Tao Lin has published two books of poetry, the novel Eeeee Eee Eeee, the short story collection Bed and most recently the autobiographical novella Shoplifting From American Apparel. His style is spare, governed by omission and slick transitions that startle and engage the reader from sentence to sentence. The characters in Tao Lin’s work drink smoothies, use g-chat and steal, all with equal gravity, or lack thereof. His prose also reveals a preference for surface detail over interior exploration of character with the surprising effect of illuminating emotion.
Given his inclination for these stylistic elements, Tao Lin’s stated reverence for certain authors such as Ann Beattie, Frederick Barthelme, and Joy Williams seems natural. He even stated in a 2008 blog post for This Recording that he thinks his writing is “most influenced by “K-Mart Realism,”” (a name given to those writers who adopt some of these stylistic elements and includes the writers just named). However, he’s aware that the term “K-Mart Realism” is not exactly used as a compliment. In that same blog post, he stated, “K-Mart Realism” is a term a New York Times journalist or I think probably Tom Wolfe made up to group a lot of writers together in a shit-talking way.”
One of the earlier moments of “shit-talking” with respect to the K-Mart Realists, before there was even any name for the group, occurred in a 1986 essay for Harper’s Magazine called “Less is Less: The Dwindling American Short Story,” by Madison Smartt Bell in which Bell maligned the new “school” of writers and identified some of its common traits: “a trim “minimal” style, an obsessive concern for surface detail, a tendency to ignore or eliminate distinctions among the people it renders, and a studiedly deterministic, at times nihilistic, vision of the world.” Tom Wolfe followed up with an essay in 1989, “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” in which he scoffed at K-Mart Realists for ignoring expansive social issues in favor of “tiny domestic ones.”
In gamesome defense of those who he might call his literary antecedents, Tao Lin posted a piece in 2005 entitled “k-mart, k-mart realism; the rise, struggle, decline of.” In the post, he provided such benchmarks for “K-Mart Realism” as “Raymond Carver publishes Cathedral” (in rise), “k-mart buys stake in OfficeMax” (in struggle), and about Ann Beattie, “complaining about how now at readings people just ask her “specious questions to elicit amusing answers” (in decline). While he’s been called out for being spare, no one’s ever blamed Tao Lin for not having a sense of humor.
I wanted to engage Tao Lin on the subject of “K-Mart Realism,” the territory purportedly defined by the term and where he stands in relation to this territory. This interview was conducted in many places including, but not limited to, a university library in New York, an airplane flying from New York to Los Angeles, an apartment in Santa Monica, a cafe in Santa Monica, a bus going from Santa Monica to Los Angeles, a theater in New York, and a Whole Foods in Pasadena. Tao Lin and I were never in the same place at the same time.
The Rumpus: Are there any writers whose work has influenced your writing? And if so, who and in what way?
Tao Lin: My first book of fiction, BED, a collection of stories, was very influenced by Lorrie Moore’s short stories,
from LIKE LIFE mostly, her prose style and tone and also a lot by the structure of her stories, how she would start stories, how exactly she would change scenes or “place” the reader in a new scene. I also studied how she ordered the stories in LIKE LIFE and thought about that when organizing BED. I was also influenced, in some of the stories in BED, by Jean Rhys’ tone in GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT and Joy Williams’ sense of humor.
My first novel, EEEEE EEE EEEE, was very influenced by Ann Beattie’s CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER. I liked what she focused on with her characters, the way she would repeat single words or phrases to reference something earlier, in a manner like it was the character “idly remembering” or “being reminded suddenly” of something earlier, and do that using the same things throughout the entire novel almost. I liked that her characters were familiar enough with each other to be joking or sarcastic most of the time in a friendly manner. I liked that there were many scenes of the characters sitting around talking or eating food. I liked the frequent lack of transitional or self-referencing words like “again” or “but” or “so” or “then.” I liked the non-sequitur style of description or narration and lack of pressure, it seemed to me, to have sentence variety. I liked how the prose, I thought, was styled in a way to represent how people think. I was conscious of liking all those things, and wanting to reproduce them, in forms that were more artistically satisfying to me (I liked all those things but they weren’t completely ideal, to me), in the realistic sections of EEEEE EEE EEEE. The “Ellen” sections in EEEEE EEE EEEE are influenced by Joy Williams’ THE QUICK AND THE DEAD. The “animal” sections in EEEEE EEE EEEE are influenced, in prose style and pacing, by Noah Cicero’s THE HUMAN WAR.
My first novella, SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL, is not, I think, influenced by one book or author enough for me to name an influence. At this point I’ve been influenced to different degrees by a large enough amount of writers and books, I feel, that one could read my writing and not find an apparent influence, except maybe a larger thing like “minimalism” or “Kmart Realism” or “realism” or something.
Rumpus: Would you call yourself a “K-Mart Realist”?
Tao Lin: In certain situations, for extraliterary reasons and in a to-some-degree ironic tone, I might. But in terms of my writing I don’t think I would, because I don’t really enjoy grouping writers together except sarcastically or to say something about journalism or the media. I honestly view the works of Frederick Barthelme and Joy Williams and Ann Beattie and Mary Robison and Bobbie Ann Mason and Raymond Carver as distinct and separate from one another. I honestly feel that if you showed me a new short story by each of those writers I would be able to tell you which writer wrote it (except maybe Carver, though still I would be able to deduce the answer by canceling out the other writers probably).
Rumpus: There is a lack of affect to the characters in Shoplifting From American Apparel (“SFAA“). They are rendered no more or less valuable than the objects alongside which they are described. Is this flattening of value something that is intentional on your part?
Tao Lin: To me the characters in SFAA experience emotions the same as other humans and maybe even more intensely than other humans. Luis talks about how he feels like his chest is going to explode. Sam talks about how he feels like his face is going to float away from his skull (to emo music). But I decided not to include sentences about the characters’ emotions or thoughts. In part because I wanted to write in a certain prose style’s most extreme form. One “by-product” or “side-effect” of the prose style is that the characters’ thoughts/feelings aren’t available to the reader. I talk about the prose style’s function more below, I think.
Rumpus: Unlike the writers you mention, like Ann Beattie and Lorrie Moore, your writing doesn’t seem to explore the inner life of the characters. Would you say that your stories, and SFAA, insist on a lack of depth?
Tao Lin: I think the stories in BED are almost entirely about the characters’ thoughts and feelings. Their thoughts and feelings are described in detail, and constantly, I feel. SFAA however does not have sentences describing what a character is thinking/feeling. I don’t think this conveys a lack of depth on the part of the characters. The characters have as much depth, I assume, as those in other books. I just chose, for many reasons, to write in a style that focuses only on “surface” details.
The main reason might be because in my earlier writing I expressed, to some degree, a consistent philosophy (characterized by wanting to reduce abstract suffering by learning to accept undesirable situations; by learning to view life as a book already written rather than a book to be written, so as to better experience each moment’s pleasures and to experience despair less intensely by being detached from it to some degree, as one can read about “despair” without “feeling” it; and by learning to view things from more perspectives, or “every” perspective, ideally from the perspective of the universe, a perspective which perceives “no depth” or “no consciousness”) and SFAA could be said to be the actualization, in terms of prose style, of that philosophy.
Another reason SFAA’s prose style focuses on concrete reality, or the “surface” of things, is because I want to induce in myself, and the reader, certain feelings that are “pre-language,” certain feelings I’ve felt because of certain memories of concrete reality being in my head at certain times while a certain thing in concrete reality presently happens. I feel certain things sometimes not because of having analyzed something and not because of having thought up connections between certain things, but “simply” because concrete reality has displayed certain things to me.
For example the end of the novella causes me to feel something that if conveyed using abstract language would not, in my view, be as effective or accurate as it is conveyed through “surface” details. It is possible to convey the feeling of the end of the novella using abstract language, or a simile. or something, but I chose to convey it through an organized accumulation (throughout the entire novella, ideally) of “surface” details, in part because that’s what I think made me feel it.
Additionally, I’m interested in Buddhist thinking, and wanted to write a book where the focus is only on concrete reality, on the direct and “pre-language” experience of concrete reality, in a context of “time passing.” An unmediated experience of reality seems desirable to me sometimes. None of these reasons, in my view, have anything to do with “numbness,” “ennui,” “apathy,” “condemning my generation,” “saying [anything] about my generation,” “saying [anything] about society,” “saying [anything] about the state of the world,” or “saying [anything] about technology’s effect on people.”
Rumpus: I’m intrigued by this statement, “by learning to view life as a book already written rather than a book to be written.” This philosophy would seem to obviate people of responsibility for their actions. If everything that is going to happen is fixed, people can claim they have no control over their actions. For example, a person who steals. It’s a deterministic view. This has important implications I think. What are your thoughts on that? (According to the definition of determinism as used by the Oxford English Dictionary Online (“OED Online“): 1) The philosophical doctrine that human action is not free but necessarily determined by motives, which are regarded as external forces acting upon the will. 2) The doctrine that everything that happens is determined by a necessary chain of causation.)
Tao Lin: My “overarching” thought about this is that I want to view things, firstly, existentially and not morally: to me, ideally, everything is equally important, therefore the word “important” doesn’t mean anything to me. On a moral level, though, basing morality on concrete reality, as that is where pain and suffering exists (in that someone can’t hurt another person by only thinking things or only feeling things, and someone can’t kill someone else unless they do it in concrete reality), it doesn’t seem relevant to me whether or not a person “feels” responsible for their actions. If five people “feel responsible” and cause a certain amount of pain to other people in concrete reality, and ten people don’t feel responsible but have refrained from causing pain in concrete reality, the “ten people” situation seems morally preferable to me.
Anyone who exists in concrete reality will experience “cause and effect” (which is maybe the concrete version of “responsibility”). No person in concrete reality is exempt from “cause and effect” (or “gravity”). Therefore people who claim they have no control over their actions will still be affected by their actions.
On a moral level, additionally, I think I have always acknowledged that I’m unsure how to satisfactorily refute a “determinist” view of the world (that the first thing caused the second thing, causing the third thing, in a kind of inescapable and impenetrable closed system of cause-and-effect, where there seems to be no “choice” except the “choice” of the first thing existing or not existing) and I don’t think it has affected my morals at all. I currently “know” that I don’t have free will, but this doesn’t affect how I act or think in terms of my effect on others. I think this is because morals is on a different spectrum than whatever spectrum “determinism thoughts” is on. A “determinist” view of the world can cause a person to act where they might previously not act (by making them feel less nervous or afraid, maybe), but the content of the act itself, I think, is more influenced by other things. I’m not sure what exactly. Probably a combination of societal pressure, evolution (that humans have evolved to want to avoid “pain,” and so will avoid doing something that might cause them to feel “pain” whether vicariously or directly), what one has learned is right or wrong, and how accurately one knows the effects of their actions.
Schopenhauer said something like that life should be viewed as a book already written, instead of a book one writes, so as to gain some kind of detachment and reduce one’s suffering. I don’t remember if he elaborated on that. But he was thinking about it as a personal philosophy to reduce one’s suffering, not a philosophy to hurt people without feeling responsible.
Rumpus: Your work has been called nihilistic–see the review of SFAA by The Village Voice. This reminds me of Madison Smartt Bell’s comments in his 1986 essay “Less is Less” in which he described as nihilistic the writing of the new wave of writers in the mid-eighties–writers who would later sometimes be grouped together and called “K-Mart Realists.” The OED Online defines nihilism as: “Total rejection of prevailing religious beliefs, moral principles, laws, etc., often from a sense of despair and the belief that life is devoid of meaning.” What do you think about having your work called nihilistic?
Tao Lin: I’m not sure what I think. According to that definition I don’t think my work is nihilistic, but that definition seems vague and almost more like a feeling, so maybe I would agree with someone if they said that my work “seems” nihilistic. I don’t think I would agree if someone said that my work “is” nihilistic. I don’t think my work rejects anything. As a person I can say that I don’t reject anything, or don’t want to reject anything. I would like to have the abililty to calmly acknowledge that all things are equally legitimate, from their own perspectives, or from certain perspectives. If my work rejects anything it rejects “feeling bad,” or it wants to in that it functions, in part, as a way for me to convince myself to not feel bad.
On a literal or “obvious” level the writers who Madison Smartt Bell called nihilist are not nihilists, I think. Those writers follow laws, to some degree, probably, because they aren’t in jail right now (people who totally reject laws are probably in jail), and some of them are religious, or talk about religion a lot. Joy Williams has many essays that reference religion in a non-rejecting manner. Those writers’ characters also follow laws and moral principles. They aren’t in jail. They sometimes have jobs. They function in small communities or families. Some are religious, I think. Even if religion or morality are not written about in a book it doesn’t mean the book is rejecting religion or morality. Many books do not discuss swimming pools or airplanes and I think people would agree that those books do not necessarily reject swimming pools or airplanes. The authors have just chosen to focus on other things.
Beyond that literal level I think in order to view a work of art as nihilistic one would need to view the work of art as existing not in this world, but in its own world. If one views the art as a person’s creation, that (the art and the person) together seems life affirming, to me, in that a person has, in their life, created something and shared it with society. I don’t know what a person who feels that “life is devoid of meaning” would be like. It seems difficult to imagine what they would do each day. I feel they definitely wouldn’t work 8 hours a day editing a book. I don’t think I know what the word “meaning” references when applied to conscious beings. It seems “nearly impossible” for me to accurately and earnestly call someone a nihilist.
Rumpus: Do you think The New Yorker has a particular aesthetic with respect to the stories that it publishes? Could you define what that aesthetic is?
Tao Lin: I feel I haven’t read enough New Yorker stories to define their aesthetic satisfactorily. Lorrie Moore appears regularly in the New Yorker and Rebecca Curtis appears sometimes and they each seem distinctive to me in tone and sense of humor and also in prose style (Lorrie Moore especially, re prose style) and so maybe the New Yorker’s aesthetic is wide-ranging enough to be beyond definition, in terms of myself. I also know that the New Yorker used to publish Frederick Barthelme and Mary Robison often (something like 30-40 of their stories), in the 80’s, and their stories are much different in focus and tone than many of the stories I’ve read in the New Yorker in the 90’s or 00’s, so from that I know that the New Yorker’s short story aesthetic is changing over time, which is another reason I feel “uneasy” defining their aesthetic.
Rumpus: There is a significant shift from Eeeee Eee Eeee to SFAA in that SFAA is more realistic whereas Eeeee Eee Eeee has “surreal” elements. [By surreal, I’ll use the definition of the OED Online: “Having the qualities of surrealist art; bizarre, dreamlike.”] Bed did not have surreal elements. Do you feel more comfortable writing in one mode as opposed to the other, real or surreal?
Tao Lin: I feel comfortable writing in either modes. My books that don’t have concretely surreal elements usually feel surreal to me in tone. Real life often seems “dreamlike” to me. I like viewing real life as a dream. I like writing about it as if it were a dream.
Rumpus: In a very funny and thorough 2005 post called “k-mart, k-mart realism; the rise, struggle, decline of” on your blog (which was then called “Reader of Depressing Books”), you noted under the section called “the decline,” that Frederick Barthelme had not published a story in The New Yorker since sometime before 1992 and “will not publish another story in The New Yorker ever.” What did you mean by that statement?
Tao Lin: I think I meant only that in the time the blog post covered he did not publish another story in The New Yorker, not that he won’t publish another story in The New Yorker ever again.
Rumpus: I have heard you call SFAA an autobiographical novella. What to you makes SFAA different from a work of non-fiction?
Tao Lin: Some events and dialogue in SFAA are moved around from how they are in my memory of real life. The dialogue is edited down, and I structured it and edited it like it was a novel. Honestly, though, I don’t know how it differs to me from non-fiction, because I would edit and structure non-fiction also. I think I just don’t really make distinctions for what is non-fiction and what is fiction, even when I read other books. When I read Lydia Davis’ THE END OF THE STORY, which is labeled as a novel, I assume the narrator is Lydia Davis and that everything in the book happened to her, and that she is using her memory as a first draft. But I know she is writing about a former self, so she seems, to me, to still be writing about someone else. I think I view all memoirs as fiction, if only because it’s based on memory. I think I view documentaries, even, as fiction, on some level, because everyone is “acting” to some degree at all times. I think I view everything as fiction. Or, more accurately, I think I view everything as “[whatever word one wants to use to indicate ‘all things’ or ‘itself’].”
Rumpus: Why did you choose to cover a period of two years in SFAA? It seems like a lot to fit into a-hundred-and-three pages. How did you choose which details to place in your novella?
Tao Lin: Two years felt artistically satisfying to me. In earlier drafts it ranged from one and a half years to three years. I think what influenced me most re what I included in the novella was that I wanted the novella to be calm and somewhat non-dramatic, so as to intensify the prose style’s effects. I edited out or edited down certain dramatic passages. I edited out something where Sam argued with his brother. Scene-wise I wanted the novella to skip amounts of time in a consistent manner, so that it would be consistently non-sequiturish on a scene level. Books or movies that move forward in a consistently elliptical manner are emotional to me; they make me think about how lives move sort of “crazily” toward death. An example to me of a book like that is Richard Yates’ THE EASTER PARADE which covers something like 45 years, or 50 years, in around 220 pages without noticeably abberant skips in time.
Rumpus: While twenty years ago, writers who shunned large social or political issues for “tiny domestic ones” as Tom Wolfe put it in the essay referred to earlier, were denounced, it seems odd to be having that conversation today. Yet, the conversation is still happening in some form or another. While the minimalism, spare language and domestic scenes of Lydia Davis and Christine Schutt are now accepted and even praised, the conversation has shifted and become one of general “weight.” In a review for The New York Times, David Means even called Lydia Davis “maximalist” for her ability to convey, with respect to her characters, despite the domesticity of their circumstances, a sense of the “enormity of their situations.” It seems as if the bar keeps shifting with respect to what is defined as “weighty.” Do you think critics might be concerned that your work is not “weighty”?
