“Richard Yates” – Tao Lin

“Richard Yates” by Tao Lin sucks. This book is crap, crippity crap crap crap. Maybe I’m biased– because I’ve had the unfortunate luck of having read Lin’s work before, lots of his work, and knew in advance, in my guts, that this book would suck just like all of his work that I’d read before– or maybe this is honestly awful literature.

There’s a giant part of me that thinks Lin secretly plays a joke on the entire publishing world– tricking millionaires into buying shares for this book while it was still a whimpy rough draft? Having published numerous books and poetry while under the age of thirty even though every word is mediocre and the one main idea is repeated verbatim on every other page? Ha ha, is this funny? Who is laughing? There’s a tiny part of me that thinks Lin is a genius (getting away with a joke like that– genius). Maybe he’s onto something smart. Maybe this is post-post-modernism. (Come to think of it, this is definitely, without a doubt, post-post-modernism.) Maybe he really understands the modern reader on a more intimate and personal level than any other writer does. But, on the other hand, maybe not. Maybe his writing and this book are just crap.

It’s  simple sentence after simple sentence sentence. Passive verbs flatten themselves onto the page in a suicide attempt and beg your eyes, “Run over me! I don’t matter!” Your eyes oblige.

And where the hell is the plot, Lin? Hypothetical characters Haley Joel Osment, a pathetic 25 year old New Yorker writer shmuck, falls into something like love with Dakota Fanning, a pathetic 16 year old shmuck, and together they steal stuff from American Apparel and Whole Foods and talk about hamsters– just like Lin’s characters have done in previous books. Nothing about this is interesting, entertaining, humorous, or even particularly depressing.

It’s written for the modern kids who are adapted to social networking, iPhones, and chat rooms. Well, that’s the selling strategy. That’s supposed to explain the simple sentences and the godawful monotonous voice. However, as a modern kid who is pretty well adapted to social networking et cetera et cetera, this is not what my mundane life is like. Maybe what my life was like when I was 12. And I’d argue that most people online or on Twitter are more linguistically complex than this crap that Lin suggests is reality.

Clancy Martin suggests Lin is “a Kafka for the iPhone generation.” (Say what?) Brian Morton called Lin strange, but I think he meant that as a compliment. Chicago’s Time Out called his voice absurd. Quite a few other critiques called Lin’s voice “ironic” and his style “deadpan.” Miranda July applauds Lin’s radicalness for writing from a lazy, vacant, and bored place. (Of course she does.) But if you ask me, I can’t believe I wasted three hours of my life trying to read the book.

In Lin’s defense, this is somewhat of an autobiography with plenty of generalizations and fictions thrown into the  batter. Who am I to judge the level of boring of his life? And in his defense, according to an interview he did with The Rumpus, he wrote the book for himself– meaning, he doesn’t care if I or you like the book because he simply wrote something that he would like to read. It’s okay to him that it sucks, because he would read it. That’s not a logical fallacy; it’s the truth.

Oh man, and can someone please explain the book’s design to me? A hipster male with a conch shell resembling a vagina in front of his face? “I’m a pussy, buy my book”– is that what this is all about? I think this resembles Vampire Weekend’s “Contra” album cover. Was that accidental? (Do not get me started on Vampire Weekend. It’s worse than what I think about Lin, I’ll tell ya that.)

You want my advice? Save your money and your time.
Your life is better than this. Promise.