contents (part I, part II, part III, part IV,
appendix)
I. Half-Assed Introductory Words
Tao Lin is the judas funk for the capitalist side of the world. “Judas funk” is a title I just made up, I think. Master of simple sentences, Hemingway would have an affair with Tao Lin. A shoplifting psychotic with balls enough to write about it, Tao Lin is a born pop cultist.
Tao Lin shoplifting tacos.
Tao Lin is a better artist than Andy Warhol. Adaptive, Tao Lin has lived places on his own, is a graduate of New York University, and a commercially successful writer with four books currently available, and two in the not-so-distant future (2009 & 2010) . Tao Lin is going to be a professor someday. Tao Lin is already basically famous. Tao Lin was paid seventy dollars to be on Saturday Night Live one time. One time Tao Lin got caught stealing from American Apparel. One of Tao Lin’s friends got caught stealing from Whole Foods this one time.
Tao Lin met the very psychotic Carol Novack but turned me down for a meeting a couple years ago. Gmail chat is Tao Lin’s cure for all of society’s ailments. Tao Lin says of himself, “I am emo.” Fresh, I get the feeling that Lin doesn’t want to sound like anyone else, so he writes about the rarest subjects he can find, as evidenced in his (outstanding) 2006 semi-self-published story collection, Today The Sky is Blue and White with Bright Blue Spots and a Small Pale Moon and I Will Destroy Our Relationship Today (read free by clicking title), which I only recently made the time-investment to actually read, and thus was born my new fascination with this “young” writer–young in physical age, perhaps, but with an ancient wisdom regarding what works and what does not work in literature, not to mention how to piss off my not-so-beloved e-literati. Tao Lin likes words such as “existential.” More on this will follow later in this entry.
First Published Book (2006)
Tao Lin considers middle schoolers to be his target audience. He’s quoted as saying, “…target demographics include hipsters, depressed teenagers, depressed vegans, happy but sensitive teenagers, people of any age who are severely detached from reality, Europeans, all college students..” in a September, 2008 interview. A good target, because kids need direction. Maybe they’ll become writers. Envision the collapse of the dreaded, boring status quo as enacted by a generation of myspacing bloggers, writers, angry poets, confused vegans, plus hamsters trapped in human bodies, inspired and led by one Tao Lin, born 1983 in either Florida or Virginia. Writers aren’t dangerous or violent, usually, though some danger and violence in the literary world would be refreshing, and if anyone’s going to make something like that happen, you can be your ass it’ll be Tao Lin or one of his followers. More on followers in Part III.
There are people who hate the work of Tao Lin, which is scattered wide and shows a clear, necessary progression. I mean to say that all writers must progress to say important, and Tao Lin has done so thus far in his career. I think these people just hate Tao Lin for the sake of hating him, mostly, and for it they are jackasses. I recently stalked Tao Lin on the internet. I am guilty of doing this to a lot of writers. I wish more people would do it to me.
II. Madore & Lin: Pursuance, Correspondance
I’ve done some few-question interviews with Tao Lin. This is the most recent:
| P. H. Madore <moonpunter@gmail.com> | Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 11:38 AM | |
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To: Tao Lin <binky.tabby@gmail.com>
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| Tao Lin <binky.tabby@gmail.com> | Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 2:56 PM | |
| To: “P. H. Madore” <moonpunter@gmail.com> | ||
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Tao Lin's Novel Debut
Tao Lin’s favorite website is blogspot.com. He’s never said this to me, but I gather it through my thorough electronic stalking of him. He tries to publish in popular culture magazines because he wants to reach a very different audience than the average writer gets to ever reach through publishing in underground literary magazines, or even big literary magazines. He has done so with Vice, Nerve, and Esquire. Given the following pasted communication, it can be assumed that he’ll be doing more things like that. We had the following (slightly trunucated) conversation on this topic via Gmail chat (his favored form of communication, apparently):
| Bear Parade <bearparade@gmail.com> | Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 8:20 AM | |
| To: “P. H. Madore” <moonpunter@gmail.com> | ||
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Yes, through looking through my Gmail “writing” archives, it appears that it was on the 11th of June, 2006, that I sent the above mentioned submission and the 28th that I received my rejection. I mentioned I was “heady” in those days. That might be an understatement. I was so thirsty for “success” with my writing that it was all I could ever think about; I lost jobs for being too tired to perform; writing was taking over my life. I envied writers like Tao Lin to the point of distaste, and thus developed bad relations and bad impressions of them for a long time to come. Of course, I was quite uninformed about Tao Lin then; perhaps I wasn’t clear-headed enough to “get” his work. It is only this year that I have perhaps matured, a little and only to certain degrees, as a writer. I am a happier person overall, and I feel that’s a big part of maturity in writing. Tao might not describe himself as a happy person–indeed, we are a little bit happier than he is–but I would go out on a limb and say that he is, if nothing else, at least a satisfied writer. It is important to note that I only wanted his attention: I didn’t care then, as I can’t bring myself to now, about my poetry. Or what people thought of it. Most of my poems have been published under names I’ll never cop to.
