Tao Lin's audience is probably something like a group of hipster teenage/early 20's persons[1] dissatisfied/bored/growing lethargic with heavy "literature" as is commonly accepted by stuffy English professors and self-proclaimed literature "buffs." These same literature buffs group Tao Lin with authors like Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Joy Williams, Bobbie Ann Mason, Frederick Barthelme, and Mary Robison, usually under a group name called "K-Mart realists," and usually for purposes of dismissing these people as having written completely banal stories that ultimately have no bearing on American culture as a whole[3], or at least have no real large themes like the Holocaust or 9/11[4]. Indeed, common subjects in Tao Lin's books tend to be "concrete reality" and "himself"[5], which, I guess if you see someone reading Bed and ask them what it's about, and the person tells you that it's about "concrete reality" and "Tao Lin," you might be immediately turned off and declare Tao Lin a presumptuous assclown deserving the precise amount of popularity enjoyed by Noah Cicero[6][7] and other related authors.

Except that the Wikipedia article is actually bullshit of a very high degree.

"Love Is a Thing on Sale for More Money Than There Exists" comments on the following issues: (1) how people in a post-9/11 world (2) cope with paranoia and loneliness and/or (3) relationship troubles while (4) trying to maintain jobs and (5) define themselves. "Love" actually comments on individual v. society: Garret's relationship looks very different from relationships in movies in that Garret keeps asking Kristy for things (like to simply show up on time) that she simply refuses to provide. The title of the piece comes from a man in an anti-war protest stating that "love is a thing on sale for more money than there exists," which seems "inappropriately capitalist . . . or else much too cynical" to the anti-war crowd. The man is "ignored." The individual fights against society and frequently loses.

Perhaps Bed is dismissed because the content seems puerile, the prose too stylized, the characters too thin, but isn't it possible that there are real people who really feel like this? Isn't it possible that people realize that life is "not cake," and then that people have to specify that life is "not carrot cake"? Or, isn't it enough that the prose is funny because it's both completely ridiculous (who really thinks that life is "not cake" and then has to reiterate that life is "not carrot cake"?) and because it reflects very well how real people think? Rarely do people's thoughts come coherently and organized as some people[8] seem to believe. Anyway, it makes sense that stuffy English professors don't like Tao Lin's stuff. It's too easy. It's too fun. It's not masochistic enough like, say, James Joyce or Charles Dickens. Tao Lin reveals how absurd people are, and reveals that people are absurd all the time, and he reveals that this absurdity is funny and grotesque and tragic and beautiful, and concerned with their own little bubbles. And English professors like to think that people can be concerned with more things than just their own little bubbles, except English professors are not normal people, and so they don't understand that a whole story about just trying to make someone fucking show up on time is realistic. English professors ask for something more than a realistic view of 21st century people. They want morals, but it's a problem when most people are too tired from 9/11 and their daily lives to care about morals.

It's the only logical explanation I can come up with regarding why people didn't give too much of a damn about Bed. It showed people as they really are, but it was so effective that people thought they knew themselves all along and wanted to learn something more.

If Bed represents a realistic view of people as they exist now, Eeeee Eee Eeee takes that idea to its logical extreme. Eeeee Eee Eeee features talking bears and dolphins who interact with humans by causing destruction and becoming emotional. Indeed, the bears and dolphins actually feel more emotional than the main character, Andrew. Dolphins frequently murder real people and cry. Bears seem to feel melancholic when people refuse to climb down ladders with them. Andrew, meanwhile, constantly wears a "shit-eating grin," and thinks about going on a "killing rampage" and imagines his dead body floating in a retention pond[9]. Eeeee Eee Eeee was released the same day as Bed, and both feel generally the same despite how Eeeee Eee Eeee has shorter sentences and paragraphs than Bed. Both books feel generally unserious yet familiar. Both books have people generally doing nothing significant for long periods of time. Both books have clipped dialogue that feels nonsensical. It's worth noting that (at least from my POV) Bed feels like it has a lot more social commentary than EEE, and that EEE feels like one of Tao Lin's more successful literary experiments that he decided to polish and send to a publisher. Bed definitely feels like it's about something. EEE, not so much.