Tao Lin: I think ~3 years ago I sometimes felt pressure, from reading those types of articles and reviews and listening to people say that certain books are more important than other books, to include terrorism or cancer or 9/11 in my work, and I did sometimes, though secondarily and with some amount of sarcasm, in the stories in BED.
Today I don’t think about “weightiness,” I think, except literally. 200 words about [anything] are viewed, ideally, as equal, to me, to 200 words about [anything else]. Today I feel unable, or maybe unwilling (due to it contradicting the way I want to view things, as I talked about elsewhere in this interview), to non-sarcastically process or earnestly comprehend articles that use the words “important,” “weighty,” etc. non-sarcastically.
If I were to engage myself in qualitative abstractions, and somehow train myself to “block out” that the universe is arbitrary, I think the conversation between critics and writers about what is “weighty” still wouldn’t be comprehensible to me. Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine focused exclusively on things like the sound of peanut butter jars being opened, and I feel like people didn’t dismiss that book as unimportant or unweighty. Lorrie Moore’s stories often feature suicidal characters or dying characters or characters that are thinking a lot about death, and she has been called a practitioner of “tea towel fiction,” I think. Camus’ The Stranger seems universally regarded as important and weighty, and it seems to me to be about “the indifference of the universe,” which is not usually viewed as a large social or political issue, I think.
I think for those reasons, and other reasons, I feel that for me to consider “weightiness” while writing, or to just think earnestly about “weightiness,” ever, wouldn’t make sense at all to me. It would seem weird, like I was in a science-fiction movie. It would be like if critics started writing about how novels need to have more toy poodles in them. And I read their articles and felt pressured and earnestly put a lot of toy poodles in my writing.
Rumpus: In his essay “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast: A Literary Manifesto for the New Social Novel,” in which Tom Wolfe speaks negatively about “K-Mart realism,” Tom Wolfe describes a scene in which Leonard Bernstein has invited some Black Panthers to his home to speak to socialites about their “ten-point program” for a revolution. He states 
the socialites were “giddy with nostalgie de la boue.” Nostalgie de la boue is defined by the OED Online as “A longing for sexual or social degradation; a desire to regress to more primitive social conditions or behaviour than those to which a person is accustomed.” Do you ever feel nostalgie de la boue?
Tao Lin: I think I do constantly. But I also feel a constant longing for the opposite, I think, to “make progress” or be productive. And I also feel a constant longing to accept what I have, to “remain” where I am physically/metaphysically, in a kind of acceptance or Zen. The combination of those three longings, as applied to all aspects of my life, within a context of unidirectional time ending in “death,” might be the “central confusion” of my life.
***
All illustrations by Tao Lin. Illustrations in order of appearance:
1) tree-swinging sasquatch
2) toy poodle
3) sasquatch sitting at bench at night experiencing the full effect of the loneliness of existence
4) book covers of Tao Lin’s books (2006-2009)
5) buddhist tyrannasaurus rex
6a) sad pteradactyl living a life of fear and anxiety
6b) pteradactyl in rare moment of happiness
180 responses
As I read this interview three books came to mind: Rant by Chuck Palahniuk; Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys; and, The New York Trilogy by Paul Austere. I guess Tao Lin just seems like the type of writer that enjoys exploring different perspectives and realities. I enjoyed this interview because it gave me hope for things I have already written. The part of this interview where the Rumpus interviewer talked to Tao Lin about that Schopenhauer theory or whatever was excellent. So many times I’ve read things I used to write about and just wanted to vomit, set them on fire and punch myself in the face. Sometimes I probably should have done just that. Maybe not in that order. I guess though after reading this interview I can still use some of that older stuff to grow. Sounds like a Tao Lin’s a great author!
tao lin
best interview i’ve read, maybe ever.
thank you
Heckof reppin’ the OED Online!
yeah this is probably the best interview i’ve read in my life. tao’s answers are great, it is nice to read.
Thank you. And I agree, Tao’s answers are great!
Once and for all, who is Hipster Runoff? Is It You?
i havent read this yet but i want to be the first to ask how long is your penis
what’s your favorite Lydia Davis short story?
Tao, do you feel like if you saw the video of Marina Abramovic eating dinner with James Franco that involved eating “raw gold” (viewable here: http://www.thefader.com/2009/12/04/james-franco-loves-performance-artist-marina-abramovic-so-do-we/) that you would feel different about her?
“Once and for all, who is Hipster Runoff? Is It You?”
it’s carles
“i havent read this yet but i want to be the first to ask how long is your penis”
~5″ erect
“what’s your favorite Lydia Davis short story?”
maybe the last story in ‘break it down’ or the one in ‘break it down’ where the main character sees a therapist and thinks it’s funny that she keeps ‘falling down’ or something like that
“Tao, do you feel like if you saw the video of Marina Abramovic eating dinner with James Franco that involved eating “raw gold†(viewable here: http://www.thefader.com/2009/12/04/james-franco-loves-performance-artist-marina-abramovic-so-do-we/) that you would feel different about her?”
i would probably feel different about her because i don’t feel my feelings about anyone remain the same from one moment to another moment
my feelings about her currently are that i enjoy thinking about and talking about her and ‘look forward’ to learning more things about her in the future
When is the ‘Jesus Christ: The Indie Band.’ EP going to be released?
“Once and for all, who is Hipster Runoff? Is It You?â€
it’s carles
****
i’ll do the follow up question. do you write under the pseudonym of carles? if not, who is carles?
What sexual technique has received the best response from partners?
Have you ever had “homosexual tendencies”?
are you going to go on a “big-ass” book tour for “richard yates”? if so, any chicago locations? quimby’s?
What was the closest that you’ve ever come to committing suicide? i.e – standing on the edge of a ledge, holding shotty in your mouth with toe on the trigger
AND
When you think about those memories now, do you “respect” them?
“are you going to go on a “big-ass†book tour for “richard yatesâ€? if so, any chicago locations? quimby’s?”
i don’t know yet, my publisher is thinking and planning those things, i think
“When is the ‘Jesus Christ: The Indie Band.’ EP going to be released?”
i don’t know
“What sexual technique has received the best response from partners?”
i’m not sure exactly, maybe certain ways of ‘fingering’/’finger-type things’ using both hands
Do you ever feel like you have noticed a ‘tipping point’ in friendships with other people where their accomplishments originally overshadow yours, and then after time your accomplishments begin to be ‘on par’ with them, and then surpass them?
I think about writers like Brandon Scott Gorrel or Zachary German, and imagine that maybe they sometimes cannot help but look at you through the ‘lens of accomplishment’ described above- do you think that’s true, or not necessarily?
“What was the closest that you’ve ever come to committing suicide? i.e – standing on the edge of a ledge, holding shotty in your mouth with toe on the trigger”
probably lying in bed thinking about suicide or walking on a sidewalk thinking about suicide
“When you think about those memories now, do you “respect†them?”
i don’t think i have a definition for ‘respect’ in this context
why do you like to type in lowercase? is it a ‘natural’ thing
what do you think of the “iamamiwhoami” video’s on youtube
are you going to be selective on answering questions?
What are common qualities you look for in a girl? and what are turnoffs/dealbreakers and turnons?
what happened between you and zachary german?
Tao,
How much do you like radiohead?
How often do you feel like ‘giving up’ or ‘throwing the towel in’ and getting a salary job?
tao, was your’s money involved in the purchase of your myspace account?
A very nice interview. It’s the best explanation of your fiction that I’ve ever seen and I’m glad to read it. I’m curious about this, however:
Tao:”I would like to have the abililty to calmly acknowledge that all things are equally legitimate, from their own perspectives, or from certain perspectives.”
Do fields of perspective ever overlap, like Venn diagrams perhaps? If you have many fields of perspectives overlapping, are those fields more “powerful” or “better” than a field held by a single individual? I hesitate to use the word better because it’s a moral judgment, however I’m not sure than humans can move through life without making moral judgments. I wonder if we’re condemned to make such judgments.
Whenever you drink a spinach smoothie are you not in some way, no matter how slight, dissing the pure seething joy of a Rum and Coke? But if there is no choice, there’s never a moral judgment? Is that what you mean?
Much of what you say confuses me, obviously. Why attempt to lessen your suffering if there’s no difference between things? Suffering is the same thing as joy then, right?
tao, when you reached the conclusion that sam reached in your novella, that you are interested in being around people who are not like you, how long did this feeling last?
also, do you have any advice/’tips’ on how to control one’s emotions using one’s thoughts?
Do you find it irritating when people can’t think of a more interesting question to ask you than “Are you Carles?”
Do you ever feel sort of floored by your own taste-making, blog-ability, relevance and/ or talent? Do you enjoy being an internet superstar?
“Do you ever feel like you have noticed a ‘tipping point’ in friendships with other people where their accomplishments originally overshadow yours, and then after time your accomplishments begin to be ‘on par’ with them, and then surpass them?”
i think i’ve almost always ‘naturally’ avoided, or simply been unable to successfully ‘enter’ (possibly due to low self-esteem or some kind of sensitivity re ‘not wanting to be in situations where i’m unwanted’), friendships w/ people who i feel have ‘accomplished’* more than me
in part because i feel ‘ever aware’ that i’m ‘wasting their time’ to some degree, by having their focus be on me instead of their own work or other friends who can help them more, at least financially (i’m aware also of many reasons why someone would want to be friends with someone else for reasons completely unrelated to finances/careers/convenience, as i feel almost all my friendships are unrelated to those things), and in part because i don’t like to feel that someone might feel like i might be ‘using’ them unfairly, or being in situations where that thought even simply occurs, even if it’s not true at all, and even though i feel ‘completely fine’ with people ‘using’ me (because ideally i don’t ever think that anyone is ‘using’ anyone else, because anyone can leave a situation if they want to, at least in the context of this question; if two people are talking to each other they’re both ‘free’ to leave, and if they don’t leave then they’re each ‘getting something’ to a degree that is ‘enough’ for them to continue talking, i feel; i never feel that someone who i have chosen to communicate with is ‘using’ me, i think)
i don’t think i’ve experienced any ‘tipping point’ experiences like in your question, probably in the future i will
*by ‘accomplished’ i more accurately mean ‘have more power/influence, concretely or abstractly, in the world,’ i think ideally i view every moment as an ‘accomplishment,’ from a certain perspective, and in that sense everyone has ‘accomplished’ the same amount of things
“I think about writers like Brandon Scott Gorrel or Zachary German, and imagine that maybe they sometimes cannot help but look at you through the ‘lens of accomplishment’ described above- do you think that’s true, or not necessarily?”
i feel that is probably true, that brandon and zachary have had thoughts about ‘accomplishment,’ probably mostly neutral, observational thoughts, i’m not sure
i don’t think the ‘tipping point’ thing you described occurred to them because brandon, mine, and zachary’s ‘accomplishments’ have each increased steadily, i think, since i met each of them
“why do you like to type in lowercase? is it a ‘natural’ thing”
it takes less time to convey the same thing (to ppl who focus only on the meanings of the words) because i don’t need to use the shift button and less space because lowercase letters are smaller than uppercase letters
using uppercase maybe makes some things more readable and to some people more ‘[abstraction],’ i use uppercase in most emails and published things
lowercase, with line breaks instead of periods, can also make some other things more readable, in my view and more ‘[abstraction]’
“what do you think of the “iamamiwhoami†video’s on youtube”
i don’t know, i haven’t seen that
Another question I forgot to include the first time:
how exactly do your visual works fit into the rest of what you produce (specifically, in regards to your choice of subject matter and media)?
“are you going to be selective on answering questions”
no, except i don’t want to answer questions that might reveal things about other people that they might not want be known
“What are common qualities you look for in a girl? and what are turnoffs/dealbreakers and turnons?”
i honestly don’t know what common qualities there are
i like certain things, but then that ‘hasn’t worked,’ and i feel interested in ‘open to’ being around people who are a certain opposite way, in terms of personality/lifestyle
i’m physically attracted to skinny girls
i don’t think there are ‘dealbreakers’
what is your favorite plant? (those that are generally not used for eating purposes)
are you happy?
How can I send you books? I remember reading it somewhere but I can’t find it!
Did you ever like Blink 182?
Are you CARLES?????????
do you take drugs? illegal or illegally? how often? which do you prefer?
“what happened between you and zachary german?”
email me and i’ll email you the blog post about it
“Do fields of perspective ever overlap, like Venn diagrams perhaps? If you have many fields of perspectives overlapping, are those fields more “powerful†or “better†than a field held by a single individual?”
ideally, at this moment, to me, i view ‘overlapping perspectives’ as ‘simply’ different than ‘a single perspective,’ useful to different people with different goals in different ways at different moments
also i’m not sure what ‘overlapping perspectives,’ to a single person, would be like, as compared to ‘a single perspective,’ to a single person
“Whenever you drink a spinach smoothie are you not in some way, no matter how slight, dissing the pure seething joy of a Rum and Coke? But if there is no choice, there’s never a moral judgment? Is that what you mean?”
some people would probably perceive me drinking a spinach smoothie as rhetoric against a rum and coke
at this moment i view someone drinking a spinach smoothie as different than someone saying ‘don’t drink rum and cokes’ as different than someone concretely stopping you from drinking a rum and coke
it seems impossible not to ‘exude’ rhetoric, just by existing, and ‘choosing’ to do a certain thing instead of a certain other thing, so in that sense there is a ‘base level’ of rhetoric a person ‘has,’ by existing,’ therefore i view that ‘base level’ as ‘no rhetoric,’ but ‘simply’ being conscious, which is not, in the context of this question, a choice, and therefore not something rhetorical…or something
“But if there is no choice, there’s never a moral judgment? Is that what you mean?”
i’m not sure what you mean exactly
if one person wants to judge someone else, saying they’re immoral, they can do that, despite what anyone else thinks or what the universe is like
“Why attempt to lessen your suffering if there’s no difference between things? Suffering is the same thing as joy then, right?”
from the perspective of ‘everything’ or of ‘no perspective’ there are no difference between things
humans, i think, cannot 100% occupy a perspective of ‘everything’ or ‘no perspective,’ due to consciousness, evolution, and that humans manifest physically
it seems impossible for a human to view ‘no different between things,’ but it is not impossible, i think, for a human to view that as a way to think about the universe, for purposes of reducing suffering, relieving boredom, or [other]
humans seem to have no choice, due to ‘consciousness,’ but to differentiate b/w things, even if they are not thinking about anything at all, because a human is required to ‘do something’ in each moment of time, and cannot ‘do “everything”‘ or ‘nothing’ unless they are ‘dead’ or maybe ‘asleep’ or [some kind of meditation], i think
When is your iPhone app coming out, if ever? Seems to be taking a while. How many species of North American Hampsters will be included? Will it be interactive, like a game?
“i’ll do the follow up question. do you write under the pseudonym of carles? if not, who is carles?”
i don’t write under the pseudonym of carles
carles is a person, information about him is on the internet
“Have you ever had “homosexual tendenciesâ€?”
yeah
“Do you find it irritating when people can’t think of a more interesting question to ask you than “Are you Carles?—
no
“Do you ever feel sort of floored by your own taste-making, blog-ability, relevance and/ or talent? Do you enjoy being an internet superstar?””
i don’t know unless you specifically define ‘floored’ and ‘internet superstar’
“how exactly do your visual works fit into the rest of what you produce (specifically, in regards to your choice of subject matter and media)?”
they ‘fit,’ in my view, in that they’re a product of ‘me’
“How much do you like radiohead?”
i haven’t listened to them that much, i like them ‘a little’ maybe
“How often do you feel like ‘giving up’ or ‘throwing the towel in’ and getting a salary job?”
i don’t think i ever feel like ‘getting a salary job,’ unless it’s for the same reasons i might write a certain book, which isn’t like ‘giving up,’ more like ‘doing something i want to do’
“tao, was your’s money involved in the purchase of your myspace account?”
yeah
“what is your favorite plant? (those that are generally not used for eating purposes)”
i don’t view any plant as ‘favorite’ right now
“are you happy?”
i feel different in each moment, i think i rarely think in terms of ‘happiness’ except self-consciously or, to some degree, sarcasticallly
“How can I send you books? I remember reading it somewhere but I can’t find it!”
my address is here: http://bobstlibrary.com
“Did you ever like Blink 182?”
yeah
“Are you CARLES?????????”
carles is carles
“do you take drugs? illegal or illegally? how often? which do you prefer?
i’ve ‘taken’ drugs before and anticipating ‘taking’ more drugs in the future
i’ve ‘taken’ illegal drugs at most maybe ~3-5 consecutive days and not ‘taken’ illegal drugs for ~20-50 consecutive days in the past ~3 years
i don’t have a prescription for anything
i like any drug, i think, and prefer amphetamines and painkillers maybe
“When is your iPhone app coming out, if ever?”
probably sometime in 2011
“How many species of North American Hampsters will be included?”
probably 50-70
“Will it be interactive, like a game?”
probably no
Are you ‘in love’ currently? Have you ever been and if so, how do you convey that feeling in your writing? Some of your work has a sweet quality but it seems more sarcastic than genuine. Is that a defense mechanism that you use in real life? It’s something I’m able to identify with.
Also, are you biased toward obese/chubby/overweight people? You reference them a lot in your writing and drawings. Do you see them as inferior or unattractive?
In your short story ‘Candace’ on bear parade there is a scene where the first person narrator is working in a movie theater and when someone asks for Pokemon movie tickets the narrator says “Make the transaction” out loud.. is that a true story??
