the most promising young american author is TAO LIN

good one

original

You forgot to put "thrown the towel in" in quotes xp

Scott - Murphy's fun and clever and doesn't have lots and lots of pages detailing haemophiliac family lines for the sake of one impossibility (a thing I don't personally mind).

Guess I should read Tao Lin, but I suspect it would intensify feelings of weariness that i don't need intensifying right now.

haha that's pretty much exactly how i feel about it. i picked it up at the bookstore the other day, read a paragraph and lold in recognition, then put it down thinking 'i really don't need this right now.'

*i am drunk*

i re-read the whole thing today while waiting to be called for jury duty. this time i was struck by how paul's dissatisfaction with life leads him to accept some post-humanist, terrence mckenna type ideas about the singularity and the "computer at the end of the universe" that is just (to paul) a cosmic oneness and renders everything in our immediate experience irrelevant. to evade the burden of himself, he tries to seem himself as part of a larger system -- which makes sense -- but since he feels disconnected from other people this larger system is necessarily impersonal and cosmic. ironically, mysticism is just another kind of narcissism, and a cover for being careless with his time, his health, etc.... things in, as he says, "concrete reality." i thought this was a very convincing way to describe depression, and how by seeking out ways of thinking that seem to offer consolation we can just end up pulling ourselves further and further from our actual lives, which are always in a process of expiring and easy to miss. not that the book sees "living in the moment" as a kind of ideal to strive for -- it seems impossible, a fantasy, according to the novel, focused as it is on the way our experience of the world is always both actively and passively mediated -- but still, it is tragic that we are always missing out on life, as it is happening. paul doesn't think of his time with erin in taipei as positive until he watches video footage of that time months later. so it is through memory (finally i am getting to my point) that we lend meaning to our experience; our life is never lived until it is lived again. against this backdrop -- the idea of the vital importance of memory to experience -- the stuff about paul half-willingly disengaging himself from his own memories, which he describes as becoming harder to access with his increasing drug use takes on a much darker quality. it's not for nothing that near the very end of the book paul describes himself as feeling frightened by the degree to which he, at that point, felt he could understand the suicidal impulse, which had previously seemed abstract to him.

there is a lot of talk about tao lin being a generational writer, concerned with the internet, etc. but i think his real talent, now as always, has been his ability to write about depression, and the ways in which it distorts our understanding of the world. this book is great -- as opposed to his other novels being merely good -- because he seems to intuit, here, that "distortion" is always relative. drugs, depression, whatever, do change how we see the world, but not in a way that necessarily makes it less natural or accurate. what is a normal way of thinking anyway? how do we get back to it?

also there are some legitimately funny moments here. the whole hipster panel section is pretty good, also just the extremely flat style is often pushed to the point of self-parody, especially when describing sex and drugs, in a way that i think is intentional. also, just the matter of fact way paul explains to erin, without blaming himself really, that he speaks in a disrespectful tone to his mother because he has just always done that is lol, in a kind of kafkaesque way, as you are aware that this particular absurdity is also a kind of cruelty. paul's lack of boundaries -- giving heroin to high school students, for one -- is also kind of funny, but in a cheaper way.

i just read two long excerpts online - on vice and some other place - and they were kinda trance-like in a not unpleasant way. i could take 200 pages maybe. if it were a brick of a book like that i don't think i could do it.

meanwhile, i've been reading the same sci-fi trilogy for what seems like years now and their are PAGES of people thinking about rocks and lichen - not even talking about rocks and lichen just thinking about them - and i gotta tell you, i kinda breezed through those excerpts. kind of a breath of fresh air. literally months of my life devoted to geology. and i don't understand, like, 75% of it. Tapei would be a vacation at this point.

"there"

there i did the quote thing.

what sci-trilogy is this? and yea, you would breeze through taipei in a few days at most. it is kind of dreamlike, in that it is unstructured and rambling and, simple as the plot is, it is hard to keep track of what has happened in what order. this is intentional, i think, as a big part of the book is how paul is, due to apathy and ennui and drugs, half-willing losing touch with his memories and by extension his identity. this confusing, trancelike element of the book is not altogether unpleasant though.

you know another one where its kinda agony and you are hanging your head saying oh god its too real life is too real! is joseph heller's Something Happened. its like just wallow in it. that book is rough. i'll betcha lots of people start that book with good intentions and then just crawl away in defeat.