It should also be noted that Tao Lin reportedly writes "for roughly eight hours on the public computers at the library at NYU"[10]. It's obvious that Tao Lin's "head-over-heels dedicated in exactly the way we like our young artists to be"[10]. Tao Lin has published two poetry collections (you are a little bit happier than i am and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy), both of which feel characteristically Taoish (Linnish?), and both of which I dismiss in this essay not because they're bad collections, but because they don't feel very relevant in an essay leading up to Tao Lin's newest novel, Richard Yates.

Multiple reviewers[11] reason that Tao's prose is "brain-damaged" and therefore bad. I wonder what these reviewers mean when they reason that "brain-damaged" prose entails a bad story. Recall the critical success of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which is told from the POV of an autistic person, and seems very charming and light. Reviewers did not tend to complain that that book's prose seemed "brain-damaged," so perhaps reviewers don't mean "brain-damaged" in the literal sense. Or perhaps reviewers feel that [author] writes in such a way that the audience is aware that the author is not brain-damaged while simultaneously being aware that the autistic narrator is brain-damaged. Perhaps reviewers like to feel a certain clinical distance between themselves and the material. Perhaps the narrator in TCIotDitN feels autistic, which we can relate to, while Andrew in EEE and the other narrators in Bed feel autistic plus clinically depressed, and perhaps the combination of brain-damages is too much for some readers to appreciate.

Notably, Tao Lin and his publisher (Melville House) have used Miranda July's blurb about how Tao "writes from moods that less radical writers would let pass—from laziness, from vacancy, from boredom" liberally, as if this is the best compliment his work can garner[12]. I think one of the best words in that blurb is "vacant," as it describes very well the tone of his books (including Shoplifting from American Apparel). Unfortunately, "vacant" is not the kind of book that sells well in the commercial or academic world[13]. Commercial readers seem right now enthralled with writers like Stephenie Meyer (melodramatically romantic in the worst possible sense, plus poorly-researched vampires), Dan Brown (a complete bore whose books only survive because their chapters are approx. 1-2 pp. long), and Stieg Larsson (who can overwrite something as banal as falling asleep on a train). Academic readers really give a damn about Don DeLillo (whose work is simultaneously deeply emotional and deeply unsubtle), Toni Morrison (who is a black woman who writes about slavery and is therefore de facto entitled to copious amounts of academic praise), Martin Amis (whose fiction is deeply unsubtle like DeLillo's, but also deeply unfunny in that you always get the sense that he's Trying Too Hard), and Philip Roth (see: Toni Morrison). Of the above authors, Tao's work may be closest to DeLillo's work, in that they both write about big-picture themes, except that Tao delves into emotions that are difficult to translate to paper. Which, I think is ironic: Tao writes difficult emotions. And he writes them so skillfully that when you read other writers, you wish they would try harder or simply be better, and even prose from DeLillo and Amis starts to seem insincere[14].

