michael silverblatt interviewed me for kcrw's bookworm
the interview can be listened to here, more information about michael silverblatt is here; bookworm's archives contain 3x joy williams, 4x ann beattie, 3x lydia davis, 1x mary robison, 1x bobbie ann mason, 7x nicholson baker, 5x david foster wallace, 1x gordon lish, 1x stephen dixon, 1x clancy martin, 2x kurt vonnegut, 2x lorrie moore interview
46 Comments:
sweet.
i heard tao is the youngest person michael silverblatt has interviewed. good job tao.
nice. looking forward to this.
yo tao,
you ridin 'google wave' yet bro?
i like michael silverblatt, seems cool
his interviews with david foster wallace are great
nice
good news, i will listen
but i have a question, why do you always mention the same few writers over and over again
like dfw, he is an 'important' writer, you never mention him or lots of other good writers
do you read other writers but just don't care about them, i have tried to read the 'kmart realists' but i find them boring, not like you, not like dfw or toni morrison or bolano or pynchon or atwood or kathy acker or donald barthelme who seems a lot more interesting then his brother (i know all these are different kinds of writers)
sometimes get the feeling you ignore like 90% of current-recent writers, most of whom are considered more interesting
you like 'minor' writers i guess
I'm really waiting for it.
@millss not yet
"why do you always mention the same few writers over and over again"
because i think about their writing more often than the writing of other people probably, and when i come here and look at the computer screen i make blog posts about what i'm already thinking about, perhaps
"do you read other writers but just don't care about them"
i do read other writers and think about their writing
"i have tried to read the 'kmart realists' but i find them boring, not like you, not like dfw or toni morrison or bolano or pynchon or atwood or kathy acker or donald barthelme who seems a lot more interesting then his brother (i know all these are different kinds of writers)"
that is okay that you find them boring, if i stopped blogging about every writer that someone thinks is boring there wouldn't be any writers to blog about
every writer probably has millions of people, who if they read the writer's books, would think they are boring
"sometimes get the feeling you ignore like 90% of current-recent writers, most of whom are considered more interesting"
i probably haven't read more than 20 pages of 99.8% of literary fiction books published in the last 5 years
i probably blog about 2-5% of the books i read
the new yorker, or whatever, probably reviews .05% of literary fiction books published each year
there are probably 20-50 literary fiction books that i would enjoy reading right now but i don't know they exist and they are probably 'really out of print'
"you like 'minor' writers i guess"
i probably mostly like writers that you consider 'minor,' yes
congrats. Bookworm is a fine show, and Mr. Silverblatt has a heart of gold.
This comment has nothing to do with this post, but I've learned that you mostly eat raw foods. You seem to have a passion for food and enjoy experimenting with bizarre ingredients. Could you start a food blog? not only would it be entertaining, but also I think it would help other vegans and raw foodists figure out what to eat. Also, where did you get raw vegan ice cream in NY?
Oh, I posted the last comment then just saw on your profile that you already have a vegan blog! Whoops.
"Also, where did you get raw vegan ice cream in NY?"
'pure food and wine'
i think most 'health food' grocery stores in nyc have some kind of raw organic vegan ice cream
'rockin raw' i think has raw organic vegan ice cream
'bonobos' has fruit ice cream that i like
"Oh, I posted the last comment then just saw on your profile that you already have a vegan blog! Whoops."
that blog is really old, it hasn't been updated in ~3 years i think
thank you for your interest in what i eat, seems sweet
looking forward to reading the silverblatt interview
"there are probably 20-50 literary fiction books that i would enjoy reading right now"
maybe you could post this list or at least a partial list? (like 20-yes, but 50 sounds like a lot)
i'd be interested in reading your list and prolly others would too
@redpencil i was referring to books that i don't know about due to being out of print or not reviewed/covered by the media that much
a list of books that i like is here
"i was referring to books that i don't know about due to being out of print or not reviewed/covered by the media that much"
that was the list i was interested in, but i understand that it might be at least partially imagined or imaginary and not particularly easy to compose without some thought, and a lot to ask of you, i guess
i did think it would be an interesting post, though,
or a good mental exercise at least - would be for anyone, i guess
so, thanks for the goodreads link, i will check out your list (and others) more thoroughly
goodreads is cool
i like lists and i like lists of books
even imagined or imaginary ones
I am looking forward to this like nothing else in the world. In other news, I interviewed Silverblatt myself a little while back, and I'm still reeling from the awesomeness.
yo taoism
i can send you an invite to wave
email me sir
i feel excited about your career arc + your upcoming "tightly-plotted, page-turner" novel, 'Richard Yates'
what prose-style did you use?
i like your interviews
i feel bored/slightly amused re: the repetitive nature of the preamble/'establishment of angle' that segues into them
Tao Lin: Collected Interviews (Melville House/Muumuu House, 2020)?
[people can click on my name to vote on a story that i should finish/post on my blog]
Tao Lin, I will 'look forward' to the interview.
