Tao Lin

Tao Lin (林韜) is an American novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer, and artist. He has published three novels, a novella, two books of poetry, a collection of short stories and a memoir as well as an extensive assortment of online content. His third novel, Taipei, was published by Vintage on June 4, 2013.[1] His nonfiction book, Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change, was published by Vintage on May 1, 2018. Lin is working on his next novel, Leave Society, which will be published by Vintage in 2021.[2]

Tao Lin
BornJuly 2, 1983
Alexandria, Virginia
OccupationNovelist, poet
GenreLiterary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, Kmart realism, alt-lit
Notable worksTaipei, Bed, Richard Yates, Shoplifting from American Apparel
SpouseMegan Boyle (separated)
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese林韜
Simplified Chinese林韬
Hanyu PinyinLín Tāo
Website
taolin.tumblr.com

In November 2008 Lin founded Muumuu House, an independent publishing house, and in 2010 he co-founded MDMAfilms, an independent film production company.[3][4]

Personal life

Lin was born to Taiwanese parents and grew up in Orlando, Florida. He graduated from New York University in 2005 with a B.A. in journalism.[5] He has lectured on his writing and art at Vassar College, Kansas City Art Institute, Columbia College, UNC Chapel Hill, and other universities and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum. In 2012 and in 2015 he taught a graduate course at Sarah Lawrence College called "The Contemporary Short Story." Lin lives in New York City.[6]

Lin has one brother who also lives in New York; their father is a retired physics professor[7][8] who is the inventor of the flying-spot LASIK, a laser procedure for vision correction (US pat. #5520679, 1991).[9]

Critical response

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",[10] though he was later "pardoned". After reading this criticism, Lin retaliated by completely covering the front door of the Gawker office building with stickers bearing Britney Spears's name.[11] Later, Gawker published a piece Lin had written.[12] 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..."[13] 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."[14] Miranda July has praised his work as "moving and necessary."[15]

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 "inscrutable.""[16]

Lin's work has increasingly been praised in the UK, including positive reviews from The Guardian[17][18] and Times Literary Supplement, who, reviewing[19] Taipei in 2013, said Lin was "a daring, urgent voice for a malfunctioning age," and a 2010 career overview from London Review of Books.[20]

Books

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

In November 2006 Lin's first book, a poetry collection titled 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.[21][22]

Eeeee Eee Eeee & Bed (2007)

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."[23]

They were ignored by most mainstream media but have since been referenced in The Independent (who called Eeeee Eee Eeee "a wonderfully deadpan joke"[24]) and The New York Times who called Lin a "deadpan literary trickster"[25] in reference to Eeeee Eee Eeee.

cognitive-behavioral therapy (2008)

In May 2008 Lin's second poetry collection, cognitive-behavioral therapy was published.[26]

The poem "room night" from this collection was anthologized in Wave Books' State of the Union.[27] A French translation was published by Au Diable Vauvert[28] in 2012.

Shoplifting from American Apparel (2009)

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."[17] The Village Voice called it a "fragile, elusive book."[29] 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."[30] 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."[31] 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."[32] Los Angeles Times said, "Camus' The Stranger or sociopath?"[33] while Austin Chronicle called it "scathingly funny" and said that "it might just be the future of literature."[34] Another reviewer described it as "a vehicle...for self-promotion."[35]

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"[36] 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."[36]

In December 2009 clothing retailer Urban Outfitters began selling Shoplifting from American Apparel in its stores.[37]

Richard Yates (2010)

Published September 7, 2010, by Melville House,[38] Richard Yates is Lin's second novel.

