the most promising young american author is TAO LIN

I dunno, Vintage either a) doesn't look at creepy Twitter accounts, b) has a financial/contractual/PR reason for not saying anything, c) is worried he'll show up at their office.

he's probably contractually obligated to continue posting to his creepy twitter account

I considered that, but it would be a pretty fucking edgy play by a publisher to have anything to do with this guy.

i would guess tai pei sold better than most of the vintage contemporaries catalog, even if that isn't saying much. leaving aside his directed energy attack on building 7 and alex jones-level attacks on big pharma... i guess they appreciate his "self-promotion."

9/11 free-energy attacks and anti-vaccine nonsense in 2017 is fairly mild compared to, you know, what's out there... it's almost quaint.

he's probably contractually obligated to continue posting to his creepy twitter account

I would be extraordinarily surprised if this were the case

I think he sucks but cmon guys it’s the publishers job to sell books I’m sure they have done way worse

fuck this guy; his writing is shit, he is shitty, end of story

an uncompromising document of our cultural moment

taipei was good but stuff like this makes me think, no, actually, taipei was bad

what if i said it felt extremely contemporary which is a unique thing for me to feel about writing that i find in a book

part of this had to do with the way he represented the mediated quality of his characters' experiences -- through drugs, technology, etc. it was dystopian fiction in the present.

i'm not trying to say he is shakespeare or something but he did some new stuff

agree w treesh tapei is good

his free energy tweets are hard to take, tho i see no evidence/reason he isn't having this drug bk published

bret eastao elin

In some ways it's just Kerouac or whoever though, isn't it? Just a guy who's very, very high writing stuff in such a way that you can't tell if he's trying to write well or using "not very good writing" as formal grammar for something more naturalistic than the prose pyrotechnics of mid-brow brit lit, for example. It's really not new to read this kind of lad stuff, I've been reading it for 20 years, it's just that with Taipei the drugs have been updated—what does that one do?—and there is now the internet. I seem to remember a moment in Kerouac, though, the end of the novella The Subterraneans that was quite jaw-dropping in its spare, emotional impact (a group of people standing around outside a bar, doing nothing). I thought to myself, Kerouac you old con artist, you actually meant to do that.

I mean I can kind of see Taipei posing a more troubling and possibly more urgent question about literature itself, but I think that's possible because I read some Blanchot as an undergraduate and so I'm conditioned to look for halls of mirrors in fiction because they tie in nicely with theory which in turn allows you to stretch your paper's word count using more block quotes from the theory.

has everyone forgiven him the whole rapey thing?

by the "rapey" thing, you mean the consensual relationship between a 22-year old and a 16-year old, with the approval of her mother, that lasted for over a year?

yeah I forgive him. actually, I never gave a shit in the first place.

re the vaccine stuff and 9/11—I don't think this is some kind of performance. I just think he's ruined his brain with drugs.

he most likely believes all of this stuff but it’s still a performance. you can tell how he is setting up his bext book — “beyond existentialism”, or beyond the sense of meaninglessness he sketched in his last novel.

*next

bring back treeship the first

maybe this is just Tao's way of responding to mainstream acceptance from the literary establishment

by the rapey stuff I mean everything outlined here: https://jezebel.com/alt-lit-icon-tao-lin-accused-of-horrific-rape-and-abuse-1641641060 which sounded bad enough to me. if you think that all sounds consensual, I guess, fine, go ahead and think that.

"Yes, I had consensual sex with Ellen in her parents' house in Pennsylvania in her parents' bed, as she tweeted, when I was 22 and she was 16. No, that is not statutory rape, let alone rape."

actually it is statutory rape, that is the definition of what statutory rape is. I understand there are some grey lines here with older adolescents and consent, but it legally is statutory rape, dumbshit.

*googles* legally speaking, its not

it depends on where it happened and what the age of consent is. in some places it is 17.

Are people really interested in talking about this? His reputation in the mainstream literary world has rightly been torched. That doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting things about the work.

