Tao Lin (1983 - ????)
BIOGRAPHYTao Lin is the author of 6 books of fiction/poetry. He has a BA in Journalism from NYU and lives in Manhattan NY.
His third novel will be published by Vintage in 2013.
His previous books are the poetry-collection YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM (2006), which is regularly a bestseller (#2, #2, #1); the story-collection BED (2007); the novel EEEEE EEE EEEE (2007); the poetry-collection COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY (2008); the novella SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL (2009), which was available at Urban Outfitters; the novel RICHARD YATES (2010).
His books have been published in Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Serbia, South Korea, China, Taiwan. His writing has been published by Gawker, New York Observer, The Believer, Noon, Vice, Poetry Foundation, Thought Catalog, The Stranger, Flaunt, bear parade (ebooks of poetry/stories and collaboration with Ellen Kennedy titled hikikomori).
His books have been published in Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Serbia, South Korea, China, Taiwan. His writing has been published by Gawker, New York Observer, The Believer, Noon, Vice, Poetry Foundation, Thought Catalog, The Stranger, Flaunt, bear parade (ebooks of poetry/stories and collaboration with Ellen Kennedy titled hikikomori).
He is the founder/editor of Muumuu House (est. 2008), a literary press featured in Nylon and at The Morning News.
He is the co-founder with Megan Boyle of MDMAfilms (est. 2010), a film company featured by Indiewire and whose second film, BEBE ZEVA, was covered by New York Times and Filmmaker.
Vice publishes a column by him titled Drug-Related Photoshop Art. His art may be viewed here.
Selected posts from this blog are here. Information re "booking" is here.
SELECTED PRESSCareer Overview, London Review of Books (October 2010)
Profile, The Eye (September 2011)
Profile, The Stranger (September 2010)
Profile, BlackBook (September 2010)
Profile, Associated Press (September 2010)
Profile, Nylon (August 2010)
Profile, New York Observer (August 2010)
Profile, Salon (August 2010)
Profile, The Atlantic (August 2010)
Profile, The Daily Beast
Profile, New York Magazine
Profile, Paste
Profile, Time Out New York
Review, RICHARD YATES / Guardian
Review, RICHARD YATES / New York Times Book Review
Review, RICHARD YATES / Boston Globe
Review, RICHARD YATES / Vice
Review, RICHARD YATES / Huffington Post
Review, RICHARD YATES / Village Voice
Review, RICHARD YATES / Bookforum
Review, SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / Guardian
Review, SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / San Francisco Chronicle
Review, SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / Austin Chronicle
Review, SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / Los Angeles Times
Review, SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / Time Out New York
Review, EEEEE EEE EEEE & BED / San Francisco Bay Guardian
Review, EEEEE EEE EEEE & BED / Hipster Book Club
Review, EEEEE EEE EEEE / Bookslut
Review, BED / The Stranger
Review, COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY / The Constant Critic
Review, YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM / Time Out Chicago
Interview, Thought Catalog (November 2010)
Interview, National Post (October 2010)
Interview, It's Nice That (September 2010)
Interview, ChuckPalahniuk.net
Interview, Jacket2
Interview, KCRW's Bookworm
Interview, The Millions w/ Deb Olin Unferth
Interview, The Rumpus
Interview, NYU Local
Interview, Canongate's blog w/ Chris Killen
Interview, NYU Local
Interview, BBC Radio 2
Interview, ANP Quarterly Issue 10
SELECTED WRITING
Fiction, Relationship Story
Fiction, Sasquatch
Fiction, Leftover Crack in Red Hook
Fiction, Love is a Thing on Sale For More Money Than There Exists
Fiction, We Will Drink Our Coffee And Complete Our Novels And...
Fiction, [excerpt re RICHARD YATES]
Fiction, [excerpt re SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL]
Fiction, Sex After Not Seeing Each Other For A Few Days
Fiction, [from North American Hamsters]
Fiction, The Vegan Muffin
Fiction, Should
Fiction, October
Fiction, Exactly What I Want
Essay, Does the Novel Have a Future? The Answer Is In This Essay!
Essay, How to Give a Reading On Mushrooms
Essay, Koko, The "Talking" Gorilla
Essay, Almost Transparent Blue
Essay, Five Low-Level Conspiracies Jesse Eisenberg Should Accidentally Discover...
Essay, Top 10 Worst Fruits to Get Blowjobs From
Essay, Top 10 Animals That Don't Have Asses
Essay, "Audrey" from "Shoplifting from American Apparel"
Essay, The Great American Dialogue...
