Tao Lin

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Tao Lin
Photo of Tao Lin
Tao Lin in Japan, 2010
Born (1983-07-02) July 2, 1983 (age 29)
Alexandria, Virginia
Occupation Novelist, poet
Nationality United States
Genres Literary Fiction
Notable work(s) Bed, Richard Yates, Shoplifting from American Apparel,
Spouse(s) Megan Boyle (separated)
www.taolin.info

Tao Lin (born July 2, 1983 in Alexandria, Virginia) is an American novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer, and artist. He has published two novels, two books of poetry, one short story collection, and one novella in print as well as an extensive assortment of online content. His third novel, Taipei, will be published by Vintage on June 4, 2013.[3]

In May 2012, he began a weekly column, "Drug-Related Photoshop Art",[4] for Vice Magazine, to which he also frequently contributes fiction and essays. He was an early, frequent contributor to Thought Catalog and has also written for New York Observer, Gawker, Poetry Foundation, and The Believer.

In November 2008 Lin founded Muumuu House, an independent publishing house, and in 2010 he co-founded MDMAfilms, an independent film production company.[5][6]

Contents

Biography & Life [edit]

Tao Lin was born of Taiwanese parents and lives in Manhattan, New York. He graduated from New York University in 2005 with a B.A. in Journalism.[7] He has lectured on his writing and art at Vassar, Kansas City Art Institute, Columbia College, UNC Chapel Hill, and other universities. He teaches a graduate course called The Contemporary Short Story at Sarah Lawrence College.[8]

Critical response [edit]

Lin's writing has attracted both negative and positive attention from various publications. Gawker once referred to him as "maybe perhaps the single most irritating person we've ever had to deal with",[9] though he was later "pardoned".[10] After the "pardon", Gawker published a piece Lin had written.[11]

L Magazine said, "We've long been deeply irked by Lin's vacuous posturing and 'I know you are but what am I' dorm-room philosophizing..."[12] Sam Anderson, in New York Magazine, wrote, "Dismissing Lin, however, ignores the fact that he is deeply smart, funny, and head-over-heels dedicated in exactly the way we like our young artists to be."[13] Miranda July has praised his work as "moving and necessary."[14]

An article in The Atlantic described Lin as having a "fairly staggering" knack for self-promotion. The same article said "there's something unusual about a writer being so transparent, so ready to tell you every insignificant detail of a seemingly eventful day, so aware of his next novel's word count, yet also remaining so opaque, mysterious..."[15]

Lin's work has increasingly been praised in the UK, including positive reviews from The Guardian[16][17] and a career overview from London Review of Books.[18]

An article in AALR in 2012, reviewing Lin's prose books, stated:

David Foster Wallace concluded “E Unabus Pluram” with the hope that one day, a writer, bilingual in both irony and sincerity, would be able to engage a post-ironic audience without need of the essentially terminal narrative armaments his postmodern forefathers bequeathed her (or him). And if Tao Lin has one gift, it is a biplanar ability to convince a generation of sincerity-starved young men and women to embrace his realist, single-entendre fiction while convincingly presenting himself as the inveterately hip jester of the online-spawned lit scene. Replete with single quotes, unblinking unseriousness, the word ‘bro,’ and punk-y shots at the corporate literary edifice, Lin’s very funny, very “self-aware” Internet presence is a signal to MacBook owners the world over that he is, most importantly, one of them.[1] Lin’s fiction and poetry, replete with a baseline sadness, blips of absurdity, and a monastic commitment to personal truth, has the freshly coined and postmodernity-prescribed ability to seize the techno-catatonic comment-section dwellers who were repulsed or charmed enough by online Lin to face a set of his sentences and make abundantly clear that, yes, he does know what it’s like to exist online yet have to honestly live offline.

Books [edit]

you are a little bit happier than i am (2006) [edit]

In November 2006 Lin's first book, a poetry collection, you are a little bit happier than i am, was published. It was the winner of Action Books' December Prize and has been a small press bestseller.[19][20]

Eeeee Eee Eeee & Bed (2007) [edit]

In May 2007 Lin's first novel, Eeeee Eee Eeee, and first story collection, Bed were published simultaneously. Of the stories, Jennifer Bassett, writing in KGB Lit Journal, said: "In structure and tone, they have the feel of early Lorrie Moore and Deborah Eisenberg. Like Moore's characters, there are a lot of plays on language and within each story, a return to the same images or ideas -- or jokes. And like Moore, most of these characters live in New York, are unemployed or recently employed, and are originally from somewhere more provincial (Florida in Lin's case, Wisconsin in Moore's). However, Lin knows to dig a little deeper into his characters--something we see in Moore's later stories, but less so in her early ones."[21]

They were ignored by most mainstream media but have since been referenced in The Independent (who called Eeeee Eee Eeee "a wonderfully deadpan joke"[22]) and The New York Times who called Lin a "deadpan literary trickster"[23] in reference to Eeeee Eee Eeee.

