my interview with tao lin

me:
You use a lot of gmail chats in your newest book. Why did you decide to
present them on the page in a prose dialogue manner rather than just using
the format that online chats actually occur in?

tao:
I feel that presenting them like "screen shots" would only be satisfying to
me if I also did not edit them at all. And if it was presented as
"unedited." But I wanted the dialogue in the book (and all my writing,
unless it's gimmick is that it isn't edited at all), to be "heavily" edited,
which in part made me want to present it as prose dialogue.

me:
How often do you shop at American Apparel? How many times have you stolen
from American Apparel in real life? How long did you have to stay in the
holding cell and did it suck?

tao:
I've probably shopped at American Apparel ~15 times in my life. I've
probably bought ~3 shirts, ~15 pairs of underwear, ~2 [miscellaneous things]
from American Apparel in my life. I have probably shoplifted from American
Apparel ~2 times in my life. I stayed in the holding cell, after being
arrested at American Apparel, for ~5 hours, I think, which can be read about
in SFAA. I felt that my time in the holding cell was interesting, calming,
and funny.

me:
How much do you write during a typical day? What was the writing editing
process like for Shoplifting from American Apparel compared to Eeeee Eee
Eeee?

tao:
When I am working on a book, with SFAA and my next novel, RICHARD YATES, I
worked 8-10 hours a day. I would not do anything else except eat, exercise,
drink coffee, work on writing, and late at night "chill" before going to
sleep. I worked more consistently and "harder" perhaps on SFAA than EEE.
With EEE I wasn't sure if it was going to be published, so I would work on
it "half-assedly" for like 2 hours a day, for like 15 months, with "little
or no plan."

me:
After you have finished a book, do you generally take some time off for
writing or are you continuously writing?

tao:
I generally take some time off, in terms of writing complete books, but I am
almost always writing single poems or stories or essays or whatever.

me:
Do you know the approximate release date for your novel Richard Yates?

tao:
The official release date is September 2010.

me:
What do you like about Richard Yates? writing?

tao:
I like his writing, that he seemed like a considerate person despite
suffering from severe depression and "bouts of madness" (according to Blake
Bailey's biography of him, which I enjoyed), and that he was productive and
worked hard. He has two or maybe three books that I like enough to reread:
The Easter Parade, Revolutionary Road, and maybe his collected stories or
Disturbing the Peace.

me:
In interviews you mention some of your influences (Ann Beattie, Richard
Yates, Joy Williams, Noah Cicero, etc.). I was wondering if there were any
writers that you influence you that wrote before circa 1960?

tao:
Jean Rhys, Kobo Abe, Fernando Pessoa, Kafka, James Purdy, Schopenhauer.

me:
I?ve always thought that Today The Sky is Blue and White with Bright Blue
Spots and a Small Pale Moon and I Will Destroy Our Relationship Today was
really good. Why did it never get published in hard copy form?

tao:
I don't think it's long enough for a complete book. It was going to be a
chapbook with Future Tense Press but it got canceled. For more information
on that Google my name and Kevin Sampsell's name.

me:
Do you have a political or philosophical affiliation? Do you think that
your writing has any political or philosophical motivations?

tao:
Ideally I don't have any "affiliation" but look at specific situations to
make choices, I think. Ideally my writing is existentially minded, in that
it "knows" that to have any political or philosophical motivation one must
first "make assumptions" about the universe, due to the universe itself
being "arbitrary"

me:
Where do you see your career going after the release of your second novel
early next year?

tao:
I see myself and my girlfriend taking a helicopter to the Virgin Islands,
where we'll "embark" on a 212 world-wide cruise, followed by "chilling" for
3-8 years in a mansion in Colorado in the Summertime and in a mansion/beach
house in San Francisco in the Wintertime, concluding with a 15-25 year
period in rural Japan gardening and drinking coconut water fresh from
coconuts from our coconut farm.

