9x news item
the poetry foundation published an essay by me, i just tried to reread it, seems unreadable
lee rourke reviewed 'sometimes my hear pushes my ribs' (order)
dennis loy johnson interviewed me about my $8100 myspace sale
muumuu house published everyone i've had sex with & elevated self esteem as a result of alcohol consumption by megan boyle
bomb magazine interviewed me
i created a muxtape and 'had sex' with red bull and published a 'long lost, recently rediscovered' poem
other essays by me: what i can tell you about seattle, levels of greatness a fiction writer can achieve in america, a review of 'the woodcutters' by thomas bernhard, an essay on kmart realismjimmy chen reviewed 'the brandon book crisis' (order; more reviews here, here, here)
lee rourke reviewed 'sometimes my hear pushes my ribs' (order)
dennis loy johnson interviewed me about my $8100 myspace sale
muumuu house published everyone i've had sex with & elevated self esteem as a result of alcohol consumption by megan boyle
bomb magazine interviewed me
i created a muxtape and 'had sex' with red bull and published a 'long lost, recently rediscovered' poem
70 Comments:
the essay is pretty unreadable
oh, thomas! i don't want to borrow the internet voice for too long but i think this essay is a 'crucial' step for how writing might look 10-20 years from now.
Tao-
don't you ever get bored with this?
with what
This whole thing you're doing.
maybe yes, but i try to not keep doing the same thing
It seems exactly the same since the first day I read it.
i didn't have a publishing company then
If I give you a topic, will you write something for me?
Do you think it makes a difference?
'maybe'
and 'depends'
I want you to write something based on this:
he said he wanted a baby, but then he thought about it and thought maybe it wasn't a really good idea
Tao, can I use you as a character in a story?
This part of the interview was sort of spiritual:
"EN: So for you, is the computer more exciting than going to a new place?
TL: Definitely. I’ve never felt 1/10 as excited looking at a mountain as I do checking my email."
Tao Lin, would you submit my short story with your name on it?
I think it’d be interesting if it gets published on McSweeny’s or something.
The story is not very good; but everyone will automatically think... “this is good because a writer wrote it”.
you need permission to touch my butt.
Animal Planet is the best thing to watch while writing poetry. I wish you would try it for a post, just to see what happens.
This is what I got after five minutes of watchign Plannet Earth:
I wonder if Pamela Anderson feels
like those rare flatbellied lizards on TV
that are jumping and showing their
rainbow tummies
to fill their bellies with flies.
I took a look at that story "everyone i've had sex with." I'm surprised Susan Boyle has made it with that many people, i thought she told Simon she'd never been kissed? Anyway she isn't the most attractive woman, even by Scottish standards, but she has a lovely singing voice, so i guess it's nice you published her rather pointless story. Tho for my tastes i'll always prefer the classic works of Ass Hi. Or as Susan Boyle might say to her next drunken (kilted) seduction, 'Bob's your Uncle!'
You really need to do something new. I read that thing about People I've had Sex With. Is that really fiction writing? Is it really saying anything new or discovering some new way of writing? Gmail chats? How are these interesting? How is it fiction? How is it literature? You are at risk of becoming inconsequential. Just someone talking and talking and talking with nothing to say. Just someone making noise. It's disappointing.
Tao—
I'm editing a new fiction bookzine in Milan. It will be called the Milan Review. The first issue will be out in July. The theme is: darkness. I would like to run one of your short stories in it. If you're at all interested, please get back to me at timothysmall [at] gmail.com
All best & thanks
Tim
@olivia answers are in the poetry foundation essay i think
Trouble is, I'm not interested in reading it.
Olivia, then why are you shit-talking?
lol @ this olivia woman getting upset at words and trying to tell you what you should write about.
god forbid someone be interested in doing something that someone else isn't interested in.
- Amos A. Non
Word up to Amos A. Non
hehe
today i have seen the blurriness of your header
the review of ellen's book was good.
sweet 'muxtape'. i'm glad i can listen to your bbc radio interview whenever i want now.