What follows is another good, early exchange between Lin and myself, which I think will give the reader some insight into his personality and wisdom, in addition to promoting one of my favorite poems, which still does not compare, in my own view at least, to anything this article’s subject has ever published in that form. The appendix to this article will be a listing of my favorite online works by Tao Lin.
found w/google images, don't hate
Couple interesting things to note:
I recently became furiously interested in Pessoa, espeically his use of “heteronyms”– courtesy of a mini-dissertation by one Jac Jemc.
The poem “Ran Out Of Coffee Grains” was published twice, once in Zygote In My Coffee (which is a story for another day, about Fugett flipping out at, understandably in hindsight, over money) and the apparently defunct In Between Hangovers magazine in the UK.
Here we go.
| P. H. Madore <moonpunter@gmail.com> | Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 11:00 PM | ||||
To: “Tao Lin” <binky.tabby@gmail.com>
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| Tao Lin <binky.tabby@gmail.com> | Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 11:31 PM | ||||
To: “P. H. Madore” <moonpunter@gmail.com>
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| P. H. Madore <moonpunter@gmail.com> | Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 11:36 PM | ||||
To: “Tao Lin” <binky.tabby@gmail.com>
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| Tao Lin <binky.tabby@gmail.com> | Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 11:37 PM | ||||
To: “P. H. Madore” <moonpunter@gmail.com>
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| P. H. Madore <moonpunter@gmail.com> | Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 11:38 PM | ||||
To: “Tao Lin” <binky.tabby@gmail.com>
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| Tao Lin <binky.tabby@gmail.com> | Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 11:39 PM | ||||
To: “P. H. Madore” <moonpunter@gmail.com>
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| P. H. Madore <moonpunter@gmail.com> | Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 11:43 PM | ||||
To: “Tao Lin” <binky.tabby@gmail.com
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| Tao Lin <binky.tabby@gmail.com> | Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 11:44 PM | ||||
To: “P. H. Madore” <moonpunter@gmail.com>
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| P. H. Madore <moonpunter@gmail.com> | Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 11:47 PM | ||||
To: “Tao Lin” <binky.tabby@gmail.com
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| Tao Lin <binky.tabby@gmail.com> | Sat, Jun 17, 2006 at 11:49 PM | ||||
To: “P. H. Madore” <moonpunter@gmail.com>
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Bed: Stories by Tao Lin (2007)
This exchange from June, 2006, illustrates Tao’s undying committment to being an honest person. In a way, I think that all writers are honest to a fault, and this is what sets us generally apart from society as a whole–some find our honesty funny, others wholesome, and still others find it quite offensive, and thus think all writers are weird. I think all these feelings towards writers in general are born of the average writer’s unwillingness to lie, at least in the sense that what they are saying could never be or has never been true.
Part III: Pop. Cult., Resistance Leader, Anti-Hero-Firebrand
a. Popular Culture Versus Tao Lin
Tao Lin is one of those writers which only the highest of literary minds can be “lukewarm” or “in-between” about. Earlier I mentioned about how Lin (and perhaps myself, futuristically-speaking) tries for “pop culture” markets, liberal magazines like Vice, et cetera, which occasionally publish fiction. Given the caliber of his work in these markets up to this point, it would not be too terribly surprising to see Lin appearing in magazines like Playboy with fiction and magazines like Rolling Stone with non-fiction/alternative lifestyle type writing. Maybe even Salon, High Times, and so on–so long as he can come up with something that could fit their overall mission as magazines. And I think that he should, if only to get his name out to a broader audience than before, which is likely to sell books. When I try to “classify” Tao Lin in my head, too many names from Rolling Stone, Salon, and US News & World Report come to mind for me to really put a name on him other than his own. Of course, what I’m saying, in my own retarded way, is that Tao Lin is his own person–and quite satisfied as such.