Essay, An Account of Being Arrested for "Trespassing" NYU's Bookstore
Essay, Review of Ten "Blogging Platforms"
Essay, Marina Abramović, “The Staring Woman at MoMA”
Essay, @Poetry Foundation re "good/bad in art"
Essay, @Poetry Foundation re "relationships/poetry"
Essay, Review of Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard
Essay, What I Can Tell You About Seattle Based on the People I've Met Who Are From There
Essay, Levels of Greatness a Fiction Writer can Achieve in America
Essay, Fighting Elliott Bay Audience
Poems, [first seven pages of COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY]
Poems, [twenty-four poems (twelve in comments section)]
Poems, A Stoic Philosophy... & The Power of Ethical Reasoning
Poem, ugly fish poem
Poem, a poem written by a bear
Poem, some of my happiest moments in life occur on AOL instant messenger
Poem, i went fishing with my family when i was five
Poem, Opposite Of Song Of Myself
—Clancy Martin, author of How To Sell
"[Richard Yates] is like a ninety-foot pigeon. You've never seen anything like it before, and yet it is somehow exactly like the world we live in."
—Daniel Handler, author of Adverbs
"[Richard Yates] is a focused, moving, and rather upsetting portrait of two oddballs in love."
—Boston Globe
"[Richard Yates] is amazingly weird, disturbing, and good."
—Time Out New York
"Tao Lin writes from moods that less radical writers would let pass - from laziness, from vacancy, from boredom. And it turns out that his report from these places is moving and necessary, not to mention frequently hilarious."
—Miranda July, author of No One Belongs Here More Than You
"[F]ascinating and articulate in a way that people my age (incl. um, like, you know, myself) rarely are...I still think he's a scam artist but now I think the scam is interesting."
—Emily Gould, author of And The Heart Says Whatever
"Do you read Tao Lin and think 'I love this! What is it?' Perhaps it is the curious effect of a radically talented, fecund and tender mind setting down a world sans sense or consequence."
—Lore Segal, author of Other People's Houses and Shakespeare's Kitchen
“Richard Yates is a moving, very funny, discomforting, and heartbreakingly life-affirming meditation on extremes—extreme alienation, extreme intimacy, extreme confusion, extreme expectations—that reads like a meticulously and lovingly crafted collaboration between a weirder Ernest Hemingway and a more philosophically-minded Jean Rhys.”
—James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces
"Trancelike and often hilarious…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…deliciously odd.”
—The Guardian
"[A] deadpan literary trickster."
—The New York Times
"Lin's fiction is a wonderfully deadpan joke."
—The Independent
"You don't think, 'I like this guy,' or 'I really dislike this guy.' You think, 'huh.' [...] Camus' The Stranger or 'sociopath?'"
—Los Angeles Times
"[D]eeply smart, funny, and heads-over-heels dedicated."
—Sam Anderson, New York Magazine
"[SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL is] the purest example so far of the minimalist aesthetic as it used to be enunciated."
—Michael Silverblatt, Bookworm
"[SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL is] somehow both the funniest and the saddest book I've read in a long time."
—Michael Schaub, Bookslut
"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.”
—Time Out New York
"Lin's sympathetic fascination with the meaning of life is full of profound and often hilarious insights."
—Publishers Weekly
“Tao Lin's poetry passes by slacker era irony and self-indulgent formalism to dig up something deeper and more human, even when that something seems on first reading to merely be depressed hamsters. ”
—Jeffrey Brown, author of Clumsy and Little Things
"Tao Lin is the most distinctive young writer I've come upon in a long time: the most intrepid, the funniest, the strangest. He's a new voice, and the pleasure of reading his work is a new kind of pleasure."
—Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening
"Loved it. [...] Shoplifting From American Apparel stands out. And maybe it’s similar, if stylistically opposite, from We Did Porn in this way. Both books are necessary, written for people who don’t have many books to choose from. They’re not competing with the rest of the books on the shelf. They’re on a different shelf where there aren’t too many books. On that same shelf you’ll find Ask The Dust, Frisk, The Fuck Up, The Basketball Diaries, Jesus' Son, several books by Michelle Tea, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and Chelsea Girls. It’s a good shelf to be on, I think. Young, urban, self-sure, engaged. The audience is small but they’ll take you in; they’re looking to connect."
