the most promising young american author is TAO LIN

deems shut the fuck up

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Wednesday, 29 November 2017 02:32 (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The actual fuck?

so this is , what, the fifth time on this board where people who have read tao lin but concede he is a horrible person argue about the value of his work with people who have not read him

well ain't dry yet

you can enjoy something and see how it's full of shit at the same time. cf. the movie Network.

imo the movie Network is poorly misunderstood

Ned Beatty really underrated in that one.

i don't want to derail the thread at all but i'm curious why horseshoe singled out melville as someone who did bad things to other ppl (unless that was just an example of a dead writer?), i'm not an expert on his life but i've never heard him referred to as an abuser or anything. i'm also pretty stunned by treeship's suggestion that joyce may have molested his daughter. i have to admit that would probably affect my view of his work quite a bit, but i've read a few books about him and haven't heard anyone suggest that.

one biographer claims that same daughter dictated finnegans wake to him via the medium of dance

I think Melville beat his wife. The reason I mentioned him is that I discovered that waist deep into a grad school class where I read basically all his work. And had been really loving him and imagining this empathic connection across time. Granted that is really silly and sentimental of me. I still read his work, and I think it helps not feel so ooky about it that he is dead, and per plax’s post I am not supporting his career by reading him.

I don’t read literature for moral instruction, and I don’t appreciate the way people who are troubled by shitty behavior by artists are being caricatured on this thread. I do not think I read “wrong” and often when I read I feel like I am getting to know a writer. It is not obviously crazy to be affected by what that writer has done in that process.

I realize Mordy will cringe at my weaponizing my identity in this way, but it’s hard not to look at the sweep of literature and think about the effects of looking the other way about bad behavior in terms of whose work we read and whose we don’t and whose never makes it into publication and whose never gets written in the first place.

isn't this also about the inextricable way art production is linked to commercial interests (distribution, publicity)? In this way enjoyment if art by terrible (abuser, anti-Semite, etc) producer involves feeding those interests and furthering the commercial validity of the artists projects.

― plax (ico), Wednesday, 29 November 2017 02:09 (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i suspect given the minimal monetary stakes, it's more about giving cultural capital to a scoundrel for a work of dubious (consensus) value.

― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 29 November 2017 02:16 (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well yes, I guess I did mean to say capital in general. As we are all constantly reminded, we are all now working all the time producing value not only at work but in social media and in generating social and cultural capital through all kinds of endeavours. Whether or not this value is directly monetisable *by us* is basically beside the point. The question of value is in our culture a rather debased and consumerist concept. Its not irrelevant that the artist is the sort of vanguard figure in this, the person for whom everything is work, everything is making culture, everything an artist does is art etc. This is now true in a way for all of us. Thus we are always contributing to the appreciation of value and everything we do seems reduced to this consumer logic. In this way I often feel bad even *knowing* about some airbag trustfund writer or artist or w/e, contributing some tiny piece of real-estate in my head, free of charge. In a flattened landscape of cultural valuation, whether or not people are getting paid is irrelevant maybe. I mean who gets paid for anything.

it’s hard not to look at the sweep of literature and think about the effects of looking the other way about bad behavior in terms of whose work we read and whose we don’t and whose never makes it into publication and whose never gets written in the first place.

idk how this is weaponizing your identity? weaponizing your identity is more like, "i'm a woman and you're a man so you should shut up and listen to me," which i appreciate that afaik you've never done on ilx.

any subjective criteria you use to evaluate/relate to books is obv 100% fine (not like you need my permission) but there's something kinda underhanded going on here? you say that you "don’t appreciate the way people who are troubled by shitty behavior by artists are being caricatured on this thread," but in the current cultural zeitgeist ime ppl who are willing to engage w/ shitty artists are far more aligned than ppl who are not. we're in a moment of moral concern, not a moment of nihilism. i've had to weigh whether i should shut my mouth about certain artistic artifacts that mean something to me in order to keep from getting chastised in the public forum. maybe it's just one big lol misunderstanding and we all just want to enjoy the things we want but that's not been my experience.