In researching for this article, I made sure to read/re-read his selections at the following three markets: Nerve.com, Vice Magazine, and Esquire Magazine. All of these are uber-professional magazines with paid staff and advertisers and offices and so forth. They are mainstream outlets which seem to sneak in as much of the fringes as they can muster, and more power to them: I don’t think anyone looks down on magazines which can get people reading. It was funny, because in re-reading “Sex After Not Seeing Each Other for a Few Days,” (the best line of which, in my opinion, is “He has an urge to scream in despair because the rib cage is very sexy, but is able to control himself completely, without it affecting his neutral facial expression.“) I discovered for the first time that Nerve.com has the option for people to comment on articles. Well, what a gold-mine for shit-talk about Tao Lin! Right? Turns out, right, because one pompous jackass wrote:
Sloppy, monotonous, overwritten, unsexy writing. A good example of how not to write about fucking because in my opinion if this “work” is anything, it’s primarily brain fucking, one of the worst kinds of fucking there is and one of the least kinds of fucking the world needs right now: cold, unsensual and disconnected. Your writing continues to get worse and worse with time. This is one of the worst things you’ve written from what I’ve read.
–FU
03/10
This fucking handitard uses the words “Jack Kerouac” as if they are meant to demean a writer–call me Kerouac any day, shit–and this is, as you may know, pure sacrelige around this particular corner of the internet… to whit:
do you edit your writing? because this read as if you wrote it, like you write everything, fast on a library computer, without thinking twice and without editing. plus the story was stupid and juvenile. but, yes, it is a great title. so: bad writer, or not bad but not there yet, not yet evolved, still in jack kerouac stage, but great self-promotionalist.
–ohm
03/08
Of course, however, the overall majority understood the writing for what it was: a very simplistic sex story which was likely submitted because the second sentence of Nerve’s submission guidelines reads like this: Here is what we do not publish: porn, “erotica,” play-by-play sexploits and purple fiction (read: overwrought romances in the airport-novel genre). Thus we see here Tao Lin the rule breaker. And so to balance the previous quoted comments, here are two which were very much on the other side of things:
right now, this is the best story i have ever read in my life.
–ay
03/14
I love you. Please write 2,896 more stories like this.
–TE
11/14
His other popular culture achievements, to date (this article being written between November 11th and November 17th, 2008) are, aside from the newsworthy articles like this one at Gawker Media and this one in the UK’s Telegraph, are “Shoplifting From American Apparel” at Vice Magazine and The Professional Sasquatch in Esquire.
The former is apparently also the title of a forthcoming novella in 2009, to be published by his number one richest fan, Melville House Publishing. Obviously the world waits with bated breath for this release, as well as Tao’s second novel, Richard Yates, which will also be released by Melville House. This would be a good point to note that Tao has created his own sort of mimic press, Muumuu House, in conjunction with the elusive Ellen Kennedy, who has claimed in biographical notes to be ” co-founder, owner, CEO, publisher, secretary, and art director for ass hi books,” which seems to be like an imprint of Muumuu or something, because all projects touched by either of them are very much connected, very similar, all born of the same mind or set of minds. Kennedy is a beautiful lass, as has been documented elsewhere on this site, and though she may not admit it, one of her pieces of Hamster Fiction definitely had a character in it very much like Tao Lin, that piece being titled, specifically, “A Pale White Hamster Yawns In Bed.” I’m getting a bit off-topic, though, because the very next section of this article, actually, is dedicated to the “organic hamster” business and also because I need another cup of coffee, which by this time has probably brewed and may already be cold.
