Taipei
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You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
I'm page 133 of Taipei and am considering putting the book down. Of course I'm not going to ask you to tell me what to do lit, but for those of you who have read it, is there any reason to continue? The prose that was celebrated for being "disengaged" and representative of contemporary times is boring, superficial, and under developed. I think I see what Lin is trying to do but I don't think its revolutionary or thought out that well. Also nothing about Paul is redeeming and his true self never seems to be explored past a certain point. There are parts of the book that are pretty good, especially the first sixty pages or so. But the burgeoning romance with Erin is boring me. Either Lin's trick is to write a really shallow book that is a metaphor for modern times which is nauseating just to type or he is just kind of bad at writing. I know this is kind of rambly and maybe incoherent but what are your thoughts on Taipei?
there's no payoff if that's what you're asking. it's more of the same, though he has a small epiphany at the end I guess.
>>7516356
>he fell for a meme
>>7516356
I think it's safe to assume he's "kind of bad at writing". I've read most of what he's written, and never in any of those works did he display a talent for writing. There's really no reason for you to continue reading.
The second half consists wholly of Paul and Erin's relationship, and it's a monotonous slog the entire time.
Meditate on the connection between Paul and Paul the Apostle, and then read it again. ;-)
I don't think you're giving the book the attention it deserves.
>>7516356
I really enjoyed this book and have trouble understanding why others don't. I suppose I felt it spoke to me and resonated with my experiences to an extent not accomplished by any other classifiably literary fiction. I wouldn't say he's bad at writing; it's a tightly controlled style that delivers on its intent.
>>7516412
don't you have some drugs to do you untalented chink?
>>7516412
There's no connection and you're obviously memeing, but it is a good book.
>>7516412
>>7516417
>>7516428
But why do you guys consider this good. I really feel like I am missing something here. Is there anything more to this story than a guy who is trying to figure out his depression by losing himself in drugs, relationships, and technology? I don't feel like I am getting anything out of Paul/Lin that is particularly insightful about anything. Its just a guy finding himself in his 20's in the 21st century, right?
>>7516463
Aren't we all trying to find ourselves in our twenties in the twenty-first century?
>>7516467
yea so why do I have to read about this fucking guy do it. Why should i care about the twentieth time he did MDMA or the fifteenth time Daniel says "bro"
>>7516472
Maybe it'll clarify some things about your own experience. Maybe you should read The Bible, and then read Taipei again, and then read The Bible again. Maybe.
>>7516472
just B.E yourself
>>7516463
Imo people who like it like it bc they can relate to it. It's like a long status update where they can self insert their own tags and feel like wow this totally gets me. Sadly for these individuals everyone else seems to find the book incredibly banal. Of course those in this lifestyle will take that as a melancholic reflection on mode life.
>>7516481
nobody liked it because of this
>>7516472
do you have to be a normie to get this?
>>7516491
I think you have to be a "normie" to like the style
Internet assburgers won't find anything new.
>>7516356
One conception that people have about Tao Lin is that he is trying to "do" anything. He just wrote a book.
In my honest opinion it's the greatest American novel.
You shouldn't feel bad about not "getting it."
>>7516487
You seem triggered so I can only assume I struck a nerve
>>7516463
I consider it good because I had never read and to this day I have never read a book that simulates how I experience life so accurately and precisely as this.
Tao Lin is a genius.
This is the best essay on the significance of Lin's writing for anyone who doesn't "get" Tao Lin.
>>7516505
https://nplusonemag.com/issue-20/reviews/nobodys-protest-novel/
we links nao
>>7516506
>Tao Lin has, in my opinion, thought extremely hard about this kind of power, and has, though incapable of challenging it directly, worked extremely hard, using the language and experiences available to him, to present this dominance in such a way as to reveal its workings and reduce it to a human scale. If he embodies, to some extent, in his person and his art, this tyranny, he also makes it, through the window of his being in the text, available for criticism and destruction. It’s a punishing form of art, with disturbing and unconscious parallels to human sacrifice, but it is doubtlessly and absolutely literature. As far as taking his miserable remuneration as evidence of some kind of fraud, his neutral tone as a lack of tone, his stylistic consistency as uncreative and robotic, his care as indifference, his power as impotent, his character as dickless, his clarity as inscrutable, his talent for evoking human feeling as mathematically inhuman, his attempts to be accessible as ignorant, his fidelity to detail as autism—well, go ahead. Who can stop you. It’s not as if there aren’t grounds on which to criticize Lin’s work, but before I leave this place, it really must be said that to recycle, when reviewing the first great male Asian author of American descent, relentlessly and without even the slightest consideration, the same slurs typically aimed at Asian males by white Americans to deface and devalue them socially—this comes off as a desperate and disorganized, even downright illiterate attempt to erase not just his greatness as an artist, but all the struggle to be human he’s invested in his art—invested there and only there, because there was nowhere in this culture he could take it but the art of words, as faceless as he is. Abstractions though you are, you still hold all the power, and so I’m asking anyway: Tell me, if you know, you white American reviewers, section leaders, incurious overseers—how the fuck can you do so much to create a monster, then try to take away all he has left—his status as unique?
http://www.taolin.info/
>Just noticed you no longer list Manhattan as your location on Twitter profile. Have you permanently moved to Taipei now?
>Thank you for noticing. I haven’t, but I’m here until March and I want to move out of NYC after March.
Is it not the end of an era?
Calm down Tao, no need to samefag to get a point across.
>>7516509
>If you don't like him you're a racist
