Tao Lin Interview

• April 17, 2010
• by TD

Photo: Noah Kalina

Tao Lin is a mystically fascinating writer of books of poetry, stories, a novella, a novel and blog projects worth scrutinizing for their humor and perceptive acuity. Here we talk to him about his upcoming novel, Richard Yates, the stress of writing, the possibilities of translation and more!

Hi Tao. So, your upcoming second novel is called Richard Yates. Can you tell us a little about it?

Richard Yates is ~56,000 words focused linearly on one “plot-line” about a romantic relationship between Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning. It is being marketed as an “illicit sex” novel. It contains scenes in a three-person apartment on Wall Street, a book festival in Florida, and Dakota Fanning’s mother’s house in rural New Jersey—ending in the gravel parking lot of an isolated, two-story, “upscale” restaurant owned by a long-term AIDS survivor and activist. I honestly feel that it’s a “page-turner” (with elements, and the tone, also, of the “plotless” novel, though, I honestly feel).

Is writing stressful?

Maybe not, I think, because to me it is similar to “thinking,” to some degree, which itself does not seem stressful. Thinking about certain things, combined with having some kind of “deadline,” can be stressful, to me, but I haven’t had “deadlines” for my published books and usually those certain stressful things, like “what am I going to do about [a certain 'troubling' thing in the future]” or “I don’t want to do what [a person I feel obligation toward] wants me to do” are things I more think about than write about.

In other news, your book Eeeee Eee Eeee has been optioned for film and will soon be translated into Serbian. Are you elated?

Maybe more surprised/amused or “delighted, to some degree” than elated. I don’t remember having felt specifically “elated” yet in my life. Hoping for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, and Ellen Page (with a supporting cast of Werner Herzog, Christian Bale, and maybe Chloe Sevigny).

What other languages would you like your books to be translated into, ideally?

Japanese. Eeeee Eee Eeee has been translated to Japanese but I would like if they translated my other books also. I just thought “Antarctica” then “the moon.” I would like if an extraterrestrial race of a population of [a number beyond human comprehension] translated my oeuvre secretly, without contacting my publisher, as a box-set for the [a number beyond human comprehension] planets they occupy.

You keep a reading diary here. Are you a speedy reader? In what locations and positions do you enjoy reading most?

I’m not sure if I’m a speedy reader. Sometimes it feels like I’m reading “really fast,” and it seems weird, like I’m “flying” sort of, or watching a movie, having somehow “bypassed” the awareness of “processing the words,” therefore only experiencing a continuous reality of images and emotions as I stare at the page. Might be what people call “speed reading.” That happens rarely. I like to read lying on my stomach on my bed, “leveraging” my upper body and head with my elbows and maybe forearms. I like to read sitting in sunlight in warm weather.

You have published novels, books of poetry, stories, and a novella. What genres would you like to expand into in the future?

Biography maybe. A biography of “a normal person” in the tone/style of a conventional biography about a famous person. Also I would like to begin publishing a series of books entitled The Collected Gmail Correspondences of [a person] and [a person] from [a date] to [a date] at some point, maybe ~2015, via Muumuu House. Currently I’m working on an iPhone app entitled North American Hamsters with intent to publish it as a book at some point.

Thanks, Tao!