“Are you ‘in love’ currently? Have you ever been and if so, how do you convey that feeling in your writing?”
i don’t know unless you defined ‘in love’
“Some of your work has a sweet quality but it seems more sarcastic than genuine. Is that a defense mechanism that you use in real life?”
to me sarcasm means ‘being aware of the arbitrary nature of the universe’ while also being aware of [something else], i think
that may be a ‘defense mechanism,’ at times against ‘feeling bad’ or ‘feeling frustrated’ because if i view myself as accurately significant, and within a universe where from the perspective of ‘everything’ or ‘nothing’ things are ‘equal’ or ‘made of atoms,’ or whatever, i usually feel less bad or less frustrated
i don’t know how that can be ‘genuine’ or ‘not genuine,’ i would want a specific definition of ‘genuine’ to answer that part
“Also, are you biased toward obese/chubby/overweight people? You reference them a lot in your writing and drawings. Do you see them as inferior or unattractive?”
ideally i am not, or don’t want to be, biased against anyone or anything
ideally i don’t view anyone as inferior unless a context/goal is defined and a computer would also view the specific person, within a specific context/goal as ‘inferior’
at this point in my life i feel that i’m more likely to be sexually attracted to someone who i view as ‘not overweight’
“In your short story ‘Candace’ on bear parade there is a scene where the first person narrator is working in a movie theater and when someone asks for Pokemon movie tickets the narrator says “Make the transaction†out loud.. is that a true story??”
that hasn’t happened to me in concrete reality
Do you consider yourself shy/introverted?
Do you like the kale salad at the Union Square Whole Foods? There’s something I find disagreeable about it but I can’t figure out what it is.
What drugs have you done?
What are some of your favorite movies and modern artists?
Do you practice yoga. If so, what style?
Word association: Parallelogram.
Tao, in an interview with Stephen Elliott (http://mhpbooks.com/mobylives/?p=7417), you asked him about his drug habits and how they relate to his writing, specifically his “productivity.” You asked him: “Which writer do you think would produce more work (that is not firstly motivated by money) in their life: a person with no access at all to Adderall or caffeine or a person with unlimited access to Adderall and caffeine?” Stephen thinks he would be “more productive if I had never taken any drug.” I have the impression that you use Adderall and/or caffeine when you write sometimes.
My question is… how would you answer your own question? Do you think that your use of stimulants has made you more “productive” in the short-term? Do you think that your use of stimulants will make you more “productive” in the long-term? Do you think that a “‘chemically heightened’ rate of productivity” is more effective than a “‘natural’ rate of productivity” at achieving “success”? (I mean “success” in a broad sense, I guess. It might include the number of pieces/books published, career-long income levels, amount of press coverage, and whatever else. I hope this isn’t too vague for you to answer.)
Thanks. Sorry if this question is hard to answer or something.
“If my work rejects anything it rejects “feeling bad,†or it wants to in that it functions, in part, as a way for me to convince myself to not feel bad.”
-So then, would you consider yourself a hedonist?
what are some of your fave chill hang out spots in brooklyn?
What has happened to Ellen Kennedy and Zachary German? Are you all still ‘getting along’ and all that?
CLARIFICATION: If my definition of “success” is not meaningful to you or you are otherwise not able to answer the question as posed, please substitute your definition of “success” or discuss the role of stimulants in achieving your own goals re writing.
“Do you consider yourself shy/introverted?”
yes, i think
“Do you like the kale salad at the Union Square Whole Foods? There’s something I find disagreeable about it but I can’t figure out what it is.”
i think i’ve eaten that 2-5 times, it seems ‘fine’
i like the kale salad at the salad bar at ‘lifethyme’
‘lifethyme’ has an all-organic hot/cold salad bar
“What drugs have you done?”
adderall, ritalin, tylenol 3, percocet, morphine (in a hospital), oxycodone, [unknown painkiller], methadone, ambien, seroquel, cocaine, klonopin, xanax, ecstacy
“What are some of your favorite movies and modern artists?”
i like ‘yi yi,’ ‘first love, last rites,’ ‘stardust memories,’ ‘land of silence and darkness,’ other woody allen & werner herzog movies
but i feel that each time someone asks me re movies i’ll have different answers, because i don’t think about it often
i don’t know of many modern artists, i don’t think i view any as ‘favorites’
“Do you practice yoga. If so, what style?”
i do yoga-like/pilates-like things on a yoga-mat in my room, i’m not sure what style, i have one pilates book and have looked at things on youtube before, for reference, i think
“Word association: Parallelogram.”
i thought ‘i don’t know’
what do you do while ‘on drugs’ / do you ‘consume’ drugs ‘socially’ or for ‘[other reasons related to contemporary emotional / physiological ‘well-being’ possibly]’?
What advice would you have for someone who is very interested in “getting” Adderall to help with their writing?
“My question is… how would you answer your own question? Do you think that your use of stimulants has made you more “productive†in the short-term?”
i’m 95% certain that using caffeine or something like adderall causes me to be more productive in the next 2-6 hours, in my current situation
i’m not sure that if i was observed for one week, after a one week period of not using any caffeine or [other], i would be more or less productive
“Do you think that your use of stimulants will make you more “productive†in the long-term?”
i don’t know
i think to some degree i’m influenced by other things than ‘productivity’ re stimulants
i’m 60-95% sure though that refraining from certain foods, and eating or mostly only raw fruits/vegetables, will increase my long-term productivity, if only b/c it might cause me to ‘live longer’
maybe stimulants would make me more productive re ‘writing’/’writing-related things’ even if it decreased my overall productivity, as a person, because i almost always do ‘writing-related things’ after using stimulants
maybe the rest of each day i’m much less productive
thinking about it briefly that doesn’t seem true
i’m not sure
“Do you think that a “‘chemically heightened’ rate of productivity†is more effective than a “‘natural’ rate of productivity†at achieving “successâ€? (I mean “success†in a broad sense, I guess. It might include the number of pieces/books published, career-long income levels, amount of press coverage, and whatever else. I hope this isn’t too vague for you to answer.)”
i don’t know
seems like i would need like 10 computers, 5 assistants, microchips implanted into my brain, and [other things] to get an answer for that
i honestly don’t know
“-So then, would you consider yourself a hedonist?”
i don’t know the exact definition of ‘hedonist’ but probably i would think that everyone is a hedonist, in that even people who do not seek pleasure are, by default, due to evolution, seeking [something] which from different perspectives, maybe most perspectives, could be agreeably defined as ‘pleasure’ or some synonym of that
“what are some of your fave chill hang out spots in brooklyn?”
east river park, the lovin’ cup, my room, spoonbill & sugartown
“What has happened to Ellen Kennedy and Zachary German? Are you all still ‘getting along’ and all that?”
i don’t think anything has happened to them that people don’t know about from the internet
in my view i am ‘getting along’ with them
the 2nd edition of ellen’s book is currently being printed
ellen’s book: http://muumuuhouse.com/ellenkennedy.poetrybook.html
Damn, seems like someone asked a somewhat similar question while I typed mine.
“what do you do while ‘on drugs’ / do you ‘consume’ drugs ’socially’ or for ‘[other reasons related to contemporary emotional / physiological ‘well-being’ possibly]‘?”
on stimulants i usually do productive things alone
on other things i usually am in social situations, with people i like
or at ‘stressful’/’scary’ events that feature me
i very rarely, or almost never, so far in my life, ‘use’ non-stimulant drugs alone except sometimes, like, advil or, rarely, something i feel will cause me to ‘go to sleep for a long time’
“What advice would you have for someone who is very interested in “getting†Adderall to help with their writing?”
i don’t know, ‘facebook’ maybe
If I sent you multiple pictures of myself (possibly nude) that you found “attractive” and asked if you would be down for me coming to a 3rd party location to perform sex acts on you that would be, or the most part, all about the pleasure of Tao Lin and not about the pleasure of me the recipient (although it would likely be pleasurable for me as well, I am only trying to say that you wouldn’t have to try some complicated two-handed ‘fingering’ scenario), would you be willing to engage in this?
Would having a conversation to determine whether this would be ‘a good idea’ be necessary if you saw a picture of me naked and felt attracted?
“If I sent you multiple pictures of myself (possibly nude) that you found “attractive†and asked if you would be down for me coming to a 3rd party location to perform sex acts on you that would be, or the most part, all about the pleasure of Tao Lin and not about the pleasure of me the recipient (although it would likely be pleasurable for me as well, I am only trying to say that you wouldn’t have to try some complicated two-handed ‘fingering’ scenario), would you be willing to engage in this?”
maybe
“Would having a conversation to determine whether this would be ‘a good idea’ be necessary if you saw a picture of me naked and felt attracted?”
yes, i think
Are we doing that thing on ‘boredom’ next week?
“Are we doing that thing on ‘boredom’ next week?”
i don’t know, i’ve told melville house i want to
Friends, often women sometimes comment that your treatment of women in stories comes across as borderline sexist, or that your female characters lack a certain ‘agency’ or ‘clarity’ that male characters have- granted, the characters you write about in SFAA are apparently all based on real people and thus real actions, but do you ever feel conscious of ‘giving power’ to certain people in stories in a way that gives dudes more power?
I think of “Love is for sale” in Bed, and think about how the male character’s choice to break up was all about asserting a control over female character’s “lateness” – or, attempting to assert it and failing.
So I wonder how you feel about sexism in your work – whether you have heard people talk about you in relation so sexism, and whether you feel like it is possible to label short stories or novels sexist when they are just talking about things that are happening to a person/group of people and do not contain an overarching ideology that leaks out into other areas of life.
Thanks.
Would you consider yourself more passive or active during sex? Do you have any fetishes? What’s the most ‘fucked up’ sexual situation you’ve been involved in? How many times a day do you masturbate/watch porn? How sexually active are you ie) when did you last have sex? And do you have casual sex with friends and/or strangers? What physical qualities are you sexually attracted to in girls besides ‘skinny’? Any qualities that aren’t necessarily sexually attractive but that you admire/find beautiful?
I haven’t read any of your books yet (though I intend to) but I’m wondering if you use quote marks in the same way/at the same frequency within them. What does your frequent quoting of words and phrases mean? Am I not supposed to hear those words in your voice, or are you being sarcastic about them, or signaling they you don’t take them seriously?
Like here: “if only b/c it might cause me to ‘live longer’” and “or at ’stressful’/’scary’ events that feature me”
“Friends, often women sometimes comment that your treatment of women in stories comes across as borderline sexist, or that your female characters lack a certain ‘agency’ or ‘clarity’ that male characters have- granted, the characters you write about in SFAA are apparently all based on real people and thus real actions, but do you ever feel conscious of ‘giving power’ to certain people in stories in a way that gives dudes more power?”
most of my stories are from the perspective of ‘me,’ and i ‘just happen’ to be male, and probably that causes the other characters, in my ‘relationship stories’ to seem to lack ‘agency’ or ‘clarity’
i don’t feel conscious of ‘giving power’ to certain people in stories, it seems like most characters in most of my stories have ‘no power’
i think i have two stories from the perspective of a female, one is here:
http://eeeee-eee-eeee-bed.blogspot.com/2006/08/though-shed-begun-to-get-bit-fat-that.html
the other is maybe ‘three-day cruise’ from ‘bed’
in ‘love is a thing…’ the female character ‘broke up’ with the male character, who was, i think, in part, disappointed because the female character was often late, which isn’t gender specific
i don’t think many people have talked to me about sexism
ideally i would like to view every person, or thing, as specific, and not think that a person is going to be a certain way because of their gender/race/appearance/[etc] but probably i ‘fail’ at that often (i feel that i ‘fail’ at that least often re gender though and more often re race/appearance), as i view it as an ideal, to ‘work at’ ‘until i die,’ not something that can be accomplished at some point, in part because it seems literally impossible to view each thing as 100% itself, due to the brain automatically/uncontrollably having hundreds or millions or something of associations with every thing it processes
i’m not sure if a book can be labeled ‘sexist,’ as it doesn’t have a viewpoint
a story or a book is something someone has thought about then conveyed, so if you feel like you can label something someone has said ‘sexist’ then it seems like you could call a story or a novel ‘sexist’
a story or a novel is abstract, though, and what it conveys does not affect concrete reality directly
if a person distinguishes violence or sexism in a novel with violence or sexism in concrete reality then they can treat differently what people think or say (that are possibly abstractly violent or sexist, but do not affect anyone in concrete reality directly) with what people do in concrete reality, where cause/effect exists, and if you ‘punch someone’ it will have effects that most people can see and agree on
because of that i think that not ‘condemning’ or labeling anyone’s thoughts (stories, novels) in a ‘negative’ manner (or ‘censorship,’ to some degree) would, in certain contexts, maybe reduce pain/suffering in the world
i think i’ve expressed this elsewhere more articulately/comprehensively, maybe here:
http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/2007/04/crippling-loneliness-and-killing.html
what do you think of university of virginia graduates?
i’m going ‘afk’ now, will answer other questions later
How is it possible to “act[_], at all times, in a sarcastic manner…” (from your LECTURE NOTES, 4/02, KANSAS CITY)? eg. what would using a printer sarcastically involve, wouldn’t involve being ‘against’ the printer or something? [this question probably seems ‘extremely stupid’ to most people reading it, but i am just an innocent person confused about what the word sarcasm means so don’t hate on me y’all]
Hi Tao,
You seem to have a very intellectual approach to both prose style and theme. By this, I mean that you seem to make craft decisions and other writing decisions with a clear philosophy in mind:
“in my earlier writing I expressed, to some degree, a consistent philosophy (characterized by wanting to reduce abstract suffering by learning to accept undesirable situations; by learning to view life as a book already written rather than a book to be written, so as to better experience each moment’s pleasures and to experience despair less intensely by being detached from it to some degree”
Do you feel that writing with a philosophical idea in mind makes the writing process less spontaneous? Do you feel that writers need a big overarching philosophy to make good fiction?
Do you enjoy the writing process? Do you write the aim of finishing a piece of fiction that satisfies you or do you write for the pleasure of the process or for some other reason?
Thanks for answering.
What is carles’ job, has he become a ‘consultant’?
Tao, a lot of people insult “Tao Lin imitators,” even as they are praising you, in reviews. People say that only you are doing something interesting and original–that other people, like writers published at Muumuu House, are “just” copying “your” style. Obviously you like what these writers, and probably others, are doing, or else you wouldn’t support them. I’ve thought about this and tried to compare it to other literary movements, like the Beats. Did people insult Gregory Corso or William Burroughs by saying they were “Ginsberg imitators” or “Kerouac imitators”? I don’t know. Maybe some people dismiss some writers in your group, other than you, because the scare quotes are so prominent, and other quickly visible things like phrases like “neutral facial expression.” Maybe the influence would be more respected if it was more subtle, but the influence shows very clearly with some writers. I don’t know what to ask as a question, but I am interested in what you think about this. I think a lot of other writers are really into your style and your voice, but I think there is also (mostly unspoken) anxiety/discomfort about trying to not be a “rip off,” because that phrase is floating around so much. (For example, I read a Jordan Castro poem where he said that he thinks Brittany Wallace thinks he is “just” a “tao lin ripoff.”) It’s past 7:30, but if you want to say anything about any of this, I’d be interested. Thanks for writing.
this is not a question, i only want to say your response to the last question ‘in the interview proper’ (esp. ~ first 2x sentences) made me feel better re ‘irreconcilable’ ‘contradictions’ / my ‘unrelenting’, ‘to a degree’, thoughts re ‘contradictions’ and also feel less like an inappropriate kind of existence and more just like a person
thanks also for your response re ‘drugs’ ‘trivia’
“Would you consider yourself more passive or active during sex?”
probably equally passive/active, with some kind of focus on ‘matching’ the other person’s level of passivity/activity
“Do you have any fetishes?”
i don’t think i have any notable fetishes
“What’s the most ‘fucked up’ sexual situation you’ve been involved in?”
i can’t think of any that i feel were ‘fucked up’
“How many times a day do you masturbate/watch porn?”
maybe an average, the past 5 years, of .3-/.5 times (once every ~2-3 days, on average, with up to ~5-15 consecutive days of not masturbating & probably ~3-20 consecutive days of masturbating 1-4/times a day)
“How sexually active are you ie) when did you last have sex?”
‘not very,’ i feel, i last had sex w/ my previous gf in december, i think
“And do you have casual sex with friends and/or strangers?”
no, except maybe once or twice and ‘vaguely’ re ‘sex’
“What physical qualities are you sexually attracted to in girls besides ’skinny’?”
