Tao Lin

Lin was born in Alexandria, Virginia, to a Taiwanese American family and grew up in suburbs in Orlando, Florida. He attended Lake Howell High School, and graduated from New York University in 2005 with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in journalism. Lin moved to Hawaii in January 2020. For years, Lin abused multiple drugs, including amphetamines, opioids, MDMA, and benzodiazepines. He wrote about recovering from his pharmaceutical drug addiction in his 2018 book Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change. == Career ==

Lin's first book, a poetry collection, was published in 2006. His next five books were published by the independent press Melville House Publishing. Of his first three or four books, New York Observer wrote, "His earlier stuff is juvenile, but now his style works to heighten a sense of alienation." In 2008, Lin founded the independent press Muumuu House. The press has published four print books and over 100 stories, essays, and poems online, including work by Megan Boyle, Marie Calloway, Sheila Heti, and James Purdy. Lin quit his job after selling shares of the future royalties of his novel Richard Yates online in 2009. After Richard Yates, Lin got a literary agent, Bill Clegg, who sold his next book, Taipei, to Vintage Books, which has published his subsequent work. In 2010, The Atlantic wrote that Lin had a "fairly staggering" knack for self-promotion. The same article read, "there's something unusual about a writer being so transparent, so ready to tell you every insignificant detail of a seemingly eventful day, so aware of his next novel's word count, yet also remaining so opaque, mysterious, 'inscrutable.'" In an NPR book review, Lin was called "computer literate" and "narcissistic". The London Evening Standard wrote, "Lin admits he is not good at talking". In 2011, Lin and his ex-wife Megan Boyle founded MDMAfilms, a film production company, through which they released three experimental films, including Mumblecore. The films were made using a Macbook's iSight camera on an extremely low budget. Lin has lectured on his writing, poetry, and art at Vassar College, Kansas City Art Institute, UNC Chapel Hill, and other universities and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum. In 2012 and in 2015 he taught a graduate course at Sarah Lawrence College called "The Contemporary Short Story". In 2014, the website Jezebel posted screenshots of tweets by Lin's former girlfriend, writer E.R. Kennedy, alleging abuse, statutory rape, and plagiarism. The allegations stem from 2005, when Kennedy and Lin dated. At the time, Kennedy was 16 and Lin was 22. Lin responded on Facebook, denying the allegations. Kennedy deleted the tweets and asked Jezebel to take down the article, a request Jezebel ignored. A 2021 New Yorker article noted that the statutory allegation was false. Lin began drawing what he called "mandalas" in 2014. Initially, he sold them on eBay. With his 2018 book Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change, Lin's work took a spiritual turn. In Interview Magazine, he said, "My writing career—and my life—has had two separate phases that are opposite to each other. I think my writing up until Taipei in 2013 was about depressed, lonely, pessimistic, existential characters. After that, I wrote more from a perspective of hope and optimism. I began to read nonfiction and to want to learn about the world, and I became more spiritual." ==Critical response==

L Magazine wrote, "We've long been deeply irked by Lin's vacuous posturing and 'I know you are but what am I' dorm-room philosophizing". Sam Anderson wrote in New York Magazine, "Dismissing Lin, however, ignores the fact that he is deeply smart, funny, and head-over-heels dedicated in exactly the way we like our young artists to be." Miranda July has called Lin's work "moving and necessary". In n+1, critic Frank Guan called Lin "the first great male Asian author of American descent ". Lin's early writing has been criticized as detached and bleak, with NPR calling it "boring and harrowing". His work has been praised in the UK, including in The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, which called Lin "a daring, urgent voice for a malfunctioning age", and a 2010 career overview by the London Review of Books. Since 2013, Lin's work has been associated with the mode of writing called "autofiction", post-postmodernist aesthetics and posthumanist philosophy. Fellow autofictioners have praised his work. Ben Lerner said, "One thing I like about Tao's writing is how beside the point for me 'liking' it feels—it's a frank depiction of the rhythm of a contemporary consciousness or lack of consciousness and so it has a power that bypasses those questions of taste entirely. Like it or not, it has the force of the real." ==Books==