@brandon sweet
@colin sweet
@bearfish sweet
muxtape seems sweet. cool. nice.
i like the muxtape
i like listening to your voice
a poem written by an unreliable piece of shit
let me go eat because i am not hungry
i crotch down and put coke cans in the river;
carnival targets floating past hunters during hunting season
i’m an unreliable piece of shit; i walk in the wooden city and look at the car river and am cold
i see business men and they ran to work and i was alone standing destroyed, amongst small tents of fallen newspapers
that night i cried
let me go eat because i am not hungry
the salmon was sad but it still wanted to live
it wanted to swim and be sad and i ate it under moonlight
i saw a man with children scream the other day
he screamed quietly behind the swings
i felt self-conscious and lush and i thought, ‘i know your god. he’s my god’
sometimes i climb the swings and sit there and watch very quietly
sometimes i want to steal children and chase their innocents and claw it
i’ll ride that fleeting happiness into a shopping mall and ram the humans
i will ride the escalator without the escalator and i will hug the children and they will cry
i will eat the children
i don’t care
i will scream and throw the bubblegum machine from the second floor to the first floor
i felt compassion for the salmon and now i don’t care
i am an unreliable piece of shit
i’ll walk into a parking lot, find a jeep with a pine tree air-freshener and grip the wheel and cry.
the car will sit there
i won’t walk into my house at night and push burden off the bed
i won’t stare at the bed and i won’t feel fake
i haven’t left the parking lot
i won’t eat because i am hungry
"cafe with free coffee {excruciatingly bad..}" is my new favorite song. thanks for posting.
did Olivia Frances Miller write that book about the badger that got into the jam? And all the illustrations are that odd shade of green? I loved that book when I used to get high. i think the best thing in life would be to have alzheimer's but a slow form of it and be a successful author of children's books...is that what O.F.M. does? if so, i'm jealous.
When I think Tao Lin, I think "iconic gmail chats." I wish my gmail chats could be iconic. Maybe you would be interested in becoming a gmail sensei? You could start start a dojo devoted to teaching the ancient art of talking about things on gmail.
Tao, I am not sure of your involvement in the Branden Gorrell contest, but please understand that I left this comment on his blog, and you will be implicated appropriately:
Please refund this money asap or else I will notify the New York State Consumer Protection Board of your wrongdoings.
I will also be sure that Sarah Schneider is audited and all entities who gained money from this are properly taxed
"Does this personal sort of interaction—or these attacks—bother you?
Tao Lin: It doesn’t bother me at all. I feel like I’m reading stuff like I’m reading fiction."
i don't see how you can reconcile your stated position of doing things to reduce suffering in the world (e.g. eating natural foods etc., not going corporate whatever)with this kind of detachment from
the fallout from your behaviour.
on that bat segundo show there was some sort of converstaion about the vagina monologues being put on at some school under a different name and you seemed to suggest that it would have been better if the kids had been honest with the
teacher. like the doing it covertly under a different name just spread distrust in the world - it was better to be honest.
surely the honest thing to do and the one that spreads trust in the world (ie reduce suffering) is to enter competitions under your own name?
i might be totally wrong but
i don't think you can realistically win a major mainstream book prize that you keep going on about with the degree of detachment from people's "shit-talking" (bad feeling or whatever you want to call it) that you have. that's not to suggest shit-talking is right but it seems your writing seems to be stirring up more shit talking than it is reducing.
even though you and brandon can't understand why the right thing to do would be to refund everyone's money who entered the competition i 'believe' you should do it.
i 'believe' this would be a 'good' promotion of yourselves as writers.
congrats on winning brandon's contest tao!
@jonathan,
email binky.tabby@gmail.com
@anonymous
read my comments in the post i linked; if you have thoughts about specific thoughts i have had, in those comments, i will be happy to elaborate or respond to your thoughts about my thoughts; as it is it seems like you are responding from 'within a black hole' or something, not taking into account what comments i have made, what comments brandon has made, what brandon has said in his video, and what brandon has stated a few weeks ago as the contest guidelines
'surely the honest thing to do and the one that spreads trust in the world (ie reduce suffering) is to enter competitions under your own name?'
seems, at this moment, like having thought processes that allow for non-ownership of 'abstract' things reduces pain and suffering in the world
seems like i gave sarah something, and she submitted it, not that i submitted it under a different name
also seems like 'pen names' are widespread and functional and conventionally accepted, and that the shit-talking in this case is directed at something else, maybe it is mostly just the people that 'always' talk shit about brandon, me, and others 'no matter what we are doing' 'doing their thing'
also seems like i honestly believe 100% that i do not know what reduces pain and suffering on a comprehensive scale, in both time and space, for example over a time period of 1,000,000,000,000 years, in at least 60% of the universe or something, and that i feel that being comprehensive is something i am interested in 'these days'
therefore, it seems like i 'honestly don't know what i am doing,' but am satisfied 'morally' by doing things that reduce focus on ownership, reduce focus on abstractions, and increase focus on cause and effects in concrete reality, for example where one spends one's money
things i have said in the past may or may not be what i think right now, it seems, additionally
yes but you pick and choose (if you believe in cause and effect) the examples of non-ownership you're making. (i.e. not giving away your new books on the internet). so you send out mixed messages - either non-ownership reduces suffering or not. seems like you want it both ways depending on whats at stake.
