-Maybe you are tired of looking at a computer screen. Maybe you’re just not a visual person. Maybe you want a new lens into Richard Yates, by Tao Lin. Whatever your needs, Largehearted Boy has just the right medicine: a musical playlist, created by Lin, that relates in some way to his new novel.
It’s not very long, but Lin’s descriptions of the songs flesh out Richard Yates’s central characters a little more. Plus, listen to it while reading and you can have an actual soundtrack behind the narrative instead of having to imagine one.
-“I never fucking liked Tao Lin,” begins Giancarlo Ditrapano on the blog Vice. He may have liked them more, he writes, if “he and his books hadn’t been constantly shoved down my throat every day of the week for the past few years.” Not exactly what you want to hear, if you’re most people. But for Tao, the fact that his books had been shoved down Ditrapano’s throat is exactly what he wants to hear; shameless self-promotion is one of his signature marks, and the idea that he is forced upon everyone would be a sure sign of success. Even better, Ditrapano’s essay, “I Like Tao Lin Now,” evolved from an rant about Lin into a love story. “I kind of fucking love this guy now,” Ditrapano admits. To find out why, you’ll have to read the whole essay.
–BookForum‘s Joshua Cohen takes on a less emphatic tone: to him, Richard Yates is just “a series of boredom-filled blog posts.”
–The Kansas City Star finds Richard Yates pretty contradictory; its newest review is titled: “Tao Lin writes a autobiographical (but perhaps not) novel that’s depressing (but also life-affirming).”
-Read PopMatters’ “20 Questions For Artist and Author Tao Lin” to find out, among other things, the latest book that made Lin cry, his hidden talents, and whether Lin prefers coffee, vodka, chocolate, or cigarettes.
-In what promises to be one of the zaniest interviews yet, The Rumpus Book Club interviews Tao Lin, forcing him to reveal the last thing that he shoplifted. And many other, “deeper” revelations about his writing process, nomenclature of Richard Yates, and the role of social media in fiction.
–The Boston Phoenix reviews John Brandon‘s Citrus County, praising it’s “bruised idealism” and remarking on how Brandon has a knack for “turning a landscape into a liminal state.”
-Mandy the Well-Read Wife thanks The Rumpus Book Club for making Lan Samantha Chang‘s All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost the September selection. Before her detailed review (beware of spoilers!), she first instructs readers to get out their wine and cigs.
-WSJ’s Speakeasy blog describes Chang’s talk at the Asian American Writer’s Workshop’s new space, depicting Chang as approachable and down-to-earth as she read from her new novel and talked about the need to write.
-Obama is the “subject-in-chief” of the fall’s book line-up, writes The Chicago Sun Times’ Teresa Budasi. But too much Obama makes Jack a dull boy, and also in Budasi’s sneak preview of the fall is Adam Levin‘s The Instructions, a “sprawling debut novel” we know you’re gonna love, so that’s why we made it October’s Book Club selection.