Eeeee Eee Eeee has been translated to Spanish, Japanese,[24] Chinese, Serbian,[25] and German.[26]

cognitive-behavioral therapy (2008) [edit]

In May 2008 Lin's second poetry collection, cognitive-behavioral therapy was published.[27] Paste called it "a mesmerizing wonder...devastating and hilarious."[28]

The poem "room night" from this collection was anthologized in Wave Books' State of the Union.[29] A French translation was published by Au Diable Vauvert[30] in 2012.

Shoplifting from American Apparel (2009) [edit]

In September 2009 Lin's novella, Shoplifting from American Apparel, was published to mixed reviews. The Guardian said, "Trancelike and often hilarious… Lin's writing is reminiscent of early Douglas Coupland, or early Bret Easton Ellis, but there is also something going on here that is more profoundly peculiar, even Beckettian."[31] The Village Voice called it a "fragile, elusive book."[32] Bookslut said, "it shares an affected childishness with bands like The Moldy Peaches and it has a put-on weirdness reminiscent of Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You."[33] Time Out New York said, "Writing about being an artist makes most contemporary artists self-conscious, squeamish and arch. Lin, however, appears to be comfortable, even earnest, when his characters try to describe their aspirations (or their shortcomings) [...] purposefully raw."[34] San Francisco Chronicle said, “Tao Lin's sly, forlorn, deadpan humor jumps off the page [...] will delight fans of everyone from Mark Twain to Michelle Tea.”[35] Los Angeles Times said, "Camus' The Stranger or sociopath?"[36] while Austin Chronicle called it "scathingly funny" and said that "it might just be the future of literature."[37] Another reviewer described it as "a vehicle...for self-promotion."[38]

In an interview aired December 2009 with Michael Silverblatt on KCRW's Bookworm Silverblatt called the novella "the purest example so far of the minimalist aesthetic as it used to be enunciated"[39] and Lin described the novella's style as deliberately "concrete, with all the focus on surface details, with no sentences devoted to thoughts or feelings, and I think that results in a kind of themelessness, that, in its lack of focus on anything else, the theme becomes, to me, the passage of time."[39]

In December 2009 clothing retailer Urban Outfitters began selling Shoplifting from American Apparel in its stores.[40]

As of Summer 2011, a film adaptation of Shoplifting from American Apparel is in the works by ILIKENIRVANA PRODUCTIONS, starring Brad Warner, Jennifer Bishop, Noah Cicero and Jordan Castro.[41]

Richard Yates (2010) [edit]

Published September 7, 2010, by Melville House,[42] Richard Yates is Lin's second novel.

In England, papers such as The Daily Telegraph[43] and The Guardian[44] ran pieces on him. In the United States, Lin was mentioned on the blogs of New York Magazine,[45] The New Yorker,[46] The New York Times,[47] and Poets & Writers.[48]

In a book review in The New York Times, Charles Bock described the book as "more interesting as a concept than as an actual narrative", adding, "By the time I reached the last 50 pages, each time the characters said they wanted to kill themselves, I knew exactly how they felt."[49]

Clancy Martin said of it: "Richard Yates is hilarious, menacing, and hugely intelligent. Tao Lin is a Kafka for the iPhone generation. He has that most important gift: it’s impossible to imagine anyone else writing like he does and sounding authentic. Yet he has already spawned a huge school of Lin imitators. As precocious and prolific as he is, every book surpasses the last. Tao Lin may well be the most important writer under thirty working today."[50]

It has been translated into Spanish (Alpha Decay), Italian (Saggiatore), and French (Au Diable Vauvert).

Taipei (2013) [edit]

In August 2011, Lin reported[51] that he had found an agent for his third book, which he described as "a combination of Lorrie Moore’s prose style and tone, Bret Easton Ellis’ sort of reckless and drug-using characters, and Siddhartha’s continually unsuccessful, earnest attempts at some kind of peace or transcendence." Lin told the New York Observer that he plans to complete the novel by Fall 2012 and that he wants it to be "short...something [he] could almost memorize."