Anonymous, if you are interested in seeing vegan food, I have a site documenting last year's Xmas dinner that I made: http://sites.google.com/site/veganxmasdinner/
It's not exotic or raw at all though so maybe it won't turn you on. I think it looks pretty delicious, except, to be honest, the broccoli didn't turn out to taste very good at all.
hi tao, you seem to be doing really well
i wanted to tell you that i applied to cooper union
millss, i feel afraid of google wave, it seems more like "google tsunami"
@redpencil i see, interesting, maybe this chart answers that question (last 'item' in chart)
@colin sweet/nice, i'm going to listen to that
@millss i have google waves, thank you
@masande i used the prose style of 'sfaa,' with 'minor modifications'
sweet white-person killing poem
sweet blog
@jillian nice, i hope you 'get in'
thanks, i really want to be "in". also we started fiction in my creative writing class. if i ever write anything i will send it to you
@tao Let me know what you think, and also what you thought of Silverblatt upon being interviewed by him.
tao,
happy for you. seems ill reserved to openly state your distaste for contemporary fiction.
fine though, i think. i will still buy your books and probably so will everyone else.
albert
p.s. r.i.p. carles
Tao,
Don't see it posted yet. Maybe I am impatient/ looking in the wrong place. Unsure.
listening to this made me very happy tao, thank you.
That was cool, Tao. Silverblatt is exacting. Excited for Richard Yates now. Interesting what you said about not being able to write fiction after that, like the artist is fully realised when he/she doesn't need to make art anymore and can just 'experience life'. It sounds like bliss.
nice
you are 'ambitious' and 'aggressive' tao
sweet
i liked it
i liked listening to the "ugly fish"
nice interview
Hi Tao
cant wait to listen to this, such a great series.
eeeee eee eeee is winging its way to me for christmas!!! hopefully more of your books too.
hope alls good
@jillian nice re fiction writing
@colinmarshall good job re silverblatt interview, i liked it
@iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii i like contemporary fiction, where did i state distaste for contemporary fiction
@colin i'm glad you were made very happy
@joe sweet
@michael sweet
@steve damn, actually i don't think i'm ambitious in the conventional definition of ambitious; if i were i would be working on getting grants or something and then not have a blog but work on a 500-page book or something and then work on getting a 'high powered agent' and then being published by knopf and then being rich, not sure though
@elise thank you
@bollo sweet
it is possible that i have misunderstood,
"i probably haven't read more than 20 pages of 99.8% of literary fiction books published in the last 5 years"
maybe it is because i can relate to this situation only because i do the same thing due to the fact that I have a distaste for a lot of contemporary fiction.
i guess 'contemporary fiction' is kind of a ridiculous generalization but somehow i find that the most accurate label
i actually like books though, just not some of them. maybe that is what you are trying to say? Or do you have another reason for not reading beyond the first 20 pages?
@iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
i think i was talking about how there are thousands of books that are published that i don't know about because they aren't 'covered' in places that i read, they 'disappear' in a few weeks, or they aren't promoted
for example 200 books of 'literary fiction' were probably published this week and i haven't read any of them
the same for last week
probably 80% of the books i reread were published after 1960
thank you for the clarification; that makes a lot of sense now
on that note, your literary 'sphere' seems relatively small.
whereas people who read eggers or sedaris can generally find similar items, i have difficulty scouring amazon for books written by writers in your literary 'sphere.'
still waiting on daniel spinks's book. restless.
damnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn bro
'philip seymour hoffman in "happiness"'
hehe
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Tao,
Listened again. Made me feel really good x2.
Stared at a fixed point in space thinking "uh-uh, damn, uh-huh, damn."
Really good job.
Tao, what did you think of the Powells review
Are you just using being a writer as the first part of becoming a celebrity artman like the reviewer said
Do you forsee yourself doing music, visual art, film, tv, talk shows, etc instead of writing
Do you think you will ever be covered by People magazine
Do you hit your girlfriend, what do you think of guys who do
Do you ever eat animal products
Thank you for answering my questions if you do want to, I hope I am not too rude, just curious
damn re miles / millss
what is everyones opinion re "the challenger" (space accident ~2003)
good interview tao
so when you talk about Jonathan Safran Foer or Michael Chabon or Dav Eggers or whoever, you never actually read a word they wrote, right? You just read your same KMart realists over and over again.
I guess that is part of your autism spectrum disorder/Asperger's syndrome. You obsess and know a lot about one very narrow thing.
Not sure I have ever heard him say he reads pieces over repetitiously and obsessively, just cause someone isn't connecting with the same fiction that 95% of the nation is connecting with via the borders bestsellers list doesn't mean you have to openly regard that person with disdain--
New Powells review is the same review published in Bookslut circa 9/08.
Tao-
You tweeted:
seems like i spoke 'brain-damagedly' slow on kcrw despite being 'on coffee' heavily & feeling during it like i was being 'uncommonly fluent'
I thoroughly enjoyed your interview with Silverblatt, you _were_ uncommonly fluent, which is a good thing, I think. And Bookworm was the perfect venue for you to be so, because you can often seem vague or understated or mildly disaffected - not a criticism, just my take on your persona. I think in fact you are simply shy, and detached in a Buddhist sort of way.
In this interview you sounded intelligent and thoughtful, and communicated your writing "means and ends" and "reasons" quite well. I learned a lot.
And I am very impressed with Silverblatt as an interviewer - he is thoughtful (very), compassionate and respectful. It is obvious how much he cares about writing. I have since listened to a number of other Bookworm interviews by him. I also liked Colin Marshall's interview of Silverblatt. Thanks for the links!
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