/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3543528]

So, /lit/...

[Anonymous No.3543535]

Ewww

[Anonymous No.3543537]

>>3543528
is this fag's shitty english a feature or he just bad at writing?

nah, don't care anyway
fuck viral

[Anonymous No.3543538]

>>3543537
what's wrong with it?

[Anonymous No.3543542]

>that fucking prose

[Anonymous No.3543546]

>>3543542
I'd say it's an improvement, said Dakota Fanning in gmail chat.

[Anonymous No.3543549]

>>3543537
He's no JK Rowling, that's for sure

I mean, where are all the wizards? Doesn't he know books are meant to be readable by children and have wizards?

[Anonymous No.3543550]

>>3543546

Ahaha that's actually pretty funny, though he is prolly writing intentionally badly to hide that he is actully bad (its something that I do all the time)

[Anonymous No.3543551]

>>3543542
Are you really judging an entire book based on two sentences?

[Anonymous No.3543553]

>>3543551
no, I don't think he was

[Anonymous No.3543554]

>>3543551

No, I'm judging the prose based on the fucking prose.

[Anonymous No.3543555]

>>3543554
Give some examples of good prose.
inb4 it's YA and genre fiction

[Anonymous No.3543558]

>>3543554
That is still two sentences.

[Anonymous No.3543562]

>>3543558

Two fucking terrible sentences, what are you, the Tao Lin Defense Force?

>>3543555

Joe Abercrombie does good prose.

[Anonymous No.3543565]

>>3543562
>Joe Abercrombie does good prose.
Didn't I call it? So predictable. I bet if you were to do a find and replace on things like drugs with magic potions and 4chan with crystal balls or whatever you'd be creaming yourself over this.

[Anonymous No.3543568]

>>3543565

You've never read a Joe Abercrombie book, have you?

[Anonymous No.3543570]

>>3543568
>taking a condescending tone over bad genre fiction

[Anonymous No.3543574]

Oh, this again. Tao's been posting this excerpt for months.

Sage and report.

[Anonymous No.3543576]

>>3543570

>being a rube who judges things they have absolutely no idea about

[Anonymous No.3543577]

>>3543528
Is that autobiographical?

[Anonymous No.3543579]

>>3543551
>Are you really judging an entire book based on two sentences?
No, he's posted Taipei excerpts before, and they've always been fucking terrible:

"After deciding, around 5:30AM, to snort all their cocaine before leaving for the airport they recorded Erin snorting and licking cocaine off Paul's testicles, stopping when he, indiscernably desiring she continue, began getting an erection; Erin serving cocaine off an iPhone to Paul seated on a high chair, found on a sidewalk in August, reading a purple paperback edition of Siddhartha; Paul serving cocaine to Erin seated on the high chair reading an issue of Nylon; Erin snorting cocaine off her MacBook screen; both snorting cocaine off frozen steaks that arrived in the mail a few weeks ago from Calvin's father for Thanksgiving, apparently; among other configurations. "I think my favorite aspect of cocaine is just thinking of funny places to snort it from," said Paul. "We're going to feel so depleted later/"

[Anonymous No.3543581]

>>3543576
Yeah, well I'm a level 60 rube with nerd-arse-kicking powers

[Anonymous No.3543583]

>>3543577
All his books are semi-autobiographical. He shoplifted from American Apparel, he spent a lot of time talking to a girl on g-mail chat, he comes to /lit/ every so often.

[Anonymous No.3543585]

>>3543579
What is so bad about that?

[Anonymous No.3543589]

>>3543583
>he comes to /lit/ every so often.
More often than he should.

I feel a bit sorry for him now. He thought referencing 4chan would reverse the resentment, and work as a marketing machine for him.

[Anonymous No.3543591]

>>3543585
DYER?

[Anonymous No.3543594]

>>3543589
You must be new. He is /lit/'s objet petit a, if anything. Any perceived "resentment" is merely part of a loving play.

[Anonymous No.3543595]

>>3543591
Is that supposed to stand for something?

[Anonymous No.3543596]

>>3543595
Welcome to /lit/. DYER = Do You Even Read?

[Anonymous No.3543597]

>>3543579
holy shit the prose is cringeworthy bad
I bet kids here mistake shitty writing for hipster edginess

fuck viral

[Anonymous No.3543599]

>>3543589
>sage

you hate tao so much you sage his threads?