Tao's third physically published prose book is Shoplifting from American Apparel, which is not about shoplifting. The book doesn't really feel like it's "about" anything, so much as it feels like it's chronicling [main character]'s life as he does things like getting arrested for shoplifting from American Apparel. The book departs from EEE's and Bed's writing styles in that it seems almost self-consciously unhumorous and straight-forward. Most of the sentences are clipped and in SVO form and describe concrete reality[15], and iirc, Shoplifting is autobiographical[16]. Time passes quickly in the book but the settings and characters tend to feel the same. One tends to get a sense of existential despair from the book. It feels less like a literary foray and more like a test of masochism. It feels like Tao has spent a lot of time on each sentence, but it also feels like Tao has done everything he can to tear the humanity out of the story. But make no mistake: Shoplifting still feels strikingly Taoish/Linnish, and I think this is what some commenters/reviewers mean when they say that all of Tao's stuff feels the same. All of Tao's stuff feels the same in the same sense that all of David Lynch's movies feel the same, all of Gertrude Stein's prose feels the same, and all of Pollack's paintings look the same. And I think their art all has a distinctive feel because they are so radically different from their contemporaries. The only person who really seems to write like Tao is Noah Cicero, but Tao feels more truthful and less gimmicky than Cicero. Maybe David Lynch's movies are similar to Tarantino's, but that's only because Tarantino was directly influenced by Lynch. You'll notice that these artists (Lynch, Stein, Pollack, et al.) have been criticized as simply being too weird, or too gimmicky. You'll notice that some critics will argue that theirs is not art at all. Shoplifting is Taoish/Linnish because he's writing about "nothing," yet again, but Shoplifting feels different from EEE and Bed because he's writing about "nothing" in a different way than he wrote those two books.

Aside from his word choice and subject matter, Tao has been criticized for his nonfiction, whose style some magazines (like L Magazine and Gawker['s audience]) find very annoying. Tao uses quotation marks and numbers liberally in his nonfiction, and the unfortunate thing is that quotation marks in nonfiction are usually used for jokes or innuendo (e.g., "You want to 'come over' and have some 'coffee'?"). It's unfortunate, because Tao uses these quotation marks to remove himself from his prose and call attention to how we as a society classify things [17][18]. Tao's nonfiction prose tends to revolve around himself and his work, or else revolves around fiction in general[19], and he interacts with people on the comments section of his posts and articles. Interestingly, Tao never seems to have a facetious reply to idiotic or irrelevant questions [example], but answers them plainly and without the kind of reserve most other people would show if asked similar questions. This is perhaps evidence that Tao really is as brain-damaged as critics believe, or it could be evidence that Tao has effectively isolated himself from certain social taboos that people claim are useless but still follow for whatever reason.

Richard Yates is slated to be published next month, and has gathered attention from its "provocative" cover[20] and Tao's marketing ploy of selling six shares of the book[21]. In this sense, Tao's book once again appears gimmicky[22] and will probably therefore be poorly received except by people who actually read the book and don't need literature spoon-fed to them. The reader can expect Richard Yates to be about boredom and apathy and existential crises and nothingness, seeing as these were the common themes in his past books. Nothing's publicly slated for release after Richard Yates, but I think he's a bit too young and determined to let this be his last publication.


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NOTES


1. Tao Lin's audience is probably really only defined by their age group; race, religious background, socioeconomic status, gender identification, sexual orientation, and other identifying qualities seem irrelevant (with respect to "target audience"), probably because Tao Lin's books (except Richard Yates, perhaps) have very little to say regarding race, religious background, etc.

2. http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.c.....t-realism.html

3. The irony is crazy here. Not the least of which irony being that Raymond Carver really started writing in 1958, and that Tao Lin is still active in 2010, which means Raymond Carver's "K-Mart realistic" prose has influenced some American person at least 50 years in the future.

4. Further irony: Frederick Barthelme's Waveland is about people coping with Katrina.

5. According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Lin

6. See note 5 supra, wherein Wikipedia cites Noah Cicero as one of Tao Lin's influences.

7. Tao Lin himself understands that Noah Cicero's fame is virtually nonexistent. In his essay "The Levels of Greatness a Fiction Writer Can Achieve in America"[a], Tao Lin lists Noah Cicero as a "centipede in the darkness," which marks the lowest level of greatness achievable by a fiction writer in America.

a. http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/.....ent?oid=449302

8. i.e., critics of "K-Mart realists"; ironically, Tao Lin's prose in Bed is itself realistic. Is it possible that these critics are the same people who hate when people write things like "Don't dwell on the past" and "Life is short," even though, if you actually take the time to listen, you'll find real people who really say these things all the time?

