Tao Lin, 26, is a writer based in New York who blogs here. He is the author of the novel Eeeee Eee Eeee, the short story collection Bed, released simultaneously in 2007 by Melville House Publishing, and two poetry collections: you are a little bit happier than i am and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. His latest is the novella Shoplifting from American Apparel, a humorous, subtle, and melancholy work.

Tao Lin was kind enough to take part in an e-mail interview. He has a Twitter feed and a Tumblr presence. His second novel, Richard Yates, will be published by Melville House in 2010.

Vernacular Lit: You’ve been compared to Andy Warhol, possibly because of your attention to surfaces, engagement with pop culture, and (at times) playful and enigmatic interview style. What do you make of this assessment? Does it annoy you? Have Warhol’s works or public statements been an influence in any way? Have you ever seen Blue Movie?

Tao Lin: I don’t know how accurate the assessment is but I feel good, or “okay,” when people make it. Based on what I know about Andy Warhol he seems like a calm, detached, productive, sensitive person who doesn’t talk shit and who has some sort of focus on human relationships or humans. I’ve currently read half of FROM A TO B AND BACK AGAIN and his wikipedia page. I look forward to reading a biography of Andy Warhol and then googling him a lot, and thinking about him a lot, with interest, for an amount of time, at some point in my life.

I don’t think I ever thought anything beyond “who is Andy Warhol, seems like I should know more about him, seems okay” about Andy Warhol until someone compared me to him. I think the first person who compared me to him did it sort of arbitrarily, partly because the only book they had ever finished reading, they said, I think, was FROM A TO B AND BACK AGAIN. I always felt kind of confused about Andy Warhol, like I wasn’t sure what he did or how he viewed things. I still don’t know how he views things or what he thinks about certain things or even what his tone is when he is doing or saying things. I don’t know “Blue Movie.”

VL: Why do certain people (mainly on the Internet) appear to enjoy bashing Tao Lin? Do you get the feeling that many of them haven’t actually read your work?

TL: Based on my experiences “bashing” people (I think I have “bashed” people a few times, in middle school probably, in message boards or online role-playing games) I think people enjoy doing it for the same reasons people enjoy vandalizing people’s things or houses (which I’ve also done, in high school) or talking shit about a “rival” sports team or political party; or, to a lesser degree, “annoying” their siblings, or something. Because to a certain person it probably “feels” fun, distracts immediately from “existential despair,” and connects one immediately and sort of intimately with others who are doing it to the same target.

Some people who shit-talk me on my blog seem to do it continuously, for long periods of time, though, and I don’t think I ever did that, so I’m not sure exactly how it is enjoyable for them. Probably it just seems funny to them or somehow “fun.” I think some of my shit-talkers have read my work and then started to shit-talk me, because they don’t like my work. Some of my shit-talkers have read something I have online and then started to shit-talk me. For people who are earnestly talking shit about me because they really think I’m a horrible person whose entire existence is some kind of “persona” or “gimmick” I recommend they read my story-collection, BED, if they have any feeling like they don’t want to feel like they “have to” talk shit about me.

VL: Would you mind describing your writing habits? Do you follow a strict routine when you are working?

TL: I think the past ~6 years my “writing habits” that have remained constant are probably that I listen to music while writing, I try to “schedule” periods longer than one hour before writing, and while I’m working the hardest on a book I work on it every day, for between 3 and 10 hours a day, and schedule other things around it, and do it while I’m feeling “most creative,” or “most alive,” which means usually after I have had coffee. For more information about my “habits” I recommend reading this interview.

VL: You’ve published a novel, a short story collection, two books of poetry, and just last month, the novella Shoplifting from American Apparel. Which form appeals to you the most right now, or would you say they are equal? Do you consider yourself a poet who writes short stories, a novelist who writes poems, or just a writer above all else?

TL: I think I consider myself “a person,” or, ideally, “a thing,” even, more than things like “a writer,” due in part to viewing “writing” as a form of “thinking,” which it seems like everyone does. Currently I don’t feel that any form of writing is more appealing to me. I feel excited by different things for each form.

VL: You’ve mentioned in other interviews that SFAA is highly autobiographical. What was the writing experience like? What made you decide to focus on real life to this extent?

TL: The writing experience seemed “pleasurable” and calm, until the mid to later stages, when it became “sort of despairing” (which I expected, though, from experience working on my other books), as I began to feel “almost completely unsure” if I liked each edit or not, yet continued editing for 2-4 months.

In part I focused on using my memory as a first draft to this extent because I wanted it to be an extreme version of whatever it is. In part because at that point in my life I didn’t feel like “making things up,” I felt interested in making a highly-edited “diary,” to some extent.