[Anonymous No.3543601]

>>3543596
I didn't know that became an acronym around here. It is nice to see that /lit/ remains to not be able to defend any position they have without insulting anyone.

[Anonymous No.3543600]

>>3543596
You trying to force a phrase does not make it a thing I'm afraid.

[Anonymous No.3543602]

>>3543600
newfag, you have officially been assigned a quarantine month of lurking

don't post anymore

[Anonymous No.3543603]

IT'S HAPPENING

[Anonymous No.3543605]

>>3543594

go to bed tao, we all hate you.

and stop promoting your shitty books.

[Anonymous No.3543604]

>>3543600

[Anonymous No.3543606]

I'm getting all nostalgic for 2011 now.

c h a n a r c h i v e d o t o r g/4chan/lit/25876/does-anyone-have-an-electronic-copy-of-one-of-tao-lin-s-books-i-know-he-s-hated-here-but-i-d-like-to-chec

c h a n a r c h i v e d o t o r g/4chan/lit/26036/tao-lin-richard-yates-p2-continued-from-2166310-it-wouldn-t-let-me-reuse-that-cock-eyed-seinfeld-pic

[formatting due to the "Error: Our system thinks your post is spam. Please reformat and try again." message]

[Anonymous No.3543607]

>>3543600
Is that an attempt at trolling, or is this genuinely your first time here?

http://fuuka.warosu.org/lit/?task=search&ghost=&search_text=DYEL

[Anonymous No.3543608]

>>3543602
We all have access to the archive. It's obviously one person posting it every couple of weeks since last year, the word and name Dyer gets more mention. And, indeed, nearly nobody replies to your forcing of DYER either.

[Anonymous No.3543609]

>>3543607
Next he'll accuse you of posting all of those in an attempt to 'force' a 'meme'.

[Anonymous No.3543611]

>>3543608

Yeah, just you.

[Anonymous No.3543612]

>>3543607
DYEL?

Back to >>>/fit/, nogains.

[Anonymous No.3543613]

>>3543611
It's really kinda sad. Did you think you'd birthed an epin cool me me or something?

[Anonymous No.3543614]

go to bed, Tao.

[Anonymous No.3543616]

>>3543614
>go to bed, Tao.
I can't. I have to spend the day marketing.

[Anonymous No.3543617]

>>3543613

That wasn't me, Anonymous isn't a username dumb-dumb.

[Anonymous No.3543618]

>>3543613
'Do you even read' has been common on /lit/ for ages, though without turning it into initials.

[Anonymous No.3543619]

>>3543618
It's the initialism is what's being talked about. Read do even you?

[Anonymous No.3543625]

>>3543617
>That wasn't me
Over ~9 months there's been ~ 50 or so uses, and a lot of those are ITT. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work this one out.

[Anonymous No.3543626]

>>3543619
No, Yoda, I just watches me teevee.

[Anonymous No.3543634]

>>3543625

No, I mean I'm not the fucking guy in this thread talking about it, you stupid fucking cunt.

[Anonymous No.3543636]

>>3543634
If you're not the guy talking about it, how come you're talking about it?

[Anonymous No.3543639]

>>3543636
This is turning into a Monty Python skit. An unmemorable one, unfortunately.

[Anonymous No.3543641]

>>3543639
Much like that meme you tried to force that one time.

[Anonymous No.3543642]

>>3543641

Now you're talking to yet another different person, ANONYMOUS ISN'T A FUCKING USERNAME, STOP TRYING TO BE RETARDED.

[Anonymous No.3543643]

[Anonymous No.3543644]

>>3543642
It's amazing how all these different people are posting and getting gradually more and more rustled. Why, one might even extrapolate and guess they're really one person.

[Anonymous No.3543646]

>>3543625
>Over ~9 months there's been ~ 50 or so uses

Tao pls go.

"One of the main alt-lit textual trends is wrapping up pretty much anything that might have some kind of emotional resonance in quotation marks. I imagine they're there as a stylistic device to imbue the writing with a sense of abstraction and a confliction of emotions and blah, blah, blah, but they always just end up reading as a writer who's too afraid to commit to the task at hand. Mind you, sincerity totally sucks anyway, right?