—Stephen Elliott, author of Happy Baby and The Adderall Diaries
Fiction, Sasquatch
Fiction, Leftover Crack in Red Hook
Fiction, Love is a Thing on Sale For More Money Than There Exists
Fiction, We Will Drink Our Coffee And Complete Our Novels And...
Fiction, [excerpt re RICHARD YATES]
Fiction, [excerpt re SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL]
Fiction, Sex After Not Seeing Each Other For A Few Days
Fiction, [from North American Hamsters]
Fiction, The Vegan Muffin
Fiction, Should
Fiction, October
Fiction, Exactly What I Want
Essay, Does the Novel Have a Future? The Answer Is In This Essay!
Essay, How to Give a Reading On Mushrooms
Essay, Koko, The "Talking" Gorilla
Essay, Almost Transparent Blue
Essay, Five Low-Level Conspiracies Jesse Eisenberg Should Accidentally Discover...
Essay, Top 10 Worst Fruits to Get Blowjobs From
Essay, Top 10 Animals That Don't Have Asses
Essay, "Audrey" from "Shoplifting from American Apparel"
Essay, The Great American Dialogue...
Essay, An Account of Being Arrested for "Trespassing" NYU's Bookstore
Essay, Review of Ten "Blogging Platforms"
Essay, Marina Abramović, “The Staring Woman at MoMA”
Essay, @Poetry Foundation re "good/bad in art"
Essay, @Poetry Foundation re "relationships/poetry"
Essay, Review of Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard
Essay, What I Can Tell You About Seattle Based on the People I've Met Who Are From There
Essay, Levels of Greatness a Fiction Writer can Achieve in America
Essay, Fighting Elliott Bay Audience
Poems, [first seven pages of COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY]
Poems, [twenty-four poems (twelve in comments section)]
Poems, A Stoic Philosophy... & The Power of Ethical Reasoning
Poem, ugly fish poem
Poem, a poem written by a bear
Poem, some of my happiest moments in life occur on AOL instant messenger
Poem, i went fishing with my family when i was five
Poem, Opposite Of Song Of Myself
BLURBS"Richard Yates is hilarious, menacing, and hugely intelligent. Tao Lin is a Kafka for the iPhone generation. He has that most important gift: it’s impossible to imagine anyone else writing like he does and sounding authentic. Yet he has already spawned a huge school of Lin imitators. As precocious and prolific as he is, every book surpasses the last. Tao Lin may well be the most important writer under thirty working today."
—Clancy Martin, author of How To Sell
"[Richard Yates] is like a ninety-foot pigeon. You've never seen anything like it before, and yet it is somehow exactly like the world we live in."
—Daniel Handler, author of Adverbs
"[Richard Yates] is a focused, moving, and rather upsetting portrait of two oddballs in love."
—Boston Globe
"[Richard Yates] is amazingly weird, disturbing, and good."
—Time Out New York
"Tao Lin writes from moods that less radical writers would let pass - from laziness, from vacancy, from boredom. And it turns out that his report from these places is moving and necessary, not to mention frequently hilarious."
—Miranda July, author of No One Belongs Here More Than You
"[F]ascinating and articulate in a way that people my age (incl. um, like, you know, myself) rarely are...I still think he's a scam artist but now I think the scam is interesting."
—Emily Gould, author of And The Heart Says Whatever
"Do you read Tao Lin and think 'I love this! What is it?' Perhaps it is the curious effect of a radically talented, fecund and tender mind setting down a world sans sense or consequence."
—Lore Segal, author of Other People's Houses and Shakespeare's Kitchen
“Richard Yates is a moving, very funny, discomforting, and heartbreakingly life-affirming meditation on extremes—extreme alienation, extreme intimacy, extreme confusion, extreme expectations—that reads like a meticulously and lovingly crafted collaboration between a weirder Ernest Hemingway and a more philosophically-minded Jean Rhys.”
—James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces
"Trancelike and often hilarious…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…deliciously odd.”
—The Guardian
"[A] deadpan literary trickster."
—The New York Times
"Lin's fiction is a wonderfully deadpan joke."
—The Independent
"You don't think, 'I like this guy,' or 'I really dislike this guy.' You think, 'huh.' [...] Camus' The Stranger or 'sociopath?'"
—Los Angeles Times
"[D]eeply smart, funny, and heads-over-heels dedicated."
—Sam Anderson, New York Magazine
"[SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL is] the purest example so far of the minimalist aesthetic as it used to be enunciated."
—Michael Silverblatt, Bookworm
"[SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL is] somehow both the funniest and the saddest book I've read in a long time."