“Shoplifting From American Apparel,” like his two other pop culture accomplishments, is nothing if not true to its title–that is, it’s about exactly that. My favorite part of the piece is where the manager tells him why he is morally wrong for what he has done. Here’s an exact quote:
“Steal from some shitty corporation. We have fair-trade labor. I mean fair labor. We are subsidized by the government. We have goals that are aesthetically pleasing to the general public who wouldn’t ever use the word ‘aesthetically,’ which is part of why I think we still exist, or something.”
“I spend my money on even better places,” I said. “Organic vegan restaurants.”
“I’m all for that,” he said.
This is my favorite part because–purely from a literary perspective–it shows how Lin’s veganism, as well as all his other tendencies, such as hamster fetishism or the study of subtle shifts in emotion, bleeds through into all parts of his life, the biggest part of which, if you watch his videos promoting eBay auctions, is of course his writing. I think most of us dream of getting as much done with our writing as Tao Lin has. He told me once that when shit-storms are a-brewin’, he just buries his head in his writing. If we could all learn to do that, a literary renaissance might arrive in the course of like two weeks or something.
His other pop culture piece, and please feel free to use the comments section of this entry to chastise me for missing something or for the purpose of updating it as time gathers around this entry like dust, is very much something to be admired: a piece of writing in a major magazine like Esquire which not only breaks the boundary of ewriter-versus-mainstream-behemoth but also transcends form, being advertised, as it was, as a piece of “napkin fiction.” I get the feeling that this is exactly the kind of thing which some people despise about Tao Lin: he hasn’t been doing this (writing/publishing) as long as Stephen King, but already he takes the liberties that Stephen King has supposedly earned in letters (King is reputed to be able to publish something so mundane as a grocery list, a joke perhaps, but very true considering the following the man’s long career has developed): who else has the nuts to submit a piece of fiction on a napkin? Well, now I eat my words, because I just did a google on exactly this subject. It appears that Esquire has been running this project for awhile (apparently since February, 2007), wherein people are encouraged to submit pieces of fiction on bar napkins. This does not degrade, in any sense, Tao’s achievement here, however. Because I highly doubt the subject of his story has been done before. This goes back to my earlier statement about how I feel like, to avoid boredom and being mundane, he, for the larger part of his writing, find subjects that no one else would think to write about. Esquire says so, too, with this introductory note:
Here’s a story you’ve never read before: A sasquatch who works at American Apparel meets a toy poodle in jail.
And to keep with the thus-far format of reviewing these most-important fiction pieces by Tao Lin, I will now note my favorite line from “The Professional Sasquatch:”
One day the professional sasquatch was walking out of Kmart when two men opened his bag and saw soap and said the soap, which the professional sasquatch had just bought from Duane Reade, was stolen.
Simplistic, yet detailed. I’m pretty sure I’ve never read a story where the main character is a professional sasquatch, at least not before I made contact with Tao Lin’s writing generally, and I think that this originality, which is very Tao Lin, is the sort of thing that made me envious long ago. Still does, but in a different way: I am
Tao Lin's Second Book of Poetry
doing my best to learn what I can from the writing of Tao Lin, to incorporate his best strategies into my own work, as I have with all my favorite writers who I’ve read over the years. This isn’t to say I’ll be plagiarizing him or coming out with stories about hamsters and sasquatches in the near future, no–I don’t feel so entitled. I feel like that is a privilege of his interns and closest associates, read: prior paragraph about Ellen Kennedy and her story about existential hamsters. No, what I’m saying is that I will now, beginning this year anyway, begin to seriously consider what makes good fiction good fiction. Is it possible, for instance, to take a brazen daschund named Jingles and turn her into the full-fledged heroine of a 200-page novel, wherein the writer remains true to her canine nature but at the same time tells a good story? I may, in fact, one day find out the answer to the question. Of course, I have yet to create a good novel. Now, before I get too far off-topic here, I must move on.
b. Tao Lin and the Blogosphere’s Impact on Letters
A number of followers, might be you can count me among them, but I am not so recognizable–I developed my own writing style somewhere along the way, independent of the subject or even most of his inspirational sources, such as Richard Yates and Fernando Pessoa, so even if I wanted to become one of “the crowd,” which I’ll list below once again, I’m not cool enough because I do my own thing in terms of tone, speed, word choice, and topical selection. I won’t say my writing is better for it. Maybe I’d be better off as an intern. All of the names I am about say are “followers” of Tao Lin actually have something else entirely in common: they are not failures, in any sense, when it comes to the world of letters. Articles like this will be written about each of them one day, especially the young Zachary German, who already exhibits qualities becoming of a mega-famous writer or something. I inserted that phrase, “or something,” so I can feel, for this moment, like I am one of them. All of this of course goes back to my earlier statements about envy.
