It’s hard out there for young writers. The only houses that will house them are small, indie enterprises full of energy but lacking funds, and readers are scared by untested virtue. Be scared no longer sovereign readers! I will test your books for poison. Eat up!
Richard Yates by Tao Lin
What’s in a name? Behind Tao Lin’s lies a deep undercurrent of electronic press and radical polarization of literary critique. Some people love him, others do not. Whatever the case, you have to applaud his productivity. The back of his latest book, Richard Yates, says it’s about an illicit affair between a highschooler and a college grad, her 16 to his 22. The relationship itself is “pretty normal” while the modes in which it is actualized portray the 21st century as the real criminal in the lineup for its lack of scope and human body interaction amidst its complex web of mobile communication. Gchat and text messaging are the 2-D masks reality wears, perfectly suited for those alienated and apathetic to hyper emotion. People meet on the internet, they fall in love on the internet, then they meet again, outside of the internet, and try to do so as much as possible. When they can’t, they go back to internet. The prose is simple and the humor is strange, but the boy-girl arc of infatuation and omission and reconciliation feels real enough to me that I recommend the book without qualms. A friend once told me reading Tao Lin is like doing something that is addictive. It may not be healthy, but by golly, you want more. So forget the Tao Lin moniker, and the fact that the main characters are named Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning, and read this book.
~Matt Nelson, Northeast Branch
In case you missed them, make sure to check out Part I and Part II of Books by People You’ve Probably Never Heard of!
Leave a Comment