In some ways it's just Kerouac or whoever though, isn't it? Just a guy who's very, very high writing stuff in such a way that you can't tell if he's trying to write well or using "not very good writing" as formal grammar for something more naturalistic than the prose pyrotechnics of mid-brow brit lit, for example. It's really not new to read this kind of lad stuff, I've been reading it for 20 years, it's just that with Taipei the drugs have been updated—what does that one do?—and there is now the internet. I seem to remember a moment in Kerouac, though, the end of the novella The Subterraneans that was quite jaw-dropping in its spare, emotional impact (a group of people standing around outside a bar, doing nothing). I thought to myself, Kerouac you old con artist, you actually meant to do that.

I mean I can kind of see Taipei posing a more troubling and possibly more urgent question about literature itself, but I think that's possible because I read some Blanchot as an undergraduate and so I'm conditioned to look for halls of mirrors in fiction because they tie in nicely with theory which in turn allows you to stretch your paper's word count using more block quotes from the theory.

― fields of salmon, Monday, November 27, 2017 11:33 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What is your point? it's obvious you don't like his writing, this is just a thing of "if it works for you, it's insightful; if it doesn't, it's transparent horseshit." as with all discussions of divisive art. i agree with treeship, i mean i started this thread right after i got Taipei, and I still think it's one of the best books of recent years. Tao Lin really brings out the ire in NYC media people & academics, and I just don't give a shit about these internecine battles. the idea that Vintage isn't going to publish his next 2 books because of his tweets is just stupid. he's provocative, he's controversial = easy sell.

re: the jezebel piece, from what I remember the person recanted their initial statement & it was resolved & the situation was clarified. take that as you will. I certainly understand the hate & suspicion, but again, you gonna throw out your Burroughs books? yea yea we get it, you don't dig Tao Lin, that's fine, the knee-jerk hate he gets is so ott and boring. most of it stems from annoying Gawker in the 00s and now his (comparatively mild) paranoia on twitter. whatever, i don't give a shit. i just find the intense loathing of this guy to be so strange

Are people really interested in talking about this? His reputation in the mainstream literary world has rightly been torched. That doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting things about the work.

― treeship 2, Monday, November 27, 2017 3:10 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

exactly. and this applies to so, so many artists.

guys, what if—and I know this sounds crazy—but what if old Gawker Media posts aren't actually the best information source for making moral judgments about people's personal lives?

i was led to believe by information sources on the internet that you don't actually have to choose the best information source to make important judgments about anything, historical events, public health policy, whatever

guys, what if—and I know this sounds crazy—but what if old Gawker Media posts aren't actually the best information source for making moral judgments about people's personal lives?

― it me, Monday, November 27, 2017 1:21 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

weird hill to die on.

his ex made him sound like a real POS abuser. the gawker article quoted her posts.

once again I've died on a hill

guys, what if—and I know this sounds crazy—but what if old Gawker Media posts aren't actually the best information source for making moral judgments about people's personal lives?

― it me, Monday, November 27, 2017 3:21 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

how fast did ilx go from 'gawker is stupid for running speculation' to 'gawker's correct speculation doesn't have to be the only thing we listen to'

iirc the jezebel post is all scenes straight out of his (transparently autobiographical) novel Richard Yates. at the time alt-lit types who had lauded the book had to act shocked SHOCKED that he was capable of such monstrous behaviour

Gawker didn't "speculate." They amplified a series of out-of-context tweets that the author later deleted and tried to have removed. Neither Tao nor Kennedy felt that Gawker's representation of events was accurate, and both asked that the article be taken down. But Gawker had a long-standing vendetta against Lin—one that predated his literary celebrity—and an institutional mandate to drive traffic.