- Ellen Kennedy
- Noah Cicero
- Kristen Iskandrian
- Gene Morgan
- Ofelia Hunt
- Chris Killen
- Brandon Scott Gorrell
- Mazie Louise Montgomery
- Tracy Brannstrom
- Colin Bassett
- Jillian Clark
- Zachary German
I have to admit, I have not properly researched all of the names above. I am familiar with nearly all of them, having read electronic literature and small press titles almost exclusively for a over four years now, and I must further admit, the only reason any of their names are included here is because they are listed under the “people” section of Tao Lin’s blog’s sidebar thing. It may in fact be unfair to call any of them Tao Lin’s followers. It certainly goes against certain core principles of mine, to believe that people need leaders. But if Tao Lin is the most notable of all these names, then that makes him, in the old school, their leader, even if some of them are unwilling. For all I know some or all of these people don’t exist, though I have taken the time to acquaint myself with the works of Ofelia Hunt, Zachary German, Ellen Kennedy, Gene Morgan, Noah Cicero, and Brandon Scott Gorrell in one way or another. Anyone who’s pissed about my use of their name here, please feel free to bitch about it in the comments section. I like stirring up shit when I can.
Anyway, before I lose my point…
All of these people blog in one form or another, and all of them also have moved on to impacting other sectors of the world of letters. German, for instance, has been written about in the above linked chapbook from the curiously Baltimore small press, Publishing Genius, in addition to having published some time back an electronic chapbook at Bear Parade. Noah Cicero is sort of famous. Ellen Kennedy’s got her own things going on, aside from winning photography contests for pictures like this one, which is as hilarious as it is a showcase of her solemn Irish Bostonian cuteness. And on and on. I don’t think this article will benefit from going much further than this, I just felt that if I didn’t include this part, a first-time Tao Lin researcher might, upon finishing reading this article, feel confused and cheated because I didn’t mention all these other people who play a big role in his life and times, which are mostly only documented through his published work, whereas many people are more accessible these days through their blogs, that is, many people these days give it all away, whereas Tao Lin will make his biographers have their work cut out for them some day.
A fortune cookie just told me: “You will be recognized and honored as a community leader.” No shit. I wonder if this is how best to do so, by name-dropping a bunch of people I’ve never met in an article about a writer I once did not like. Either way, moving on to Tao’s other endeavors–I felt that no article about Tao Lin would or could be complete without noting his many likewise notable associates. I hope that makes sense, and I am of course ever-deeply apologetic to anyone who feels offended by any portion of this article up to this point, except Carol fucking Novack, which is its own story. Do cordially note that this piece is categorized under “shit-talk.”
c. Lacking Definition, Into Infinity
As a side note, sudden as it may seem to anyone who’s found it posibble to read this coherently and consistently, perhaps even with some level of dedication, up to this point, I, in typical fashion of myself, have written nearly six-thousand words on my subject, claiming to have done and actually having a fair amount of legitimate research, completely missed, or failed to actively investigate, the page which Tao Lin titled “journalists click here.” Overall, I don’t think this will detract too much from my piece as a whole. The reason I don’t think so is that I developed, over the course of writing this for the past week, a writing which I didn’t think would have the power to so burn me out (it’s just a massive undertaking, trying to define someone who actually matters in my niche world), my own varying and transitional form of “shit-talking,” as it were. I didn’t think it would be fair to go further, having just found this knowledgebase, without listing it for future article writers. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ve uncovered much here for the reader, except perhaps their internal desire to learn as much about Tao Lin as they can. This notwithstanding, I proceed. This sounds haughty. I don’t like sounding this way. Ah, well, it’s too late to apologize.