"it is kind of dreamlike, in that it is unstructured and rambling and, simple as the plot is, it is hard to keep track of what has happened in what order. this is intentional, i think, as a big part of the book is how paul is, due to apathy and ennui and drugs, half-willing losing touch with his memories and by extension his identity. this confusing, trancelike element of the book is not altogether unpleasant though."

this whole thing sounds a lot like Something Happened.

this one. been hard for me. i'm okay when i'm reading, its just when i put it down i really have to motivate myself to pick it up again. i know i'm in for some heavy weather talk for awhile.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cK2inJvMz_w/TgOFsdp3RrI/AAAAAAAAQv4/J9ZDJ4BaH7s/s1600/red+green+blue+mars.jpg

i've been cheating on kim stanley robinson too. seeing some other sci-fi writers on the side for a quick exciting short story or two. i have needs!

xp i'll look into the heller book. i bailed on catch-22 a few times in high school so am not familiar with heller, really. i have positive feelings toward him because he was friends with kurt vonnegut.

in terms of tao lin's works, this is his bleakest, i think, because it flirts with cosmic nihilism (even though its basically humanistic, in the end) but richard yates is far more devastating. the non-sequitir character names and other whimsical things sort of lull you into a comfortable sense of distance but then in the second half it basically stabs you in the face with "oh god its too real life is too real". that book doesn't delve into the characters' thoughts really, but mostly focuses on how "haley joel osment's" neuroses manifest themselves in passive aggressive, controlling behavior which you do get a glimpse of with paul in taipei. the real tough thing is the cracks in the text where you see glimpses of the "real" dakota fanning, and the extent of her suffering which is not a thing that haley joel osment usually allows himself/the reader to see. that novel is a masterpiece of suburban desperation -- not merely alienation or discontent -- and the title "richard yates" is anything but a non-sequitir. it's possible that that book will be the one tao lin is ultimately remembered for.

i like how even the titles and covers of those kim stanley robinson books look boring. i'm sure they're good but he/she really doesn't seem to be meeting the reader halfway lol

i have positive feelings toward him because he was friends with kurt vonnegut.

lol

i like how even the titles and covers of those kim stanley robinson books look boring.

lol i know spaceships are no drug-addled suicidal ennui but scott's trying to improve himself, not just be entertained

i bailed on something happened two or three times in high school cuz i was in high school and what was that gonna mean to me. LOVED catch-22 tho. started wearing a bomber jacket. god. i mean i still wear it but i've grown into it now. maybe.

...it is through memory (finally i am getting to my point) that we lend meaning to our experience; our life is never lived until it is lived again. ...the idea of the vital importance of memory to experience...

...he seems to intuit, here, that "distortion" is always relative. drugs, depression, whatever, do change how we see the world, but not in a way that necessarily makes it less natural or accurate. what is a normal way of thinking anyway? how do we get back to it?

...also there are some legitimately funny moments here. ...the extremely flat style is often pushed to the point of self-parody, especially when describing sex and drugs... the matter of fact way paul explains to erin, without blaming himself really, that he speaks in a disrespectful tone to his mother because he has just always done that is lol, in a kind of kafkaesque way, as you are aware that this particular absurdity is also a kind of cruelty.

― Treeship, Tuesday, July 9, 2013 8:58 PM (Yesterday)

okay, you've convinced me to give the dude another shot. at least i won't be reading it for months.

Can I just say one thing

just one thing, I promise. . .

LOVED catch-22 tho. started wearing a bomber jacket. god. i mean i still wear it but i've grown into it now. maybe.

― """""""""""""stalin""""""""""" (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, July 10, 2013 8:50 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

uhh pretty sure i also started wearing a military type jacket in high school because of catch-22

Hey guys, one thing

Just one thing, ready?

