Tao Lin

Tao Lin has inserted himself into public consciousness with a series of all-publicity-is-good-publicity antics, such as selling six shares of his upcoming novel and repeating the line "The next night we ate whale" for seven minutes straight at a poetry reading. Even his titles like Eeeee Eee Eeee and you are a little bit happier than i am flirt with kitsch. Yet while his stunts threaten to position him as the Paris Hilton of literature, his writing still demands serious consideration. Sure, he has included shamelessly mundane online chats in a novella, but perhaps this is less for shock value than for his dedication to realism in an age when America has turned on, tuned in, and wired up. We are in the heyday of blogging, instant messages, and tweets, and Tao Lin isn't afraid to acknowledge this. In fact, Lin's first publication was what might be called a collection of "poetr-e", that is, an e-book entitled this emotion was a little e-book. This modern-day savvy is also in evidence in his coy telling of how he shoplifted from corporate stores to eat organic vegan food in Shoplifting from American Apparel. With two poetry collections, a novel, a short story collection, and a novella under his belt since 2006, Tao Lin continues to dissect and exploit the 21st century in all of its ephemeral, tweeting glory--if only out of courtesy for his novel shareholders.