i also had a problem reading john rechy when i was younger. i could never finish a book. grove press put out so much flat stuff.
― scott seward, Monday, 8 July 2013 12:51 (ten years ago) link
because he is experimenting with a way of writing that is different from what he's done before, and different from other things I've read by other authors as well.
In what way is his prose experimental, though?
― copter (waterface), Monday, 8 July 2013 13:18 (ten years ago) link
because it violates received ideas about what good writing looks like, i.e. he explains things exhaustively instead of "showing" them, he pursues precision in his descriptions of his characters' thought patterns to the point of awkwardness and a loss of clarity, metaphors are not used to illustrate clearly graspable concepts but just as an approximating language to describe states of feeling, metaphysical impressions, that evade real description and in this way every metaphor in the book is a failed metaphor... idk, read my review or better yet the millions review. that reviewer hated it but she said that it seemed "hostile" to language, and it's true: tao lin is writing against the grain of convention, in a manner that on first blush seems antithetical to all ideas of eloquence, beauty, whatever but as other critics have noted his flat, convoluted style produces its own kind of lyricism for patient readers.
again, it's not finnegans wake but experimental doesn't mean totally new and radical just that he is doing interesting things with form.
― Treeship, Monday, 8 July 2013 13:24 (ten years ago) link
You could say all that stuff about tons of books, though. Don't see how it's experimental.
― copter (waterface), Monday, 8 July 2013 13:39 (ten years ago) link
so it's tumblr beckett, then? xp
― 乒乓, Monday, 8 July 2013 13:44 (ten years ago) link
Tons of books are experimental. It's not a rare distinction. It's a term to differentiate books that are messing around with form to achieve unusual effects from "realist" fiction, which hews more closely to conventions. Ben Lerners leaving the atocha station is not an experimental novel because it is written in a style that feels familiar and is supposed to, even though 1.) it's great and 2.) on the level of content it is concerned with questions about literary form, like the characters have conversations about that kind of thing.
Tumblr Beckett is pretty accurate, especially for the earlier stuff. This is more like Tumblr Proust, but with a Beckettian detachment to it.
― Treeship, Monday, 8 July 2013 14:59 (ten years ago) link
So how is any of that experimental
― copter (waterface), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:18 (ten years ago) link
tree's answered that pretty clearly, i think. experimental writing "messes around with form" to achieve effects other than those typically generated by more conventionally structured fiction. tao lin is deliberately "writing against the grain of convention, in a manner that on first blush seems antithetical to all ideas of eloquence, beauty, whatever but ...[which] produces its own kind of lyricism for patient readers."
that all seems pretty straightforward, even if you don't accept the proposed definition and characterization.
― twerking for obvious reasons (contenderizer), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:28 (ten years ago) link
It reads like jibberish
― copter (waterface), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:28 (ten years ago) link
I just don't see how this dude is going to save my generation.
― copter (waterface), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:30 (ten years ago) link
Not having read a thing this dude's written, I think the question is coming more from the standpoint of "How is an extended exercise in already-explored literary styles an experiment?" because the impression I'm getting is that dude is doing stuff other venerated authors like Becket and Proust did years ago, only about boring modern young people.
― big black nemesis, Puya chilensis (DJP), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:30 (ten years ago) link
and in a boring modern young manner. see? experiment ho!
― twerking for obvious reasons (contenderizer), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:32 (ten years ago) link
what did you call me
― big black nemesis, Puya chilensis (DJP), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:33 (ten years ago) link
Dude is doing stuff lots of other writers have written only he uses "scare quotes" to pull "meaning" out of his sentences. It's a pretty silly "trick."
― copter (waterface), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:33 (ten years ago) link
why are modern young people boring?
― molly ratchet (crüt), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:33 (ten years ago) link
i mean, i don't care for tao lin, but i'll grant for the sake of argument that he passes some low-bar experimentalism test
― twerking for obvious reasons (contenderizer), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:34 (ten years ago) link
thye're not boring they just dont read so claims abt new shit are usually wrong
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:35 (ten years ago) link
lol DJP
― twerking for obvious reasons (contenderizer), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:35 (ten years ago) link
tao lin is a blogger not a writer
Exactly
― copter (waterface), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:36 (ten years ago) link
Books about people doing drugs are usually boring
― copter (waterface), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:38 (ten years ago) link
feel like Alice Munro missed her chance to write a story about kids in Saskatchewan tweaking and eating cake, ham, salad in Calvin's basement.
― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:38 (ten years ago) link
looking at Richard Yates it kinda just looked like a joke. the way he repeated the names haley joel osment and dakota fanning 40000 times in the course of the novel. a funny joke though! but it does seem more like a conceptual thing than a thing i would want to read. so, experimental, in a sense. the repeating thing. could drive you nuts to read the whole thing.
