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Tao Lin
Tao Lin in Japan, 2010
Born	(1983-07-02) July 2, 1983 (age 41) Alexandria, Virginia
Occupation	Novelist, poet
Nationality	United States
Genre	Literary fiction, poetry, Kmart realism
Notable works	Taipei, Bed, Richard Yates, Shoplifting from American Apparel
Spouse	Megan Boyle (separated)
Website
http://www.taolin.info

Tao Lin (Traditional Chinese: 林 韜, Simplified Chinese: 林 韬, Pinyin: Lín Tāo, born July 2, 1983) is an American novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer, and artist. He has published three novels, two books of poetry, one short story collection, and one novella in print as well as an extensive assortment of online content. His third novel, Taipei, was published by Vintage on June 4, 2013.

In November 2008 Lin founded Muumuu House, an independent publishing house, and in 2010 he co-founded MDMAfilms, an independent film production company.

Personal life

Tao Lin was born to Taiwanese parents and lives in New York City. He graduated from New York University in 2005 with a B.A. in journalism. He has lectured on his writing and art at Vassar, Kansas City Art Institute, Columbia College, UNC Chapel Hill, and other universities and museums, including The Museum of Modern Art and The New Museum. In 2012 he taught a graduate course at Sarah Lawrence College called "The Contemporary Short Story",.

Lin has one brother who also lives in New York; their father is a retired physics professor who is the inventor of the flying-spot LASIK, a laser procedure for vision correction (US pat. #5520679, 1991).

Critical response

Lin's writing has attracted both negative and positive attention from various publications. Gawker once referred to him as "maybe perhaps the single most irritating person we've ever had to deal with", though he was later "pardoned". After reading this criticism, however, Lin retaliated by completely covering the front door of the Gawker office building with stickers bearing Britney Spears' name. Later, Gawker published a piece Lin had written. L Magazine said, "We've long been deeply irked by Lin's vacuous posturing and 'I know you are but what am I' dorm-room philosophizing..." Sam Anderson, in New York Magazine, wrote, "Dismissing Lin, however, ignores the fact that he is deeply smart, funny, and head-over-heels dedicated in exactly the way we like our young artists to be." Miranda July has praised his work as "moving and necessary."

An article in The Atlantic described Lin as having a "fairly staggering" knack for self-promotion. The same article said "there's something unusual about a writer being so transparent, so ready to tell you every insignificant detail of a seemingly eventful day, so aware of his next novel's word count, yet also remaining so opaque, mysterious "inscrutable.""

Lin's work has increasingly been praised in the UK, including positive reviews from The Guardian and Times Literary Supplement, who, reviewing Taipei in 2013, said Lin was "a daring, urgent voice for a malfunctioning age," and a 2010 career overview from London Review of Books.

An article in The Asian American Literary Review in 2012, reviewing Lin's prose books, stated:

David Foster Wallace concluded “E Unabus Pluram” with the hope that one day, a writer, bilingual in both irony and sincerity, would be able to engage a post-ironic audience without need of the essentially terminal narrative armaments his postmodern forefathers bequeathed her (or him). And if Tao Lin has one gift, it is a biplanar ability to convince a generation of sincerity-starved young men and women to embrace his realist, single-entendre fiction while convincingly presenting himself as the inveterately hip jester of the online-spawned lit scene. Replete with single quotes, unblinking unseriousness, the word ‘bro,’ and punk-y shots at the corporate literary edifice, Lin’s very funny, very “self-aware” Internet presence is a signal to MacBook owners the world over that he is, most importantly, one of them. Lin’s fiction and poetry, replete with a baseline sadness, blips of absurdity, and a monastic commitment to personal truth, has the freshly coined and postmodernity-prescribed ability to seize the techno-catatonic comment-section dwellers who were repulsed or charmed enough by online Lin to face a set of his sentences and make abundantly clear that, yes, he does know what it’s like to exist online yet have to honestly live offline.