‘seems clean,’ ‘looks healthy,’ ‘looks pretty to me’
“Any qualities that aren’t necessarily sexually attractive but that you admire/find beautiful?”
physically seems like probably ‘no’
“I haven’t read any of your books yet (though I intend to) but I’m wondering if you use quote marks in the same way/at the same frequency within them. What does your frequent quoting of words and phrases mean?”
i don’t use as many quotation marks in my book, maybe 65-95% less
“Am I not supposed to hear those words in your voice, or are you being sarcastic about them, or signaling they you don’t take them seriously?”
quotation marks around words or phrases can mean:
1. i am using the word/phrase as if ‘quoting’ someone else, indicating that i’m using the language of someone else’s voice or [some entity’s] voice (like the voice of a press release or publicist or government or something) and tone temporarily; for example when i put ‘live longer’ in quotation marks i was temporarily using the voice of [some vitamin company or something]
2. i am using an adjective or phrase that i would feel uncomfortable using ‘earnestly’ due to its inaccuracy or obscurity or [other reason], a ‘real life’ equivalent of this would be me grinning and pausing a moment before using a word like ‘obdurate’ or something, so that if the other person doesn’t know the meaning they’ll feel less afraid to ask me what it means, knowing that i know i’m using a word that not everyone might know and that i’m not just going to ‘keep talking,’ assuming everyone knows the word
3. i am typing something that would conventionally be typed with capital letters, like a title (The Great American Novel), or with hyphens (the eat-all-can-eat-until-you-vomit-in-the-bathroom-and-go-back-to-eat-more buffet), for purposes of readability but am using quotation marks around it because i feel that it is more readable and more clear to do that
4. i think there are some other reasons, elisa gabbert typed some here:
http://thefrenchexit.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-scare-quotes-mean-fyi.html
“what do you think of university of virginia graduates?”
i’m not sure if i know any, i think probably the same things about them as any other people, or ideally i do
“How is it possible to “act[_], at all times, in a sarcastic manner…†(from your LECTURE NOTES, 4/02, KANSAS CITY)? eg. what would using a printer sarcastically involve, wouldn’t involve being ‘against’ the printer or something? [this question probably seems ‘extremely stupid’ to most people reading it, but i am just an innocent person confused about what the word sarcasm means so don’t hate on me y’all]”
‘sarcasm’ can mean anything since it is an abstraction
to me, in the context of where you quoted that sentence from, it meant something like ‘being aware of something abstract that is either “in opposition” to, “not reconcilable” with, or “not defensible” within [what one is doing in concrete reality’
for example why am i typing these sentences, why am i thinking things, why am i eating and ‘doing other things’ in my life? based on what i know about the universe and the universe’s laws (gravity, entropy, etc.) it is not explainable why i am conscious, consciousness is not reconcilable with ‘the rest of the universe,’ and my actions are not earnestly defensible without making assumptions like ‘pain is bad’ or ‘advancement is good’ or ‘if i’m good now i’ll get into heaven later’ or [anything else]
therefore it’s like i’m ‘faking it,’ i’m doing things ‘sarcastically,’ i’m ‘moving forward’ with my life while knowing that what i’m doing is as arbitrary and based on assumptions as anything anyone else is doing
this however does not cause me to act any differently, in concrete reality, than other people, or a version of myself that doesn’t think metaphysical things, i feel
it seems to only effect my emotions, it seems to make me less able to feel angry or frustrated or like anything is ‘unfair,’ which causes me to be more able to feel ‘calm’ and ‘grateful’ and things like that
it is, to some degree, like playing chess or a videogame
if i focus 100% on the videogame and forget everything outside of the fantasy world i can probably play it ‘earnestly,’ without sarcasm, and become earnestly ‘angry’ or ‘frustrated’ if bad things happen to my character in the game
but if i’m playing the videogame and aware that the game will end at some point, that the rules of the game have been arbitrarily created, that my ‘score’ and level of advancement in the game is based on arbitrary rules, and that no matter how much i advance in the game the game will end it will be difficult for me to play it earnestly, to experience ‘anger’ or ‘frustration’ without immediately, simultaneously, feeling that ‘there’s no reason to feel angry, it isn’t “real”‘
the ‘sarcasm,’ as i’ve described (probably not the conventional usage of the word) is useful in negating or weakening feelings of frustration or anger, etc., while also being useful in increasing or intensifying feelings of ‘gratitude,’ in part by creating a situation where ‘there becomes nothing left to think about, or to “ponder,” which sort of leaves one with only the knowledge of “limited-time ending in ‘death,’” i think
i’m not completely sure of the previous two paragraphs, i might’ve articulated this more accuratedly/clearly somewhere else on the internet, maybe i will try to write an essay about this at some point
Do you think it’s strange that many questions have asked things about your drug use or sexual preference? Why do you think they do that? Do you think it might have something to do with wanting to ‘humanise’ people in the way that some magazines or faux-current affairs programs or faux-news programs ‘humanise’ people by examining elements of their personal life, which has nothing at all to do with their work at all?
If you had a preference, do you think you’d like people to ask you ‘personal shit’, or about your work?
Do you think Raymond Carver ever won a fist-fight?
I didn’t mean to say ‘at all’ twice in the last question of the first paragraph. Reads like I’m ‘batshit insane’ now. I wish moderators could fix errors like that so comment writers don’t look like douches quite so much.
Also, ‘they’ in the second question is referring to question-askers. That was clear before I rephrased the first question. Seems like a second reason to be considered ‘batshit insane’.
“[your response re sarcasm]”
thanks man, seems to me you articulated this very clearly and i feel i understand this now. i really enjoyed your video game analogy, was v. accessible. seems like this would also be useful in negating feelings of social anxiety.
tao who were you thinking of when you tweeted you were thinking of emailing some ‘random bro’ on tumblr to collaborate?
what brand of jeans do you wear?
Thank you, Tao.
You shattered my life and then rebuilt it. Your stories helped me get over being sexually abused for 6 months. I finally let go.
Thank you,
-Frio
“Do you feel that writing with a philosophical idea in mind makes the writing process less spontaneous?”
i don’t know
i don’t think i currently, or in ~98% of my published things, write ‘with a philosophical idea in mind,’ i think i mostly focus on if each sentence/paragraph/[etc] is making me ‘feel’ a certain way, as i reread it, editing it until it seems to cause me to consistently, each day, feel a certain way, as i reread it repeatedly while conscious of how it’s causing me to feel
“Do you feel that writers need a big overarching philosophy to make good fiction?”
it seems like every person literally has a unique perspective/context/goal
therefore, it seems, every person literally has a unique meaning for the word ‘good’ (or any other abstraction)
also every person’s perspective/context/goal is continuously changing
i think the above three lines are my answer to your question
“Do you enjoy the writing process?”
if i already ‘feel good’ then ‘yes,’ if i already ‘feel bad’ then probably ‘no’
sometimes writing, or thinking, can make me feel better though, i think
“Do you write the aim of finishing a piece of fiction that satisfies you or do you write for the pleasure of the process or for some other reason?”
both of those reasons, to some degree, and probably 10-200 other reasons, to different degrees, at different times
“What is carles’ job, has he become a ‘consultant’?”
i don’t know
“[how do you feel about people saying certain writers sound like or ‘copy’ you]”
short answer:
(1) i like when i find a writer that writes in a manner that i like, and if they write in a manner that i like they are probably writing similarly to another writer that i also like, and i also like when a writer openly ‘copies’ another writer due to liking that writer’s writing (in contrast to ‘mocking’ or ‘parodying’ it) & (2) i don’t like when people say someone is copying me or when someone sounds like someone else
longer answer:
(some things in this ‘longer answer’ may be ‘off-topic’ to some degree, each # is some kind of feeling i have or thing i have thought that is related to this topic to some degree, though)
i don’t know like when people talk about ‘finding your own voice’/’being original’ and speak negatively about ‘[whoever] copying [whoever]’ because:
__(1) saying things like that seems to imply that writing is some kind of contest to be original, to do ‘new’ things, to distinguish yourself from everyone around you, rather than a way to express oneself in order to find people similar to you in order to be friends with them and have fun with them and talk to them and feel less lonely/depressed
__(2) i don’t know what ppl who say that are exactly thinking, or how they view ‘writing’ or ‘thinking,’ because when i find a writer whose writing is similar (accidentally, 40-years-apart, or something; or deliberately, being a student or friend of one of the following) to brandon scott gorrell, ellen kennedy, noah cicero, zachary german, ‘me,’ lorrie moore, joy williams, jean rhys, lydia davis, matthew rohrer, ben lerner, michael earl craig, richard yates, etc. i feel happy and excited, because it means i have ‘found’ another person whose existence excites me and makes me feel less lonely/depressed and whom i want to befriend
__(3) it doesn’t seem accurate or logical to say these things to me, about ppl ‘copying’ me, because i feel that the same people who say these things about ppl ‘copying’ me do not tell me that i am ‘copying’ lorrie moore or jean rhys or matthew rohrer or joy williams or ‘chilly scenes of winter’ even as i’ve stated in almost every interview that i specifically studied and ‘copied’ those books’/writers’ styles, techniques, and tone in almost all of my books
__(4) i literally cannot think of one writer that i like who has not ‘copied’/’been influenced’ by another writer
__(5) the function of ‘being original’ seems logical if you are a corporation that is attempting to cause another corporation’s product that has a specific/concrete function to become obsolete, so that people will buy your product, for example the boeing 747 replacing the airtran 48-b or whatever, due to specifically having ‘improved’ upon the former, which is possible because a jetliner has a specific function for a corporation (something like to move people in as profitable a manner as possible) that can be calculated probably with a computer program
writing, which exists abstractly, literally has no specific/concrete function, because one cannot qualify it except via ‘more abstractions’ (jetliners and other products can be qualified by saying things like ‘it holds 400 people and goes 500 miles on 2000 gallons of gas’), and therefore cannot be ‘improved’ upon in a manner that a computer program, inputted with ‘the entire information of the universe’ could calculate
unless one views it as a product, as something created not to ‘express oneself’ but to ‘gain [something that can be quantified]’ thinking things like ‘the new yorker will pay 5000 for this if i “improve” it in [whatever manner]’ or ‘fsg will buy this for 100,000 if i add [socio-political theme]’ which ‘seems fine’
but i don’t think i have ever met a person who nonsarcasticaly tells me both that (a) [whoever] is copying me and (b) [some kind of advice about how i should either stop that person or change my writing, in order to ‘stay ahead,’ for financial gain], maybe in part because ‘no one’ who has been ‘accused’ of ‘copying’ me has made more than, like, $900 in their hundreds of hours of ‘copying’ me
i think that is the end of (5), feeling kind of confused at this moment
__(6) it is literally impossible for any work of art to be exactly the same as another work of art
the only possible way for two [anything] to be exactly the same is if they exist at different moments in time or different areas in space, in which case they will have different contexts, which causes them to be different (even if you choose to ‘completely block out’ context because one person is unable to experience two [anything], i think, at the exact same time)
due to the infinite, it seems, nature of time, it is logical, i think, that in 1,000,000,000,000 years every combination of words up to, like, 10,000 words, or something will have been typed
therefore, from a certain perspective, everything is already a copy of something else
but ppl who say that one thing is copying another thing do not say that about every thing of art that they encounter
__(7) it seems obvious, to me, that if every person who says brandon ‘copies’ me was made to believe that brandon wrote his book before i wrote my books and then read both of our books they would say that i am copying brandon
‘who is copying who’ seems to be determined almost entirely on things not related to the actual writing
i don’t know what non-financial function there is to ‘finding out’ which book came first and then using that information to then view one book as ‘copying’ the other book
__(8) from my experiences meeting people i’ve learned that some people have a ‘similar sense of humor’ as me, think similar things are funny or interesting, interpret reality in similar ways, and feel affected by similar things
many of these people did not know i existed before they met me, after 15 or 20 or 25 years of not meeting me, yet when we meet it seems that we think in similar ways
‘writing’ is ‘thinking,’ people think in words, sentences, groups of sentences
therefore some people are going to write in a similar manner as other people
when these people meet are they supposed to ‘change themselves’ in order to ‘be original,’ should they ‘train themselves’ to think different things are funny and interesting, or should they only change their thinking when they are writing short stories? seems confusing, to me, to view a work of art firstly as ‘copying’ another work of art
__(9) i read something on the internet when i was downloading a ‘monade’ album (‘monade’ is the woman from stereolab’s other band), someone said that ‘monade’ sounded a lot like stereolab and someone else said something like ‘SO WHAT, STEREOLAB SOUNDS A LOT LIKE STEREOLAB: REALLY GOOD’ or something
__(10) here is an answer by brandon scott gorrell: http://www.formspring.me/lydiadavis/q/663821350
__(11) literally ‘no one’ has, based on what i know, ‘copied’ any amount of my content for more than maybe one sentence
for example i haven’t read any two sentences where someone talks to their manager at domino’s on the phone and drives to domino’s and then in the next sentence the manager is sarcastically ‘firing’ the person
if there is anything similar between writers it seems to be ‘style’ or ‘tone,’ and saying that someone is copying someone else’s ‘style’ or ‘tone’ is like saying that someone who is speaking english is ‘copying’ another person who is speaking english, to some degree, or that someone who thinks it is funny if someone accidentally eats a hot chili pepper is ‘copying’ someone else who first thought it was funny for someone to accidentaly eat a ‘hot chili pepper,’ to some degree
here is an example of how one person somehow viewed two objectively 80%+ (or something) different excerpts were ‘exactly the same’ (though they were being sarcastic, to some degree, probably):
http://htmlgiant.com/author-spotlight/if-you-and-your-friend-write-in-exactly-the-same-voice-about-exactly-the-same-mutual-experiences-are-all-your-mutual-friends-still-obligated-to-read-both-your-books/#comment-76518
__(12) the more i learn about certain books the more unique they seem to me, i seem to have had 5-50 experiences where initially i felt that two bands or writers were ‘similar’ and then later, after experiencing each for an amount of time, felt that they were ‘completely different,’ evoking completely different feelings to me, or at least ‘much more’ different than i initially felt
i don’t think i have ever had an experience where i thought two things were similar, and then felt, as i experienced each to greater degrees, that they were ‘even more similar’ than i previous thought, when i didn’t know as much about each
therefore when people say two things are similar i feel, to some degree, that they are not interested in both things to a degree that they are able to naturally want to learn more about both things and so are not able to, over time, differentiate the two
an example of this would be butterflies, probably
without thinking about it i would probably ‘intuit’ that all butterflies are similar
but i would then ‘correct myself’ and be aware that it is probably very likely that only to me, who has little or no interest in butterflies and know very little about them, are they similar, to someone who collects and is very interested in butterflies each butterfly is probably ‘so different’ than any other butterfly
another example would be, like, ‘asians’ or ‘black people’
to someone who has never seen an ‘asian’ or a ‘black person,’ and who is an adult, all ‘asians’ or all ‘black people’ will probably seem ‘the same’
until one is interested enough to learn about specific ‘asians’ or specific ‘black people’
this seems to be something that i’ve experienced many times in my life, to the point that i now, by default, assume that if i knew enough about two things i would view them each as unique
it seems likely that ‘all things’ or ‘most things’ are like this
what possible non-financial, non-dehumazing function would there be to see a person and have one’s first and seemingly ‘final’ thought about that person be something like ‘that person is the same as [another person]’
‘non-dehumazing’ = ‘non-dehumanizing’
“Do you think it’s strange that many questions have asked things about your drug use or sexual preference?”
no, that seems expected
it seems like what i would be interested in asking other people
i would probably want to ask joy williams or lorrie moore or frederick barthelme about drug-use, if i felt they wouldn’t be offended or feel bad about me asking that
“Why do you think they do that?”
because they feel interested in sex and drugs
“Do you think it might have something to do with wanting to ‘humanise’ people in the way that some magazines or faux-current affairs programs or faux-news programs ‘humanise’ people by examining elements of their personal life, which has nothing at all to do with their work at all?”
i don’t think people think ‘i don’t view tao as human yet, i want to humanize him, in order to humanize him i will learn what drugs he does and how long his penis is’
they probably think ‘i wonder what drugs tao does and how long his penis is, he hasn’t talked about those things in interviews, now is my chance to “force him” via [tweet where he said he would honestly answer every question] to reveal these things’
“If you had a preference, do you think you’d like people to ask you ‘personal shit’, or about your work?”
i would rather be asked about drugs, sex, and questions like ‘what did you eat last night’ or ‘what time did you wake today’ or ‘what songs have you listened to a lot recently’ or ‘what are some smoothies you like’ or ‘what restaurants do you like’ than questions about my work
i feel that if i told someone an anecdote (that i had edited in my head to a ‘tightly-plotted, interesting anecdote’ before saying it) i would prefer if they responded with clarifying questions, if they didn’t comprehend something in my anecdote, and then with one of their anecdotes, instead of critiquing my anecdote’s prose style or asking me about the meaning or cultural significance of my anecdote
in most situations, at this point in my life, i think, i feel similarly with a ‘short story’ or ‘poem’ or ‘novel’
“Do you think Raymond Carver ever won a fist-fight?”
probably, i think his biography said some things about him fighting a lot as a child
“tao who were you thinking of when you tweeted you were thinking of emailing some ‘random bro’ on tumblr to collaborate?”
i don’t remember exactly
i don’t think i was thinking of a specific person
“what brand of jeans do you wear?”
i think i have four ‘pants’ that i’ve worn the last ~10-15 months, two levis, one american apparel corduroy, one a.p.c.
is there any reason, aesthetic or otherwise, that your jeans are baggier than those of most hipsters?
“is there any reason, aesthetic or otherwise, that your jeans are baggier than those of most hipsters?”
i think my a.p.c. is a ‘looser’ than my other pants
my brother gave them to me like 3 years ago
the other ones aren’t ‘loose,’ i feel, and are from ebay and from zachary german
would you consider writing a book/essay, fiction or non-fiction, addressing veganism from your angle? kinda like jonathan safran foer did? also, would you consider answering questions like these continuously until everyone got bored asking you questions?
What, if anything, was your goal in writing that Marina Abramovic essay (aside from obvious goals like getting it published or enjoying the act of writing that you might have for anything you write)? Is there any specific message or effect you’d hope to communicate to a reader through that essay, beyond the concrete events described or maybe amusement at those events?
Also, do you feel sad that you never made it to stare at her? (I do.)
did you ever do cognitive behavioral therapy? if so, what was your experience like, and would you recommend it for the treatment of social anxiety?
how often do you cut your hair; do you “regular” a hair stylist/salon?
what’s the longest your hair has ever been?
are you vaguely anxious or otherwise about 2012? What about 2050? Does the future, anything and everything not present or past, make you feel anxious or otherwise?
What song, and by whom, would you recommend to any person, not knowing their music tastes? or, what song do you enjoy that you feel could/does transcend genre?
Do you ever think about mimes? I keep dreaming about mimes. They make me nervous.
Tao, I am trying to locate the earliest instances of the phrases “facial expression” and “neutral facial expression” in your oeuvre.
I have found the phrase “worried facial expression” in your story “Cull the Steel Heart…” in “Bed.” I have not been able to find the phrase “neutral facial expression” in “Bed.”
According to your blog post “a decade in review,” “Bed” was completed in 2004. Am I correct to believe that “Bed” is your earliest work that is “available to the public”?
The earliest instance of “neutral facial expression” that I have found is in your Bear Parade e-book “Today the Sky is Blue…†Do you know of an earlier instance? Do you know if it appears in “Bed” or “you are a little bit happier than i am”?
Thanks.