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."[39]

Taipei (2013)

On February 23, 2013, Publishers Weekly awarded Taipei a starred review, predicting it would 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."[40] The same month, Bret Easton Ellis tweeted, "With Taipei Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation, which doesn't mean that Taipei isn't a boring novel..."[41]

Taipei was published by Vintage on June 4, 2013, to mostly positive reviews. Novelist Benjamin Lytal, writing in the New York Observer, called it Lin's "modernist masterpiece,"[42] adding, "[W]e should stop calling Tao Lin the voice of his generation. Taipei, his new novel, has less to do with his generation than with the literary tradition of Knut Hamsun, Ernest Hemingway, and Robert Musil." According to Slate, "Taipei casts a surprisingly introspective eye on the spare, 21st-century landscape Lin has such a knack for depicting."[43]

New York Times critic Dwight Garner wrote, "I loathe reviews in which a critic claims to have love-hate feelings about a work of art. It's a way of having no opinion at all. But I love and hate Taipei."[44]

On June 18, writing for The Daily Beast, critic Emily Witt said in a highly positive review:[45]

Taipei is exactly the kind of book I hoped Tao Lin would one day write. He is one of the few fiction writers around who engages with contemporary life, rather than treating his writing online as existing in opposition to or apart from the hallowed analog space of the novel. He's consistently good for a few laughs and writes in a singular style already much imitated by his many sycophants on the Internet. Some people like Tao Lin for solely these reasons, or treat him as a sort of novelty or joke. But Lin can also produce the feelings of existential wonder that all good novelists provoke. His writing reveals the hyperbole in conversational language that we use, it seems, to make up for living lives where equanimity and well-adjustment are the most valued attributes, where human emotions are pathologized into illness: we do not fall in love, we become "obsessed"; we do not dislike, we "hate". We manipulate ourselves chemically to avoid acting "crazy."

On June 30, in The New York Times Book Review, Clancy Martin wrote:

His writing is weird, upsetting, memorable, honest — and it's only getting better [...] But I didn't anticipate Taipei, his latest, which is, to put it bluntly, a gigantic leap forward. Here we have a serious, first-rate novelist putting all his skills to work. Taipei is a love story, and although it's Lin's third novel it's also, in a sense, a classic first novel: it's semi-autobiographical (Lin has described it as the distillation of 25,000 pages of memory) and it's a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story about a young man who learns, through love, that life is larger than he thought it was.

On July 5 The New York Times Book Review awarded Taipei an Editors' Choice[46] distinction. It was the only paperback on the list for the week.

On KCRW's "Bookworm", in a conversation with Lin,[47] Michael Silverblatt called it "The most moving depiction of the way we live now," saying that it was "unbearably moving."

Taipei was included on best book of the year lists by Times Literary Supplement,[48] Village Voice,[49] Slate,[50] Salon, Bookforum,[51] The Week, Maisonneuve,[52] and Complex,[53] among others.

High Resolution, a film adaptation of Taipei, was released in 2018.

Selected Tweets (2015)

On June 15, 2015, Short Flight/Long Drive Books published a collaborative double-book called Selected Tweets by Lin and poet Mira Gonzalez. The book features selections from eight years of their tweets at nine different Twitter accounts, as well as visual art by each author, footnotes, and "Extras". Emma Kolchin-Miller, writing in the Columbia Spectator, described the book as featuring "a selection of bleak, depressed, disturbing, funny, and personal tweets that create a fragmented narrative and show how Twitter can serve as a platform for art, storytelling, and connection."[54] Andrea Longini, writing for Electric Literature, opined: "Although Twitter in name implies a kind of chatter or 'twittering,' Tao Lin and Mira Gonzalez have elevated the medium into an art form with the power to transmit authentic observations." [55]

Trip (2018)

Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change, a nonfiction account of Lin's experiences with psychedelic drugs, was published by Vintage Books in May 2018. Much of the book is devoted to Lin's continuing fascination with the life and thought of Terence McKenna, as well as an introduction to McKenna's ex-wife Kathleen Harrison.[56]

Trip was a Los Angeles Times bestseller.[57] In Scientific American, John Horgan wrote, “If an aspirant asks for an example of experimental science writing, I’ll recommend Trip. The book veers from excruciatingly candid autobiography to biography (of McKenna) to investigative journalism…to interview-based journalism to philosophical speculation to first-person accounts of the effects of DMT and Salvia.”[58]

MDMAfilms

Lin co-founded, with Megan Boyle, the film company MDMAfilms in late 2010.[59] So far the company has released three films, all recorded solely with the iSight camera of a Macbook: MDMA, Bebe Zeva, and Mumblecore.[60] There is a projected fourth film, World of Warcraft, which has been "delayed."[61]

