the most promising young american author is TAO LIN

a promising young american author is TAO LIN

the most promising young orange in America, Tao Lin

waterface:

http://images.angusrobertson.com.au/images/ar/97808166/9780816654598/0/0/plain/hikikomori-adolescence-without-end.jpg

Sweet thanks

So I finished the last few pages of Taipei yesterday afternoon. And yeah, it is reminiscent of Ishiguro's The Unconsoled, at least in the obsessive intensity with which it burrows into a single self-absorbed state of mind. The focus doesn't budge. Right through to the end, it concerns little but Paul's thinking about Paul (and Paul's depression) and Paul's thinking about thinking about Paul (and Paul's depression). It's a grind.

Though I didn't enjoy it much - I'm honestly tempted to call it the single most aggressively unpleasant book I've ever read, even including nasty shit like Houellebecq - I can't deny that's an honest and insightful exploration of its subject. Lin's especially effective in using a limited third person narrative to communicate the things Paul himself can't see, such as his blindness to his own withering hostility and the almost terrifying depth of his unhappiness. He also deserves credit for managing to slowly build suspense within a seemingly plotless, even pointless narrative simply by modulating the level of his protagonist's oblivious agony. On a literary level, Paul's withdrawl into depersonalized alienation functions much like the drugs do in his life. It's a screen that increasingly distances us (him) from the story (events in his life). This strategy made me feel increasingly anxious as the story went on.

The problem, for me, is that Taipei's content doesn't justify the length, even allowing for the horrible, bad-trip intensity of its final pages. Like The Unconsoled, it's a kind of fractal: any one random chunk says exactly the same thing as any other (that depression feels bad and feels like exactly like this). Unlike The Unconsoled, there's nothing compelling about the nightmare it describes. Taipei's universe has been stripped of all but its dullest, weakest, most miserable details. The environment and characters are described only in general terms. No one ever says or does anything worth noting, they just drift in and out of view.

There are bright spots: clever turns of phrase, blackly comical asides, the beguilingly fried story of an acid-blazed, late-night trip to a Chinese McDonald's. But overall, they weren't enough for me. I respect Lin and his work but didn't like this book at all.

it concerns little but Paul's thinking about Paul (and Paul's depression) and Paul's thinking about thinking about Paul (and Paul's depression).

A little like a first-person version of DFW's The Depressed Person?

it's in third person, but yeah, that seems sort of accurate. although the depressed person is both much bleaker in my view and not as good. for one thing, the depressed person's depression is characterized by narcissistic self-loathing -- she is revolted by her appearance, and feels that nobody likes her -- whereas paul's depression, while it seems to have gone through that phase in high school, has settled into this mode of cosmic ambivalence, which is maybe more frightening (if easier to read about) because he is drifting further and further away from the concerns of ordinary people.

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.

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-01-0059425.pdf

^^Masterpiece

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.

A lots of his stuff is excruciating* to read, which is why I digs reading it.

*painful yes, but no t tedious

See Also Mister Squishy for excruciating but very satisfying fiction from DF Dubs

What is "ordinary" thinking*

*Do not answer this

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.

the depressed person has a punch line tho!

what is it? it was so long ago that i read it.

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.

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."

if i were feeling up to it i'd try to make an argument about how the protagonist in the story is the friend

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.

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

all that ellipsis omitted btw was one of his fucking (i.e., the friend) interjections

Oh the narrator is totally the friend

At least as I read it

Or I mean is the Depressed Person

what?

Exactky

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-disorder-of-things/

ew get your tao lin out of my new inquiry

that essay is really annoying, as is the general trend of ascribing every precocious and/or obsessive trait to "autism" and "aspergers"

Dunno about ilx user NI, but ilx user cardamon's view remain the same.

Tons of copies of this book for sale in Singapore's Kinokuniya bookstore

tonight he read out his twitter timeline for a while

i got out of it what tao puts into it: a huge shrug

something to be said about this new trend of autism in lit, i think there's something to that article above

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.

xxp OTM

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.

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.

cardamon you were there last night? idk how i feel about ilx melding w/ the real world like that

Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (580 of them)

ogmor, it was practically a mini ilx meetup

hmm, the thought that i might inadvertently know an ilxor irl is distressing.

If it helps, I've mentally associated your ilx handle with a tall, bearded, friendly northern irish dude

if it helps, i always thought you were an actual troll, from some kind of scandinavian country, like, ethnically troll

Ethnically droll

i feel sorry to disappoint you, but i'm curious about ppl's mental pictures of other ilxors

how was it?