Tao Lin’s characters, from what I have read, are generally anti-heroic, in the traditional sense, which there really is no traditional sense, but I guess what I mean by that is they are anti-heroic in the sense that they lack much in the way of traditionalistic morals and mannerisms: they say and think the things that society has deemed to be weird or “off the beaten path.” This does not set him apart from other writers, if it’s left there. But having interacted with Tao Lin, watched the majority of his available video footage, and read most everything I can find of his on the internet, I have a feeling that Tao Lin does not much need to “get into character” to write his best works. Tao Lin does not need to think too hard about what he is writing. Tao Lin does not need the traditional literary devices that supposedly made the bulk of great literature over the past few centuries–a notion which those who know me best know that I reject, almost unconciously. I think I’m as much a victim of conflicting “schools of thought” as Tao or any writer who’d like to be remembered for doing what he could to produce original work. I hate comparing myself to him, but then again I don’t think that anyone who writes of or about him, for any purpose, be it dedicational like this piece or critical like writings and blurbs earlier mentioned, I don’t think that anyone who uses Tao Lin’s name for any purpose has left this part of it out of their thougth process. The part where you think, if only for a moment: we are alike in these ways, and we are different in these ways, Tao Lin and I. I am nowhere as successful as Tao Lin, in any sense of the word, but I have time.
Anti-hero and firebrand are both good words for a person like Tao Lin, generally speaking. This surely requires at least a little bit of definition.
Over the course of my communications with Tao Lin, he’s changed a few hundred times, with his emotions, like any normal person, except that he is more conscious of it. Back when there were his statements about the benefits of being a robot, and now there is the very real, earnest writerly Tao Lin. I think they all culminate in an anti-hero for a generation of writers disenfranchised by a nation to discontent to focus on anything for long, least of all novels, poetry, and literary journals. Or something. For once that device comes in handy, because the truth is that I almost never really know what I’m talking about, and on the rare occasions that that happens, it’s because we’re talking about something that nobody really cares much about, like web design or Ubuntu Linux or Esperanto or the life and times of someone on the level of notoriety of delphine lecompte, who’s novel I was just looking at, admiring in my little collection, and so I demonstrate my own ability to be subject to the throes of my own emotion. More than once during this writing I have contemplated backing out, because I’ve said too much and had too little to drink. It doesn’t matter though, I’ve spent my entire lack-of-career saying things that would potentially piss a massive group of people off, and somehow I still manage to get something into print every now and again. Right then, moving on.
Firebrand.
There was a very public exchange between Pindeldyboz editor Whitney Pastorek and Tao Lin some time back. I must have been vacant for one reason or another, because the first I heard of it was within the past month. This is alright, though, because it’s better that I didn’t have the chance to get myself involved, because I have a tendency to waste too much time on stuff like that when it flares up, time that I could be using to accomplish things like writing articles no one’s going to write about writers far better than myself. This self-deprecation is a misengineered shotgun, surely, but I think it gets the job done. The exchange pretty much went like this:
Tao Lin submitted some previously published work to Pboz.
Whitney Pastorek got pissed about it, made a fuss. Sent a mass-email to a number of editors informing them of Lin’s deadly sin.
Tao Lin made a blog post barely defending himself, and Pastorek copped to it. A discussion ensued involving more than 100 comments over the course of I don’t know how long, I don’t knwo because that’s one of the many things I can’t stand about fucking blogspot. This is apparently a quote from what Whitney Pastorek said in defense of her very mudslinging move:
Tao, you sent us a story that violated our submission policies by not being completely unpublished prior to submission; you then sent that story several other places without informing them of its acceptance at Pboz or its previous appearance elsewhere. When I asked you if this disrespectful act was true, you said yes; then you wrote that “‘respect’ is abstract and meaninglessness outside of one person and a bad thing to either want or want to give.”
This is where we see Tao Lin the firebrand, not so much in defense of himself, but in his heralding of philosophical terminology in response to the question. Pastorek writes as if what Lin has said here is not true; for is there really a universal meaning of respect, least of all to an exististentialist? I asked friends about this, when it came up on my radar, and some had read her mass-e-mail. Mostly, nobody cared. This is probably what Lin was counting on. There’s so little really happening for the literati as it stands. End of the day, Lin was in a mood to get something published, whatever it actually was, and so he got it published many places. Other writers have done this. But since Tao Lin is “famous,” well, someone had a problem, didn’t she? But end of the day, it was they who accepted the piece. It was they who accepted the need for an argument. She could have just let the whole thing go. Instead she made a stink, and Tao Lin the firebrand burnt her, just a little bit, because truth is his blog probably gets more traffic than many e-mags ou there, and that’s no shit.
