i do think the humor in the book is successful in making it palatable. for me, it wasn't a chore to slog through. i don't think paul has lost himself as much as he thinks/fears he has.
― Treeship, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 16:54 (ten years ago) link
http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-01-0059425.pdf
― waterface, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 16:54 (ten years ago) link
^^Masterpiece
― waterface, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 16:55 (ten years ago) link
it's good, but i think it's excruciating to read. i've suffered on and off from depression, and for whatever reason that story makes it seem like an inescapable black hole whereas taipei makes me feel like maybe i've already escaped, if i would only notice it. i think it's because dfw, at least in that story, takes the medical definition of depression at face value more or less and writes about it whereas tao lin is concerned with complicating our understanding of the border between "depressive" thinking (or drug-induced thinking) and "ordinary" thinking. i know you are not interested in hearing more about this.
― Treeship, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 16:59 (ten years ago) link
A lots of his stuff is excruciating* to read, which is why I digs reading it.
*painful yes, but no t tedious
― waterface, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 17:03 (ten years ago) link
See Also Mister Squishy for excruciating but very satisfying fiction from DF Dubs
― waterface, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 17:04 (ten years ago) link
What is "ordinary" thinking*
*Do not answer this
― waterface, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 17:05 (ten years ago) link
xp i appreciate your thoughts contenderizer. i can see how this book would be nightmarish for certain people. i have a love-hate relationship with dfw because of the similarity i sense between the reflexive self-doubt he represents in his fiction -- characterized by a difficulty experiencing things directly, due to an impulse toward intellectualization -- and things i have struggled with.
― Treeship, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 17:05 (ten years ago) link
the depressed person has a punch line tho!
― one yankee sympathizer masquerading as a historian (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, 23 July 2013 17:25 (ten years ago) link
what is it? it was so long ago that i read it.
― Treeship, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 17:26 (ten years ago) link
it's true that there's no way out in the text but i think it points in negative space at the foundation for a way out in the reader. i doubt dfw felt that way tho.
― one yankee sympathizer masquerading as a historian (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, 23 July 2013 17:29 (ten years ago) link
i mean it's a punch line that's basically the same joke as the rest of the story but it's always the only part in the story to make me laugh; it's like a release. it's when the woman asks her friend to not hold back anymore and to describe "what all she had learned said about her."
― one yankee sympathizer masquerading as a historian (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, 23 July 2013 17:30 (ten years ago) link
if i were feeling up to it i'd try to make an argument about how the protagonist in the story is the friend
― one yankee sympathizer masquerading as a historian (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, 23 July 2013 17:32 (ten years ago) link
i'm interested in hearing that argument. what i thought, reading the story, was that dfw was almost daring you not to like her, as you witnessed just how much damage was being caused by the fact that she assumes nobody likes her and is, in fact, unlikable.
― Treeship, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 17:33 (ten years ago) link
yeah i do think that there's some linkage between the part where she implores her friend to get off the phone "the very moment she ... was getting bored or frustrated or repelled" and you the reader reading the story
― one yankee sympathizer masquerading as a historian (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, 23 July 2013 17:38 (ten years ago) link
all that ellipsis omitted btw was one of his fucking (i.e., the friend) interjections
― one yankee sympathizer masquerading as a historian (difficult listening hour), Tuesday, 23 July 2013 17:42 (ten years ago) link
Oh the narrator is totally the friend
― waterface, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 18:01 (ten years ago) link
At least as I read it
Or I mean is the Depressed Person
what?
― Treeship, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 19:45 (ten years ago) link
Exactky
― waterface, Tuesday, 23 July 2013 20:15 (ten years ago) link
http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-disorder-of-things/
― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Monday, 12 August 2013 15:22 (ten years ago) link
ew get your tao lin out of my new inquiry
― BIG HOOS aka the denigrated boogeyman (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Monday, 12 August 2013 16:47 (ten years ago) link
that essay is really annoying, as is the general trend of ascribing every precocious and/or obsessive trait to "autism" and "aspergers"
― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Monday, 12 August 2013 16:52 (ten years ago) link
Dunno about ilx user NI, but ilx user cardamon's view remain the same.