books are concrete, i feel, and would cost me money to give away; i do give them away when i have extra money
what i was referring to in terms of ownership in the last comment was 'abstract' things like ideas, stories, books, etc., for example if someone wanted to reproduce my books or use my writing in their books or 'plagiarize' my ideas or sentences, or post my writing on their blog or something, i would not be averse to that
books are concrete or abstract which is it? you say both in your comment
books, when used literally, is considered 'concrete' to me
the writing inside the books that is reproduced more than once is considered more 'abstract' to me
so if writing is printed in a book that exists in the real world ownership over the book is o.k. to be exercised
but if it (writing) exists "in the air" to use a cliche then exercising ownership over it is somehow not right or necessary.
would that be your position?
i don't know
seems more complicated than that
it's a spectrum not 'black or white'
if its a spectrum how about instead of writing "in doing this i'm reduce suffering" and just write "im doing this" which seems nearer to the truth.
hm, i didn't say, in this case, that i was reducing pain and suffering
i listed reasons why i did what i did on brandon's blog and reducing pain and suffering wasn't one of them, though it may be one of them, to some degree
"seems, at this moment, like having thought processes that allow for non-ownership of 'abstract' things reduces pain and suffering in the world
"
i was refering to when you said it 5 minutes ago in the above post
what i typed seemed true, about how it seems that way
you asked me a question and i answered it with how i feel
saying it is a spectrum does not, i think, negate what i said
i feel that almost everything is a spectrum rather than 'black and white'
you also ignored other parts of my comment which stated that i do not think i am reducing pain and suffering because i do not know how to on a comprehensive scale
"you also ignored other parts of my comment which stated that i do not think i am reducing pain and suffering because i do not know how to on a comprehensive scale"
if you don't think you're reducing pain and suffering why say it? or is it just a design element of your writing?
read my comment
i stated my feelings on reducing pain and suffering for this situation, i think from some perspectives i am whereas from others 'i don't know'
i think from some perspectives i am whereas from others 'i don't know'
i predict people will continue to be upset by your writing and promotions until you resolve this tension/contradiction in your work.
at its root this is the tension that is upsetting people.
Too bad some people had to throw a shit fit over the short story thing.
eh, Congrats either way
Tao, your goal must actually be to reduce people who like and admire you in the world.
Well, you can count me as an ex-fan whose gone over to the other side. You are not a good person, however good a writer you may be.
Hopefully you will not reply to this at all. Any reply would just be another insult to your once-loyal readers.
I will never buy another book by you.
And I won't shoplift it either, because it's wrong.
not sure why 'anonymous' won't read books by 'tao lin' anymore. 'good person' seems arbitrary and irrelevant in literary preference. seems 'stupid.' 'interesting.'
your gonna end up in prison
and repeatedly fucked up the ass
like your father was
for scamming people
for cheating people
for treating people like shit
ask your father
how it felt
when he was fucked up the ass
in prison
you worthless lowlife scum
"'good person' seems arbitrary and irrelevant in literary preference"
if thats true why not get a robot to generate a book why the need to
read a book by a human being?
good writers should be held to a higher standard
come to KGB tonite (Tue 5/26) & watch Tao Lin get a beating if you like blood
that is crazy. i don't really agree with how tao's handling this but he is fundamentally a sincere and principled dude, trying i think earnestly at all times to negotiate how better to be sincere and principled while also being funny. there is a community in new york that likes and appreciates him for this and they will basically all be at kgb.
damn, bro
feel excited, nervous
the community who doesn't think Lin is principled will be at kgb with their fists.
i suggest the other community bring bandages, ice, smelling salts
if he is too scared to show up we'll be outside the dunkin donuts on graham ave later & tomorrow & till he comes out of his apt
he can't avoid this beating
he's had it comeing a long long time
it'll be over as quick as possible
watch at kgb for the least likely person to throw the first punch to Lin's jaw
seems like this is 'anonymous':
cpe-24-193-43-60.nyc.res.rr.com
IP Address 24.193.43.60
VISITOR SYSTEM SPECS
Browser Firefox 3.0
Operating System MacOSX
whoa! seriously? feels like tao's a small scale weed dealer or something. wonder if a small scale weed dealer ever got beat up over a dime bag. probably in michigan once. i mean, dude, i get the sense you're probably goofing around because you know like all of us do that this is over an amateur literary contest with an entrance fee of $7, but i feel like it's pretty intense and unnecessary to make comments like you're making even if they're not serious.
tao lin is a person - i'm a person too
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