Bret Easton Ellis tweeted "With "Taipei" Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation, which doesn't mean that "Taipei" isn't a boring novel..." Lin responded to this criticism by speeding up his voice in an interview with The Organist and having Kool A.D. and Kitty Pryde read excerpts of Taipei as rapidly as possible.

Books

you are a little bit happier than i am (2006)

In November 2006 Lin's first book, a poetry collection titled you are a little bit happier than i am, was published. It was the winner of Action Books' December Prize and has been a small-press bestseller.

Eeeee Eee Eeee & Bed (2007)

In May 2007 Lin's first novel, Eeeee Eee Eeee, and first story collection, Bed were published simultaneously. Of the stories, Jennifer Bassett, writing in KGB Lit Journal, said: "In structure and tone, they have the feel of early Lorrie Moore and Deborah Eisenberg. Like Moore's characters, there are a lot of plays on language and within each story, a return to the same images or ideas -- or jokes. And like Moore, most of these characters live in New York, are unemployed or recently employed, and are originally from somewhere more provincial (Florida in Lin's case, Wisconsin in Moore's). However, Lin knows to dig a little deeper into his characters--something we see in Moore's later stories, but less so in her early ones."

They were ignored by most mainstream media but have since been referenced in The Independent (who called Eeeee Eee Eeee "a wonderfully deadpan joke") and The New York Times who called Lin a "deadpan literary trickster" in reference to Eeeee Eee Eeee.

cognitive-behavioral therapy (2008)

In May 2008 Lin's second poetry collection, cognitive-behavioral therapy was published.

The poem "room night" from this collection was anthologized in Wave Books' State of the Union. A French translation was published by Au Diable Vauvert in 2012.

Shoplifting from American Apparel (2009)

In September 2009 Lin's novella, Shoplifting from American Apparel, was published to mixed reviews. The Guardian said, "Trancelike and often hilarious… Lin's writing is 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." The Village Voice called it a "fragile, elusive book." Bookslut said, "it shares an affected childishness with bands like The Moldy Peaches and it has a put-on weirdness reminiscent of Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You." Time Out New York said, "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." San Francisco Chronicle said, “Tao Lin's sly, forlorn, deadpan humor jumps off the page will delight fans of everyone from Mark Twain to Michelle Tea.” Los Angeles Times said, "Camus' The Stranger or sociopath?" while Austin Chronicle called it "scathingly funny" and said that "it might just be the future of literature." Another reviewer described it as "a vehicle...for self-promotion."

In an interview aired December 2009 with Michael Silverblatt on KCRW's Bookworm Silverblatt called the novella "the purest example so far of the minimalist aesthetic as it used to be enunciated" and Lin described the novella's style as deliberately "concrete, with all the focus on surface details, with no sentences devoted to thoughts or feelings, and I think that results in a kind of themelessness, that, in its lack of focus on anything else, the theme becomes, to me, the passage of time."

In December 2009 clothing retailer Urban Outfitters began selling Shoplifting from American Apparel in its stores.

Richard Yates (2010)

Published September 7, 2010, by Melville House, Richard Yates is Lin's second novel.

In a book review in The New York Times, Charles Bock described the book as "more interesting as a concept than as an actual narrative", adding, "By the time I reached the last 50 pages, each time the characters said they wanted to kill themselves, I knew exactly how they felt."

Taipei (2013)

On February 23, 2013, Publishers Weekly awarded Taipei a starred review, predicting it would be Lin's "breakout" book and describing it as "a novel about disaffection that's oddly affecting" and "a book without an ounce of self-pity, melodrama, or posturing."

Taipei was published by Vintage on June 4, 2013, to mostly positive reviews. Novelist Benjamin Lytal, writing in the New York Observer, called it Lin's "modernist masterpiece." Lytal: "e should stop calling Tao Lin the voice of his generation. Taipei, his new novel, has less to do with his generation than with the literary tradition of Knut Hamsun, Ernest Hemingway, and Robert Musil." Slate: Taipei casts a surprisingly introspective eye on the spare, 21st-century landscape Lin has such a knack for depicting."