So guess what happened?

so kennedy retracted all of this? if so then fine. I'm just saying: this is an odd reversal given ILX's general reaction to every other man accused of doing similar things.

yeah, well, I'm not actually wearing a shirt that says "Official ILX Opinion-Holder" right now

yeah i guess it would be if Kennedy didn't retract their statements

His book, Richard Yates, makes him sound like a real POS abuser. He gave interviews at the time suggesting it was autobiographical, and anyone who read it could see that was true. The book itself is primarily about a Tao Lin surrogate abusing an E.L. Kennedy surrogate.

Also, treeship, Taipei is not good. Lin has tin ears, and chunky clauses strung together like language legos does little to hide this. More importantly, he is not an elephant art kind of guy. Richard Yates works because it's so unimaginative and literal. It's like a word polaroid. Factual, artless, private.

Also, treeship, Taipei is not good.

has everyone in this thread turned into turrican with these declarative objective statements about the quality & merit of a piece of art

weirdly fine with this version of it

declarative statements about a piece of art prob constitutes 90 percent of ilx

what is elephant art

lest we forget the objective merits of the angry birds movie

What is your point? it's obvious you don't like his writing, this is just a thing of "if it works for you, it's insightful; if it doesn't, it's transparent horseshit."

Starting a reply with "What is your point?" on an internet message board seems a bit strong.

Treeship made the point that, "I still think Taipei is an extraordinary book—an uncompromising document of our cultural moment." For my part, I'm trying to poke for more details here about what others think is significant about the work, and saying "if you don't like it that's fine" isn't useful. Treeship said "part of this had to do with the way he represented the mediated quality of his characters' experiences -- through drugs, technology, etc. it was dystopian fiction in the present," which is perhaps a good place start, and that was the reply I was looking at when I responded, basically, "isn't it just like Kerouac?" which is me trying to dig in a little bit to what is meant to be unique about Taipei (or Tao Lin's fiction more generally).

Always thought it me was a hoos but I guess not?

the people critiquing the book are providing p reasonable and considered criticism, and the people who like taipei are being attacked for liking it obv

I don’t retract anything I said about the book but I kind of hate how closely I’m associated with it now, given who the author is and what he’s done. Defending socipathic behavior is not what I’m about if that wasn’t already clear.

I liked Taipei. I liked its fundamental ambiguity where it was hard to tell what was calculated and what was just naive narration of his own life - I think that's what was interesting, this state of simultaneously reporting the times and being a symptom of the times. He wrote a good book but I'm not sure he's a great writer - maybe more a question of being at the right place at the right time.

I don't have a copy on hand, but IIRC the plot of Richard Yates is this:

The Lin stand-in character, a 22-year-old vegan, is unhappy when his 16-year old girlfriend gains weight, and advises her to avoid food-court garbage and start eating healthier. This comes alongside his broader disapproval of fat Americans and their unhealthy diets. (Together, the two start calling obese people "cheese beasts.")

The Kennedy stand-in appears to agree with Lin, but instead secretly develops a severe case of bulimia, which she only reveals to him months later in a startling confessional e-mail. Lin realizes he's partly at fault, and that he has been controlling her, and the book ends with an apology.

So... is he the worst human alive? Can this book be read outside of the lens of "rape" and "abuse"? I think it can.

The other question is whether the writing's any good. Certainly Lin's style is different from anyone else's, and this distinction is the result of concentrated effort on Lin's part. He delights, I think, in trolling the guardians of the received wisdom of what constitutes "good prose"—you don't write a phrase like "vaguely liquid-y" without a good understanding of what writing rules you're breaking and which of the grammar mavens trying to offend.

Also, Lin is very funny. Like how Taipei begins with him setting a goal of "calmly organizing things" and ends with him accidentally snorting a double-dose of heroin and falling face down in the street. Or how he's constantly dropping his iPhone on his face. Or how posters always fall on him.

Perhaps now he's trolling the purveyors of establishment wisdom. A theory like 9/11 "dustification" is absurd even to truthers—it could, I guess, be a performative way of permanently placing himself outside of the boundaries of the literary establishment. Then again, maybe he's just done too much acid.