Have you ever had a “sexual encounter” with another male? If not, would you?
are you enjoying/feeling satisfied with this relocated formspring session?
how do you make decisions in daily life, like what to eat or what to write about, if you “view every person, or thing, as specific”? i.e., how can simultaneously see everything as being the same amount of important, and still choose to do certain things over other things?
does your ‘philosophy’ about viewing things as equally important ever ‘make it hard’ for you to have a ‘personality’, besides a ‘shy and introverted’ personality?
Have you ever read any James Joyce?
Do you ever feel like you should be writing ‘about’ something i.e. making a political point (this is assuming that other than in a documentary sense, you are somewhat apolitical)?
Do you think of the starving millions at all/everytime you consume an ‘over-priced’ beverage/item of food? Or in case you think I should define ‘over-priced’, which I find I can’t easily (other than to say a product with a high profit margin):
Do you think of the starving millions at all/everytime you live a lifestyle beyond marginal utility?
are you philosophically opposed to smoking some dank and smashing a za?
-hands Tao a muffin-
“would you consider writing a book/essay, fiction or non-fiction, addressing veganism from your angle?â€
yes via ‘i will consider anything’
chances of me doing that seem to be 2-5% currently
chances are maybe higher of me writing a book/essay in which ‘morals’ was inside of it, with ‘veganism’ probably not specifically mentioned, with ‘morals’ being an aspect of some other thing, probably ‘undefinable,’ to some degree, that the book would be focused on, maybe
“also, would you consider answering questions like these continuously until everyone got bored asking you questions?”
yes, i am now committed to doing that until [an unknown time]
“What, if anything, was your goal in writing that Marina Abramovic essay (aside from obvious goals like getting it published or enjoying the act of writing that you might have for anything you write)?”
i don’t think there were other goals than what you mentioned except, to some degree, ‘get paid’ and have something for ‘thought catalog’ to publish as they ‘wait’ for my currently ~8000-word/’pretty unorganized’ ‘piece’ on ryu murakami’s ‘almost transparent blue’
“Is there any specific message or effect you’d hope to communicate to a reader through that essay, beyond the concrete events described or maybe amusement at those events? ”
no
“Also, do you feel sad that you never made it to stare at her? (I do.)”
no, i feel, if anything, ‘relieved,’ because it seems like it would’ve been stressful/scary, to some degree
i also feel other things though, but maybe not ‘sad’
“did you ever do cognitive behavioral therapy? if so, what was your experience like, and would you recommend it for the treatment of social anxiety?â€
yes i have ‘done it’ before, and still do each day i think
i think probably most people ‘do it’ every day, whenever they focus on thinking a certain thing or not thinking a certain thing
or on feeling less of whatever emotion via either ‘doing something’ or ‘thinking something’ that they feel will cause them to feel different emotions or [things like anxiety, not sure what those things are called, don’t think they’re ’emotions’] than the ones they want to feel less to some degree
the experience was ‘normal’ maybe
“how often do you cut your hairâ€
once, a little, every 1-8 days
“do you “regular†a hair stylist/salon?â€â€¨
i’ve cut it myself for something like 9 years
“what’s the longest your hair has ever been?â€
to my ears or a little below my ears, some time in middle or high school
“are you vaguely anxious or otherwise about 2012?â€
not more so than about [most things] i think
“What about 2050?â€
not more so than about [most things] i think
“Does the future, anything and everything not present or past, make you feel anxious or otherwise?â€â€¨
yes, some things about it sometimes make me feel anxious, but some things about anything also do
“What song, and by whom, would you recommend to any person, not knowing their music tastes?â€
if i didn’t know anything about their tastes i would recommend something i like at the time
currently i would recommend maybe something by ‘johnny hobo and the freight trains’
“or, what song do you enjoy that you feel could/does transcend genre?â€
i feel that probably every song has an equal ability to ‘transcend genre,’ that it depends on the person/society, i’m not completely sure about this though
so i’m not sure what song i that i like could do that
seems like the song ‘these days’ as covered by someone w/ a ‘less deep’ voice than nico is able to transcend genre more so, in my experience, than some other songs that i like
i think that is mostly because of specific people & ‘society’ and not b/c of the song itself though
seems like even things like ‘a mango’ will sometimes be unable to transcend its ‘genre,’ if someone has some aversion toward ‘fruit’
“Do you ever think about mimes?â€
not more than most other things, i think
“Am I correct to believe that “Bed†is your earliest work that is “available to the publicâ€?â€
there are 5-20 stories/poems/[other] on the internet and in some literary magazines that were written before ‘bed,’ i think
“
The earliest instance of “neutral facial expression†that I have found is in your Bear Parade e-book “Today the Sky is Blue…†Do you know of an earlier instance? Do you know if it appears in “Bed†or “you are a little bit happier than i amâ€?
”
i searched ‘neutral facial expression’ in my word file of ‘you are a little bit…,’ it is not in there
i searched it in my word file of ‘bed,’ it is not there
i searched it in my word file of ‘eeeee eee eeee,’ it is in there 4 times
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22neutral+facial+expression%22+%22tao+lin%22&hl=en&start=20&sa=N yields some results (story on nerve.com, a page of ‘hikikomori’ but i’m not completely sure if any of those were before ‘eeeee eee eeee’ and i only looked at the 1st & 2nd page of results
Where’s the best place to get an iced coffee in Brooklyn?
“Have you ever had a “sexual encounter†with another male? If not, would you?â€
i don’t think i have
i’m ‘open’ to it but currently feel that probably 95-99.8% of moments i won’t ‘feel like it’
“are you enjoying/feeling satisfied with this relocated formspring session?â€
yes
“how do you make decisions in daily life, like what to eat or what to write about, if you “view every person, or thing, as specificâ€?â€
viewing every person/thing as ‘specific’ is an ideal that i feel literally is ‘impossible’ for a conscious being to do 100%, i don’t view it as something that can be accomplished or not accomplished, but something that one could, if they wanted to, ‘use’ as a kind of ‘rule’ to help them decide what to do in each moment or how to interpret things they see or think about
an analogy could be something like…’writing a novel’
in my head, at each moment, i feel that i have an ‘ideal’ for what i want the novel to be like
i know that i will not be able to achieve that ‘ideal,’ because it’s something i ‘feel,’ ‘pre-language,’ based on my entire experience from being born until now, and therefore probably more complex and ‘extra-literary’ than i can express with sentences arranged in a certain manner, or something
but that doesn’t mean that i cannot write a novel, i can try to do it, and because the ‘ideal’ is, in my view, ‘impossible,’ trying itself is the accomplishment
not having ‘ideals’ would be like ‘not being conscious,’ to a degree
often ‘ideals’ are not conscious, or are momentary, i think
for example a person who is eating a cupcake probably has the momentarily ‘ideal’ of ‘satisfy my urges via “taste” via “cupcake’” or something
“i.e., how can simultaneously see everything as being the same amount of important, and still choose to do certain things over other things?â€
because i view ‘seeing everything as equal’ as ‘impossible’ for a conscious being
it is an ‘ideal’ (see above)
i think that consciousness means ‘existentially required to make choices’ to some degree, and i accept that, while also ‘knowing’ that from the perspective of ‘everything’/’nothing’ no one thing is more ‘important’ than any other thing, which is why, some of the time, when i do things–anything–i feel ‘sarcastic’ about it, because i know that i am ‘choosing’ certain things after making assumptions that are as arbitrary/illegitimate/legitimate as any other person’s assumptions
this may be what some kinds of works labeled ‘existentialism’ sometimes talk about
“does your ‘philosophy’ about viewing things as equally important ever ‘make it hard’ for you to have a ‘personality’, besides a ’shy and introverted’ personality?â€
i think that depends on your definition of ‘personality’
i think my ‘personality’ is ‘whatever i effect, via thoughts/feelings/actions, with my existence,’ which is maybe ‘not hard’ to ‘have’
“you ever read any James Joyce?â€â€¨
i’ve read most of ‘dubliners’ and maybe 3-100 pages from his other books
“Do you ever feel like you should be writing ‘about’ something i.e. making a political point (this is assuming that other than in a documentary sense, you are somewhat apolitical)?â€â€¨
ideally, currently, i don’t want to ever feel like i ‘should’ be doing anything, in the ‘earnest’/’one-meaning’ sense of the word ‘should’
i feel okay with saying/thinking somewhat sarcastic things like ‘i should feel good right now, i just “chugged’ a large iced coffee’
i don’t feel accurate or honest saying/thinking ‘should’ non-sarcastically
in part because i know that in each moment i can do whatever i want to do
in part because i know that from the perspective of ‘everything’/’nothing’ there is no message except maybe ‘things “should” move toward other things of greater mass at a speed of [something],’ or ‘gravity,’ and ‘things “should” [something] at a rate of [something] within [some kind of system],’ or ‘entropy,’ maybe
i feel comfortable saying ‘i should move toward the ground if i jump off this roof’ because it makes no assumptions other than what i feel the universe itself has ‘assumed’
“Do you think of the starving millions at all/everytime you consume an ‘over-priced’ beverage/item of food?”
sometimes i do
i think that the effect of buying an ‘organic, raw, vegan almond shake’ from an independent, organic, raw vegan restaurant for $9 will reduce pain/suffering in the short-term and probably the long-term more effectively than if i bought 9 milkshakes from mcdonald’s for $1 each
an easy way to estimate if that statement is true is to think what would happen if $50 billion next year were spent at independent, organic, raw vegan restaurants instead of at mcdonald’s
mcdonald’s would close probably thousands of locations and millions (or something) of people would lose their minimum-wage jobs
each organic vegan restaurant would either expand, hiring millions (or something) of people at higher wages probably, and probably hiring more people, since their ‘human resources’ departments aren’t based completely on ‘spending the least amount of money to gain the most amount of work done’
the millions of pounds of petroleum, pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics needed to produce the millions of pounds of non-organic beef, potatoes, ‘salads,’ milk, chicken, etc. would no longer be needed, because organic food by definition does not use any of those things
millions of pounds (or something) less toxic material, each year, would be created and released into such things as ‘rivers’ (leading eventually to ‘oceans’), ‘forests,’ fields, soil, [ecosystems], [towns nearby factory farms]
thousands of owners of independent, organic, vegan raw restuarants would have a lot more money than they do now, that high-level executives at mcdonalds would previous have
there is a higher chance of money being spent to relieve pain/suffering if an organic restaurant owner (who probably is involved in socially-beneficial things already and displays a lot of flyers trying to get people to help poorer people) has a lot of expendable income than if a high-level executive at mcdonald’s has a lot of expendable income
one can extrapolate this to ‘health store’/’walmart’ or other things
it seems to me that spending more money on food/beverage, if the food/beverage is more expensive because it is organic or because the company pays its employees more money or is not large enough to get its supplies from farms or wherever at ‘deep discounts,’ is probably almost always more likely beneficial to the ‘starving people of the world’
these are ‘simply’ cause/effects i have observed, that i feel a computer that is input with the information that i know would respond with as an ‘output’
“Or in case you think I should define ‘over-priced’, which I find I can’t easily (other than to say a product with a high profit margin):
Do you think of the starving millions at all/everytime you live a lifestyle beyond marginal utility?â€
i don’t think i do, not in that manner
i think to some degree i’m ‘always’ aware that there are people poorer than me and people richer than me, and those things influence how i act, to some degree, at all moments, but not necessarily in a way that makes me spend as little money as possible or spend as much money as possible in order to support the entity who would ‘improve the world’ the most w/ my money, and avoid anything that isn’t ‘necessary’ for me to ‘stay alive’
not sure if it’s clear what i’m conveying now
i will answer more questions about this if they’re asked
will answer the next question now
“are you philosophically opposed to smoking some dank and smashing a za?â€
no
insert after this paragraph: “each organic vegan restaurant would either expand, hiring millions (or something) of people at higher wages probably, and probably hiring more people, since their ‘human resources’ departments aren’t based completely on ’spending the least amount of money to gain the most amount of work done’”
this paragraph re “either”: “or use their extra money in a manner that is not 100% focused on increasing profits (as an organic vegan restaurant that is not publicly-owned via ‘stock’ is not existentially required to increase profits), for example paying their workers more, spending more money on packaging by replacing plastic packaging with glass or paper packaging, starting socially-beneficial organizations, giving the money to already-established socially-beneficial organizations, etc.”
‘Where’s the best place to get an iced coffee in Brooklyn?’
i like ‘cold-brewed’ iced coffee, i think it is less acidic than ‘normal’ iced coffee
‘variety’ off the graham L & ‘verb’ off the bedford L have ‘cold-brewed’ iced coffee
Tao, I am an aspiring writer and follow your blog. Can you tell me if you only live off writing income or do you have other work on the side? How did you do it?
I’m interested in the analysis you did of lorrie moore’s ‘like life’ to develop some aspects of your technique. I want to apply your ‘algorithm’ to the books of Anna Kavan to develop some aspects of my own technique. Have you read her books? They are quite nice
This is cool you are doing this, Tao.
How have you made money as a writer/artist, etc? Could you be specific about which things have gained you more or less money? I am wondering if you ‘actually’ make money from your books and standard forms of writing (like articles) or mainly from ‘unusual’ ideas/gimmicks like selling your Myspace, selling shares to RY, and so on.
Also, is Muumuu House a money-making operation for you and/or others involved? Or do you basically break even on it, or lose money?
do you or have you felt cognitive dissonance toward ‘working with’ american apparel or urban outfitters, or like ‘implicitly’ promoting them? my reasoning would be that american apparel has been criticized by a lot of people for being sexist–the sexualized adverts have been said to objectify women, and dov charney has been charged with sexual harassment, i think, multiple times–and urban outfitters has their clothes made in sweatshops, i think. both of these things seem like, not ideal to support, based on your previously stated ethics (reducing suffering, increasing happiness)
Have you ever been on antidepressants or similar medications at some point? If so, do you feel that they “helped” you? If not, is there a specific reason you have chosen not to take them?
hello tao lin!
i am Japanese and not sure i could to understand what you said.
in my understanding, you said like, you don’t want to define what is important and unimportant, and therefore there is no existence of important and unimportant, everything is equally same value. it seems it is some fair statement for everything. but probably you have to have your preference. i just imagine now, maybe something have to have some particular thing. for example, i am human need to drink water, or eat food, but i can’t eat cloth or glass or table or anything not eatable. it is somewhat i am already selecting what i need. thing have function and influence each others. and chemical reaction, hydrogen and oxygen are convinced to make water. it seems something is already decided in rule. from nature level. earth is rounding, it seems it is true. it seems nothing can make this fact. something are already decided what they are and their function. it seems it is already obstinate.
important and unimportant, maybe among majority of people there is common view, what sort of thing is important and unimportant. something seems important and something seems unimportant. and doing unimportant thing is almost like just ridiculous. for example really like useless thing like “what is this using for?” maybe if person who are doing this “unimportant” or “useless” thing do not have some idea or concept for this, it possibility can be really just that. i wonder if person notice this is “unimportant” one day, and get depressed so much for wasting time for so long time. so possibility it is more safe way to choose to do important thing. possibility person can not know what is important and unimportant though.
and it seems difficult, how to choose unimportant thing. maybe when person choose something person tend to choose important thing, and it seems it is function for choosing itself.
maybe it can be possible, if person pick up thing, which is considered “unimportant” or not even considered(because it is un-spotlighted ) among majority people, but for this person it is possibility already “important”.
if “everything is okay”, it can both include “good” and “bad”, and if thing are somewhat fair, there is no boundary or concept for “good” and “bad”, like “important” and “unimportant”.
but bad thing is bad. if person say “why is this bad? i can’t understand, i don’t have the word of bad in my dictionary, i don’t understand why is this bad, so i don’t do bad”, and commit some bad crime, this person have to go jail.
and society have law, which describe what is the thing person do have to go to jail. it is somewhat fair statement, that every people have to go jail if they do crime under law.
and law is totally like rule.
and to make law, there is some system.
*
maybe lately i have felt i want to say or do something unimportant. but my certain thinking way is certain way, maybe it has been somehow my habit that try to capture important thing. unimportant, or just like very normal thing, that cause nothing, that have no purpose at all, that is like just there. also maybe i feel if all is important thing it is somewhat tiresome. maybe if “all is unimportant, actually there is no duty to see it, but if you have extra idly free time and if you want to, you can see it”, it is something good? i wonder.
*
are you interested in politics and economy?
do you have specific vision for your future?
what is your favorite color?
do you want to come to my house in new zealand and hang out?
it’s cold and damp and there’s nothing to do, and i’d probably ignore you.
I understand this point:
“i don’t feel accurate or honest saying/thinking ’should’ non-sarcastically”
but do not understand it as a justification for thinking ‘should’ sarcastically. Do you value accurate and honest thinking? If so, do you value it sarcastically, in keeping with the other kinds of valuing you do, since you are aware that value is arbitrary/external to things? What is your goal in being sarcastic–to promote an image of yourself to others as “existentially aware,” to encourage “existential awareness” in others, to identify yourself to other “existentially aware” individuals as an ally and friend? Do you think that there are “existentially aware” individuals who are not sarcastic, via a conscious series of philosophical choices resulting in choosing not to value “accurate” or “honest” thinking about value/existence? Would you want to be friends with individuals like that?
How do you justify shoplifting things you don’t “need”?
Like a shirt or headphones? Why don’t you just buy or Not buy/steal these things?
not sure what your “philosophy” is on this… feel confused.
when do you think muumuu house will put out more books? is there “really” going to be a “complete gmail correspondence of tao and bsg” at some point? seems that would be a very interesting read.
Which has been your favorite question so far?
do you read any comics, on the web or otherwise?
How do you decide which words to put quote marks around?
re “i think probably most people ‘do it’ every day, whenever they focus on thinking a certain thing or not thinking a certain thing” (re cognitive behavioural therapy), which kind of thoughts and/or emotions do you most often try to repress in your ‘day-to-day life’, and why?
