A note in case anyone ever actually comes across this post again: I later learned about Tao Lin’s acknowledged, arguably abusive relationship with a much younger person. I've left up posts about him on this blog because I don't want to erase my support of him in the past, but I've removed links to his work so as not to provide continued support now.
Today’s Reading: Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee, pp. 85-211
Dear Dennis and Tao:
Near the end of Eeeee Eee Eeee you had the President say: “Actually there is a oneness in the world because of consciousness and this oneness—what does it want, mostly. To avoid pain and suffering, seek pleasure and happiness. Patriotism and everything else like language denies the oneness; makes a twoness, threeness, so on.... You live a horribly distorted life.... Any unsarcastic thought or action is a horrible distortion. Anything is a horrible distortion.” I don’t know if that’s what Tao actually thinks, but the President really goofed!
In order to be a distortion of the oneness, language and everything like it would have to be added onto that oneness from outside! There would have to be something like a separate person that was not part of the oneness but was trying to see the oneness through a medium like language, which would also have to be separate from both the oneness and the person. There would also have to be a way that the oneness “really” looked, if you could somehow see it without any distorting medium.
But really, since the self and language and everything else are all part of the same oneness, the way that language makes everything look separate isn’t a distortion, it’s just a point of view. It’s like the way that a thing might look blue under one light and purple under another and be totally invisible under no light at all. The thing isn’t really blue or purple or totally invisible, it’s all of those, depending on the light and your eyes seeing it. None of those ways of looking are distortions or things added to the thing from outside it; they’re all versions of the thing in relationship with different other things (light, eyes). All the thing is is relationships with other things, so none of those relationships is any more “true” or “distorted” than another.
That one goof aside, Eeeee Eee Eeee was a great novel! I loved how seamlessly Tao managed the asequential narrative and how loaded with indeterminate meanings all the talking animals seem to be. And Ellen was a really likable character—I don’t understand why she doesn’t have any friends! I think in your next book, you should have her meet someone like Sam from Shoplifting from American Apparel and get married. Also, that story Tao just published on Storychord is maybe his best yet! Until Zachary German starts using compound sentences, make mine Melville!
Morgan Myers
The Internet
The proximate future
Okay smart guy, now answer this one: if everything is part of the same oneness, how do you get any relations in the first place, huh?