― scott seward, Monday, 8 July 2013 15:38 (ten years ago) link
xp: I liked that post more when I thought it said "twerking and eating cake"
― big black nemesis, Puya chilensis (DJP), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:40 (ten years ago) link
And everyone in line in the bathroomTrying to get a line in the bathroomWe all so turned up hereGetting turned up, yeah, yeah
-Tao Lin
― molly ratchet (crüt), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:42 (ten years ago) link
Much of the criticism leveled at Lin would apply equally to Beckett, Hemingway, Camus, and any minimalist or writer concerned with ennui. So maybe it's the critics who say Tao Lin is "too detached" and "hates language" who need to read more and not the people responding to those critics who say, essentially, "it's not trying to do what you seem to think fiction is supposed to do."
― Treeship, Monday, 8 July 2013 15:42 (ten years ago) link
treeshit
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:44 (ten years ago) link
i don't understand the comparison between lin + beckett, hemingway or camus tbh. they all seem to be doing very different things in very different ways.
― Mordy , Monday, 8 July 2013 15:44 (ten years ago) link
and it does remind me of dennis cooper in a way. cuzza the drugs and deadpan kids and boredom and yeah after awhile you go zzzzzz....and YET i still respect dennis cooper. and john rechy too. and genet too come to think of it. another gay writer i have trouble reading after about 30 or 40 pages cuz i get numbed. i have no idea if this guy is gay. but that deadpan thing...wait, is genet deadpan? see, i never got far enough into his books...think its just the grove press connection. i wanted to read all those books when i was a kid cuz they were "transgressive" and shocking but mostly i fell asleep. burroughs definitely made me fall asleep. de sade. all the biggies. selby i could hang with cuzza the breathless thing. carried you along. and james purdy could do deadpan, transgressive, AND experimental, but i was drawn to him more cuzza his baroque flourishes. i think i need baroque furniture to sit on if i'm going somewhere heavy. minimalism just makes me not care. i will check out taipei if i see it in a store though. it does sound kinda interesting.
― scott seward, Monday, 8 July 2013 15:46 (ten years ago) link
camus wrote the stranger tao lin was on the cover of the stranger beckett is a stranger to someone who doesnt know him hemingway shot himself in the head
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:47 (ten years ago) link
I don't like Taipei on the ground that it's the first novel to write about loneliness or anything extreme like that, i just think it handles its subject manner in a way that is effective, memorable, and yes distinctive in the sense that what he's doing -while it echoes many other authors- is it's own thing, and i wouldn't mistake his writing for anyone else's.
It's cool not to like it. I'm just clarifying my position. Also goddam this PA system test at the train station it 's the most annoying thing i've ever experienced.
― Treeship, Monday, 8 July 2013 15:47 (ten years ago) link
beckett too. i can't read him. makes me feel like a zombie. those longass novels. stein too. i really should give genet another shot. right? people love him. or they used to.
― scott seward, Monday, 8 July 2013 15:47 (ten years ago) link
read the first half of watt
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:48 (ten years ago) link
one thing camus, hemingway + beckett do that i don't see in lin is write really beautiful prose
― Mordy , Monday, 8 July 2013 15:50 (ten years ago) link
treeship started off well in this thread but is digging himself into a deeper hole. i feel like i have totally different taste to scott seward but he's giving a good account of himself.
― i better not get any (thomp), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:51 (ten years ago) link
Wait who said Tao Lin hates language
― copter (waterface), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:51 (ten years ago) link
some reviewer. dead end tbh
mordy what if i said robbe-grillet instead
scott, Becket's early novels are like early, funny Woody Allen
― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:52 (ten years ago) link
based on the one dennis cooper i have read dennis cooper is also a really good comparison. one of the pull quotes on taipei exhumes rudolph wurlitzer , which is a name i never expected to see used as a term of praise
― i better not get any (thomp), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:53 (ten years ago) link
alfred that is such a fucking lie
Lol Murphy is so bleak
― Treeship, Monday, 8 July 2013 15:54 (ten years ago) link
when is carles coming out with a "novel"?
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:55 (ten years ago) link
going a little OT, this is my fave piece ever about beckett:http://www.jstor.org/stable/488027
― Mordy , Monday, 8 July 2013 15:55 (ten years ago) link
i would enjoy reading that if it were possible for someone to possibly mail me a pdf
― i better not get any (thomp), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:56 (ten years ago) link
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, July 8, 2013 11:47 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark
and they were drinking from a fountain that was pouring like an avalanche coming down the mountain
― i wanna be a gabbneb baby (Hungry4Ass), Monday, 8 July 2013 15:58 (ten years ago) link
I would like one too
― Treeship, Monday, 8 July 2013 15:58 (ten years ago) link
lol I like wurlitzer
― sjuttiosju_u (wins), Monday, 8 July 2013 16:00 (ten years ago) link
i have a pdf copy on my hard drive. webmail me yr email addy and i'll send it.
― Mordy , Monday, 8 July 2013 16:00 (ten years ago) link
― Treeship
which is what makes it so damn funny
― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 8 July 2013 16:01 (ten years ago) link
wurlitzer's okay but i never bothered finishing either of the ones i read, i just think "this guy is like the new rudy wurlitzer!" is just ...
― i better not get any (thomp), Monday, 8 July 2013 16:01 (ten years ago) link