Other web projects

In 2016 Lin began a podcast on SoundCloud.[62] In 2020 Lin started a Patreon account to post "nonfiction that would be hard or impossible for me to get published at most places due to the content".[63]

Mandalas

Since 2014 Lin has been drawing mandalas, which have been published on the covers of the magazines Vice[64] and Story[65] and his book Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change.[66] In an interview with artist Dorothy Howard for Arachne, Lin said, "With my mandalas, I don’t walk around the painting, but I turn the paper so that I 'walk around' it."[67]

Bibliography
eBooks
Poetry
  • you are a little bit happier than i am, Action Books, 2006.
  • cognitive-behavioral therapy, Melville House, 2008.
Novels
Novellas
Stories
Nonfiction
  • Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change, Vintage Books, 2018.
Other
gollark: I mean, *look* at this.
gollark: AQA ones might be different, but we do Edexcel and they're mostly fairly trivial.
gollark: The only "difficult but rewarding" stuff here is extension papers like STEP and they don't really have... teaching... for that.
gollark: Not only does it do horrible abuse of notation but it does a "left-handed Riemann sum" with fixed thing widths, and thus breaks on certain exotic functions.
gollark: I know, yes.

References
  1. Taipei. Vintage. June 4, 2013. ISBN 0307950174.
  2. "Tao Lin's Instagram profile". Retrieved December 31, 2019.
  3. Tao Lin Now Selling Videos of Himself on Ecstasy to Pay the Rent: An Interview with MDMAfilms, L Magazine
  4. Small Press Points, Poets & Writers
  5. Roy, Jessica. "NYU Alum and Poet Tao Lin Doesn't Care Whether or Not You Think Print Is Dead". NYU Local.
  6. "The Contemporary Short Story". Slc.edu. Archived from the original on 2014-01-12. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  7. Lin, Tao (2013-09-21). "When I Moved Online". The New York Times.
  8. "Tao Lin by David Shapiro Jr".
  9. "Ophthalmic surgery method using non-contact scanning laser". ARCHPATENT. Archived from the original on 2014-02-22.
  10. Gould, Emily (2007-07-27). "Now We Also Hate Miranda July". Gawker. Archived from the original on 2009-03-14. Retrieved 2009-03-13.
  11. Gould, Emily (2007-12-04). "Pardons". Gawker. Archived from the original on 2008-07-03. Retrieved 2009-03-12.
  12. "An Account of Being Arrested for 'Trespassing' NYU's Bookstore". Gawker.com. Archived from the original on 2010-07-28. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
  13. Kyzer, Larissa. "The Best of NYC LETTERS | Books | The L Magazine - New York City's Local Event and Arts & Culture Guide". The L Magazine. Archived from the original on 2011-07-21. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
  14. Anderson, Sam (2009-01-11). "Tao Lin, Lit Boy - The All New Issue - New York Magazine". Nymag.com. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
  15. "Shoplifting From American Apparel". Melville House.
  16. Hua Hsu. "Terminal Boredom: Reading Tao Lin" retrieved August 25, 2010 from www.atlantic.com.
  17. Poole, Steven (2009-11-14). "Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin – Book review". The Guardian. London.
  18. Lezard, Nicholas (2010-11-13). "Richard Yates by Tao Lin – review". The Guardian. London.
  19. "Article". The Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  20. Haglund, David (October 21, 2010). "A Kind of Gnawing Offness". London Review of Books. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
  21. "Poetry Bestsellers July Aug 2008 : Small Press Distribution". Spdbooks.org. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
  22. "Poetry Bestsellers September 2007 : Small Press Distribution". Spdbooks.org. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
  23. "Tao Lin's BED and EEEEE EEE EEEE". KGB Bar & Lit Journal. Archived from the original on 2014-04-07. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  24. Thorne, Matt (2010-06-04). "Beatrice and Virgil, By Yann Martel". The Independent. London.
  25. Vizzini, Ned (2010-05-06). "Bridge Between Generations". The New York Times.
  26. "Melville House Publishing | Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy". Mhpbooks.com. Retrieved 2014-04-29.
  27. "State of the Union | Wave Books". Wavepoetry.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  29. Ben Beitler (2009-09-08). "Tao Lin's Five-Finger Discount - Page 1 - Books - New York". Village Voice. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
