the most promising young american author is TAO LIN

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.

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).

― fields of salmon, Monday, November 27, 2017 5:42 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fair enough, you're right. sorry for being prickly.

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

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Monday, November 27, 2017 5:38 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's a difference between discussing stuff and working through opinions and openly communicating and the stone wall of "no, bad, you're wrong" or choosing to remain aloof and not engage in a conversation in good faith

lest we forget the objective merits of the angry birds movie

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Monday, November 27, 2017 5:40 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc i just liked it a lot and made my case, i totally understand & can accept if something i like isn't someone else's jam

and yea i feel you treeship, i love Taipei but am not into hrmrm dying on a hill defending tao lin, documented shit head & possible charlatan. & i haven't read Richard Yates

His royal majesty Roger moore

there's a difference between discussing stuff and working through opinions and openly communicating and the stone wall of "no, bad, you're wrong" or choosing to remain aloof and not engage in a conversation in good faith

i don't think either of the latter scenarios are happening ("no, taipei is not good" =/= "no, bad, you're wrong"or bad faith)

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c5/7c/9c/c57c9c7df8705e626bb4dc2edf225cb2--smiley-dutch-quotes.jpg

dat klonk best slim OTM

klonkadonk

What does that say? I don’t read Italian.

Isn't dril/Trump's presidency "dystopian fiction in the present"? Don't know why you need this book.

Seriously guys.

hey this tao lin is a REAL piece of work, am i right fellas?

talk about a POISON PEN am i right? (he's poisoning children by not getting them vaccines)

this guy's no WALT WHITMAN but his books sure are leaves of ASS. who's with me?

ernest hemingway might have written A FAREWELL TO ARMS but i heard this guy's next book is going to be called A FAREWELL TO DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS THAT TOOK DOWN BUILDING 7. who's with me?

I have a feeling that actually our entire moment is amplifying the personal (with a healthy mix of isn’t that what you heard) to prove taste. Especially when you equate another’s taste with support for bad behavior. It makes sitting at home and doing fuck all about anything all that much sweeter. Personally, I go through my bookshelf and put authors in detention. It’s way too hard to figure out who’s actually a monster, so it makes picking a novel easier. Gotta go pre-internet.

Taipei was honest, he’s got some sweet short stories too. Hope that 1) the guy is mentally ill; or 2) he’s not and the next book sells; or 3) both.

What I meant: Tao Lin isn’t pure, Tao Lin is pure, I think a lot about Tao Lin.

Enthusiasm goes to get tweezered on this board.

*presses follow button* xp

Love is just the stray hairs left behind

this guy's next book is supposedly called BEYOND EXISTENTIALISM but i heard the original title was BEYOND NARCISSISM. who else has the feeling this guy is getting too big for his britches???

too bad there's not a vaccine against BAD WRITING this guy could take.

wow that is just a staggeringly horrible post lion in winter

maybe performative assholism really is l'esprit du jour

Lion in Winter otm

I have a feeling that actually our entire moment is amplifying the personal (with a healthy mix of isn’t that what you heard) to prove taste. Especially when you equate another’s taste with support for bad behavior.

this part of it is right

i don't really understand exactly what's being said in the first sentence, but if means that people's private tastes are being held up to (moral) scrutiny then he's right. and people are scrutinizing their own tastes too, internalizing the gaze of whatever communities they belong to online.

i don't think anyone here has equated people's tastes with support for bad behavior. but some people here -- me -- have expressed concern that this would happen. when people consume art and media now they do so "in public" to a degree. who knows if this is good or bad

https://static-content.springer.com/cover/book/978-1-349-09670-1.jpg

In awe of Aero finding such a fitting image in a language unknown to him (I'da thunk)

i don't really understand exactly what's being said in the first sentence

you quoted it, said it was right, and then said you didn’t understand it.

why are we digging for truths in a post with a sentence where they hope lin is mentally ill

Tbf there’s a lot of stuff that’s right that I don’t understand

I have a feeling that actually our entire moment is amplifying the personal (with a healthy mix of isn’t that what you heard) to prove taste.

