by people who assume that how a person posts in an online context is how he or she behaves when, for instance, caring for his dying grandmother, or teaching a class to eighteen year-old-kids. But alas, you have nothing to worry about: not only has this grad student never “exploded” in class, but he was recently nominated for a university-wide teaching effectiveness award, one that pitted him against tenured professors.
Again, though, you are right that my remark to Chris was cheap–and I’m actually going to delete it here in a minute.
I both love that quote and entirely disagree with him about Ellis’s novels being about “the badness of everything” or that his characters are stupid and shallow. And am surprised that people don’t compare B.E.E. and T.L. more often.
I both love that quote and entirely disagree with him about Ellis’s novels being about “the badness of everything” or that his characters are stupid and shallow. And am surprised that people don’t compare B.E.E. and T.L. more often.
dont understand how existentialism is “pop-philosophical”? although you dont exactly say that, you do strongly imply it. makes it sound like one can buy sartre’s books at the grocery store checkout counter or find a wealth of tv programs dedicated to explaining kierkegaard’s philosophy. seems to me that the millions of youtube views for two minute zizek videos, or something like that, is much closer to pop-philosophical. pop is popular aint it? dont know what im talking about .
People can work and think at the same time. Everyone thinks about all that. The “rich kids” just have the inflated sense of self that allows them to believe other people desperately need to know what they think about existence coupled with the time to write it all down.
Come on–I’ve lived a tough life.
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