  30. Kati Nolfi. "Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin". Bookslut. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
  31. "Tao Lin - Shoplifting from American Apparel - Book review - Time Out New York". Newyork.timeout.com. Archived from the original on July 26, 2010. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
  32. Messer, Ari (2009-10-01). "Tao Lin: 'Shoplifting from American Apparel'". The San Francisco Chronicle.
  33. "Discoveries: 'Shoplifting From American Apparel'". Los Angeles Times. 2009-09-27. Retrieved 2010-05-24.
  34. "Austin Books: Review - Shoplifting From American Apparel". AustinChronicle.com. 2009-10-09. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
  35. Nolfi, Katie (December 6, 2009). "Review a Day: Shoplifting from American Apparel". Powell's Books. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
  36. "Bookworm: Tao Lin". KCRW. December 3, 2009. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
  37. 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. Archived from the original on 2010-04-14. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
  38. 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.
  39. Charles Bock (September 24, 2010). "Book Review - Richard Yates - By Tao Lin - NYTimes.com". nytimes.com. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
  40. "Fiction Review: Taipei by Tao Lin". Publishersweekly.com. 2013-02-25. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  41. Easton Ellis, Brett. "With "Taipei" Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation, which doesn't mean that "Taipei" isn't a boring novel..." Twitter. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  42. Lytal, Benjamin (2013-06-05). "Gchat Is a Noble Pursuit: Tao Lin's Modernist Masterpiece". Observer. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  43. Leung, Chuck (2013-06-07). "Tao Lin's Taipei reviewed: techy, drug-fueled, existential fiction. - Slate Magazine". Slate.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  44. Garner, Dwight (2013-06-04). "'Taipei,' by Tao Lin". The New York Times.
  45. Emily Witt (2013-06-18). "The Gpistolary Novel: Tao Lin's "Taipei"". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  46. "Editors' Choice". The New York Times. 2013-07-05.
  47. "Tao Lin: Taipei - Bookworm on KCRW 89.9 FM". Kcrw.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  48. "Books of the Year". The Times Literary Supplement. 27 November 2013. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  49. "Our Favorite Books of 2013 - - Books - New York". Village Voice. 2013-12-18. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  50. Staff, Slate (2013-11-30). "Slate staff picks for best books of 2013". Slate.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  51. Christian Lorentzen (2013-12-19). "the best novels of 2013". Bookforum.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  52. Butler, Blake (2013-12-11). "All the Books I Read in 2013 | VICE Canada". Vice.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  53. "Taipei — The Best Books of 2013". Complex. 2013-12-16. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
  54. "Tao Lin, Mira Gonzalez to release 'Selected Tweets' on June 15". Columbia Daily Spectator. Archived from the original on 1 May 2015. Retrieved 23 January 2016.
  55. "Telegraphing Coherence: Selected Tweets by Mira Gonzalez and Tao Lin". Retrieved 23 January 2016.
  56. "TRIP by Tao Lin - Kirkus Reviews" – via www.kirkusreviews.com.
  57. http://projects.latimes.com/bestsellers/titles/trip/
  58. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/oneness-weirdness-and-alienation/
  59. Tao Lin Now Selling Videos of Himself on Ecstasy to Pay the Rent: An Interview with MDMA Films, L Magazine
  60. Drugs, Meet Movies: Tao Lin and Megan Boyle's MDMAfilms, Indiewire
  61. "MDMAfilms". Retrieved 23 January 2016.
  62. "taolin". SoundCloud. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  63. https://www.patreon.com/taolin
  64. https://twitter.com/tao_lin/status/525367685891510273
  65. https://www.facebook.com/taolin1983/photos/a-mandala-by-me-on-the-cover-of-issue-3-of-story-magazinehttpwwwtaolininfomandal/10155706568482481/
  66. "Twitter". January 9, 2018. Retrieved December 31, 2019.
  67. https://www.arachne.cc/issues/02/in-conversation-with-tao-lin.html
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