/lit/ - Literature

Saw it for 50 cents at the used book store and still didn't buy it..sorry tao, i'm just indifferent towards your books.

Tao is autistic. What did you expect? Coherency?

lol is he really autistic. i could see that from his videos and kind of from his writing but idk i think he is just socially retarded

is the cover supposed to be a nod to goatse?

David Foster Wallace is autistic and /lit/ loves him.
Tao Lin is autistic and /lit/ hates him for it.

I mean, I'm not saying Tao Lin is good, but dammit /lit/

>>1660828
>David Foster Wallace is autistic and /lit/ loves him.
/lit/ has really gone to shit...

AFTER "ULYSSES", "FINNEGANS WAKE", GRAVITY'S RAINBOW", "INFINITE JEST", "NAKED LUNCH", "ON THE ROAD", ETCETERA ETCETERA, PEOPLE STILL COMPLAIN AND GETS INDIGNATED BY UNCONVENTIONAL OR "ODD WRITING".

>MY FACE.

oh we're talking about tao lin?
http://www.bearparade.com/hikikomori/

my friend made me read through all 99 of these things
i'm not even sure if this was supposed to be funny or not or poetic or something i was just confused as all fuck
time well wasted i guess?

>>1660823

o shit

i haven't read this, but does the book have anything to do with yates? i'm only interested because of yates - as he's one of my all-time favs

>>1660840
OP is complaining that the style is all he can find interesting about Lin's books.

Get out of here, Tao Lin.

>>1660871

>came to me that tao lin just threw together a bunch of crap from gmail along with an awful 'story line' [if you can even call it that] and decided to leave everything up to interpretation, hoping people would try to find some meaning or deeper message in it. he did all this as a stupid money making scheme

>>1660866
no, not at all. i think he is progressively reading a book by him over the course of like 6 months tho. but nothing about the author, aside from his name here and there.

>>1660881
>the only thing this guy has is a style. not a very good one, but definably a distinguishable one.

>>1660891

THAT DOES NOT AFFIRM OR DENY MY INDIRECT REMARK ABOUT OP'S WHINING AT TAO LIN'S "ODD WRITING".

>>1660890

well that's disappointing.

>>1660898
OP didnt whine about the style. it's the only thing he found notable.

>>1660898
>>1660891
this is cute, you two are arguing about me ;)

-op

>>1660840

>categorizing ulysses with gook fuck i stack gook fucks 7 feet high like sand bags used to stack gook fucks like sand bags used to stack gook fucks seven feet high

>>1660904
who's right?

>OP didnt whine about the style. it's the only thing he found notable.

perfect

>>1660903

HE COMPLAINED AND THEN REMARKED THAT AT LEAST IT IS DISTINGUISHABLE.

>>1660904

GET OVER YOURSELF, WE ARE ARGUING FOR OWN SAKES.

the tripfag

its pretty clear.

>>1660915
>OUR

(SEE, FAGGATRON? YOU MADE ME FAIL).

>>1660915
comparing his writing to gmail is not complaining that its too odd. a gmail chat is ordinary if anything.

>>1660918
swat up on your high school english bud.

>>1660922

>threw together a bunch of crap from gmail along with an awful 'story line'

>Two tripfags arguing over the semantics of a statement made about Tao Lin, while Tao Lin eggs them on in a thread Tao Lin started about himself.

never change, /lit/

>>1660925
i have already commented on the gmail thing. if you think bringing his comment on the plot is relevant you're an idiot. just admit you were wrong and stop greentexting stuff for no reason.

>>1660928

>threw together a bunch of crap from gmail along with an awful 'story line'
>crap
>awful

>>1660931
ordinary things can be crap or awful. if i paste my facebook shoutbox onto /lit/ as original poetry it would receive similar criticism.

crap != odd
awful != odd

SUCK IT

>>1660939

TYBRAX'S CURRENT STATUS:

[ X ] SLIGHTLY MAD.
[ X ] TOLD.

>>1660939
!WvWWh.l.CE is fan of tao lin

>>1660984
not read him im waiting until someone OCR's his stuff.

so far on this forum, there have been no haters. but, i never knew a thing about tao lin before reading a negative review of this book in a book review magazine. the nature of the negativity was such that i felt that the book was going to be a fine read.

i loved the style - it fit the subject matter and seeming "point" of the piece. what you have here is two people in a destructive, all-consuming relationship that is portrayed as having no defined beginning point or end point. the feeling you get in reading this book is one of miscommunication, which is a natural feeling you might get considering the medium through which the characters are communicating. all is to be inferred, and meaning is made as much by the words on a page (screen) as by the insecurities of the characters interacting with the words on the screen.

how can you ever really know someone? what is truth in a relationship? unless you are with a person 100% of the time, how can you know what they are up to? isn't gchat and texting etc. advertised as something that would help us stay closer to each other? then why the ability to lie so freely? or, is it just changing our perception of what a lie is? it seems that lies, in tao lin's book are defined in a way i would define secrets, or even as banal information remaining unknown for any number of reasons. is this a function of our newer ways of communicating? that a lie is anything that is unknown... lots to deal with in lin's book concerning the relationship between love and communication.

the mother character didn't make a lot of sense to me. i couldn't tell what her motives or true nature were. and, the end was frustratingly ambiguous - unless i missed something

>>1660989
some of his short stories are available on his blog but maybe you just want to read his novels, idk

>>1661014
this is exactly what i mean

what you get from this book is a lot of assumptions, and implications. i spent a good hour after reading this before i came to my conclusion, that there probably isnt a lot of meaning to this book, tao just left it up to interpretation.

>the mother character didn't make a lot of sense to me. i couldn't tell what her motives or true nature were.

this is a great example of what im trying to say, someone who looked as far into this book as you still came out with things [one of the three main characters, at that] that he just cant 'force' any meaning too.

>>1661044

>that he just cant 'force' any meaning too.

that you just cant 'force' any meaning too.

sorry

Tao Lin is great, his books probably take you longer to read than they took him to write, and he's become, for an experimental novelist, famous in a very short space of time.

>>1661067
he actually puts a bit more effort into his books than you might think. he's said in an interview that he spends months staring at them and changing words/moving them around until they turn out in a way he likes. you might say that sounds like bullshit but I don't see any reason not to believe him

>>1661110
this guy stares at tons of shit for hours. i stick with my though

>>1661110

He could spend months doing it in offhand moments. I have read a number of his interviews and see no reason to believe his estimates of 200 hours for a short story or whatever, he's obviously saying that to see how much people will believe.

>>1661110
Wait, a writer who spends time.. writing? TAO MUST BE DEDICATED

>>1661334
You are retarded.