New York Times critic Dwight Garner wrote, "I loathe reviews in which a critic claims to have love-hate feelings about a work of art. It’s a way of having no opinion at all. But I love and hate Taipei."

On June 18, writing for The Daily Beast, critic Emily Witt said in a highly positive review:

Taipei is exactly the kind of book I hoped Tao Lin would one day write. He is one of the few fiction writers around who engages with contemporary life, rather than treating his writing online as existing in opposition to or apart from the hallowed analog space of the novel. He’s consistently good for a few laughs and writes in a singular style already much imitated by his many sycophants on the Internet. Some people like Tao Lin for solely these reasons, or treat him as a sort of novelty or joke. But Lin can also produce the feelings of existential wonder that all good novelists provoke. His writing reveals the hyperbole in conversational language that we use, it seems, to make up for living lives where equanimity and well-adjustment are the most valued attributes, where human emotions are pathologized into illness: we do not fall in love, we become “obsessed”; we do not dislike, we “hate”. We manipulate ourselves chemically to avoid acting “crazy.”

On June 30, in The New York Times Book Review, Clancy Martin wrote:

His writing is weird, upsetting, memorable, honest — and it’s only getting better But I didn’t anticipate Taipei, his latest, which is, to put it bluntly, a gigantic leap forward. Here we have a serious, first-rate novelist putting all his skills to work. Taipei is a love story, and although it’s Lin’s third novel it’s also, in a sense, a classic first novel: it’s semi-autobiographical (Lin has described it as the distillation of 25,000 pages of memory) and it’s a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story about a young man who learns, through love, that life is larger than he thought it was.

On July 5 The New York Times Book Review awarded Taipei an Editors' Choice distinction. It was the only paperback on the list for the week.

On KCRW's Bookworm, in a conversation with Lin, Michael Silverblatt called it, "The most moving depiction of the way we live now," saying that it was "unbearably moving."

It was included on best book of the year lists by Times Literary Supplement, Village Voice, Slate, Salon, Bookforum, The Week, Maisonneuve, Complex, among others.

MDMAfilms

Lin co-founded, with Megan Boyle, the film company MDMAfilms in late 2010.

Bibliography

eBooks

• hikikomori, bear parade, 2006.
• Today The Sky is Blue and White with Bright Blue Spots and a Small Pale Moon and I Will Destroy Our Relationship Today, bear parade, 2006.
• this emotion was a little e-book, bear parade, 2006.

Poetry

• you are a little bit happier than i am, Action Books, 2006.
• cognitive-behavioral therapy, Melville House, 2008.

Novels

• Eeeee Eee Eeee, Melville House, 2007.
• Richard Yates, Melville House, 2010.
• Taipei, Vintage Books, 2013.

Novellas

• Shoplifting from American Apparel, Melville House, 2009.

Stories

• Bed, Melville House, 2007.

Selected work available online

Fiction

• Sasquatch from Bed
• Love is a Thing on Sale for More Money Than There Exists from Bed
• Jawbreaker's Major-Label Album at Vice
• How To Give A Reading on Mushrooms at Thought Catalog
• Excerpt of Taipei at Vice
• Excerpt of Richard Yates at Hipster Runoff

Poetry

• ugly fish poem at Coconut
• 2 poems at Coconut
• 12 poems at The Lifted Brow
• i went fishing with my family when i was five at Monkeybicyle

Essays

• Final Fantasy III at Granta
• Memories of the Q&A portions of some of my Taipei events at Granta
• When I Moved Online in New York Times
• Essay about the future of the novel in New York Observer
• An Account of Being Arrested For Trespassing NYU's Bookstore at Gawker
• Koko, The "Talking" Gorilla at Thought Catalog
• Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami at Thought Catalog
• Only Connect at Poetry Foundation
• Relationship Poems at Poetry Foundation
• Self-profile in The Stranger
• What I Can Tell You About Seattle Based on the People I've Met Who Are From There at The Stranger
• The Levels of Greatness a Fiction Writer Can Achieve in America at The Stranger