There’s also this weird obsession with the tilde character (‘~’), which again seems to be there to inject completely normal, quantifiable things with a mystery, i.e: "Today Ethan drank ~500mls of Irn Bru and ate ~22 Smarties." What's that supposed to achieve besides making the text read like an awkward attempt at Lydia Davis-style ultra-scrutiny? I don't want to spend more than approximately a quarter of a second – sorry, "~a quarter of a second" – being forced to work out if it matters how much Irn Bru somebody drank, because it clearly doesn't matter to anyone anywhere whatsoever.

As much as it’s a tool of self-desertion, the internet can also make us take ourselves far too seriously, because it helps us forget that no one cares. Which is kind of an obvious thing to say, but it's never a bad idea to remind ourselves that thriving on the validation that a wall post or an RT can bring is a terrible way to measure a life. Even at its most powerful and insidious, social networking is still no more than the pre-pool footbath you’ve got to gingerly tread through before hitting the slides of reality. So the pride the alt-lit community take in abdicating from an IRL existence as some kind of "comment" on what it means to be young in the age of web 2.0 results in nothing more than a literature of absolute nothingness."

[Anonymous No.3543648]

>>3543644
So there's just you and me posting in here?

In that case, you should go to bed, Tao.

[Anonymous No.3543647]

>>3543646
>There’s also this weird obsession with the tilde character (‘~’), which again seems to be there to inject completely normal, quantifiable things with a mystery
You know that just means "about" right?

[Anonymous No.3543649]

>>3543642

[Anonymous No.3543650]

>>3543648
But, the Tao which can be known is not the true Tao.

[Anonymous No.3543651]

Worst marketing campaign ever.

[Anonymous No.3543653]

>>3543651
I dunno, the Fins seem to think he's the Kafka of the internet age. And he's had good reviews in some of the UK broadsheets. Well, one of the UK broadsheets.

[Anonymous No.3543655]

>>3543651

DYER?

[Anonymous No.3543657]

>>3543653
Let me guess, the Guardian?

[Anonymous No.3543659]

>>3543655
Is that supposed to stand for something?

[Anonymous No.3543661]

>>3543657
Well, it's not going to be the FT is it. There was one other big paper in the UK, I'm pretty sure, that reviewed him well too. NYT predictably panned him, but plebs gonna pleb.

[Anonymous No.3543662]

>>3543659
Welcome to /lit/. DYER = Do You Even Read?

[Anonymous No.3543667]

>>3543662
>DYER = Do You Even Read?
NIDYYP

[Anonymous No.3543669]

>>3543667
>You trying to force a phrase does not make it a thing I'm afraid.
You trying to force a phrase does not make it a thing I'm afraid.

[Anonymous No.3543670]

>>3543669
Are you trying to force that phrase and make it a thing I'm afraid?

[Anonymous No.3543679]

Go to bed, Tao by Samuel L. Jackson

"The cats nestle close to their kittens now.
The lambs have laid down with the sheep.
You’re cozy and warm in your bed, dear Tao
Please go the fuck to sleep.

The windows are dark in the town, child.
The whales huddle down in the deep.
I'll read your dumb book, Tao, I swear
Just go the fuck to sleep.

The eagles who soar through the sky are at rest
And the creatures who crawl, run, and creep.
I know you're spamming this thread. Stop lying.
Lie the fuck down, Tao, and sleep."

[Anonymous No.3543692]

>Someone named Rodrigo, who'd recently moved here from San Francisco, Paul discerned via Facebook, emailed that he could get mushrooms and maybe MDMA but not until after Paul's reading.

It would be better like this:

Paul discerned via Facebook that someone named Rodrigo, who'd recently moved here, emailed that he could get mushrooms and maybe MDMA but not until after Paul's reading.

[Anonymous No.3543702]

Tao, American Power Hour is over. You chose the wrong time to spam, /lit/s nice and quiet now.

[Anonymous No.3543712]

>>3543538
follow me please, Tao

[Anonymous No.3543715]

>>3543562
I like Joe Abecrombie, especially for his deep characterization ..- which I didn't notice at first as the prose (and world building) was distracting me because it was so shit.

[Anonymous No.3543729]

Oh wow, name dropping 4chan - so subversive and underground you guise.

How about we make some references to the deep web and using ThePirateBay? OMG, HE SO UNDERSTANDS OUR GENERATION.

[Anonymous No.3543750]

>>3543542
It's really not that bad.

[Anonymous No.3543756]

>>3543729
It doesn't seem like a very big part of his novel. I do not understand why this can be such a subject of ridicule. Is it because there is this notion of high art that cannot be obtain through such references?