(this is a separate question) .. i think i saw you write somewhere that [all] art reduces pain and suffering in the world. if you did write this or something similar to this, why does art do this?
can you outline your ‘history with john campbell (author of web-comic and graphic novel ‘pictures for sad children’)’?.. as in the thoughts you have had about him/his work and/or your correspondence with him if you have ever had any..
i sometimes feel that making things more ‘readable’ makes them less ‘true’ since it is kind of persuading the reader to like the sentences via them being ‘easy to digest’ or something maybe. in this way, if writing aims (to an extent) to please the reader, isn’t it like advertising/persuasive speeches/journalism/etc in the sense that it isn’t art and doesn’t aim towards something ‘true’. seems a li’l arbitrary or something. [dont really know wtf im talking abt]
what are your thoughts about the above sentences?
what are some of the thoughts/feelings about me you may have had while reading my questions?
I recently had a book club meeting at my highschool over “Eeeee Eee Eeee”, and I wanted to know whether or not this upset you.
tao, could you give me some ‘reading’ suggestions? i am not a fan of ‘ann beattie’ style writing but i am a fan of ‘cormac mccarthy’ style writing. i don’t think any ‘indie writers’ can do anything like ‘cormac mccarthy.’ do you read writers not like ‘ann beattie’? if so, can you suggest some writers more like ‘cormac mccarthy’?
damn i ‘hope u arent swamped’ by all the questions here. feel like i ‘gotta take advantage of’ this ‘boss opportunity’
how did u gain such a big readership at ur blog? u dont have ‘subscribe’ or ‘follow me’ links i’ve seen; how do u get so many people 2 come back on their own? which tactics 2 promote ur blog have worked, and which ones havent? did it get u many hits when u interviewed writers and wrote about ur favorite books, or did more ppl care when u made long arguments about editing, rights, or ‘literature that is dark’?
‘further,’ u promote urself thru ‘various online media’–twitter, blogspot, tumblr, facebook, and now this formspring. do u specifically think about which kinds of posts ‘belong’ at each place? do u limit tweets to certain kinds of messages, and tumblr posts to somthing different than ur blog? (i noticed u post hamsters and ur art on tumblr, for example. is this kind of decision ‘premeditated’? if so, on what reasoning/feeling is it based?)
one literary character you would most like to be in a relaish with??
Have you ever been in a fist fight/dangerous physical confrontation/ /situation of any sort?
Do you know how to cartwheel?
Also, Bed arrived today, many thanks.
Do you believe that a fiction writer has to be completely honest with themselves, through actions, and during the writing process to write something with authentic emotions? Additionally, do you have any thoughts on honesty and its impact (if any) on persona in writing today?
Do you have any feelings or thoughts on your affect on a certain segment of this generations language use (don’t be bashful)? Any on people mimicking your style (i.e. ‘these’) whether it be published writing or a blogger?
Lastly, the title of your upcoming novel, “Richard Yates”, is, to me at least, incredibly modern, or relevant to American culture today (and of course, funny). People already appear to be copying this. You have said in interviews you are not saying anything about this generation, technology, or society but it seems to me that one who would name their novel “Richard Yates” is keenly aware of those things listed above. So it seems to me that you are saying something about those things, even if indifferently so, because you are projecting it onto the public. Am I way off here? This may be a stupid comment.
I hope these don’t come off as aggressive or prodding. I am huge fan of yours. Your authored books and blog posts have deeply affected my thinking. Thank you.
Do you read ‘critical theory’ ‘continental philosophy’ or anything that ‘cultural studies majors’ would feel ‘inclined’ to read?
Do you read ‘straight-up philosophy’ or only literature?
Do you think there is an objective difference between poetry and prose?
Do you think the things invested in things are part of the thing, or from outside of the thing? Do you define things in terms of how they are ‘talked about’ ‘discursively’ via media or only in a functional sense, or ‘intrinsic physical properties’? I feel like you are more the latter. Does this question make sense or do you require examples?
Why is the new book called Richard Yates?
do you have any idea yet what your next book will be after ‘RY’ (i mean stories, poems, novel, or novella)?
also, it seems ‘incredible,’ maybe, that you’ve published 1+ book every year since 2006. do you ever feel you are rushing your material, or do you feel like you are ‘just’ writing and publishing at a natural, relaxed pace? do you feel pressured to publish prolifically?
thank you!
“Tao, I am an aspiring writer and follow your blog. Can you tell me if you only live off writing income or do you have other work on the side? How did you do it?
comprehensive, i think, information about that is here:
http://www.theurbanelitist.com/interview-tao-lin-on-money/1658/
if you have questions after reading that i will answer them
“I’m interested in the analysis you did of lorrie moore’s ‘like life’ to develop some aspects of your technique.”
i think i ‘simply’ looked at each sentence, what it was like from sentence to sentence, what it was like from paragraph to paragraph, ‘section’ to ‘section,’ and how exactly each of those things affected me emotionally and what they caused me to think
i noticed things like that she likes to start consecutive sentences in the same manner, if they’re short, descriptive sentences (“She began eating in bathtubs. She began showering in the afternoon.”*)
she begins new scenes with dialogue, then ‘place’ the reader in the scene with a few words (“I like to eat muffins or mangos at night,” she said in bed.”*)
she combines two recent adjectives or nouns into one ‘double adjective’ or ‘double noun’ like calling something a ‘flamingo-hawk’ after recently mentioning a flamingo and a hawk
she sort of non-sequiturly includes ‘backstory’ within a phone conversation, or other conversation, with the ‘backstory’ being sort of separate, but ‘spliced into’ the dialogue
she ‘riffs’ on non-rhetorical ‘themes’ within stories, for example some people would have a theme like ‘marriage is [something]’ or ‘marriage,’ where she might, in one story, have a ‘theme’ of something like ‘spiders’ & ‘stars’ & ‘clouds’ (‘riffing’ on them, non-rhetorically) in additional to ‘[something else]’ (thinking of ‘terrific mother’ for ‘spiders’ & ‘stars’ & ‘clouds’)
etc., things like that
*not actual quotes
“I want to apply your ‘algorithm’ to the books of Anna Kavan to develop some aspects of my own technique. Have you read her books?”
no, i don’t know that person
“How have you made money as a writer/artist, etc? Could you be specific about which things have gained you more or less money?”
if you have more questions after reading the above linked interview i will answer them
“Also, is Muumuu House a money-making operation for you and/or others involved? Or do you basically break even on it, or lose money?”
2009 COPIES SOLD – 1/1/9 – 3/5/10
ELLEN’S BOOK: 154 ( $1848)
AMAZON 3/5/09 – 3/5//10: 101 ($437.4)
SKYLIGHT: 15 ($75)
POWELL’S: 14 ($100.8)
PILOT: 4 ($20)
________________
$2481 ($1868 retail)
$2287 cost for 1000x
BRANDON’S BOOK: 73 ( $876)
AMAZON 3/5/09 – 3/5/10: 66 ($324)
POWELL’S: 15 ($108)
PILOT: 4 ($20)
_______________
$1328 ($896 retail)
$3553 cost for 2500x
TBBC: 44 ($660)
PDF: 8 ($24.5)
_________________
$684.5 ($684.5 retail)
$629.91 cost for 150x.
LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTIONS: 19 ($1900)
that is missing some bookstores, i think, and some sales ‘on the street’ and trades or some other things
overall i think muumuu house is currently ‘down’ around $1500
i like doing it though, and feel, to some degree, like i’ve spent $1500 on a widescreen TV or on a bahamas cruise or something, in that i don’t view it as ‘losing money’
also i feel that in the future it will be profitable
what are some poets you have read/”liked”, are reading/do “like”? what you do you think of someone like harold bloom, and what he might “say” about you? what do you think of poetry? are your thoughts on it the same as with “prose”, whether made by you or by others?
“do you or have you felt cognitive dissonance toward ‘working with’ american apparel or urban outfitters, or like ‘implicitly’ promoting them?”
i have not felt cognitive dissonance re that, i think in part b/c i view ‘american apparel’ as ‘better,’ due to [various things including, but not limited to, their use of organic material, how much they pay workers, their lack of outsourcing], than ‘the average clothing retailer,’ and in part b/c i don’t have a philosophy in life where i’m focused entirely, at all moments, on ‘bettering the world,’ in the conventional sense of that, in part because i know that i do not know, in the long-term, like 100,000 years, what will ‘better’ the world (for example, honestly, maybe eating 5 non-organic hamburgers a day for the rest of my life will ‘save’ 1,000,000,000 extraterrestrials from thousands of years of pain and suffering 1,000,000 years from now), and in part b/c, if the previous reason was ignored, i think that the amount of long-term ‘money’/’influence’ i could gain from having ‘american apparel’ sell my books will be greater than the amount of long-term ‘money’/’influence’ ‘american apparel’ will gain, and i know that i will probably use most of my money on organic food from independent venues
for ‘urban outfitters’ the same reasoning applies to varying degrees, i think
i think at this point i’m ‘repeating myself,’ and less accurately than previously maybe
people may want to read ‘official’ interviews i’ve typed on the internet for more accurate responses to some things, if they want to
“Have you ever been on antidepressants or similar medications at some point?”
no
“If not, is there a specific reason you have chosen not to take them?”
there are many reasons, i think
i don’t think there is one specific reason
one reason would be that i feel that i’m ‘fine’ with how i feel each day
one reason would be that i don’t currently feel like ‘using’ something with intent to use it ‘for the rest of my life,’ not sure if it works like that though
one reason would be that i feel aware of ‘tolerance’ things and feel ‘afraid’ when i become ‘tolerant’ to something, because it creates some kind of situation where i need to ‘use more’ for ‘the same effect,’ which seems unsustainable to some degree
“are you interested in politics and economy?”
yes, to some degree, depending on the definitions of those words
“do you have specific vision for your future?”
no
“what is your favorite color?”
i don’t know, i seem to like most colors, depending on context
“do you want to come to my house in new zealand and hang out?”
maybe
hi tao,
has anyone ever thought of or approached you about making a documentary about you? seems like it would be interesting to see interviews with you and your friends and to have a camera follow you around. not sure what the “angle” or “dramatic event” would be to give the doc “oomph,” in a “grizzly man”/”i am trying to break your heart” kind of way, but nonetheless, could see a doc about you screening at sundance or something. or it could be like a “fly on the wall” d.a. pennebaker “don’t look back” type deal, that has no plot but just follows the person during a key point in their career. any thoughts on this?
“I understand this point: “i don’t feel accurate or honest saying/thinking ’should’ non-sarcastically†but do not understand it as a justification for thinking ’should’ sarcastically. Do you value accurate and honest thinking?”
i don’t think i have a justification for thinking ‘should’ sarcastically, not more so than i have a justification for ‘looking at a tree’ or ‘eating a mango’ or [other]
not sure if i comprehend your question, i think i could answer it if ‘value,’ ‘accurate,’ and ‘honest’ were defined specifically
‘sarcasm,’ as i’ve defined it in this comments section, is not in opposition to or mutually exclusive re ‘honest,’ i think
“If so, do you value it sarcastically, in keeping with the other kinds of valuing you do, since you are aware that value is arbitrary/external to things?”
i probably value it sarcastically some of the time, to some degree (depending on your definition of ‘value’), or ‘can’ value it sarcastically, due to the reason you stated
i feel that i’m not constant in how i experience things, i’m not always aware of the same information, in the same manner, to the same degree, at all times
“What is your goal in being sarcastic–to promote an image of yourself to others as “existentially aware,†to encourage “existential awareness†in others, to identify yourself to other “existentially aware†individuals as an ally and friend?”
probably all those things, to some degree, and maybe to a greater degree as a way to console myself or make myself ‘feel better’ if i ‘feel bad’ for various reasons
“Do you think that there are “existentially aware†individuals who are not sarcastic, via a conscious series of philosophical choices resulting in choosing not to value “accurate†or “honest†thinking about value/existence?”
yes, that seems possible
anything seems possible
not sure if i’m comprehending the kind of individual you’re describing, but it seems possible via ‘anything seems possible’
“Would you want to be friends with individuals like that?”
i feel willing to be friends with any individual
“How do you justify shoplifting things you don’t “needâ€?”
i think that probably any action can be justified with equal legitimacy as any other action, from a certain perspective
i could justify it in many ways, depending on my context/goal, and the context/goal of the ‘target’
“Like a shirt or headphones? Why don’t you just buy or Not buy/steal these things?”
because at the time, for various reasons, a person might want to have a shirt or headphones for free, and might either feel that they are ‘improving’ the world, within whatever context, or that they are ‘improving’ their own situation, causing the action to be something they would like to actuate
the above ‘muumuu house’ thing is also missing distributor sales
also think i’m miscalculating re ‘net profit/loss’
How do you feel about the term G-Chat Realism?
Thanks TL – I think this Q+A session has been one of the best things I’ve read for the past ~7 months.
thanks for such a thorough answer 🙂
You should read ‘sleep has his house’
do you view every person/thing as specific because, in part, there is no way you can ever know the exact context (like, everything that has happened/all the energy that was put into something) of anything? is it your goal to understand as much of the context of the things you come into contact with?
do you play ping pong? do you like popcorn more than other things? do you find that you more often eat 2-3 large meals with few snacks or snack throughout the day? what is the first book you remember having complex thoughts and opinions about? have you ever stapled something a lot of times because you thought it would look cool but when you were finished found that it kinda just looked messy/sloppy?
Are your emotions pure? Are your nerves adjustable? How do you stand in relation to the potato?
How do you pronounce “pedant”?
When will the second printing of “Sometimes My Heart Pushes Against My Ribs” be in? I would really like to buy it, I think.
“re “i think probably most people ‘do it’ every day, whenever they focus on thinking a certain thing or not thinking a certain thing†(re cognitive behavioural therapy), which kind of thoughts and/or emotions do you most often try to repress in your ‘day-to-day life’, and why?”
i think i have repressed, or maybe more accurately, ‘changed’ or ‘stopped thinking,’ thoughts like ‘[something] is good’ or ‘[something, maybe most often something that most ppl feel is “art”] is bad’ or ‘this is [qualitative abstraction]’ and feelings like ‘[something involving me] isn’t [a word like “fair”]’
i would stop thinking ‘[something, maybe most often something that most ppl feel is “art”] is [qualitative abstraction]’ because, among other reasons, and to varying degrees at different times in different contexts, (1) http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/2007/04/crippling-loneliness-and-killing.html (2) i feel, in a similar manner as i would feel if i listened to a certain song or read a certain short story, or whatever, i think, to some degree, excited or ‘interested’ to stop thinking in terms of ‘good’/’bad’ and then exist and think and feel things, for an amount of time, in a manner that doesn’t, to a degree more than average, consider things in terms of ‘good’/’bad’/[qualitative abstraction]
i would stop thinking ‘[something involving me] isn’t [a word like “fair”]’ because i feel less frustrated when i stop thinking things like that, in a manner that seems more sustainable than if i were to continue think things like that, because if i think something isn’t ‘fair’ it seems like i will continue to think that, no matter what my situation is, and probably in an increasing manner, whereas if i don’t think something like that at all i will i will feel calmer and, if i view my life in the same manner i view ‘art,’ more satisfied, in the sammer manner as if i typed a short story very quickly then, instead of publishing that first draft, edited it for an amount of time then published it
i’m not sure what thoughts i ‘most often’ stop thinking or attempt to change
i don’t think i attempt to change or stop experiencing feelings, ‘cognitive-behavioral therapy’ says that thoughts cause/precede feelings, and therefore to change feelings one would want to change their thoughts
“i think i saw you write somewhere that [all] art reduces pain and suffering in the world. if you did write this or something similar to this, why does art do this?”
i’m not sure if i said that somewhere
if you define ‘art’ and ‘pain and suffering’ specifically i could answer that maybe
“can you outline your ‘history with john campbell (author of web-comic and graphic novel ‘pictures for sad children’)’?”
i think i looked at his site at some point between 2005 and 2008
one day i saw on statcounter that i was getting ‘mad hits’ suddenly from his site, he had linked my blog, i don’t remember what the link was for
i emailed him after that i think
he mailed me 4-10 his mini-comics and chapbooks and things, i read them all and liked them
i mailed him some of my books
we talked on gmail chat one time, i think he said he was in mexico
i like his comics
we discussed collaborating on something one time
feel like there is a 30-80% chance of that happening at some point
“i sometimes feel that making things more ‘readable’ makes them less ‘true’ since it is kind of persuading the reader to like the sentences via them being ‘easy to digest’ or something maybe. in this way, if writing aims (to an extent) to please the reader, isn’t it like advertising/persuasive speeches/journalism/etc in the sense that it isn’t art and doesn’t aim towards something ‘true’. seems a li’l arbitrary or something. [dont really know wtf im talking abt] what are your thoughts about the above sentences?”
i don’t think there is a correlation, in my view, b/w the ease with which something can be processed and how ‘true’ it is
for example ‘tree’ seems ‘true’ if you are pointing at a tree, and ‘[no words]’ seems even more ‘true,’ depending on your definition of ‘true,’ if you are conscious, as then nothing has been ‘changed’ from experience, which is a representation of itself (to the most direct degree that seems possible, for conscious beings, i think), to language/[other], which is a representation of something else, unless you view it as its own thing, which also seems ‘valid’
from a certain perspective everything seems ‘true’ in that it exists
the sentence ‘the tree is fioajfae’f’ seems ‘true,’ because it exists, one cannot dispute that it now exists in this comments section, i think
i don’t think ‘readability’ corresponds with ‘persuading the reader to like the sentences’ because, among other reasons, (1) if i’m attempting to tell someone a story in conversation i will probably use sentences that they can understand, so that they will not ask ‘what’ or feel that i’m not considering their ‘limited-time,’ among other things, but doing this does not affect whether they will like or dislike the content of my story, only if they will have the ability to like or dislike it, since if they don’t know what i’m talking about they won’t be able to like or dislike it, content-wise (2) different people are ‘pleased’ by different things, seems like some people are ‘pleased’ by long, complex, multiply-parenthetical sentences, some people are ‘pleased’ by short sentences, some people are ‘pleased’ to read about jesus and loving god, some people are ‘pleased’ to read about ‘the arbitrary nature of the universe,’ some people are ‘pleased’ when they read AP news stories, some people are ‘pleased’ when they experience [seems like ‘any configuration of anything’], etc., and these all are from a certain perspective, equally ‘legitimate’ things to feel ‘pleased’ about
“what are some of the thoughts/feelings about me you may have had while reading my questions?”