VL: SFAA has several humorous passages which also hint at the political, such as when an African American policeman says “Life isn’t fair” or when a manager at American Apparel says “Don’t steal from us. Steal from some shitty corporation.” Does the novella have an intentional political message?

TL: To me it doesn’t.

VL: In your opinion, what would happen if a large segment of the population stole from corporations, sold the goods on eBay, and spent the money on organic vegan restaurants?

TL: Organic vegan restaurants would have more money, which they could use to expand, possibly buying out adjacent Radio Shacks that are “out of business,” gaining more customers and increasing the amount of organic local produce that they buy. Causing organic local farmers to have more money, which they could use to expand their farms or hire more workers. Causing factory farms and conventional farms to have a little less money (due to the increased power of organic vegan restaurants to advertise themselves and have larger locations, allowing them the power to gain more business from people who would normally have eaten at KFC or Taco Bell) and possibly close one of their slaughterhouses or pesticide-run (or otherwise not-sustainably-run, soil-wise) farms. Less pesticides from non-organic farms, less factory farm “concentrated fecal runoff,” and less transportative pollution would be released into the environment. Pesticide companies and companies that produce the machines, antibiotics, and growth hormones needed for factory farms would have less money, due to factory farms and farmers buying less of their goods, and would possibly close some of their locations and lay off some of their workers, decreasing their power, decreasing the availability of pesticides, to some degree, and decreasing their power to advertise their goods to farmers. Organic local farms would have more money would want to hire more workers, and would hire the people that were laid-off at better wages, with better benefits, due to organic local farms not being a part of publicly-traded companies, and therefore having the choice to use profits to better worker conditions or worker compensation or [anything not "increasing profits" to benefit "investors," or "stock-holders," who own the company]. eBay, a publicly-traded company, would have more money, but would gain a very small percentage of money when compared to the amount of money other publicly-traded companies (that people steal from, and that organic local farms divert the business of) lose. (In addition a majority of the people who steal batteries from corporations would develop and nurture relationships with customers, so that they can eventually sell stolen goods directly to customers, bypassing eBay and PayPal and maybe even the postal service). Corporations might hire more security guards and eventually develop ways to completely counter shoplifting, but by that time organic vegan restaurants will already have gained some amount of resources and power and money, with which to leverage themselves better against non-organic restaurants, fast food restaurants, and non-organic delis, among other establishments. With less pesticides, less factory farms, less growth hormones, less antibiotics, less money in control of publicly-owned companies, people and animals throughout the world would be in better health, there would be less despair over untraceable pain and suffering (for example factory farms whose “fecal runoff” goes into rivers, causing someone 100 miles away to get cancer), global warming would be alleviated to a greater degree, more workers would be compensated better and have better benefits, there would be more jobs (a publicly-owned company existentially will not, because it “can not,” keep a worker if laying off the worker is more beneficial to the company’s profits, and so will always have the least number of works possible; while independently-owned companies have the choice to “keep on” as many workers as they want), and there would be less of a divide between the rich and the poor. Among other things. I feel I would probably need to research for months or years to feel satisfactorily knowledgeable to answer this question comprehensively. This paragraph is typed objectively, in that it doesn’t say what is good and what is bad. It “simply” states what I view as the cause and effects of certain actions.

VL: I want to ask you about a few quotes: “After a few minutes they began to say bad things about each other.” “Audrey said something about Jesus.” “Jeffrey…said a long sentence Sam responded to by making noises and nodding.” “There was a thing on the table and Sam touched it.” The deliberate vagueness has an interesting distancing effect. What did you have in mind when employing this technique?

TL: It has the same effect, I think, as saying “one hour later,” or something, in that it lets the reader know there is an amount of information the author has left out of the text, to some effect. To some degree all writing has the effect you describe. When a person in a book is described the person can be described in 1000 words or 10 words. The 10-word description could be described as “vague” as compared to the 1000-word description. Each seems to have different effects that a writer might want to employ at different times.

VL: What is the “thing on the table?”

TL: I don’t know.

VL: In SFAA you often describe characters as having “neutral facial expressions.” This reminds me of the way a film can show an object, like a bowl of soup for instance, followed by a shot of a character’s face, leading the viewer to conclude that the character is hungry. Was this your intention? Is it possible to have a truly “neutral” facial expression?

TL: I don’t think that was my intention. When I say “neutral facial expression” I mean when a face is “at default,” which seems possible.

VL: Is there a question you’ve never been asked in an interview that you
would like to answer right now?

TL: No.

Tags:   Author Interviews · Brooks · Shoplifting from American Apparel · tao lin6 Comments