― cardamon, Wednesday, 14 August 2013 23:01 (ten years ago) link
Tons of copies of this book for sale in Singapore's Kinokuniya bookstore
― Treeship, Wednesday, 14 August 2013 23:03 (ten years ago) link
tonight he read out his twitter timeline for a while
― ogmor, Wednesday, 14 August 2013 23:06 (ten years ago) link
i got out of it what tao puts into it: a huge shrug
― NI, Wednesday, 14 August 2013 23:41 (ten years ago) link
something to be said about this new trend of autism in lit, i think there's something to that article above
― NI, Wednesday, 14 August 2013 23:42 (ten years ago) link
Not to reactivate an old clusterfuck (lol), but Lin is incredibly attentive to form, especially in Taipei, which feels and sounds unlike anything else. The main character is apathetic to the point of being almost suicidal but it's a mistake to extend that sensibility to Lin's attitude toward his own writing. Imo.
Obviously the tweet reading thing is different and can be called lazy, sure.
― Treeship, Wednesday, 14 August 2013 23:45 (ten years ago) link
xxp OTM
― cardamon, Wednesday, 14 August 2013 23:45 (ten years ago) link
They were funny tweets and everything
I am going to read the new inquiry piece but my kneejerk reaction is that labeling Lins' narrators detachment and lack of cathexis as "aspergers" is missing the point.
― Treeship, Wednesday, 14 August 2013 23:50 (ten years ago) link
The autism spectrum encompasses a very wide spectrum of conditions. Even a good mind like Baren-Cohen(mindblindness quoted in the article) who is a professor of autism cannot box them in like the writer of that article has tried to.
― Damo Suzuki's Parrot, Thursday, 15 August 2013 01:16 (ten years ago) link
cardamon you were there last night? idk how i feel about ilx melding w/ the real world like that
― ogmor, Thursday, 15 August 2013 16:45 (ten years ago) link
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (580 of them)
― brian uoeno (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, 15 August 2013 16:48 (ten years ago) link
ogmor, it was practically a mini ilx meetup
― cardamon, Friday, 16 August 2013 00:09 (ten years ago) link
hmm, the thought that i might inadvertently know an ilxor irl is distressing.
― ogmor, Friday, 16 August 2013 00:37 (ten years ago) link
If it helps, I've mentally associated your ilx handle with a tall, bearded, friendly northern irish dude
― cardamon, Friday, 16 August 2013 15:20 (ten years ago) link
if it helps, i always thought you were an actual troll, from some kind of scandinavian country, like, ethnically troll
― j., Friday, 16 August 2013 15:49 (ten years ago) link
Ethnically droll
― cardamon, Friday, 16 August 2013 15:53 (ten years ago) link
i feel sorry to disappoint you, but i'm curious about ppl's mental pictures of other ilxors
― ogmor, Friday, 16 August 2013 16:42 (ten years ago) link
how was it?
― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Friday, 16 August 2013 18:42 (ten years ago) link
to quote a text i received during the night "like a victorian freakshow, everyone chuckling and clapping at the mentally disabled prancing about onstage" apparently
― NI, Friday, 16 August 2013 19:19 (ten years ago) link
i must have been downstairs for that bit.
― ogmor, Friday, 16 August 2013 19:24 (ten years ago) link
wow
― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Friday, 16 August 2013 19:33 (ten years ago) link
such literatrue
The part of that text that implies an audience being much more into a performance style than any of the actual content, I'd agree with
― cardamon, Friday, 16 August 2013 19:57 (ten years ago) link
TNI piece, re non-neurotypicals: "They can speak more freely, see more clearly, and love more truly than we can. They lack the part of us that holds us back."
this is a terrible thing to say in my opinion
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 16 August 2013 20:26 (ten years ago) link
There's also a trend whereby people rendered emotionally dysfunctional through substance abuse come to see themselves as on the autism spectrum.
― fields of salmon, Friday, 16 August 2013 21:01 (ten years ago) link