*farts*

i was at sea level in hawaii so the sleeping-in-vichy-haylofts jacket was p much the most absurd affectation ever

'something happened' is better than catch-22. bleakest office novel ever

i get a call center vibe from TAO LIN

guys tbh there is really no excuse for reading anything else if you could be reading catch-22 instead

heller is a baller

beckett too. i can't read him. makes me feel like a zombie. those longass novels. stein too. i really should give genet another shot. right? people love him. or they used to.

― scott seward, Monday, 8 July 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Mercier and Camier is v funny, and short - Beckett sorta disowned it didn't he? Its my favourite though.

Genet also wished he burnt one of his novels. I'll probably get round to reading them in sequence someday. Really dslike how he's seens as "transgressive", just sells him short.

check out good as gold, tree.

"TL: So I sit there, and maybe move to my sofa and maybe package things slowly, or clean my room. This lasts until 6 or 7 pm. Then at some point I’ll usually have thought either “fuck it” or “it’s worth it” and ingest a little Xanax, then like 10 minutes later, after I’ve left my room, and am on my way to Bobst library, some Adderall.

I eat the Xanax first, because it makes things taste better. Then I take the 6 train from Astor place and I go to 8th street organic avenue. There I usually buy a chocolate mousse, a coconut yogurt parfait, a green juice, which I usually immediately chug. Then I bring it into the park and sit there eating while reading, recently, White Out by Michael Clune off my iPhone.

At some point I go into Bobst Library. I usually ingest more Adderall, I complete some work, I leave around 10 pm maybe. On the way home I buy groceries like cilantro, coconut water, different kinds of fruit. At home I usually, by now, feel for the first time “awake.” It’s like 11 pm. I put my stuff away, I sometimes write a to-do list.

TL: So it’s around midnight, or 1 a.m., and I’ll ingest like a larger amount of Adderall, excited to do work all night. But Adderall takes 30 minutes to begin working and I guess I have developed a routine that includes masturbating during that 30 min. period. Then I’ll shower and begin working, usually answering emails and email questions.

That continues throughout the night, and then I’ll sometimes masturbate more, sometimes I’ll take more Adderall or Xanax. And I’ll be eating the fruit and usually 1 smoothie throughout the night. Then it’ll be like 10 am and I’ll feel kind of calm, and I’ll ingest Xanax usually and go to the post office and maybe the library. Then like around 6 pm return to my apartment.

TL: At this point, about half the time I’ll use more Adderall and stay up another night. I frequently order from Bareburger via Seamless. Lately I’ve been pretty healthy. I’ve eaten only raw organic vegan stuff for maybe 5 days. So if I stay up a third night, it’s the same, more Adderall, my work gets more incoherent, but I feel calm and fine, then in the morning I’ll relax a little, usually go outside for sunlight, and I don’t think I’ve stayed up for a third night more than 2 or 3 times. Then I sleep for around 12 hours and wake up surprisingly not feeling fucked up.

CD: Why did you start taking Adderall and Xanax? I read somewhere it was because you got this book deal for Taipei.

TL: At first out of curiosity. And because Adderall is a stimulant, and I like the effect tea and coffee has on me, so naturally I wanted to try a stronger version of that.

CD: How much Adderall do you take?

TL: I take like a grim amount now. I remember when one cup of green tea would make me feel like insanely good. Then when 10 mg of Adderall seemed “insane” to me. But probably the peak for me was like 160 mg Adderall over 8 hour periods. I don’t go overboard on Xanax. Maybe on average like 1.5 mg/day. Which in the past would seem insane to a degree to me. It just keeps getting worse."

http://sundayroutine.com/home/2013/7/7/tao-lin

he's eating raw organic vegan stuff so i'm sure he'll be fine

lol I immediately thought of KSR's Mars trilogy as soon as scott mentioned the thinkin bout rocks n lichen thing

I never got around to the third book myself. first is all-time awesome.

adderall and xanax are pernicious drugs.

