It is so easy to feel bad for Tao Lin. In just the last two years, the 24-year-old writer has established a promising literary career for himself by addressing and openly discussing loneliness. With a style of prose that combines succinct honesty, a strong sense of self, and a touch of the absurd, Lin has used two collections of poetry, a story-collection, and a novel to talk about depression and bitter realizations, like “i think the damage i’ve done has become irreversible/ i’m surrounded by endless shit/ i can’t move.”
And yet, Tao Lin does not want you to feel bad for him.
In 2006, the New York-based poet born to Taiwanese parents in Florida released his first collection of poetry, you are a little bit happier than i am (Action). His follow-up — the story-collection, Bed, and novel, Eeeee Eee Eeee, from Melville House — was the first double-book fiction debut since Ann Beattie released Distortions and Chilly Scenes of Winter simultaneously in 1976. His latest work is a poetry collection entitled Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, from Melville House on May 15.
In much of what he writes, Lin follows around twentysomething males much like himself who pine over girls they’ve lost or haven’t yet found, eat lonely meals in lonely apartments, stare blankly at computer screens, and lay quietly in bed, sobbing. Concurrently, his work finds bears that claw humans and knock over gumball machines and homeless hamsters that sell stolen merchandise.
Most of it is a little absurd, but all of it is routinely exposed. And it’s in the confines of wondering what it is that makes us happy, how we can form relationships to feel good about, and where we can find meaning in our lives that Lin has found his voice. In addition to being the poetry editor of online magazine 3:AM and the producer of his popular blog, Reader of Depressing Books, here is a guy who is crafting art by being completely honest and direct about disconnect, about loneliness, about the good and bad in all of us. And Lin wants you to know he feels happy about that.
Is being an Asian artist something you think about?
TL: I don’t think about being “Asian” or being an “artist.” I don’t know. Because they’re abstractions I guess.
Does your heritage play a role in how you want to be perceived?
TL: No. I want to be perceived as “That is someone whose book I want to buy so he can get a ‘steady cash flow.’” And “That is someone who is the same as me; I would like to meet him and be his friend.”
So do you ever think about your writing as art? Do you ever set out to go somewhere with it or are you just writing?
TL: I think about everything as “art.” I have thought about the universe, and concluded some things. Those things make me want to view everything as “art.” I feel okay about this. Everything to me, maybe, is “art,” meaning there is no rhetoric that is not sarcastic, ever, in my life, currently.
Will this sarcastic rhetoric ever end, do you think? Will sarcasm, for you, stop being an emotion one day and you’ll look back on it as a phase?
TL: Probably. “Faith” or “complete ‘belief’ in something” seems to be more effective, as a tone, for one’s life, for being productive, and I seem to want to be productive, so maybe. But it just depends how “far” you want to view it. From another perspective it could be viewed that my rhetoric is “sarcastic rhetoric is ‘true’ rhetoric from the point of view of everything” or something, and that would be a non-sarcastic worldview. I think about myself and I change a little every few months and like a lot every few years, so I don’t know. Probably I will change.
I read a quote from you recently in which you said you think in terms of whether or not you’re productive. Does that still hold up today?
TL: Mostly it does, I think. I feel meaningless a lot of the time; there seems to be almost no other way to “judge” whether I “should” at any moment “feel good” or “feel bad.” I think, based on that, I’ve internalized that I should feel good if I have been productive and bad if I have not been productive. I like reading about things that make the universe seem meaningless and make me feel meaningless but I feel bad if I “match” that and just “lay around” all the time. I like making things that make me feel “new kinds” of meaninglessness. Maybe I’m productive at creating varieties of meaninglessness so I can “screw around” in meaninglessness and have fun with it or something.
If you were forced to get a real job — in a cubicle, I guess — would that make you feel more meaningless?
TL: No, probably not. I might feel less meaningless — I would be thinking about how to exploit my desk job to fund other things a lot of the time maybe. Actually I think I only feel meaningless sometimes. Most of the time I feel other things, sometimes I feel “nothing” or something. I know I feel meaningless sometimes because I’m on Gmail chat and I type to people, “I feel meaningless.” Most of the time I type, “I feel okay,” and it seems “true enough.”
Do you set out to be absurd or consciously wacky?
TL: No. I feel “completely honest” and “direct” about almost everything I’ve published in a book. It was hard to be “wacky” and “absurd” when I was spending almost every day alone in the library then walking home alone and laying on my bed feeling bad. I do try to make everything I write either “interesting” or “funny” in some way, but I don’t put that over being “direct” and “honest.” But it’s not “completely honest,” I guess, because “unfiltered” my thoughts would be like, “I feel bad. I feel bad. I feel bad. Bagels. Hummus. I want the burger at Counter (an organic vegetarian restaurant in Manhattan). Dirty choads. I feel dirty. I feel bad. Mansion.” That’s not even completely honest. A lot of the time I’m thinking really bad words consecutively in my head without any meaning or emotion. If I feel bad though I don’t want to just type, “I feel bad” partly because it would be “burdening” someone else with feelings of wanting to “help me.” I don’t want to make anyone have feelings of needing to help me or wanting to help me.
So what might make you feel better?
TL: I don’t know. I don’t think I feel any “worse” than anyone else. Or rather I don’t think that is a question I ever want to think about. I don’t like people trying to convince other people that they feel worse than them or have had a worse life or something. I think that means I want everyone to “live in the present” or something. I don’t feel “bad” overall I guess. I feel “something” or something. I think I can say for sure that some things will make me “feel good” in the short-term like eating something or getting a certain e-mail or something.
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