the most promising young american author is TAO LIN

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?

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.

You could say all that stuff about tons of books, though. Don't see how it's experimental.

so it's tumblr beckett, then? xp

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.

So how is any of that experimental

So how is any of that experimental

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.

It reads like jibberish

I just don't see how this dude is going to save my generation.

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.

and in a boring modern young manner. see? experiment ho!

what did you call me

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."

why are modern young people boring?

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

thye're not boring they just dont read so claims abt new shit are usually wrong

lol DJP

tao lin is a blogger not a writer

thye're not boring they just dont read so claims abt new shit are usually wrong

Exactly

Books about people doing drugs are usually boring

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.

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.

xp: I liked that post more when I thought it said "twerking and eating cake"

And everyone in line in the bathroom
Trying to get a line in the bathroom
We all so turned up here
Getting turned up, yeah, yeah

-Tao Lin

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."

treeshit

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

read the first half of watt

one thing camus, hemingway + beckett do that i don't see in lin is write really beautiful prose

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.

Wait who said Tao Lin hates language

some reviewer. dead end tbh

mordy what if i said robbe-grillet instead

scott, Becket's early novels are like early, funny Woody Allen

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

alfred that is such a fucking lie

Lol Murphy is so bleak

when is carles coming out with a "novel"?

going a little OT, this is my fave piece ever about beckett:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/488027

i would enjoy reading that if it were possible for someone to possibly mail me a pdf

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, 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 would like one too

lol I like wurlitzer

i have a pdf copy on my hard drive. webmail me yr email addy and i'll send it.

Lol Murphy is so bleak

― Treeship

which is what makes it so damn funny

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 ...

tao lin is kinda like beckett narrowed and turned inwards