On August 15, 2011 Wall Street Journal reported[52] that rights to the unfinished novel had been sold at auction to Vintage.

In an unedited interview published by Thought Catalog on 25 July 2012 Lin confirmed that the novel will be titled Taipei .[53]

It will be published by Vintage on June 4, 2013.

On February 23, 2013 Publishers Weekly awarded it a starred review, predicting it to be Lin's "breakout" book and describing it as "a novel about disaffection that's oddly affecting" and "a book without an ounce of self-pity, melodrama, or posturing."[54]

Muumuu House [edit]

Lin founded the literary press Muumuu House in late 2008.[6] The press has published collections of poetry and prose by Ellen Kennedy, Brandon Scott Gorrell, and Megan Boyle in print as well as work by Ben Lerner, Sheila Heti, Matthew Rohrer, Sam Pink, Deb Olin Unferth, Rebecca Curtis, Noah Cicero, Mallory Whitten, Jordan Castro, Mira Gonzalez, and others online.

MDMAfilms [edit]

Lin co-founded, with Megan Boyle, the film company MDMAfilms in late 2010.[55] Its feature-length releases, all shot on MacBooks, include a documentary on Bebe Zeva (of which Filmmaker Magazine said "'The yearning for human contact — for laughter, for spontaneous joy as Zeva periodically spins and twirls and dodges her way beyond the gaze of the laptop camera — takes Harmony Korine’s notion of 'mistake-ism' to new levels, so that the radical gestures of the Lin/Boyle films occur not when things go wrong, but when they go right.") and two feature films titled MDMA and Mumblecore.

Bibliography [edit]

eBooks
Poetry
Novels
Novellas
Stories

Selected work available online [edit]

Fiction
Poetry
Essays

References [edit]

