“Richard Yates is an odd novel with an odd title and even odder character names. Oddly enough, it works… for me anyway.”
The Well-Read Wife defends liking Tao Lin’s latest.
“Richard Yates is an odd novel with an odd title and even odder character names. Oddly enough, it works… for me anyway.”
The Well-Read Wife defends liking Tao Lin’s latest.
3 responses
I know the Well-Read Wife didn’t write the headline here, but it’s just another example of how off-putting the whole “Tao Lin Phenomenon” is to me and, perhaps, others.
As a stand-alone piece of work, I “get it”, like I’ve “gotten” other experimental works. I find it expressive of a certain type of person in a certain time. The anomie is heightened by the choice to write in such minimal prose. It’s hard to read? Well, it must be even harder to BE. To be reduced to expressing oneself in such a way. The veneer seems thick on HJO; less so on DF.
However, again, ad nauseum, I object to the machinations of Tao Lin. It comes off as so contrived and manipulative. He is what ruins whatever he might write for me, not the work itself.
Maybe that’s what we’re in for, now that publishing is dead, books are dead: writers who basically tart themselves up and walk up and down the Information Highway showing their bits and hollering into your window, “Wanna mindfuck???”
That’s how it feels to me, anyway. Write a book, I’ll read it. Pimp yourself out? Not so much.
I wrote the headline. I enjoy Lin’s promotion tactics, but I can understand how it may not be others cuppa…
*promotional*
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