Blake Butler—
All this time and then we find out Tao Lin has really just been Chris Burden (see object #1, Send Me Your Money). He might also be that dude in the question mark coat.
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Tao Lin Tao Lin Tao Lin Tao Lin Richard Yates Richard Yates Richard Yates Richard Yates
I’m baffled by the back cover of my Richard Yates galley. The relationship between the book’s two main characters–one, the Tao figure, 22, and the other 16–is described three times, in three separate paragraphs, as “illicit,” a heavy-handed enforcement of theme which should hold truck with the novel itself: one would expect, going in, that the scandal which supposedly holds the weight of the novel would actually sustain itself as a scandal. Which happens to be so little the case that it’s kind of funny, this negation of the back cover, and is a fascinating, if unintentional, way of diverting expectations: by Richard Yates failing totally in self-description.
Uncategorized / 99 Comments
July 5th, 2010 / 8:06 am
July 5th, 2010 / 8:06 am
Tao Lin News x 2 re via scare quote hamster with 3 x killing scare rampage quote potential
Today is Tao Lin’s birthday. He is 27 years old.
Also, according to his blog, today is the last day of operations for The Tao Lin Store. If a person was a person who enjoys Tao Lin, or in some respect ‘supports’ his existence, this might be a fine day to lend some ‘existential’ ‘support’ in the ‘form’ ‘of’ ‘purchasing’ one or ‘more’ ‘i’te’m’s’ ‘f’r’o’m’ the Tao Lin store. One item ‘you’ might ‘want’ is a ‘copy’ of the ‘2nd’ edition of Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs by ‘Ellen’ Ke’nn’edy. Early ‘reports’ suggest ‘5 x fixed typo,’ and an ‘updated’ copyright page. You could also pre-order a copy of Richard Yates, either at the bn.com ‘link’ ‘I’ ‘just’ ‘offered’ or you could get your ‘copy’ early if you join the Rumpus Book Club, because ‘RY’ is ‘their’ next ‘selection’.
IS THERE A ‘CONNECTION’ BETWEEN TAO’S BIRTHDAY AND THE ‘CLOSING’ OF HIS ONLINE STORE? Stephen and Marshall will be moderating a discussion on this topic in our comments section. Wild speculation is encouraged. Happy birthday, friend.
A. Pope, Tao Lin, and HTML Giant walk into a bar…
This past week, there have been several blogs (plus the mention in the New Yorker) about Tao Lin and the reviews lodged for and against him. To be fair, I haven’t read much of Tao’s work, but I am entrenched in the pure spectacle of “Tao Lin.” Mostly out of boredom but partly because I can’t get away from it, even if I wanted to.
But consider this, in his Author’s Preface, Alexander Pope argues, “Poetry and criticism [are] by no means the universal concern of the world, but only the affair of idle men who write in their closets, and of idle men who read there.” So I’m back to the question of boredom. Why do we care who says what about Tao? And here, just look back at the comment streams about Tao. People seem to do more than simply “care.” They’re invested! I barely have time to care about the reviews written about my friends, much less any other contemporary. I have no desire to be an idle man writing in my closet, nor an idle man reading there.
It doesn’t matter much to me whether or not Tao (or any other writer, for that matter) cultivates this particular brand of hype. My concern has to do with the unabashed responses that indicate how very right Pope is. Even this post reinforces Pope’s argument that I’m simply an idle man—or woman in this case—reading in a closet.
Blake Butler—
Twelve new poems from Tao Lin at The Lifted Brow, the new issue of which has more good shit that you can handle, including from David Foster Wallace’s forthcoming final novel. I like these new Tao poems a lot, ‘seems fun or something,’ think most of them were in an issue of Zachary German’s The Name of This Band is the Talking Heads.
Conversation with Crispin Best re: Tao Lin
I solicited Crispin Best for a >500 line chat re: Tao Lin for his grassroots promotional campaign. Tao, please contact Crispin for his mailing address and send him SFAA. Please give HTMLGIANT, a supporter of your literature, a 100-line discount to ship over seas (UK) to Crispin. Thanks. (Caveat: if you are easily irritated by Tao or me, or by this campaign, please do not click on more.)
Former Tao Lin Intern Reviews Current Tao Lin Novel
Former Tao Lin Intern Reviews Current Tao Lin Novel
My good friend, Soffi Stiassni, formerly of the Tao Lin Internship Program, and also an alumna of this site, has reviewed her ex-boss’s new novella. Now, I know a lot of people feel like we’ve been linking to Tao-related and SFAA-related stuff too much. Well, go fuck yourselves. Seriously.
42 Comments
October 17th, 2009 / 2:52 am
October 17th, 2009 / 2:52 am
Conor Oberst Sex by Kendra Grant Malone and Tao Lin
Happy Cobra Books just published—moments ago, in fact—a brand new ebook by Kendra Grant Malone and Tao Lin. It’s a story called “Conor Oberst Sex.”
And it’s not just a story. I sent a copy of the story to my friend Michael Sanchez (a musician, comedian, and filmmaker from Chicago, Illinois) and asked him to write some music inspired by the story. He turned in an EP under his band name, The Way It Is. The EP is called Music Is My Boyfriend.
Both the ebook and the music are very good. Please check them out and praise the lovely Kendra Grant Malone, the lovely Tao Lin, and the lovely Michael Sanchez.
Tao Lin Reading + Q&A + Minireview
Tao Lin reads from the first section of Shoplifting from American Apparel, then answers questions about writing process, influence, shoplifting, etc.
I read and greatly enjoyed this novella a couple weeks ago. It makes some interesting use of what people who want to put tags on things could call verbal minimalism inherting cinéma vérité, as well as a mash of Andys (Warhol and Kaufman), new uses of internet language in print, and a linear-alinear timeline modeling that more correctly models everyday life than most textual attempts at representing everyday life. That’s if you want to put tags on things.
I’d prefer to just say that I laughed more at parts of this book than I’ve laughed in a long time, and I think those who see this book as ‘incomplete’ might be missing part of the point here, which is not to exploit the expectations of Tao Lin’s previous work while also not exploit some kind of forced shifting of an artist’s tone. Like many artists who are ahead of the curve, this book is ahead of a curve that you might not yet see curving, particularly because it most succeeds on the level of entertaining the reader while being ahead of the curve, which then most easily becomes mistaken as unfocused, when in fact it is the extreme opposite: focused beyond focus.
I really enjoyed this book.
You can buy it here.
Tao Lin’s ‘Shoplifting From American Apparel’
Really excited about this one, releasing September 15th from Melville House.
Set mostly in Manhattan—although also featuring Atlantic City, Brooklyn, GMail Chat, and Gainsville, Florida—this autobiographical novella, spanning two years in the life of a young writer with a cultish following, has been described by the author as “A shoplifting book about vague relationships,” “2 parts shoplifting arrest, 5 parts vague relationship issues,” and “An ultimately life-affirming book about how the unidirectional nature of time renders everything beautiful and sad.”
From VIP rooms in “hip” New York City clubs to central booking in Chinatown, from New York University’s Bobst Library to a bus in someone’s backyard in a college-town in Florida, from Bret Easton Ellis to Lorrie Moore, and from Moby to Ghost Mice, it explores class, culture, and the arts in all their American forms through the funny, journalistic, and existentially-minded narrative of someone trying to both “not be a bad person” and “find some kind of happiness or something,” while he is driven by his failures and successes at managing his art, morals, finances, relationships, loneliness, confusion, boredom, future, and depression.