thoughts:
‘seems like i can type “forever” about this’
‘seems like these are questions that people can answer themselves after reading my previous answers’
‘seems like “a matter of semantics”‘
‘australia’
‘australian bro’
feelings:
[agitation]
[self-conscious agitation]
[peacefulness]
[affection]
“I recently had a book club meeting at my highschool over “Eeeee Eee Eeeeâ€, and I wanted to know whether or not this upset you.”
i don’t feel upset, that seems ‘sweet’
i would be interested in learning more about that
“tao, could you give me some ‘reading’ suggestions? i am not a fan of ‘ann beattie’ style writing but i am a fan of ‘cormac mccarthy’ style writing. i don’t think any ‘indie writers’ can do anything like ‘cormac mccarthy.’ do you read writers not like ‘ann beattie’? if so, can you suggest some writers more like ‘cormac mccarthy’?
here are most of the books i like most:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/89893-tao?sort=rating&view=reviews
in my view every writer that isn’t ann beattie is ‘not like’ ann beattie
i haven’t read much cormac mccarthy, i don’t know who you might think writes like him
based on what i vaguely know about his sentences maybe some of ‘ernest hemingway’ or ‘bret easton ellis,’ in terms of one aspect of his sentences, that he doesn’t use many commas and uses ‘and’ often but i’m not sure if that’s what his sentences are like
“when do you think muumuu house will put out more books?”
spring, summer, or fall 2011 probably
“is there “really†going to be a “complete gmail correspondence of tao and bsg†at some point?”
there is a 0-90% chance of that happening, i feel
vaguely unsure if including ‘0’ in that renders it illogical/meaningless
“Which has been your favorite question so far?”
i don’t think i have viewed one as ‘favorite’
i liked the drug ones, the ‘detective-like’ ‘neutral facial expression’ one, the smoothie one, [some other ones]
not completely sure what i mean by ‘like’ though
i like any question that i have not yet answered on the internet
not sure if i ‘like’ the other questions also though
i feel interested in drugs, food, ‘health’
“do you read any comics, on the web or otherwise?”
here is a 2007 blog post about that:
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/tlin/2007/09/what-are-some-comics-that-i-like/
i also like david heatley & http://picturesforsadchildren.com/ & http://www.fartparty.org/ & http://squidcuddlesinc.blogspot.com/ & [some that i’m not remembering currently maybe]
“How do you decide which words to put quote marks around?”
i think i answered that here:
https://therumpus-production.mystagingwebsite.com/2009/09/the-surface-of-things-the-rumpus-interview-with-tao-lin/#comment-26703
if you have more questions after reading that i will answer them
Why is it that no matter how many questions you answer, no matter what kind of questions they are, and no matter how openly and thoroughly you answer them, it never makes you seem any less enigmatic?
what is your diet history, especially when you were a kid?
also, do you have your drivers license, how do you feel about driving, and what is your transportation history?
how did you come about the philosophy of existentialism/detachment that you generally espouse
or not how did you come about it, but how did you come to assimilate it
did you study it and try to do it from the inside out
or did you start with the externally claiming it’s a great philosophy in your writing or whatever and then just ‘fake it ’til you make it’
I noticed in response to the “What drugs have you done?†question, you didn’t include marijuana. Have you not tried it or did you just omit it, like also not including alcohol because it’s not really a “hard drug” or something?
If you have tried it, what are your thoughts on it? Based just on what I have read from you and the “image” I have of you, it seems like marijuana would somewhat affect you negatively, or would go against your “philosophy” of keeping your mind alert instead of “spacing out,” or something, maybe.
What are your thoughts on psychedelic drugs?
Do you listen to music when you write?
“i feel interested in drugs, food, ‘health’”
do you feel any conflict between your drug use and your want for long life and health? or do you see your drug use as within some acceptable range, kind of like eating one oily fry whose impact is more or less negligible.
“how did u gain such a big readership at ur blog?”
i think i have a readership size that isn’t abnormal, based on the amount of writing i have published, the frequency at which i post certain things on my blog, and how ‘involved’ i am w/ things on the internet
here’s my sitemeter:
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s51richardyates
if anything, my hits seem ‘kinda low,’ maybe, in my view
“u dont have ’subscribe’ or ‘follow me’ links i’ve seen; how do u get so many people 2 come back on their own?”
i don’t know, i think they type in ‘he’ in their url bar and my url appears, then they push ‘enter’ i think
some people link my blog on their blogs
some people click my name on htmlgiant when i comment ‘lol…’ there when i think a post by jimmy chen is notably funny to me
“which tactics 2 promote ur blog have worked, and which ones havent?”
the first few months i had my blog i made posts that i felt literary blogs might be interested in linking, then i emailed them links, and some of them linked, that seemed to work to some degree
i think after that time i haven’t done many things to promote my blog, except emailing links of certain of my posts to blogs that link other blogs as their main function, to some degree, like bookslut or largeheartedboy or ron silliman’s blog (his ’round up’ posts)
“did it get u many hits when u interviewed writers and wrote about ur favorite books, or did more ppl care when u made long arguments about editing, rights, or ‘literature that is dark’?”
i think posts about editing, rights, and ‘literature that is dark’ got considerably more hits than posts about other things
“‘further,’ u promote urself thru ‘various online media’–twitter, blogspot, tumblr, facebook, and now this formspring. do u specifically think about which kinds of posts ‘belong’ at each place?”
yes, i have some kind of idea about that, but sometimes i post something on all of those things at one time, or think ‘this seems like something i’ll only post on facebook’ then the next day post it on twitter and tumblr and my blog also
but i think then later i usually delete things that don’t seem consistent w/ each thing (twitter, blog, tumblr), and if you look at each of those things you can discern consistency, i think
“do u limit tweets to certain kinds of messages, and tumblr posts to somthing different than ur blog? (i noticed u post hamsters and ur art on tumblr, for example. is this kind of decision ‘premeditated’? if so, on what reasoning/feeling is it based?)”
yes, i think mostly those decisions are based how twitter/tumblr/blogger are designed
for example it is impossible for me to post on twitter a 500-word description of a hamster with an image of the hamster above it, in one undivided white area, but it is not impossible for me to do that on tumblr
people on tumblr seem to like images, and it’s easy for them to reblog them, or something, and that influences my decisions, to some degree
people seem more willing to ‘comment’ via ‘blogger’ than ‘disqus’ (tumblr), and that influences my decisions, to some degree
i know that certain people only regularly read my blog, because they don’t have a twitter account, and that influences my decisions, to some degree
“one literary character you would most like to be in a relaish with??”
i just rested my head on my left hand, with my left elbow on my right knee, crossed over my left knee, for ~10-15 seconds and thought ‘hm’ then ‘honestly not sure’
“Have you ever been in a fist fight/dangerous physical confrontation/ /situation of any sort?â€
i don’t think i have been in a ‘fist fight’
~10 days ago a ‘drunk, to a degree that he “has no recollection” of this happening’ friend sort of attacked me on a structure that didn’t have a railing or wall at its edges, on top of a ~8-story building, ~3:30 a.m., and i thought there was a 10-35% chance one of us was going to fall off the building
seems like there’s been some situations where i’ve been in danger, i’m not remembering them specifically right now, there might not be any
“Do you know how to cartwheel?â€
yes
“Do you believe that a fiction writer has to be completely honest with themselves, through actions, and during the writing process to write something with authentic emotions?â€
i don’t feel that anyone ‘has to be’ anything, in that using abstractions or forms of ‘should,’ to me, without specifying a context and a goal is similar, in my view, to using forms of ‘aeejaeriaejrh’ or something, for example when i read your question i processed it in the same manner, to a large degree, i would process a question like ‘do you AOREIAER that a writer POKAFEOP completely AROEARIJAER with ARAWOIRJ, through actions, and during the writing process, to write something with ERAEJREO emotions?’
someone can write the opposite of what they feel as they are feeling it
someone can write the opposite of what they felt twenty minutes ago but exactly what they are feeling as they type the sentences
someone can write something they think they have never felt before
someone can write exactly what they think they felt twenty minutes ago but are not currently feeling
someone can write something they think someone else is feeling or has felt
no one ‘has to’ do anything, it seems
unless you define a context/goal via ‘assumptions’/’blocking out [an amount of the universe temporally/spacially]’
for example if you say ‘stephen king must not eat a grape’ (assumption, goal) and then say ‘someone will force a grape into stephen king’s stomach if he does not type exactly how he feels for the next sentence he types’ and ‘this is “in effect” for the next twenty minutes and “on earth”‘ (context) then the answer to ‘does a writer have to write exactly how they feel’ would be something like ‘stephen king has to write exactly how he feels for the next twenty minutes, if he is “on earth”‘
your question, maybe, is if i personally ‘believe’ a certain thing, which is maybe asking me what assumptions i have made to create a context/goal to know what i ‘should’ do in each moment
my answer for that would be that i feel ‘almost always’ conscious that my context/goals are changing in a constant manner on many levels, probably, subconscious layered and sometimes in opposition to each other, and that i’m also aware that, from a certain perspective, any assumption that i make is equally ‘invalid’/’valid’ as any other possible assumption, and therefore feel like that is my answer to your question until you define the certain context/goal you would like me to answer that question with, or ask me to ‘attempt’ to discern my context/goal at a certain moment in time, and then use that context/goal to attempt to answer the question
“do you have any thoughts on honesty and its impact (if any) on persona in writing today?â€
no, currently, i think, except something like ‘if you define “honesty” and “persona” and “impact” i might have some thoughts about that’
“Do you have any feelings or thoughts on your affect on a certain segment of this generations language use (don’t be bashful)?â€
no, currently, i think, except something like ‘if you define “generation” specifically i might have some thoughts about that’
“Any on people mimicking your style (i.e. ‘these’) whether it be published writing or a blogger?
i think i answered that here, to some degree:
https://therumpus-production.mystagingwebsite.com/2009/09/the-surface-of-things-the-rumpus-interview-with-tao-lin/#comment-26761
if you have specific questions about that you can ask them and someone else may be able to answer them for you, as i’m not answering more questions, at this point, in this comments section: http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/2010/06/my-new-formspring-account.html
“the title of your upcoming novel, “Richard Yatesâ€, is, to me at least, incredibly modern, or relevant to American culture today (and of course, funny). People already appear to be copying this. You have said in interviews you are not saying anything about this generation, technology, or society but it seems to me that one who would name their novel “Richard Yates†is keenly aware of those things listed above. So it seems to me that you are saying something about those things, even if indifferently so, because you are projecting it onto the public. Am I way off here?â€
i am not saying things about ‘generation,’ ‘technology,’ or ‘society’ by naming my novel ‘richard yates,’ in my view, though i acknowledge and view as ‘true’/’legitimate’ that other people may think i am saying things about [anything] by [doing anything]
i don’t know how to say or think things about ‘generation,’ ‘technology,’ or ‘society’ unsarcastically unless it’s something like ‘what do you mean exactly by “generation,” “technology,” and “society”‘
for example i feel unable to say or think ‘technology is destroying people’s attention spans’ or ‘our generation is depraved and apathetic’ without feeling that i am ‘being sarcastic,’ that i am aware that i’m either not saying what i believe is accurate or that i am saying something that is based on a context that is ‘smaller’ than my ‘average context’ and on a goal in life that i am not able, currently, to ‘inhabit’ without ‘feeling bad’ or feeling that i would rather inhabit some other goal
i have stated in probably 5-20 interviews and 5-30 comments sections that i feel focused, in my books, on things that affect all people regardless of how many macbooks they own, if they have the ability to teleport, if they are kafka or bill gates, if they only communicate via ‘carrier pigeon’ or ‘icq’ or [anything, except maybe, like some form of ESP/’magic’ that allows two brains to occupy the same space at the same time, outside of ‘time,’ or something]
these things are, among other things, ‘death,’ ‘limited-time,’ ‘that two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time,’ ‘consciousness within a universe of arbitrary nature’
i feel ‘keenly aware’ of, if anything, ‘limited-time’ and ‘death’ and ‘[my emotions]’ (and probably things like ‘should i eat [something that can be replaced with anything throughout time that people have eaten] today’ or ‘what [something that can be replaced with anything throughout time that people have ordered] do i want to order’ or ‘do i want to [verb conveying a method of communication that can be replaced with any method of communication that people have used throughout time] this person’) not of, like, ‘how is the next macbook model’s keyboard configuration and metal/plastic configuration going to affect the sentence structure of my gmail chats to my 40-year-old internet friend who is not in my generation, and who is using a compaq desktop, and how will that affect the death of print media, within a context of the new york times’ banning of the word “tweet,” via its affect on the neurons of the brains of anyone i type things to with my new macbook’
“Do you read ‘critical theory’ ‘continental philosophy’ or anything that ‘cultural studies majors’ would feel ‘inclined’ to read?”
i’m not sure what books are generally viewed as those kinds of books or what books ‘cultural studies majors’ read
here are some books i’ve read and enjoyed, and feel interested in maybe reading more of at some point, that might be generally viewed as those kinds of books, to some degree: ‘the mole people,’ ‘sidewalk,’ ‘animal liberation,’ ‘someone else’s face in the mirror,’ ‘the art of loving,’ ‘the myth of neurosis,’ ‘the end of science,’ ‘writings on an ethical life,’ ‘one-straw revolution,’ ‘serious adverse events,’ ‘the way we eat,’ ‘who killed daniel pearl?’
“Do you read ’straight-up philosophy’ or only literature?”
i’ve read maybe 50-150 pages by nietzsche, 50-150 pages by camus, 50-300 pages by sartre, 100-300 pages by schopenhauer
i vaguely feel that i’ve read 40-100% of books by ‘philosophers’ born after 1900 but do not remember exactly what books currently, this feeling might not be accurate
“Do you think there is an objective difference between poetry and prose?”
it seems like because in your sentence you are using one word to describe one thing and a different word to describe the other thing there is an objective difference in the two things, even if you are using the two words as synonyms, if only because the two things now have different contexts, i think
if you asked me ‘do you look at words and think “that is poetry” or “that is prose”‘ i would answer something like ‘ideally i do not, unless there is some concrete function for doing so, such as if i worked for a company that paid me to distinguish between poetry and prose, for some purpose, or something’
“Do you think the things invested in things are part of the thing, or from outside of the thing? Do you define things in terms of how they are ‘talked about’ ‘discursively’ via media or only in a functional sense, or ‘intrinsic physical properties’? I feel like you are more the latter. Does this question make sense or do you require examples?”
if you are asking me that if the word ‘rock’ is part of [the concrete thing being referred to] or outside of [the concrete thing being referred to] i think it is, from a certain perspective, ‘outside,’ and from a certain other perspective, ‘a part of’
i don’t think i often define things
i feel able to define things based on what people say about it and also based on what it seems to be, if it existed on mars, and a robot or baby was looking at it, or something
“Why is the new book called Richard Yates?”
here is something i typed a few months ago, it is not comprehensive, i will likely edit this 3-50 more hours at some point and publish it somewhere:
KINDS OF TITLES
1. The “directâ€/“obvious†title: Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina
2. The “thematic†title: The Corrections, White Noise
3. The title focused on a “peripheral†event within the book: The Easter Parade, The Ice Storm
4. The title from a perspective interpretable as “outside†the book and referencing the book as a thing inside the world: Diary, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Winner of the National Book Award
5. The “descriptive†title: Self-Help, The Beautiful and Damned
6. The “profound†title: The Sun Also Rises, Everything is Illuminated
7. The title that is a near non-sequitur: Richard Yates, Panasonic (if White Noise had been named Panasonic, I think it was going to be but there was pressure from the corporation not to name it that)
Richard Yates as the title of my second novel avoids certain things that I would like to avoid, for a title, while also being something that I feel is complex, new (to me), and exciting (to me). I feel that I could talk about it for a long time, as a title, seems like I could “even†“expound†on it, in a certain context. I was going to name it Second Novel but I feel this is like naming it Second Novel while also functioning in additional ways. Second Novel, as a title, directs the reader’s attention “outward,†toward the author and concrete reality (placing the book more obviously in the context of “everything†rather than seeming like it is attempting to have a context that is only itself), rather than “inward,†toward the book and the world of the book.
IN TERMS OF “ARTFULNESS”
Richard Yates is like the thematic title but perhaps less rhetorical. Titling my second novel Richard Yates sort of reinforces its “themelessness†in a way that, I feel, makes it more complex.
Richard Yates as the title is almost the exact “attitude†I have, at most moments, towards the book. The title directs attention toward concrete reality, rather than toward the book. It also directs attention toward the book, because Richard Yates is mentioned ~4 times in the book, but in a way that is simultaneously pointing also toward concrete reality, since Richard Yates actually existed in concrete reality. It directs the reader both “outward†and “inward,†in almost an equal manner, I feel.
Titling my second novel Richard Yates places Richard Yates, the person, in a context that increases my interest, and other things, in both the context and Richard Yates, I feel. In the context of a modern, minimalist cover the name Richard Yates, in a Helvetica-like font, based on what I know about Richard Yates, the person, causes me to feel excited, like if I saw an astronaut reading Fernando Pessoa, or something. Two things that I like, and that previously were not associated with each other, becoming associated with one another is exciting to me for some reason, in most instances. Richard Yates is associated with the 50’s, while the book is set in 2006 and I was born I 1983.