[Anonymous No.3543757]

>>3543750
It's fucking atrocious.

>>3543579

[Anonymous No.3543760]

>>3543750
People just can't separate the work from the writer it seems. Same with basically every piece of work mentioned on /lit/. Remember the whole shitstorm after DFW's biography was published?

[Anonymous No.3543763]

>>3543579
Jesus Christ, I've only heard things about Tao Lin from /lit/ and now I understand why you hate it so.

[Anonymous No.3543766]

>>3543757
Yeah well that's pretty bad, but the excerpt from the OP isn't. And it's not ever certain this last excerpt will make it in the final book, I heard it was unedited.

It just seems that now people see the name 'Tao Lin' and just automatically post about how bad his writing is.

>>3543760
Yeah it's unfortunate, but I don't think everyone on /lit/ acts like this

[Anonymous No.3543768]

it's supposed to be bad. jesus christ you guys are plebs.

[Anonymous No.3543769]

>>3543579
Ugh, he''s trying to copy that manic, drug-addled Thompson Style and give it a twinge of tumblr, but he's failing miserably.

"Jesus, 6:45 now and the pill has taken hold for real. The metal on the typewriter has turned from dull green to a sort of high-gloss blue, the keys sparkle, glitter with highlights..., I sort of levitate in the chair, hovering in front of the typewriter..., not sitting. Fantastic brightness on everything, polished and waxed with special lighting..., the physical end of the thing is like a sort of buzzing all over, a sense of being gripped by something, vibrating internally but with no outward sign or movement. I'm amazed that I can keep typing. I feel like both me and the typewriter have become weightless. Jesus, the sun is coming up, the room is unbearably bright, then a cloud across the sun, I can see the cloud in the sudden loss of light in the room, now getting brighter as the cloud passes or moves..., out there somewhere, much harder to type now, but it must be done, this is my handle, keep the brain tethered, hold it down. Any slippage now could be a landslide, losing the grip, falling or flipping around, Christ, can't blow my nose, can't find it but I can see it and my hand too, but they can't get together, ice in my nose, trembling with the radio on now, some kind of flute music, cold and fantastic vibration so fast I can't move. Anthony Hatch in Jerusalem, great God, the stinking news is on, get rid of it, no mention of Nixon, too much for a tortured head..., won't even look at it..., Nixon's face..., GODDAMN. Put some lampblack on these walls, take off the glare. We need more hair on these walls, and crab lice in the rug to give it life. There are marijuana seeds in this rug, the place is full of them. The rug crackles like popcorn when I walk, who planted these seeds in this rug, and why aren't they watered? Get that drink, boy, you are slipping, we need CONCENTRATION..."

[Anonymous No.3543771]

>>3543768
It's supposed to be choppy and with transitions that don't flow. That doesn't mean that it's supposed to be bad necessarily.

[Anonymous No.3543773]

>>3543766
>'Tao Lin' and just automatically post about how bad his writing is.
Most people have downloaded his stuff from >>>/rs/, so know how bad his writing is already.

I doubt Taipei will be as bad as Richard Yates, but I'm not expecting much.

[Anonymous No.3543774]

>>3543766
>Yeah it's unfortunate, but I don't think everyone on /lit/ acts like this
Not everyone, but a great many do.

>>3543773
What is so bad about Richard Yates? Do you have a legitimate reason why you think it is bad?

[Anonymous No.3543775]

I love your work Tao, don't let the haters get to you.

[Anonymous No.3543776]

>>3543775
whatever we say about tao it only makes him stronger.

[Anonymous No.3543786]

>>3543774
>Do you have a legitimate reason why you think it is bad?

Can you give me some examples of legitimate reasons, and illegitimate reasons?

Anyway, I hated the bad syntax, and the deliberate avoidance of pronouns to repeat the character names. The way he passed up every physical object to act as metaphors for plot reinforcement, they way he is unaware of linguistic tools, they way he inadvertently used free indirect style, bringing his 'author voice' in without even realising what the fuck he was doing.

Any character exposition was terrible. The over-stylized narrative was amateur and weak, and he had absolutely nothing of substance to say.

Not only is he a very bad writer, his glorification of online communication appeals to a certain demographic who only think he's profound because of it. It's dead-pan, monotone, xanax assisted drivel, that reads like a tumblr macro image in prose form.