9. Actually, another reason critics hate Tao Lin may be that his prose seems gimmicky. Bears go on for pages about how Andrew needs to follow them down ladders, dolphins throw smoke bombs and slap Andrew in the face, and Andrew wears either a "shit-eating grin" or a "neutral facial expression" throughout most of the book. Internet commenters have cited the use of the phrase "neutral facial expression" as a source of their impatience with Tao Lin. I won't say that these apparent gimmicks have no role in the story, but I will agree that they are gimmicks.

10. http://nymag.com/news/features/all-new/53358/

11. KCRW's Bookworm, The Stranger, Brand X, Stop Smiling, The Daily Beast, and FREEwilliamsburg, according to http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.c.....ting-from.html

12. Though, one has to note that it is just a little bit tacky that this blurb is featured on at least three of Tao's books, as well as the promotional page for Richard Yates and his Wikipedia page, if I'm not mistaken.

13. N.B., however, that Tao has broken into the academic world; Bed was selected as required reading material for an English class at [university].

14. Only sometimes. DeLillo's Point Omega is still mindcrushingly sad.

15. Recall that EEE and Bed were mainly concerned with inward reality and people's thoughts.

16. and so explains why the bullshit Wikipedia article declares Tao's subject matter as "concrete reality" and "himself"

17. e.g., after Tao Lin's quirky experiment/auction (wherein people would bid for an item, said item would go to the person with the highest bid, and all bids would have to be paid) that resulted in zero bidders, Tao Lin rhetorically asked, "have i finally blogged the blog post that 'actually' 'ends my career'" [sic]. The quotation marks draw attention to the terms "actually" and "ends my career," and the quotation marks are important because these are precisely the terms many columnists or journalists or other miscellaneous dilettantes would use in such a situation. In that sense, Tao's trying to be funny, but only because he finds how other people use language funny. This strikes people as unusual, and people have an aversion to the unusual, so really I guess it's not too surprising that people kind of dislike his work.

18. Note that I haven't said anything about numbers in Tao's nonfiction, and it's because I'm unsure why Tao does this. It could be that Tao understands that numbers allow for more concrete images to be imagined, and that the ~'s and "x-y" way in which he introduces numbers are to underscore that numbers are themselves arbitrary, or that human memory is always fallible, or that the mind never imagines exact numbers but ranges and approximations.

19. It's clear from Tao's nonfiction subject matter that he gives much more of a damn about fiction than, say, Stephenie Meyer, and so the irony is that critics dejectedly accept Stephenie Meyer because people find her stuff entertaining (even though my dog has a better grasp of literary theory in his tail than Stephenie Meyer can and will ever have) while deriding Tao Lin and pointing to his "cultish" appeal and lack of sales as evidence of his literary failure.

20. I'm kind of using Tao's quotation marks here. Richard Yates's front cover is of a man holding a seashell to his face and pretending to pull both ends apart, thus revealing a pink underpart of the shell. The cover may be a parody of goatse[a], but I don't recall any comments directly from Tao himself regarding the cover art.

a. Don't ask.

21. The six shares sold for $2000 each, and will give the investor 10% of domestic royalties. The marketing ploy was covered by The New Yorker and The New York Times, among other periodicals.

22. At some point, you have to think that the gimmicks are not a mere accident. Like, maybe Tao does really gimmicky stuff because the world is really gimmicky, or because people do really gimmicky things all the time. You know, like how everyone does Uninspirational Posters or adds subtitles to that one Hitler clip on Youtube? Or maybe how marketers try to be "hip" by autotuning things[a]?

a. Seriously, during the NBA playoffs TNT and other networks would advertise for themselves by autotuning players' and coaches' voices and adding a beat behind them. The idea probably failed because people who watch the NBA playoffs on TNT like to watch basketball plays, not watch players and coaches being autotuned at press conferences.