/lit/ - Literature

*ahem*

*ahem*

>>11206469
This got me back into reading. It's really funny

New friends don't know about Tao Lin. He used to post here and he was part of a literary movement called alt-lit that came and went about 5 years ago. He lived in New York from about 2001 to about ~2015 and "Taipei", despite its title, takes place primarily in New York City.

Most of his novels have some part of the story taking place in New York. He references the characters in his story visiting "the literature board of 4chan.org" in Richard Yates I think.

Believe it or not this guy was a big meme on /lit/ in the past and he is also a respected novelist. The New York Times said of "Taipei", "here we have a serious, first-rate novelist putting all his skills to work" [1]. Bret Easton Ellis said of the book, "with 'Taipei' Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation, which doesn't mean that 'Taipei' isn't a boring novel..." [2].

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/books/review/taipei-a-novel-by-tao-lin.html
[2] https://twitter.com/BretEastonEllis/status/308502148226883584

>no one on this board read taipei in the original taiwanese
>plebs think they can discuss tao lin by reading him in translation

lmao @ ur lives. pathetic.

You have 5 seconds to explain why you haven't read it yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpAxs68T2C4

What is the deal with this novel?? I picked it up because I saw it had insane praise but it's a messy, boring, onanist, junkie tale. Am I missing something here? Am I too stupid to understand some sort of symbolism or poetic language?

I think we have reached a point in time where there are enough meme books to codify the meme genre.
What do you consider to be the essential meme-core?