you are a little bit happier than i am (2006) In November 2006 Lin's first book, a poetry collection titled you are a little bit happier than i am, was published. It was the winner of Action Books' December Prize and has been a small-press bestseller. Eeeee Eee Eeee and Bed (2007) In May 2007 Lin's first novel, Eeeee Eee Eeee, and first story collection, Bed, were published simultaneously. Of the stories, Jennifer Bassett wrote in KGB Lit Journal, "In structure and tone, they have the feel of early Lorrie Moore and Deborah Eisenberg. Like Moore's characters, there are a lot of plays on language and within each story, a return to the same images or ideas—or jokes. And like Moore, most of these characters live in New York, are unemployed or recently employed, and are originally from somewhere more provincial (Florida in Lin's case, Wisconsin in Moore's). However, Lin knows to dig a little deeper into his characters—something we see in Moore's later stories, but less so in her early ones." The books were ignored by most mainstream media but have since been referenced in The Independent (which called Eeeee Eee Eeee "a wonderfully deadpan joke") and The New York Times, which called Lin a "deadpan literary trickster" in reference to Eeeee Eee Eeee. cognitive-behavioral therapy (2008) In May 2008 Lin's second poetry collection, cognitive-behavioral therapy was published. The poem "room night" from this collection was anthologized in Wave Books' State of the Union. Shoplifting from American Apparel (2009) In September 2009 Lin's novella Shoplifting from American Apparel was published to mixed reviews. The Guardian wrote, "Trancelike and often hilarious… Lin's writing is reminiscent of early Douglas Coupland, or early Bret Easton Ellis, but there is also something going on here that is more profoundly peculiar, even Beckettian." Time Out New York wrote, "Writing about being an artist makes most contemporary artists self-conscious, squeamish and arch. Lin, however, appears to be comfortable, even earnest, when his characters try to describe their aspirations (or their shortcomings) [...] purposefully raw." The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "Tao Lin's sly, forlorn, deadpan humor jumps off the page". The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Camus' The Stranger or sociopath?"; the Austin Chronicle called it "scathingly funny" and wrote, "it might just be the future of literature". Another reviewer called it "a vehicle...for self-promotion." In a December 2009 episode of KCRW's Bookworm, Michael Silverblatt called the novella "the purest example so far of the minimalist aesthetic as it used to be enunciated". The same month, clothing retailer Urban Outfitters began selling Shoplifting from American Apparel in its stores. Richard Yates (2010) Lin's second novel, Richard Yates, was published on September 7, 2010, by Melville House. In The New York Times Book Review, Charles Bock called the book "more interesting as a concept than as an actual narrative", adding, "during important scenes, Lin slows time and piles sentences into longer paragraphs, replicating complex thought processes and shifting, nuanced moods, while showing his admiration for the work of Lydia Davis." The review ended, "By the time I reached the last 50 pages, each time the characters said they wanted to kill themselves, I knew exactly how they felt." In The Boston Globe, Danielle Dreilinger wrote, "By all rights, this sixth book by Tao Lin ought to be dreadful. It has an unnecessary index, protagonists named after child stars, and a title that pays homage to a famous novelist who has no concrete connection with the book ... But Richard Yates is neither pretentious nor sneering nor reflexively hip. It is simply a focused, moving, and rather upsetting portrait of two oddballs in love". Taipei (2013) On February 23, 2013, Publishers Weekly awarded Taipei a starred review, predicting it would be Lin's "breakout" book and calling it "a novel about disaffection that's oddly affecting" and "a book without an ounce of self-pity, melodrama, or posturing". The same month, Bret Easton Ellis tweeted, "With Taipei Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation, which doesn't mean that Taipei isn't a boring novel". (Lin and his publishers omitted the words after "generation" in a blurb they printed on Taipei's cover.) Taipei was published by Vintage on June 4, 2013, to mostly positive reviews. In the New York Observer, novelist Benjamin Lytal called it Lin's "modernist masterpiece", adding, "we should stop calling Tao Lin the voice of his generation. Taipei, his new novel, has less to do with his generation than with the literary tradition of Knut Hamsun, Ernest Hemingway, and Robert Musil." According to Slate, "Taipei casts a surprisingly introspective eye on the spare, 21st-century landscape Lin has such a knack for depicting". New York Times critic Dwight Garner wrote, "I loathe reviews in which a critic claims to have love-hate feelings about a work of art. It's a way of having no opinion at all. But I love and hate Taipei". On June 18, critic Emily Witt wrote in The Daily Beast: Taipei is exactly the kind of book I hoped Tao Lin would one day write. He is one of the few fiction writers around who engages with contemporary life, rather than treating his writing online as existing in opposition to or apart from the hallowed