I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t really care that much about this part of the article, it’s just something that has to be written, to be fair to Tao Lin. He is a firebrand. A firebrand is,
a person who kindles strife or encourages unrest; an agitator; troublemaker.
At least in his own right. Not so much by personality, because I demonstrated earlier how he deals with conflict, and mentioned it elsewhere in this article; no, he is a firebrand by some of his activities. Some people might say he makes literary America look bad what with his shoplifting and refusal to conform to some very basic standards of human decency on philosophical grounds–but this anarchic nature is what makes him irresistable–if at the same time detestable–and so I believe that, no matter what hardworking bitter asshole editors like Whitney Pastorek have to say–and yes, I do know that Tao Lin has put the whole thing to bed, but Pboz is not one of those sites that come up in my mind when I think of places to go and read right now, even if I hold it in high regards sometimes. I just think it’s at least as inconsequential as some of my own projects, and that being the case, I can’t bring myself to care that much about it, so I’m saying I don’t care how she thinks of me. I used to publish people I couldn’t stand on those grounds. Maybe I still do that. I’m never going to tell you everything, dear reader, but I’ll be honest in what I do tell.
So, this is some of the worst justification for throwing around words like anti-hero and firebrand, ever, but so be it. It was a necessary part of the article, and maybe someday someone else can do it better. Like someone who’s had the pleasure of carousing with Tao Lin and the cool emo vegan kids he writes for. And for the sake of time, I had to leave out the whole thing with the editor of Action Books, which I was around for. Do note that none of the people mentioned in this article were contacted for comment. I don’t care enough to do that. That’s just me being an asshole stunt artist, of course, quite burned out on strife within a world so small already. You know, I was googling for poetry magazines today, and I figured out that the kinds of places I love are even more niche than poetry itself, and that’s scary. That makes me feel isolated and confused about all my aspirations, but I’m dealing with it through pure denial and heinous ignorance. Forgive me, Whitney Pastorek, and everyone else. Just forgive me. I’ve done some things that I’m not too proud. My summers have all been self-constructed gallows. I’m no good at hanging around. Surfacing, resurfacing. So yes, forgive me if I don’t care about your magazine anymore, if I don’t care about my saleability or public appeal, and for fading your picture to grayscale because I think that technicolor is ruining everything delicious about life.
Part IV: Existential Hamsters, Ellen Kennedy,
and The Ellen Frances Debacle
You know, there are many times I’ll be e-stalking Tao Lin, who has consumed this entire day from a couple thousand miles away, and I’ll come across something about Hamsters. The man has an obsession, a love, a fascination with the critters. I can’t ever tell if he’s being deadly serious, but one way to get his attention is to bring the animal up. No Tao Lin article is complete without mention of hamsters. Not to mention existentialism.
I’ve only ever seen a few hamsters in my life, and I could easily confuse them with guinea pigs. Perhaps they’re the same things. I don’t know. I do know that I very much enjoy the stories by Tao Lin and others wherein hamsters are mentioned. Ellen Kennedy’s earlier mentioned story, “A Pale White Hamster Yawns In Bed,” is perhaps the crowned achievement of this niche genre type thing, or something. It’s really very good. And of course Tao Lin’s piece in Esquire was no exception. I would interview him further about this matter, but he probably feels it’s self-explanatory, and perhaps it is. End of the day, writing this article is one more thing on a long list of bullets, things that need to get done, things I’ve committed myself to, and so forth, and so, like, I don’t get the hamster thing.
I do get that maybe Ellen Kennedy and Tao Lin were at one time lovers, or still are, and I think that in terms of pure writing and stylistic integrity, they compliment each other very well. Ellen Kennedy should write more. That is all.
I didn’t know what Existentialism was, not really, until my friend explained it to me like this:
I was hoping that would help people understand the whole existential thing who are as retarded as I happen to be.