like this is a moment where ppl with moral transgressions are losing their careers and being publicly shamed, ridiculed, held up as evil, and banned from the public forum - having their work shelved. not a moment when ppl are being forced to read those works and celebrate those people. so it's kinda silly i feel to be worrying about the latter? no one is arguing on this thread really about whether tao lin is good or not (maybe a little bit that's the argument) but about whether you should read him bc of his failings. the fault lines that are being fought over are not where you're suggesting they are.

ime ppl who are not* willing to engage w/ shitty artists are far more aligned [w/ the zeitgiest] (clarification)

i think the moral outrage thus far has had little appreciable consequence on the bad actors. Charlie Rose got fired; everyone else seems fine? He got away with it long enough to become rich, I assume? Like people are talking about Louis CK et. al. and his movie got pulled from release but it's not clear to me that he will suffer long-term. just because people freak out on twitter doesn't mean anyone has been banned from the public forum, whatever that means.

i am nothing if not silly.

this moment we're in is like two seconds long in the span of history. i think it's too early to say people have been over-punished. most of them have faced no consequences except people saying publicly they don't like them.

but my point isn't about the artists and their feelings (about which i couldn't care less), it's about the audience and the conversational climate. and just as a side note while this particular two second moment is about powerful men injuring people around them with their behavior (and being punished for it), the moment of moral/political attenuation has been going on for quite a while and it swings back and forth (and of course irl much of our population is in open rebellion against it). it seems to me like ppl who are willing to condemn bad behavior / politics have a privileged discursive position within the left media/academy and their opinions have become more or less hegemonic. there are numerous topics of conversation that no one would ever have on ilx bc they'd just get banned or whatever and maybe this is a useful corrective or some level of censorship is a valuable thing for a community to have (i mean this is certainly true on some level), but i feel like positing that we're swinging towards condemning the victims / mocking the morally concerned is just not true. on the right maybe but that's not the discourse we participate in.

I mean, he's the most 4c*an literary writer out there.

i don't even like his writing lol i wrote some mean things about him above

there are numerous topics of conversation that no one would ever have on ilx bc they'd just get banned or whatever

is this true? it seems untrue to me. it might be that the current participants on ilx share a set of attitudes toward these topics and ilxors who don't no longer post here. maybe that is the same thing from your perspective.

i was not claiming that our culture is swinging toward mocking the morally concerned. i was irritated by treeship posting that he doesn't read literature for moral instruction because it smacked of attitudes of "i can loftily separate art from the artist because i better understand what literature is than these simpletons who can't." perhaps that was unfair to treeship. i have certainly encountered that attitude repeatedly in life. nb. i teach english literature and have spent most of my life studying it (god that is true!) and so i am not claiming these attitudes are widespread amongst normal people.

certainly it is poor form for me to post so much in a thread dedicated to a writer whose work i have not read.

is this true? ime yes and among current posters as well.

i am sorry to read that, but i must also say that i post on ilx a lot less than i used to and for long periods of time i stopped posting in part because the seemingly shared culture here was profoundly alienating. i got sick of trying to be cool about that and just dropped out. perhaps this is the inevitable reaction to an earlier period of ilx culture where other posters than the ones that currently feel unable to post felt unable to post.

since i started posting here over a decade ago, with some deviation, ilx has always been at the forefront of current progressive conventional wisdom and [look i'm going to apologize for using this term and the very fact that i need to contextualize/disassociate myself from this term should be telling i think] political correctness. for a v brief period it seemed like that might've blown over (esp in the wake of the election when socialists were trying to emphasize shared class goals over particularistic identity-based appeals) but now, partly bc of our President's own interests, we're right in the throes of the culture wars. and it's fine. communities /should/ be allowed to determine what opinions are within their particular Overton window and chase off opinions that they don't like. it just seems weird to me to be offended by treesh's marginalized opinion when probably like 99% of ilxors who currently post would back you up that an artists' personal life should be determinative in our evaluation of their work.

okay. perhaps it was weird of me.