analog space of the novel. He's consistently good for a few laughs and writes in a singular style already much imitated by his many sycophants on the Internet. Some people like Tao Lin for solely these reasons, or treat him as a sort of novelty or joke. But Lin can also produce the feelings of existential wonder that all good novelists provoke. On June 30, in The New York Times Book Review, Clancy Martin wrote: His writing is weird, upsetting, memorable, honest—and it's only getting better [...] But I didn't anticipate Taipei, his latest, which is, to put it bluntly, a gigantic leap forward. Here we have a serious, first-rate novelist putting all his skills to work. Taipei is a love story, and although it's Lin's third novel it's also, in a sense, a classic first novel: it's semi-autobiographical (Lin has described it as the distillation of 25,000 pages of memory) and it's a bildungsroman... Other reviews of the novel were mixed. On July 5, The New York Times Book Review awarded Taipei an Editors' Choice distinction. It was the only paperback on the list for the week. On KCRW's "Bookworm", in conversation with Lin, Silverblatt called it "the most moving depiction of the way we live now" and "unbearably moving". Taipei was included on lists of the best books of the year by the Times Literary Supplement, Village Voice, Slate, Salon, Bookforum, The Week, Maisonneuve, and Complex, among others. High Resolution, a film adaptation of Taipei, was released in 2018. Selected Tweets (2015) On June 15, 2015, Short Flight/Long Drive Books published the collaborative double-book Selected Tweets by Lin and poet Mira Gonzalez. The book features selections from eight years of their tweets at nine different Twitter accounts, as well as visual art by each author, footnotes, and "Extras". In the Columbia Spectator, Emma Kolchin-Miller wrote that the book featured "a selection of bleak, depressed, disturbing, funny, and personal tweets that create a fragmented narrative". In Electric Literature, Andrea Longini wrote that Lin and Gonzalez had "elevated the medium into an art form with the power to transmit authentic observations". Trip (2018) In May 2018, Lin's Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change, a nonfiction account of his experiences with psychedelic drugs, was published by Vintage Books. Much of the book is devoted to Lin's continuing fascination with the life and thought of Terence McKenna, as well as an introduction to McKenna's ex-wife Kathleen Harrison. Trip was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. In Scientific American, John Horgan wrote, "If an aspirant asks for an example of experimental science writing, I'll recommend Trip. The book veers from excruciatingly candid autobiography to biography (of McKenna) to investigative journalism…to interview-based journalism to philosophical speculation to first-person accounts of the effects of DMT and Salvia." Of Trip, Sheila Heti wrote, "This book has changed how I understand myself on a cellular level. It's a superbly researched, moving, and formally inventive quest for re-enchantment, and Tao Lin's most compelling and profound book yet." Leave Society (2021) Lin's fourth novel, Leave Society, was published on August 3, 2021. In a review published online on the book's release date and later in the print edition of The New York Times Book Review, Christine Smallwood wrote of its main character: "Li has left behind speed, despair and his belief in Western medicine. (He refuses steroid shots for his back pain.) But what he is really recovering from is existentialism, the idea that life has no meaning other than what we give it. He now believes that the world has an inherent purpose ... Stylistically, the book is artful, even radical". In a review in The New Yorker, Andrea Long Chu wrote:The first sentence of almost every chapter contains at least one number, often several, like a medical record: "Thirty tabs of LSD arrived on day thirty-five." This kind of prose can be elegant; it can also feel like dieting ... But it's most interesting to consider the book's flat affect as a curious, sidewise effect of Li's linguistic relationship to his parents ... There is a translated quality to this kind of writing, as if Lin were rendering Mandarin word for word; in fact, given Li's propensity for audio recordings, this is likely exactly what happened... In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Lamorna Ash wrote:Lin introduces a radical shift in outlook, a change from a posture of boredom to one of awe [...] The final sentence of Leave Society—"Li took a leaf"—echoes an earlier scene in which Li offers a leaf to his brother's son. [...] On my first reading of Leave Society, I did not know what, if anything, to make of the homophone "leaf" and "leave." On the second reading, when I was better accustomed to Lin's humor and his delight in multiplicity, it seemed to me both metaphorical and literal, playful and quite serious, a brilliant, almost perfect ending.{{cite web|last=Lamorna|first=Ash|title= Life Turned into Text: On Tao Lin's "Leave Society" ==Bibliography==