References

1. Leung, Julie (April 3, 2009). "Eclectic Writer Tao Lin Shows Us 'The Way'". Mochi Magazine. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
2. Vilensky, Mike (June 28, 2012). "'The Bullpen Is Mightier'". WSJ. Retrieved November 26, 2012.
3. Taipei. Vintage. June 4, 2013. ISBN 0307950174.
4. Tao Lin Now Selling Videos of Himself on Ecstasy to Pay the Rent: An Interview with MDMAfilms, L Magazine
5. Small Press Points, Poets & Writers
6. Roy, Jessica. "NYU Alum and Poet Tao Lin Doesn't Care Whether or Not You Think Print Is Dead". NYU Local.
7. "The Contemporary Short Story". Slc.edu. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
8. Lin, Tao (2013-09-21). "When I Moved Online". The New York Times.
9. "Tao Lin by David Shapiro Jr".
10. "Ophthalmic surgery method using non-contact scanning laser". ARCHPATENT.
11. Gould, Emily (2007-07-27). "Now We Also Hate Miranda July". Gawker. Retrieved 2009-03-13.
12. Gould, Emily (2007-12-04). "Pardons". Gawker. Retrieved 2009-03-12.
13. "An Account of Being Arrested for 'Trespassing' NYU's Bookstore". Gawker.com. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
14. Kyzer, Larissa. "The Best of NYC LETTERS | Books | The L Magazine - New York City's Local Event and Arts & Culture Guide". The L Magazine. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
15. Anderson, Sam (2009-01-11). "Tao Lin, Lit Boy - The All New Issue - New York Magazine". Nymag.com. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
16. "Shoplifting From American Apparell". Melville House.
17. Hua Hsu. "Terminal Boredom: Reading Tao Lin" retrieved August 25, 2010 from www.atlantic.com.
18. Poole, Steven (2009-11-14). "Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin – Book review". The Guardian. London.
19. Lezard, Nicholas (2010-11-13). "Richard Yates by Tao Lin – review". The Guardian. London.
20. "Article". The Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 2014-04-06. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help)
21. Haglund, David (October 21, 2010). "A Kind of Gnawing Offness". London Review of Books. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
22. X, Vaman Tyrone (3 April 2012). "Book Review: Tao Lin's Richard Yates, Shoplifting at American Apparel, and Bed". Asian American Literary Review. 3 (1): 67–90. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
23. Easton Ellis, Brett. "With "Taipei" Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation, which doesn't mean that "Taipei" isn't a boring novel..." Twitter. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
24. Simonini, Ross. "Richard, The Angel of Death". May 3rd, 2014. The Organist. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
25. "Poetry Bestsellers July Aug 2008 : Small Press Distribution". Spdbooks.org. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
26. "Poetry Bestsellers September 2007 : Small Press Distribution". Spdbooks.org. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
27. "Tao Lin's BED and EEEEE EEE EEEE". KGB Bar & Lit Journal. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
28. Thorne, Matt (2010-06-04). "Beatrice and Virgil, By Yann Martel". The Independent. London.
29. Vizzini, Ned (2010-05-06). "Bridge Between Generations". The New York Times.
30. "Melville House Publishing | Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy". Mhpbooks.com. Retrieved 2014-04-29.
31. "State of the Union | Wave Books". Wavepoetry.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
33. Poole, Steven (2009-11-14). "Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2010-05-24.
34. Ben Beitler (2009-09-08). "Tao Lin's Five-Finger Discount - Page 1 - Books - New York". Village Voice. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
35. Kati Nolfi. "Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin". Bookslut. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
36. "Tao Lin - Shoplifting from American Apparel - Book review - Time Out New York". Newyork.timeout.com. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
37. Messer, Ari (2009-10-01). "Tao Lin: 'Shoplifting from American Apparel'". The San Francisco Chronicle.