they seem to fit so organically into your routine, and to enhance your life on a moment to moment basis, that it's hard to realize the extent to which they are fucking with you. weirdly though, despite mordy's sarcasm, i think things would be a lot worse for tao lin if he wasn't eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables.

anyway, i wish the dude the best because he is a great writer and i want to see what kinds of things he will be doing in his 30s, 40s, and 50s.

this passage about paul's relationship with his mother in high school -- his instinct to blame her for his unhappiness because he couldn't help but resent her unconditional love and support -- is probably easy to mock but i think it is a brilliant, harrowing, and relatable account of just how fucked up your thinking can become as an adolescent. bratty teenagers are pretty universally reviled, so i think it is important to be able to remember, from time to time, just how unbearable their lives actually are, and the kind of un-repressable confusion that leads them to "act out." this kind of empathy is necessary for me in my current job.

In Paul’s sophomore or junior year he began to believe the only solution to his anxiety, low self-esteem, view of himself as unattractive, etc. would be for his mother to begin disciplining him on her own volition, without his prompting, as an unpredictable—and, maybe, to counter the previous fourteen or fifteen years of “overprotectiveness,” unfair—entity, convincingly not unconditionally supportive. His mother would need to create rules and punishments exceeding Paul’s expectations, to a degree that Paul would no longer feel in control. To do this, Paul believed, his mother would need to anticipate and preempt anything he might have considered, factoring in that—because Paul was thinking about this almost every day, and between the two of them was the source of this belief—he probably already expected, or had imagined, any rule or punishment she would be willing to instate or inflict, therefore she would need to consider rules and punishments that she would not think of herself as willing to instate or inflict. Paul tried to convey this in crying, shouting fights with his mother lasting up to four hours, sometimes five days a week. There was an inherent desperation to these fights, in that each time Paul, in frustration, told his mother how she could have punished him, in whatever previous situation, to make him feel not in control—to, he believed, help solve his social and psychological problems—it became complicatedly more difficult, in Paul’s view, for his mother to successfully preempt his expectations the next time. Paul cried and shouted more than his mother, who only shouted maybe once or twice. Paul would scream if his mother was downstairs while he was upstairs, in his room, where some nights he would throw his electric pencil sharpener and textbooks—and, once, a six-inch cymbal—at his walls, creating holes, resulting in punishments, but never exceeding what, by imagining their possibilities, he’d already rendered unsurprising, predictable. The intensity of these fights maybe contributed to Paul’s lungs collapsing spontaneously three times his senior year, when he was absent forty-seven days and in hospitals for around four weeks.

One night, standing in the doorway of his parents’ bedroom, when his father was on a months-long business trip, crying while shouting at his mother, who was supine in bed, in the dark, Paul heard her softly and steadily crying, with her blanket up to her chin in a way that seemed child-like. Paul stopped shouting and stood sobbing quietly, dimly aware, as his face twitched and trembled, that he felt intensely embarrassed of himself from the perspective of any person, except his mother, he had ever met. He said he didn’t know what he was talking about, or what he should do, that he was sorry and didn’t want to complain or blame other people anymore, and felt an ambiguous relief, to have reached the end of a thing without resolution and, having tried hard, feeling allowed—and ready—to resign. He didn’t stop blaming his mother, after that, but gradually they fought less—and, after each fight, when he would revert to his belief about discipline, he would apologize and reiterate he didn’t want to blame anyone or complain—and, by the last month of senior year, had mostly stopped fighting.

i like bareburger a lot

me too. i like their different varieties of ketchup.

yeah i'm gonna try the bison burger and the crocodile burger and maybe the antelope burger too one day

i've had the bison burger before and, i think, the elk burger if that exists and i'm not imagining it. i wasn't a fan of alligator when i ate it once in college (someone was barbecuing it randomly) but crocodile might be different.

treeship i think your open-faced sincerity on these boards is a good match for tao lin's unapologetic candidness

thanks. we should meet for open faced antelope burgers at some point.

160 mg of adderall a day isn't overdoing it but if you're taking that much you've built up a good tolerance with xanax to take the edge off. but when you get to that point, it must have lost most of its magic.

how are they pernicious, tree?