  1. ^ Leung, Julie (April 3, 2009). "Eclectic Writer Tao Lin Shows Us ‘The Way’". Mochi Magazine. Retrieved December 24, 2011. 
  2. ^ Vilensky, Mike (June 28, 2012). "'The Bullpen Is Mightier'". WSJ. Retrieved November 26, 2012. 
  3. ^ "Taipei". Amazon. Retrieved 26 November 2012. 
  4. ^ Lin, Tao. "Drug-Related Photoshop Art" Vice Magazine.
  5. ^ Tao Lin Now Selling Videos of Himself on Ecstasy to Pay the Rent: An Interview with MDMAfilms, L Magazine
  6. ^ a b Small Press Points, Poets & Writers
  7. ^ Roy, Jessica. "NYU Alum and Poet Tao Lin Doesn’t Care Whether or Not You Think Print Is Dead". NYU Local. 
  8. ^ http://www.slc.edu/grad-catalogue/writing/courses/2012-2013/primary/the-contemporary-short-story.html
  9. ^ Gould, Emily (2007-07-27). "Now We Also Hate Miranda July". Gawker. Retrieved 2009-03-13. 
  10. ^ Gould, Emily (2007-12-04). "Pardons". Gawker. Retrieved 2009-03-12. 
  11. ^ "An Account of Being Arrested for 'Trespassing' NYU's Bookstore". Gawker.com. Retrieved 2010-09-28. 
  12. ^ Kyzer, Larissa. "The Best of NYC LETTERS | Books | The L Magazine - New York City's Local Event and Arts & Culture Guide". The L Magazine. Retrieved 2010-09-28. 
  13. ^ Anderson, Sam (2009-01-11). "Tao Lin, Lit Boy - The All New Issue - New York Magazine". Nymag.com. Retrieved 2010-09-28. 
  14. ^ "Shoplifting From American Apparell". Melville House. 
  15. ^ Hua Hsu. "Terminal Boredom: Reading Tao Lin" retrieved August 25, 2010 from www.atlantic.com.[1]
  16. ^ Poole, Steven (2009-11-14). "Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin – Book review". The Guardian (London). 
  17. ^ Lezard, Nicholas (2010-11-13). "Richard Yates by Tao Lin – review". The Guardian (London). 
  18. ^ Haglund, David (October 21, 2010). "A Kind of Gnawing Offness". London Review of Books. Retrieved December 24, 2011. 
  19. ^ "Poetry Bestsellers July Aug 2008 : Small Press Distribution". Spdbooks.org. Retrieved 2010-09-28. 
  20. ^ "Poetry Bestsellers September 2007 : Small Press Distribution". Spdbooks.org. Retrieved 2010-09-28. 
  21. ^ http://kgbbar.pmhclients.com/lit/book_reviews/tao_lins_bed_and_eeeee_eee_eeee
  22. ^ Thorne, Matt (2010-06-04). "Beatrice and Virgil, By Yann Martel". The Independent (London). 
  23. ^ Vizzini, Ned (2010-05-06). "Bridge Between Generations". The New York Times. 
  24. ^ "イー・イー・イー: タオ・リン, 山崎 まどか: 本". Amazon.co.jp. Retrieved December 24, 2011. 
  25. ^ "IIIII III IIII | Savremena književnost". Booka.in. Retrieved December 24, 2011. 
  26. ^ "Gute Laune: Tao Lin: 9783832180997: Bücher". Amazon.de. Retrieved December 24, 2011. 
  27. ^ "Melville House Publishing | Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy". Mhpbooks.com. Retrieved 2010-09-28. 
  28. ^ http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3005/2434733381_b1806ff034_b.jpg
  29. ^ http://www.wavepoetry.com/products/state-of-the-union
  30. ^ [2][dead link]
  31. ^ Poole, Steven (2009-11-14). "Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2010-05-24. 
  32. ^ Ben Beitler (2009-09-08). "Tao Lin's Five-Finger Discount - Page 1 - Books - New York". Village Voice. Retrieved 2010-09-28. 
  33. ^ Kati Nolfi. "Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin". Bookslut. Retrieved 2010-09-28. 
  34. ^ "Tao Lin - Shoplifting from American Apparel - Book review - Time Out New York". Newyork.timeout.com. Retrieved 2010-09-28. 
  35. ^ Messer, Ari (2009-10-01). "Tao Lin: 'Shoplifting from American Apparel'". The San Francisco Chronicle. 
  36. ^ "Discoveries: 'Shoplifting From American Apparel'". Los Angeles Times. 2009-09-27. Retrieved 2010-05-24. 
  37. ^ "Austin Books: Review - Shoplifting From American Apparel". AustinChronicle.com. 2009-10-09. Retrieved 2010-09-28. 
  38. ^ Nolfi, Katie (December 6, 2009). "Review a Day: Shoplifting from American Apparel". Powell's Books. Retrieved December 24, 2011. 
  39. ^ a b "Bookworm: Tao Lin". KCRW. December 3, 2009. Retrieved December 24, 2011. 
  40. ^ Schmidt, Mackenzie (2009-12-16). "Urban Outfitters Is Actually Selling Tao Lin's Novella Shoplifting at American Apparel - New York News - Runnin' Scared". Blogs.villagevoice.com. Retrieved 2010-09-28. 
  41. ^ O'Connor, Ryan C. "Shoplifting from American Apparel the Movie", nthWORD Magazine Shorts, April 11, 2011.
  42. ^ Roy, Jessica (2009-09-25). "NYU Alum and Poet Tao Lin Doesn’t Care Whether or Not You Think Print Is Dead". NYU Local. Retrieved 2009-03-13. 
  43. ^ Moore, Matthew (2008-08-04). "Penniless author sells shares in next novel". The Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved 2009-03-13. 
  44. ^ Flood, Alison (2008-08-06). "Taking stock of Tao Lin". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2009-03-13. 
  45. ^ "The Approval Matrix: Week of August 18, 2008". New York Magazine. 
  46. ^ "In the News: Tory Reads, Male Retorts". The New Yorker. 2008-08-05. Retrieved 2009-03-13. 
  47. ^ Freakanomics (2008-08-01). "When a Novelist Holds an IPO". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-03-13. 
  48. ^ "Author Sells Shares of Royalties for Unfinished Novel". Poets & Writers. 2008-08-05. Retrieved 2009-03-13. 
  49. ^ Charles Bock (September 24, 2010). "Book Review - Richard Yates - By Tao Lin - NYTimes.com". nytimes.com. Retrieved 28 September 2010. 
  50. ^ "Richard Yates, Tao Lin". Melville House. Retrieved December 24, 2011. 
  51. ^ Freeman, Nate (August 4, 2011). "Tao Lin Gchats About New Agent Bill Clegg and his Siddhartha-Inspired Next Novel". The New York Observer. Retrieved December 24, 2011. 
  52. ^ Vilensky, Mike (2011-08-15). "Tao Lin's Next Chapter". The Wall Street Journal. 
  53. ^ "Interview with Tao Lin". Thought Catalog. July 25, 2012. Retrieved August 15, 2012. 
  54. ^ http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-307-95017-8
  55. ^ Tao Lin Now Selling Videos of Himself on Ecstasy to Pay the Rent: An Interview with MDMA Films, L Magazine

External links [edit]

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