Thinking Richard Yates when thinking about the book seems “natural†to me, in that if I do not attempt to distort how I feel, without preconceptions, or with a minimal amount of preconceptions, about the book, I think and “feel†something like “Richard Yates.†Sometimes when I email someone, or someone emails me, and we don’t know what to put as the subject of the email we just put something we like even if it is not mentioned in the email itself, but usually something that is mentioned in the email, though not necessarily prominently.
Graduate students who “yearn†to analyze the title/book in the context of 5-15 page essays will be “very able†do that, I think, with the title being Richard Yates. If you search Richard Yates in the novel his role progresses in the novel from “being mentioned,†to “the characters in the novel looking at his face without any reaction,†to “a description of his novel where the character is an alcoholic who in a mental institution,†to “a story about him giving a reading using high-pitched voices for the female characters,†to “his novel being used as a mouse pad.†That in itself is a kind of “narrative arc†(within the main narrative arc), and is one that contains, I feel, themes of art vs. life, of writing about one’s life as art, and of not knowing what to think about a work of art.
I want to look at my bibliography and see that one of my books is called Richard Yates.
IN TERMS OF “MARKETING”
I would like for people who like Richard Yates to read my book. I think an amount of people think I do not write realistic, literary fiction. They think I write science fiction, young adult, or “magical realist†things. Some people may think I write, like, “clever,†pretentious, “postmodern†things. I would like to be associated with Richard Yates. I think that will increase my audience in ways that I would like, in that I feel that people who enjoy Richard Yates’ books might enjoy Richard Yates.
Anyone interested in Richard Yates will be automatically interested in my novel. But Richard Yates is not well-known enough for it to seem like I’m exploiting his name. I will probably get Richard Yates more new readers, in the long-term, I feel, than his name being the title gets me more new readers.
“do you have any idea yet what your next book will be after ‘RY’ (i mean stories, poems, novel, or novella)?”
there is a 70% chance it will be something ‘not easily definable’ re ‘stories/novel/novella/poems,’ i feel
there is a 5% chance it will be ‘stories,’ i feel
there is a 5% chance it will be ‘novel,’ i feel
there is a 5% chance it will be ‘novella,’ i feel
there is a 5% chance it will be ‘memoir,’ i feel
there is a 10% chance [something else], i feel
i feel each of those percentages probably 40-80% in an arbitrary manner, ‘choosing’ most of those numbers to a large degree ‘simply’ so it would equal 100%, i think
“do you ever feel you are rushing your material, or do you feel like you are ‘just’ writing and publishing at a natural, relaxed pace?”
i very rarely feel that i am ‘rushing’ material
for almost every thing i’ve published (especially after 2008, i think) i’ve thought/felt the following:
1. ‘it seems finished but i will look at it for [an amount of time ranging from one day to one month] more or look at it once more in [an amount of time] before sending it to [whoever]’
2. ‘seems like i’m finished, but i know that in the past i’ve felt that i’m finished with something then edited it “much more” later, therefore i will assume that i’m not finished, only finished “for now”‘
3. ‘seems like i might be finished “for real” now, but i know that i’ve wanted to further edit things that i’ve felt were finished, then felt were finished again, and maybe 1-3 more times, therefore i will assume that i’m not finished yet’
4. ‘seems like i’m finished, but that i could continue editing this “indefinitely,” to “solve this” i will “immerse myself” “very hard” into it for an amount of time, so that it will be “definitely” close to 100% an example of how, during that time of my life, “immersed” in it, i wanted it to be, as a finished thing’
5. ‘seems like i’m finished, in that i’ve “documented” close to exactly “what i want to read”/”what i like” within the context of [range of dates], i think’
“do you feel pressured to publish prolifically?”
no
“what are some poets you have read/â€likedâ€, are reading/do “likeâ€?”
matthew rohrer, michael earl craig, ben lerner
http://muumuuhouse.com/poetry.html
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=238724
“what you do you think of someone like harold bloom, and what he might “say†about you?”
i don’t know much about him
i feel interested in what he might say about me
“what do you think of poetry? are your thoughts on it the same as with “proseâ€, whether made by you or by others?”
my thoughts are literally different for each different thing in each different moment, i think
“has anyone ever thought of or approached you about making a documentary about you?”
kendra wanted to make a documentary of me at one point, i didn’t ‘feel ready’ for that at that point
not sure how i feel now
think i’d be ‘down’ for it now, if it was like one or two months, or one book tour, or something…or something
“How do you feel about the term G-Chat Realism?”
i don’t know
feel some aversion toward the dash
maybe ‘gmail realism’ would be more marketable
‘gmail realism’ seems more pleasing to me
i am not answering more questions for now, more information about this development is here:
http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/2010/06/my-new-formspring-account.html
“do you view every person/thing as specific because, in part, there is no way you can ever know the exact context (like, everything that has happened/all the energy that was put into something) of anything?”
i don’t view each thing as specific, i think it is ‘simply’ an ‘ideal’ that i have observed as a possibility for myself to ‘use,’ if i want to, and it seems like maybe i want to, at most times in my life, for various reasons
one reason would be what you typed, yes
i like that, ‘there is no way you can ever know the exact context (like, everything that has happened/all the energy that was put into something) of anything’
“is it your goal to understand as much of the context of the things you come into contact with?”
i don’t think that is my goal
i think my goal is different for each thing i perceive and that the goal you typed is almost never my goal
the goal you typed seems like maybe one of my goals, or ‘sub-goals,’ when i’m writing a short-story or novel, in that i like to know each sentence’s context within the context of the short-story or novel
“do you play ping pong?”
i have played for 5-25 minutes in my life
“do you like popcorn more than other things?”
more than some other things, yes
“do you find that you more often eat 2-3 large meals with few snacks or snack throughout the day?”
for the last 2-7 years i’ve probably eaten 1 large meal with smaller meals of fruit/smoothies/’small nut-based snacks’ at other times in the day 60-80% of my days
“what is the first book you remember having complex thoughts and opinions about?”
depends on what ‘complex’ means
just thought about it for some time
not sure what that means to me
i remember liking ‘white noise’ in a different manner than i’d like books i’d read until that point
i remember liking ‘people like that are the only people here’ in a different manner than i’d like other writing i’d read until that point
i remember liking ‘the lichtenberg figures’ in a different manner than i’d liked other writing i’d read until that point
“have you ever stapled something a lot of times because you thought it would look cool but when you were finished found that it kinda just looked messy/sloppy?”
yes
“Are your emotions pure?”
i currently would like ’emotions’ and ‘pure’ to be defined specifically before answering that
“Are your nerves adjustable?”
i currently would like ‘nerves’ and ‘adjustable’ to be defined specifically before answering that
“How do you stand in relation to the potato?”
literally it depends on what specific potato
metaphysically i feel that i ‘stand’ in a manner that doesn’t feel ‘close’ or ‘far’ to ‘the potato’
“How do you pronounce “pedantâ€?”
i’m not sure, maybe ‘pee-dant’
“When will the second printing of “Sometimes My Heart Pushes Against My Ribs†be in? I would really like to buy it, I think.”
copies of the 2nd edition of http://muumuuhouse.com/ellenkennedy.poetrybook.html will be available in ~8-20 days, i think
“Why is it that no matter how many questions you answer, no matter what kind of questions they are, and no matter how openly and thoroughly you answer them, it never makes you seem any less enigmatic?”
i’m not sure, maybe because i try to not be rhetorical, which makes me ‘the same’ or ‘similar,’ in terms of ‘effect,’ as what most people view as ‘art,’ which most people seem to view as ‘mysterious,’ causing me to not become ‘less enigmatic’ in the same manner i might not become ‘less enigmatic’ if i continued releasing ‘enigmatic short stories’ or ‘enigmatic songs’ or something
some people probably feel i am becoming ‘less enigmatic’
“what is your diet history, especially when you were a kid?”
from 0-10 i think for dinner i ate white rice, [vegetable], [meat], i think my mom cooked w/ msg, soy sauce, vegetable oil, for lunch i probably ate roast beef sandwiches, for breakfast i ate eggs probably, after school some days i think my mom and i ate mcdonald’s or other fast food places, probably .001-.5% organic
from 10-19 i ate the same things, except i probably ate a larger variety of fast food places, like arby’s, wendy’s, checkers, taco bell, chick-fil-a, ‘ci-cis’ or something, i liked salads, i’ve eaten probably 500 salads from wendy’s, burger king, mcdonald’s, chick-fil-a, outback steakhouse, pizza hut (lunch buffet), olive garden, i’m not sure if it’s 500, could be 300 or 2000, but i also ate chicken nuggets and burgers and steaks from those places, probably .1-2% organic (mostly ‘accidentally’ probably, until ~17 or ~18)
from 19-22 i ate less meat or no meat and less dairy or no dairy, i drank edensoy soy milk and made smoothies sometimes and ate cereal and nuts and peanut butter and pasta and bread and chinese food, probably 70-90% organic
from 22-26 (typed 23-28 first and stared at it for 5-10 seconds ‘remembering’ my real age) i ate some meat and dairy, less cereal and bread and other cooked carbohydrates, more raw fruit and vegetables and fresh juices and smoothies, probably 90-98% organic
“do you have your drivers license, how do you feel about driving, and what is your transportation history?
yes, i have a drivers license
i enjoy listening to music while driving
from 0-15 i didn’t drive
from 16-19 i drove to school and other places
from 19-22 i drove while ‘at home’ on summer or winter break, i delivered pizzas via ‘driving’ one or two summers
from 22-26 i drove 2-5 times when i rented a car and 1-5 times when i drove someone else’s car
“how did you come about the philosophy of existentialism/detachment that you generally espouse”
i don’t feel that i ‘espouse’ anything
i feel that i am able to observe things’ cause/effects and can tell someone what they can do to be more effective at what they want, if they ask me about it and for some reason i feel like ‘helping’ them
if they want to not be detached that seems equally ‘fine’ with them wanting to be detached
i think i first learned of ‘existentialism’-type things when i read 5-8 kurt vonnegut books in a row in high school after watching ‘fight club’ at some point before that and reading some chuck palahniuk books and seeing on his website that recommended kurt vonnegut for people who like chuck palahniuk
“or not how did you come about it, but how did you come to assimilate it / did you study it and try to do it from the inside out”
i think ‘existentialism’-type things have mostly seemed more ‘obvious’ to me than something that i learned at some point
i think i wrote a ~8-page essay on ‘existentialism’ in my first year of college, and read various books for it, and concluded something like that every ‘existentialist’ has their own definition of it, and that they don’t really define it specifically anywhere, or something like that
“or did you start with the externally claiming it’s a great philosophy in your writing or whatever and then just ‘fake it ’til you make it’”
i don’t know what the philosophy of ‘existentialism’ is
seems like i don’t know what ‘any’ philosophy is, or even what the word ‘philosophy’ means, at least at this moment
i think i’ve mostly used those words, and other abstractions/’genres,’ in my writing, as ‘feelings’ than as [other things], for example some things, including myself, ‘seem/look/feel philosophical’ or ‘seem/look/feel existential’ to me in the same manner some things ‘seem/look/feel depressed’ or whatever
“I noticed in response to the “What drugs have you done?†question, you didn’t include marijuana. Have you not tried it or did you just omit it, like also not including alcohol because it’s not really a “hard drug†or something?”
i have tried marijuana and alcohol and nicotine
“If you have tried it, what are your thoughts on it?”
i have ‘smoked’ marijuana something like twice, and maybe ‘eaten it’ 1-4 times, i don’t remember feeling anything notable, maybe just ‘sleepy’ or something
my lungs collapsed spontaneously in high school three times, the doctor said smoking increases the chance of it happening 12x or something and that smoking marijuana increases the chance of it happening 42x or something
in fear of my lung(s) collapsing again i have not smoked anything since then, except maybe once or twice, i think
i’ve probably smoked the equivalent of [i don’t know] via ‘second-hand smoke’
“What are your thoughts on psychedelic drugs?”
i haven’t tried them
i have some and look forward to trying them
“Do you listen to music when you write?”
yes
@Tao
The first time I did mushrooms I took too much and I got very scared. I would suggest to anyone taking psychedelic drugs to try to not take too much.
“do you feel any conflict between your drug use and your want for long life and health? or do you see your drug use as within some acceptable range, kind of like eating one oily fry whose impact is more or less negligible.”
i think, more than ‘long life’ or ‘health,’ i want to ‘experience [certain things] and [certain feelings]’
if i live longer, and am healthier, i will be able to experience more of those things, to more intense degrees, i feel
some of those things are maybe (1) continuous hours of ‘high brain functioning’ while ‘feeling happy’ and doing things like reading/writing/’making art’ alone (2) amounts of time spent with single other people talking/’looking at things’/[other] comfortably and with unselfconscious feelings of interest/excitement/’wanting to learn about the other person or view their reaction to certain things about me’ (3) moments of ‘intense alertness’ or ‘intense awareness’ while experiencing (1) or (2) or [anything]
some drugs have the effect of increasing the intensity or length of (1), (2), (3)
some things that could ‘distract’ or lessen the effect of (1), (2), (3) include ‘feeling hungry’ or ‘feeling sleepy’ or ‘feeling tired’ or ‘feeling sick’
some foods have the effect of causing more periods of time of more intensity where i would feel hungry, sleepy, tired, sick (i would say these foods are any food that is not raw fruit or vegetables in ‘freshly juiced’ or ‘normal’ form, and not eating the raw fruit w/ any non leafy-green vegetable w/o one of them digesting first), decreasing (1), (2), (3)
some foods have the effect of lessening the periods of time where i would feel hungry, sleepy, tired, sick (raw fruits & vegetables), therefore increasing (1), (2), (3)
if i’ve been ‘raw vegan’ for 5 days i’ll probably feel [a certain way] and then if i ‘take drugs’ at that point i’ll probably feel [another certain way that would not be possible w/o ‘drugs’]
__
i don’t think i want to distinguish b/w ‘drugs’/food/[anything]
it seems like every thing will have an effect on how i feel, each thing has specific effects
living in nyc probably decreases my life span and ‘level of functioning’ due to pollution, as compared to living on the galapagos islands, but there are more people and other things here that i like
in that sense ‘nyc’ is similar, to me, to a drug
and one could say that about ‘anything,’ i feel
the ‘worst’ drug, in my view, seems to be ‘cooked carbohydrates’ like bread or cupcakes or pasta or muffins
if i eat a cupcake, even if it is organic and made of spelt, or something, i ‘feel good’ for something like the 180 seconds that i’m eating it, there is no ‘high’ afterward, and i will very likely want to ‘eat another one’ immediately after, and it will increase my blood-sugar levels at an unnaturally rate, causing my body to release insulin, or something, causing me to feel hungry again in like 2 hours, while also destroying my blood-sugar regulating system, to some degree, increasing my chances for diabetes, heart disease, weight gain, and affecting my skin/’energy levels’ negatively, in my view
whereas if i drink coffee or ‘take’ some kind of stimulant i will feel good for [an amount of time 50-300x longer than w/ the cupcake] while also probably feeling less hungry, causing me to not eat, increasing my life span, energy level (digestion, i’ve noticed, decreases my energy levels a lot; my brain seems to function ‘most effectively’ while my stomach is empty), etc.
i feel like ‘one line of cocaine’ or 10 mg adderall is probably much less ‘harmful’ to a human body than ‘one cupcake’ or ‘one piece of bread’*
here are the leading causes of death in america, according to ‘faststats’:
* Heart disease: 631,636
* Cancer: 559,888
* Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 137,119
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,583
* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 121,599
* Diabetes: 72,449
* Alzheimer’s disease: 72,432
heart disease, stroke, diabetes are probably caused most by ‘cooked carbohyrates,’ ‘non-raw oils,’ ‘cooked proteins,’ ‘non-vegetable sources of sodium,’ ‘processed foods,’ [other]
cancer is probably caused by ‘natural/artificial flavors,’ ‘cleaning products,’ ‘non-raw sugars,’ ‘pollution,’ ‘smoking,’ ‘non-organic foods,’ [other]
i’m not sure what causes alzheimer’s, i’m sure all of the above has a negative effect on alzheimer’s
drugs probably increase ‘accidents,’ but i’m not sure, maybe not
__
everything seems like [a thing] or like [a drug] to me
exercising every day causes one to feel like they ‘need to’ exercise every day, on the days one doesn’t exercise they ‘don’t feel as good’
if i am ‘raw vegan’ for 10 days i will feel less good on the 11th day if i am not ‘raw vegan’
if i take adderall 5 days in a row i will feel less good on the 6th day if i do not, and the effect of adderall will decrease each day, after the 1st day
if i eat a cupcake today i will want to eat one tomorrow
certain people who become ‘raw vegan’ become more and more extreme, until if they eat one cupcake they ‘get sick,’ or if they do not have a certain green juice in the morning they feel ‘less well’ that day, or something, in a similar manner, to some degree, on a certain spectrum, as a person who is addicted to [some drug] ‘suffering’ withdrawal when they do not have [that drug] one day
it seems like when i think about things like this i mostly think about ‘variety,’ about wanting to not go ‘in one direction’ but to ‘move in opposing directions’ within a time-frame, not thinking about ‘progress’ in terms of ‘health,’ but about ‘using’ a strategy re ‘health’ in order to do things in my life that i want to do more effectively
‘health’ is a ‘means’ to something else
i would not view myself as wanting to ‘become more healthy’ over time until i die
rather i would want to view myself as becoming ‘more skilled’ at my strategies re ‘health’ in order to more effectively do what i want to do in my life until i die
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* These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This blog comment is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
Via what angle do you approach your fiction writing? Like, do you aim to convey a specific idea or feeling, or do you have a particular narrative arc outlined, or do you just start writing and see where it goes?
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A very nice interview and – BEAUTIFUL pictures, make me wonder about the size of the original illustrations. Funny, that the only book by Tao Lin translated into German (EEEEE EEE EEEE) was published in Germany under the title (if translated literally) “Good Mood”. Thanks for the interview – brilliant!
Tao I think you use the ~ incorrectly – can you please explain how you use it and what you think it is called, used for ‘etc’
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