[Anonymous No.3543811]

>>3543786
>illegitimate reasons?
Not liking Tao as a person would be one.

>his glorification of online communication appeals to a certain demographic who only think he's profound because of it

I feel like this is the real reason why you dislike the book. It seemed like you went into the novel just to insult it.

I haven't read it in a while so I can't say anything about the "author voice" and his arbitrary use of linguistic tools and indirect style, but many of the other things you mentioned were all stylistic choices. Especially the character expositions, they reminded me of conversations from a Eugene Ionesco play. And the whole idea that there is no substance in Richard Yates just seems a bit lame to say. What about the idea of existential loneliness that was sprinkled into each and every conversation had in Richard Yates? It seemed like both Olsen and Fanning were both code characters in a bland world.

[Anonymous No.3543868]

All those buzzwords...

>4chan
>internet
>MDMA
>emailed
>facebook

I'd say the hate usually reserved for Ayn Rand, the sarcasms directed toward DFW and the mockery spewed on Finnegans Wake should altogether be fully channeled toward Tao Lin.

Seriously, I can understand the need for this guy to be the "voice of a generation" by inserting random fashionable words in his stories and making them a central theme but he is trying way too hard.

Even now, upon reading the few sentences above,I feel that guy obviously went to 4chan, probably on /lit/ since he's a writer and all and, again, all odds are suggesting he noticed the negativity of /lit/ would have obviously been stirring in his direction and still decided to include a direct reference to 4chan breaking a huge implicit rule of ours. --I mean, what kind of mentally unstable imbecile would mention 4chan IRL, casually?

>so I was browsing 4chan the other day...
>wait, wut?

Fuck you tao, and if you ever read this post now, or in some archive or copypasta'd, somewhere, don't even quote this, don't you dare do it.
Also, your prose is special indeed. By special, I mean it propels the notion of bad writing into a whole new abysmal and ethereal plane of existence, where it is so blatantly shit it makes you question to a 3rd or even 4rth degree the original intention of the author.
>Did he intended to be bad to fake some bad writer being bad
>or was he a bad writer faking a bad writer being bad?

But since you have some success, by all means, good luck for the rest of your career. Who am I to judge your fanbase, after all?

[Anonymous No.3543890]

>>3543528

Why does that read so horrendously?

It's awful and almost painful trying to read through even if it does 'make sense' in a ugly convoluted way.

[Anonymous No.3543929]

>>3543568

Okay, I'VE read a Joe Abercrombie book, and I can safely say that his prose is mostly just ordinarily trashy and uninteresting but also features frequent ill-advised flashes of awkward writerliness.

Even GRRM writes better.

[Anonymous No.3543931]

>>3543868

>internet
>emailed

>buzzwords

okay

>decided to include a direct reference to 4chan breaking a huge implicit rule of ours.

ANON IS LEEJUN

[Anonymous No.3543932]

Run-on sentences everywhere.

Edited:

> He walked to a cafe near Type Books, then took a detour to 4chan. As usual, there were two threads about him on the front page. They were the longest he'd ever seen, and almost completely derogatory, but when he asked if anyone in the Toronto area could sell him MDMA or some mushrooms within two hours, he received an email immediately.

> The man who emailed said his name was Rodrigo. Facebook said Rodrigo had moved from San Francisco. He was gay, had two cats, and liked Breaking Bad. Mushrooms, said Rodrigo, were easy enough, and MDMA was a distinct possibility, but neither could be got in time for Paul's reading.

It's still polishing a turd, but at least now it's halfway readable.

[Anonymous No.3543935]

>>3543932

Meant to add another paragraph break after Breaking Bad.

[Anonymous No.3543936]

>>3543932

I'm no big fan of Tao Lin's prose, but wow, way to miss the point entirely. You even changed the sense of some parts.

[Anonymous No.3543947]

>>3543932
Nice work anon!

What I don't understand about the excerpt in the OP is why there'd be threads about this random guy in the first place. Is Tao so used to reading threads about himself that he can't put himself in the shoes of someone else.

Also
>400 replies
>ever
nice try toe

[Anonymous No.3543995]

>>3543947

Presumably the character in the excerpt is a writer as well, given that he's doing a reading.

Presumably the character in the excerpt is like Tao Lin in every way, except that he leads a more interesting life and is more clever.

[Anonymous No.3544148]

>>3543932

you've never read IJ have you? I bet the page long sentences would make you cringe