—Michael Schaub, Bookslut
"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.”
—Time Out New York
"Lin's sympathetic fascination with the meaning of life is full of profound and often hilarious insights."
—Publishers Weekly
“Tao Lin's poetry passes by slacker era irony and self-indulgent formalism to dig up something deeper and more human, even when that something seems on first reading to merely be depressed hamsters. ”
—Jeffrey Brown, author of Clumsy and Little Things
"Tao Lin is the most distinctive young writer I've come upon in a long time: the most intrepid, the funniest, the strangest. He's a new voice, and the pleasure of reading his work is a new kind of pleasure."
—Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening
"Loved it. [...] Shoplifting From American Apparel stands out. And maybe it’s similar, if stylistically opposite, from We Did Porn in this way. Both books are necessary, written for people who don’t have many books to choose from. They’re not competing with the rest of the books on the shelf. They’re on a different shelf where there aren’t too many books. On that same shelf you’ll find Ask The Dust, Frisk, The Fuck Up, The Basketball Diaries, Jesus' Son, several books by Michelle Tea, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and Chelsea Girls. It’s a good shelf to be on, I think. Young, urban, self-sure, engaged. The audience is small but they’ll take you in; they’re looking to connect."
—Stephen Elliott, author of Happy Baby and The Adderall Diaries
19 Comments:
holy shit
victory over billy by tao lin
Very professional
Is the fact that yours is the "the first two-book story-collection/novel debut since Ann Beattie in 1976" significant in any way, or did you only intend to state a fact?
it gives journalists 'an angle'
this post is targeted at journalists
it's also a fact
'I'm Going To Touch You Very Hard' is a really great poem. where can i find more poems like this?
i bought T.S. elliot's 'The Wasteland' because people told that it was brilliant. i liked it okay.
tao, will you lead a six-week seminar on "Ambivalent Nihilism"?
i can pay the registration fee in smoothies
also, will pet and/or child care be provided?
colin,
i think you can find poems like that in 'a green light' by matthew rohrer maybe
daniel,
i will lead a six week internet low residency seminar on 'ambivalent nihilism,' yes
may 1-june 14
please paypal binky.tabby [at] gmail.com $200
Hi Tao:
I was unable to find a contact e-mail address; hence this informal blog comment. I first came across your work Pindeldyboz, then read more of your fiction and poetry, all of which impressed me greatly.
If you haven't heard of Kartika Review yet, well...Kartika Review. See: http://www.kartikareview.com. Or, in the alternative, please contact me directly at editor at kartikareview dot com about submitting your work to our journal.
- http://kartikareview.com/sun/
hi tao,
i love your bear poem. almost as much as i love bears.
keep up the good writing. it makes me happy.
love,
katie
I love your stuff, man. (thank Jamiee G. for turning me onto you).
Stuart
http://www.stuartgoldmanstories.com
sounds like you wrote frizzin anne frank
Dear Tao Lin,
I am writing an essay about your work for my degree. Currently my title is 'Weary, Wounded People: Tao Lin and Affect in the Post-9/11 Era' - I hope you like it (I think I can come up with a snappier title though).
I have but one question: what year did you start your degree in New York?
Thank you.
dear tao lin,
i had a dream that you called me on my telephone last night. you were cordial but chuckled a bit much for my taste. if this continues i will have to cease enjoying your writing. because i have an aversion to speaking on the phone, especially to strangers, while i sleep.
how did you get my number?
cognitive-behavioral therapy was quite an enjoyable work. thank you?
Dear Tao Lin,
If you give me your email address, I will send you my completed essay.
binky [dot] tabby [at] gmail
bought your first book today. felt weird buying something. in the process of reading everything you've ever published. thanks for working so hard.
i think you should probably give me a free book. it doesn't have to be richard yates, but it can be. i already have eee... and bed. so not those. why should you give me a free book? because i am not very awesome and owning your book might take me just a little bit in the direction of awesomeness. why don't i just go out and buy one? what's my problem? i don't know. i really don't.
I'm french and i've read all i could read of you (Yates, eee, shoplifting, you're a little happier than i am). I understand when some people say that the style is terrible but i think in your novels the style is really just a simple tool, other writers do art with the style whereas you're doing a better art with your subjects, the message, the realist details about life, so never mind about your style (but it gives some effects either). I just wanted to say that i really like what you write and that i'm a little sad because there aren't a lot of people in my connections who know you (unfortunatly i'm 15).
PS: you're not a hipster aren't you ?
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