just watched hotel rwanda for the first time in years

makes me want to go join the peace corps or something

makes me feel like my life is a waste

im an asshole

i need to do something good and meaningful

this is depressing

economic recession depression

feeling depressed about how much the economy sucks

got fucked over in my job kind of this summer

cant find a job on my college campus

dont really care too much though i guess

feel intrigued about the health care debate

think the dems should just push through the public option and forget about the fillibuster

no they shouldn't do that because fillibusters are okay for when the country is gung ho

think that obama should push for a mandate that employer's provide health insurance

then a lot of people would get it

but it wouldnt be as good and competitive as the public option

maybe he should just push for more money in subsidies

i care but i dont know what i think

things ive recently discovered that i like that dont really matter

salt (when it comes from a salt shaker)

carrying around a copy of rimbaud so i look cool and because you can just leave it open and sit and eat food (i might come back to this)

ice cream (preferrably in a cone but it doesnt really matter)

horror movies

considering my diet

waiting for godot (i used to think it was sweet and then i was like no its lame and now im like no its sweet)

sweaters

"dressing up" in my "fine" clothing

bass guitar (once again, more of a rediscovery)

sweaters

pills

shampoo (though i need a special kind)

writing nonsense that no one will read

fascism (as an idea, not as something practical)

meeting new people (this one is a lie)

cigarettes that havent been crushed (i dont like cigs that have been crushed)

holding onto library books as long as i want because the library has no "power"

forgetting to post on other peoples blogs (i only do that so they will look at this)

beer in cans (unless its magic hat or corona or ginger ale)

langston hughes (hes kind of funny when you think about it)

laughing to myself when no one else is around

cupcakes (with icing)

calling people names, usually their actual names

old retro shit (because its retro)

new order (the band)

looking at my fingers and wondering how i scratched them

what is art?

been rereading what is literature? by sartre.

this time i am reading it much more closely.

the first time it was just like "booo" sartre is moving away from freedom and towards commitment

it is weird to read a book by an author i like if i dont quite agree with everything the book is saying

he basically thinks that artists, particularly writers, particularly prose writers create their works out of a sense of commitment

i haven't read the whole thing again yet so i might be misreading this to an extent

the writers of prose is the most committed because he deals with an art that can only be taken literally, and therefore what he creates must say what he wants it to say

he uses the example of richard wright, saying how wright was committed, just like all writers, due to the fact that his place in the world was unique

for wright this meant that he had to explore the racial, social, political, and cultural history that went in to his being such that he can be one with the history that is currently is force

sartre would say that writers of poetry are not as committed because they use words to create images and metaphors that can have multiple meanings (prose writers fall into this too, but it is not the immediate goal of their art)

all other art would fall under the same lack of commitment that poetry does

he might not even consider prose to be art even, though i dont have the book in front of me

but since sartre work has been done such that today any open-minded literary scholar would consider the boundaries between prose and poetry to be superfluous and also they would also say that you can be committed just through the act of writing words

i believe that this attitude can be extended to all the other arts

for when the sculptor puts his hands into the clay, or the painter puts his brush on the canvas, or the musicians strikes his first note, it is obvious that there has to be some type of choice, and that this choice is in some way committed

a word can carry multiple meanings just the same as an sculpture or canvas

duh

i would consider myself to be committed when i write or make music

not in an overtly political or ideological manner, but just through the mere fact that i come out of nothingness and am an original individual

i dont really write about my skin color or my political affiliations in a simplistic or direct way

but i do carry with myself my consciousness, the fact that there are things that i know that i also know probably haven't been written, at least not in the way that i am conscious of it

i would say i write from alienation, not political really, more social or maybe cultural

i think i also write from depression, apathy, anger, and all sorts of other shit

and because i write from such a viewpoint, i am committed

i dont really care if i am or not, i just am, but i think i am

i think im starting to lose track of where i was going, im talking to much about myself

basically

i think there can actually be commitment across all types of writing and probably also across all types of art

and thats about it