38. "Discoveries: 'Shoplifting From American Apparel'". Los Angeles Times. 2009-09-27. Retrieved 2010-05-24.
39. "Austin Books: Review - Shoplifting From American Apparel". AustinChronicle.com. 2009-10-09. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
40. Nolfi, Katie (December 6, 2009). "Review a Day: Shoplifting from American Apparel". Powell's Books. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
41. ^ "Bookworm: Tao Lin". KCRW. December 3, 2009. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
42. Schmidt, Mackenzie (2009-12-16). "Urban Outfitters Is Actually Selling Tao Lin's Novella Shoplifting at American Apparel - New York News - Runnin' Scared". Blogs.villagevoice.com. Retrieved 2010-09-28.
43. Roy, Jessica (2009-09-25). "NYU Alum and Poet Tao Lin Doesn't Care Whether or Not You Think Print Is Dead". NYU Local. Retrieved 2009-03-13.
44. Charles Bock (September 24, 2010). "Book Review - Richard Yates - By Tao Lin - NYTimes.com". nytimes.com. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
45. "Fiction Review: Taipei by Tao Lin. Vintage, $14.95 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-0-307-95017-8". Publishersweekly.com. 2013-02-25. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
46. Lytal, Benjamin (2013-06-05). "Gchat Is a Noble Pursuit: Tao Lin's Modernist Masterpiece". Observer. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
47. Leung, Chuck (2013-06-07). "Tao Lin's Taipei reviewed: techy, drug-fueled, existential fiction. - Slate Magazine". Slate.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
48. Garner, Dwight (2013-06-04). "'Taipei,' by Tao Lin". The New York Times.
49. Emily Witt (2013-06-18). "The Gpistolary Novel: Tao Lin's "Taipei"". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
50. "Editors' Choice". The New York Times. 2013-07-05.
51. "Tao Lin: Taipei - Bookworm on KCRW 89.9 FM". Kcrw.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
52. "Books of the Year". The Times Literary Supplement. 27 November 2013. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
53. "Our Favorite Books of 2013 - - Books - New York". Village Voice. 2013-12-18. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
54. Staff, Slate (2013-11-30). "Slate staff picks for best books of 2013". Slate.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
55. Christian Lorentzen (2013-12-19). "the best novels of 2013". Bookforum.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
56. Butler, Blake (2013-12-11). "All the Books I Read in 2013 | VICE Canada". Vice.com. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
57. "Taipei — The Best Books of 2013". Complex. 2013-12-16. Retrieved 2014-04-06.
58. Tao Lin Now Selling Videos of Himself on Ecstasy to Pay the Rent: An Interview with MDMA Films, L Magazine

External links

• Official site
• Author's Twitter account
• Interview with the author (2009) by KCRW's Bookworm
• Interview with the author (2013) by KCRW's Bookworm
• Interview with the author by Deb Olin Unferth at The Millions
• Interview with the author by Granta
• Career Overview in London Review of Books
• Profile in Wall Street Journal
• Profile in New York Observer
• Profile in New York Magazine
• Review of Taipei in The Daily Beast
• Review of Taipei in New York Observer
• Review of Taipei in New York Times by Dwight Gardner
• Review of Taipei in New York Times Book Review by Clancy Martin
• Review of Taipei in Slate
• Review of Taipei in Publishers Weekly
• Review of Richard Yates in New York Times Book Review
• Review of Richard Yates in The Guardian
• Review of Richard Yates in Boston Globe
• Review of Shoplifting from American Apparel in San Francisco Guardian
• Review of Shoplifting from American Apparel in The Guardian

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• 1983 births
• 21st-century American novelists
• American male novelists
• American people of Taiwanese descent
• American poets
• American short story writers
• American writers of Chinese descent
• Living people
• People from Brooklyn
• New York University alumni
• Writers from New York City
• Writers from Florida
• Alternative literature
• Male short story writers