Whomst the fuck is out there saying "so and so is a good person and therefore they make good art" though? We're reckoning with the "art vs the artist" question at the moment for legitimate reasons. And I don't see many (or really any) people making the argument that it's not OK to enjoy things by bad people. (Promotion/dissemination/funding is another matter on which there is more dispute, sure.)

bret eastao elin

― mh, Monday, November 27, 2017 10:22 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kudos

Whomst the fuck is out there saying "so and so is a good person and therefore they make good art" though?

i really do think that this is the direction many implicitly would like to go. maybe we should just be more honest about it!

more like being a good person is a necessary but not suffiient condition for [something considerably weaker than 'making good art', more like 'whether they should be given space or put in power']

Well that's just lazy arguing tbh

I'd make the argument rather that art made by bad people that is truly an expression of their badness is pretty much always trivial and disposable, and the exceptions are usually expressions of the good parts of themselves warning us what pieces of shit the rest of them are. Does Tao Lin's work have the requisite amount of edifying self-loathing to get to that level?

I disagree, even accepting the premise that Tao Lin is a "bad person" writing true "expressions of his badness," we can gleam insight from it, in the same way that Noah Baumbach's Greenberg is an accidental masterpiece excoriating a very specific type of Gen X hipster contrarian misogynist that is all too often exalted and excused for in popular culture. the same could be said of the amoral, affectless, drug-addicted narrator of Taipei.

*glean

If that excoriation isn't embedded in the work itself, then really it's the critic who does the excoriating that is making the art, no?

most art isn't made in a vacuum; even celebrated novelists are part of a literary community and exert power and influence in significant ways. i don't think the argument is so much about 'are tao lin novels still good' (even less about whether they ever were--i'll cop to enjoying richard yates when i read it at 22) but 'should this person continue to be validated by this community'. the community is diffuse and includes semi-public figures with platforms from which to denounce them, but also the private decisions of readers to continue to buy their work or how to talk about them among friends. i think 'amplifying the personal to prove taste' is too smug a way of putting it. the idea that everyone just closes ranks and takes a hardline stance for fear of being shunned isn't borne out in reality; most ppl openly admit to having mixed feelings, still love the work, etc

xp No, I think people can learn and get things in works of art that the creator never considered, especially if it endures long after the creator is dead. "Separate the art from the artist" is an imprecise term, I believe that art does not belong to the artist, in a spiritual sense. it's an offering to the world and completely open to interpretation and can mean a million different things to a million different people. Even if you don't believe that, and you think a creator's behavior or beliefs are inextricable from their work, you can use the work to more precisely understand why you think they are wrong or bad.

well said

exile all morally suspect artists to siberia and make them suffer so we can enjoy their art knowing that they are not benefiting

When the art no longer belongs to the originator, then you are the artist. If you can mine valuable things from shit, that was you doing the work, and the value of it should be ascribed to you, not the originator.
I don't think a creator's behavior or beliefs are inextricable from their work, but the more that is the case, the more that work is craft rather than art, and so then a different set of value judgments come in.

wait wait wait how is Greenberg accidental? I feel like Baumbach is pretty obviously making him intolerable

exile all morally suspect artists to siberia and make them suffer so we can enjoy their art knowing that they are not benefiting

― Mordy, Tuesday, November 28, 2017 3:59 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I actually like this solution

There's at least a 75% chance someone in this thread is actually Tao Lin I figure

Good posts

I don't think a creator's behavior or beliefs are inextricable from their work

But does it matter if they are or aren't the answer fyi is no

An object is an object once complete it is not the history of its creation save for that remnant of the history that shows in the object NB this remnant is a lot less than you think ps scrub author names and by christ flamethrower off author biographies from novels and continue in this vein through all artefacts that you would have known as creative endeavour else admit ur fandom and just buy a tshirt

yes that's a threat

of course extricability of intent matters: we've all enjoyed food well-prepared by racists precisely because try as they might, they're unable to imbue BBQ chicken with hatred.