The Ellen Frances debacle is this: she got mad because I connected her to Tao Lin here on my blog, then acted like she wasn’t mad, and I don’t know, all I was saying was that I somehow found her through Tao Lin, and yes, I admitted that I love to judge people, and I do, and I’ve done so about a hundred times in this article.
And I think that’s all there is to say. This is longer than almost anything I’ve ever written. Tao Lin is a good man, a good writer, and, this is not a lukewarm article. This article was written by a fan of Tao Lin’s. This is Tao Lin fan lit. Or something. This is not a good analysis, and I’m not even feeling defensive about it. I put a lot of time into this. I could have put it into a lot of other things, but today I chose this. Along with some orange chicken, a pot of coffee, one episode of Brotherhood, and a couple tweaks to a website. Plus I’ve been soliciting people for an issue of a poetry magazine. I feel happy about my current station in life, as miserable as it will get tomorrow when I return to work, and I hope to, if nothing else, have revived or installed some interest in my reader’s regarding the work and life of Tao Lin. Buy his book if you can afford it, or read his stuff online if you cannot. The appendix will be a list of important stuff regarding him, things that you can access for free which you should access for free. Plus a few others. That is all. Thank you for reading.
P. H. Madore was once a finalist in Riot Lit’s novel contest. That novel sucked, but you can read it and other stuff through his website, freemadore.
Appendix / Mostly Robbed From Tao Lin’s Journalist Directory
SELECTED PRESS
Feature, The Telegraph (UK) (August, 2008)
Feature, De Zeit (Germany) (June, 2008)
Feature, Paste Magazine (May, 2008)
Feature, Time Out New York
Feature, South China Morning Post
Review, COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY / The Brooklyn Rail
Review, COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY / The Constant Critic
Review, EEEEE EEE EEEE & BED / San Francisco Bay Guardian
Review, EEEEE EEE EEEE & BED / Bookmunch
Review, EEEEE EEE EEEE / Bookslut
Review, BED / The Stranger
Review, YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM / Time Out New York
Interview, NYU Local (September, 2008)
Interview, BBC Radio 2, “The Chris Evans Show” (August, 2008)
Interview, 3AM: Magazine (May, 2008)
Interview, Psychopedia (May, 2008)
Interview, ANP Quarterly Issue 10
Interview, Bookslut
Interview, Popmatters
Interview, Litpark
SELECTED LITERATURE
Poems, “Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy” (first seven pages)
Poems, “A Stoic Philosophy…” “The Power of Ethical Reasoning“
Poem, “I’m Going To Touch You Very Hard“
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“
Story, “The Professional Sasquatch“
Story, “The Gay Stepdad“
Story, “The Existentially Fucked Megamouth Shark“
Story, “We Will Drink our Coffee and Complete our Novels…“
Story, “Love is a Thing on Sale For More Money Than There Exists“
Story, “Leftover Crack in Red Hook“
Story, “Sex After Not Seeing Each Other For A Few Days“
Story, “Shoplifting from American Apparel“
Story, “Exactly What I Want“
Story, “Should“
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
Essay, Bed (Largeheartedboy’s Booknotes)
Essay, Cho Seung-Hui
Essay, Novel Writing
oh man – i just made it to the end of this beast. In the process I have lost 12 pounds, suffered an ailment in which my eyes would not lubricate themselves and peed myself just so I wouldn’t have to lose time stopping to find a port-a-potty.
Where’s my medal?
Good article
Thank you Adam Humphreys and Jac Jemc for reading and commenting.
congratulations
that was like War & Peace, but with more hamsters.
i now will copy and paste this into Wikipedia.
Good.
one time i approached tao lin in the street and i asked him for an autograph. he looked at me in silence for ten seconds then pushed me in front of a bus. later he broke into my home and violently beat my elderly grandmother into a coma.
just order one of his books from him personally and tell him you want it signed.
by the way he is soon to be the proud recipient of my review copy of your chapbook.
[...] or might not be interested to know that a person named P.H. Madore has posted something he calls 8,794 Rambling Words On Tao Lin. I don’t know what it is about Tao that somehow, simply by existing in the world, he is able [...]