Tao Lin
Auteur van Eeeee Eee Eeee
Werken van Tao Lin
this emotion was a little e-book 9 exemplaren
Hikikomori 4 exemplaren
A Message of Unknown Purpose 2 exemplaren
alternate-universe nightmare 2 exemplaren
Twelve Poems (in The Lifted Brow 5 - SCOTT) 1 exemplaar
Serious Adverse Events: An Uncesored History of AIDS, by Celia Farber (in The Lifted Brow 2 - SCOTT) 1 exemplaar
The Brandon Book Crisis 1 exemplaar
The Snake Stone (in The Lifted Brow 4 - SCOTT) 1 exemplaar
Gerelateerde werken
Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Geboortedatum
- 1983
- Geslacht
- male
- Nationaliteit
- USA
- Woonplaatsen
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Opleiding
- New York University (BA|Journalism)
- Beroepen
- poet
novelist
short-story writer - Organisaties
- 3:AM Magazine (co-editor of poetry)
Ass Hi Books (co-editor)
Leden
Besprekingen
Lijsten
Prijzen
Misschien vindt je deze ook leuk
Gerelateerde auteurs
Statistieken
- Werken
- 28
- Ook door
- 3
- Leden
- 1,825
- Populariteit
- #14,094
- Waardering
- 3.2
- Besprekingen
- 72
- ISBNs
- 49
- Talen
- 8
- Favoriet
- 7
Lin’s style doesn’t seem to be aiming towards this. In interviews he has said he views his work as a kind of therapy, which fits in well with his avatar’s obsession with “recovery” from his various neurosises, health problems, and addictions. As such, this book is mostly free of the pretensions to literary style that other autofictionists like Knausgaard, Teju Cole, or Sebald might include. Instead we are given actual transcriptions of secret recordings made by the narrator Li of the people around him, full of the small idiosyncrasies, misspeaking, and awkwardness swirling around us in the conversations we have everyday. The fact that we are reading them in a book highlights all these feelings, often pushing Lin’s writing into a kind of cringey uncanny.
I’ve seen some other reviewers react viscerally to Li as a character, grafting their hatred for him and his annoying preoccupations onto how they feel about the book. Li is most certainly annoying. I spent most of the book wondering how ironically it was all meant to be taken. Was I supposed to take all the New Age mumbo jumbo at face value? Or was I supposed to see I no thru it? Only after finishing the book and listening to an interview with Lin did I figure out that no, he’s actually serious, and that later claims that Lin has made about curing his autism with holistic medicine and liking Trump for his anti vaxx stance was totally real. I don’t particularly object to these beliefs- I like my artists eccentric and don’t mind if they don’t conform to what I might say about a given topic. But some of the stuff Li blathers on about in this book are really silly, and it seems like Lin actually wasn’t in on the joke like I was initially inclined to think he was.
Speaking of autism, I sort of started to feel like that was an unspoken theme of the book halfway thru, and was vindicated when in the latter parts it becomes a major preoccupation for Li. For those who feel like hating on this book, think about the fact that this is probably the first “openly” autistic artist with wide reach the world has ever seen, and I dig the fact that Lin is repping his neurodivergent tendencies.
This book goes into a category of art that I really love: interesting works that I’m not sure if I actually like or not. Reading it I was reminded of another Taiwan related artist, the director Tsai Ming Liang, whose difficult, excruciatingly slow movies are hard to “enjoy” in the way one typically does with a good film. However, I often find myself ruminating upon his movies much longer than other films that I “like” more - sometimes even months after the fact. Like Tsai, Lin’s work doesn’t play into what is “entertaining” or particularly palatable - but he does deserve plaudits for using art in maybe its most interesting way: a tool for intellectual experimentation and alchemy. Seen in this way, even his failures are worth it.… (meer)