(nb i'm not saying you're weird please don't take anything i'm writing personally. i'm just saying that it's strange to me that we have such different views of the current climate)

fwiw i've enjoyed chatting with you over the years i think you're smart and reasonable and inquisitive and thoughtful

can't you see you're in love with each other??!?!?!?

i didn't take it personally! i guess...i feel like some of your experience of the world and ilx over the past ten years jibes with mine and some seems somewhat different.

i also have enjoyed chatting with you!

hahaha xp

if ilx were a romantic comedy Mordy and i would have to get married. he's also Jewish and i'm Muslim iirc.

It’s like social media Romeo and Juliet

i was irritated by treeship posting that he doesn't read literature for moral instruction because it smacked of attitudes of "i can loftily separate art from the artist because i better understand what literature is than these simpletons who can't."

i'm sorry, i didn't mean it like that. there are writers i can't read for personal, emotional reasons. like, i actually have never read william s burroughs because he shot his wife. the fact that i make exceptions for other writers is totally inconsistent but i'm not claiming to be consistent.

my attitude toward literature is sentimental. i do think that works contain a part of the person who created them; the fact that they are things made by people is why they are relevant to us. if i'm pushing against anything it's the idea that there are people who are "totally bad" and that, because of this, they can't have written books that could be relevant or instructive to "good people." i don't think you were making a version of that argument. i think it's implicit in some of the attitudes expressed on ilx and in similar corners of the internet though. the term "garbage person" is popular.

no, don't be sorry; i'm pretty sure i over-read what you wrote and projected some shit irl men have said to me over the years onto you.

"garbage person" and "trash" to refer to people bother me a lot in terms of their ubiquity on social media, too. unless the garbage person is donald trump, because that seems true.

yeah trump does seem uniquely worthless

its just a fucking book christ

Sorry I just woke up

thought I recognised the shrill tone of the recently woke

Goddamit ten secs earlier and I could've been in first with a worse joke

Wins for the win

Discussions so much better with horseshoe and it's a bad thing if you don't enjoy them on ilx anymore and if I'm anything to do with that I'm genuinely sorry btw. Never not a great poster.

otm

yeah horseshoe's posts here have been great

oh no! i am sorry; i did not mean to fire shots! if anything ilx seems kinder and mellower than it ever did when i used to post constantly! i think what i'm describing is a change in me where i no longer feel it necessary to inhabit predominantly male spaces to prove to myself that i am cool? i have given up on being cool. also i am old and sleep a lot more.

darragh you are a delight and i hope you are thriving, on ilx and off.

(also to prove to anonymous men that i am cool? the fact that i used to feel it necessary to do this does not reflect partic well on me, i think, and has little to do with the anonymous men themselves.)

Phew *exhales*

many xxxps but lol wins. horseshoe i enjoy your posts. convo itt has been good. my crankiness was not directed at anyone in particular, apologies everyone. i wasn't yet woke enough

seems to me whether or not tao lin was good was a central part of the question here & the rhetorical trap treesh falls into is not acknowledging (until a recent post) that looking at TL's writing through different lenses can completely shift how people interpret him

a lot of the language used to describe him from proponents has been some borderline voice-of-a-generation objective long view 'he is important' stuff that does not jibe i think w/ good crit in 2017 (nb I am guilty of doing this stuff to, 'i learned it from watching you' etc) but I think its important for people in this moment not to cut off all "bad culture" (i'm not sure a single person in this thread was even advocating for this, contra mordy) but to reassess *how they discuss their attraction to / repulsion to cultural objects* rhetorically, to make their arguments through a lens of personal, subjective experience *through* their intuited objective readings of what the piece of art does or doesnt do.

im not saying this was something people didnt know already or werent already doing, but a lot of the 'conflict' in these conversations seems to come down not to two groups standing on one side of 'condemn bad artists' or 'sepearate art from artist' but to *slippage* in the rhetoric about the art where they lean objective/universal when they are describing a personal & subjective attraction/repulsion to the art

i mean 'good crit' not in the professional sense, more in the critical thinking/useful contribution sense

and of course they can describe *their own sense* of art's importance, but its important to foreground that it is their own experience

there is something objective/universal in claiming "the most promising young american author is TAO LIN"
is he really the only candidate?