Tao Lin

Tao Lin’s new book of poetry is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy from Melville House Publishing. My review of the book is here. I asked Tao a few questions via email about the composition of the book and other methods. You can now buy shares in new Tao’s next forthcoming novel via his website at http://reader-of-depressing-books.blogspot.com
- Blake Butler

BLAKE BUTLER
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy as a whole has this strange mix of off the cuff or sporadic and then very refined and specific in its mind. In fact I think one of the most interesting things about this book, and in comparison to your first poetry book you are a little bit happier than i am, how it seems much more orchestrated in a way, but it still has the impromptu energy that your work has. What percentage or how much of the lines came out of you very quickly or in a rush or stream and how much of it was poured over or erased and reworded etc? I am aiming, I think, at the creation process and how it synthesizes to form these big strange blocks of text. I said 'impromptu.'

TAO LIN
I think almost all the lines I thought of pretty quickly and in an intuitive way, like I didn't have to think about what consciousness means in terms of reality or something, in terms of some kind of theory of the universe, while remaining within the confines of pre-algebra, I just did it intuitively. Lines like... I don't remember, something about an "expansive shithead," lines like that are almost always in my head, lines like "kombucha bitches unite" or "demonstrations like these are what hold us back" or "fuck america so much" or "sales aren't rising" or "my target demographic is hipsters" or "the future is uncertain." Those lines are always in my head and I like it, I like them being in my head, it feels really funny sometimes and sometimes just a little funny. Those are the kinds of lines mostly I put in the poetry book, I think, I might be wrong, it's just how I feel right now.

Most of the lines remained like they were when I typed them. I probably spent 2 hours on certain lines to delete one word or something. I spent a lot of time making it so "one line to the next" would have "just the right amount" of "non-sequitur action" and "rhythm and flow" while also retaining "a sense of being from a human in order to convey some kind of emotion." Most of my time was spent reading my own lines and deleting like one word or one line. I probably spent 9 hours on one page and "in the end" changed one line or something (due to changing things and changing it back repeatedly), 9 hours is a "wild estimate."

I have thought things before like, "At this point in my life if I just write something without thinking, and I 'do a good job,' and don't edit, it will be 80% good, if I then edit it for a while it will go down in goodness to 65% good, if i edit it some more it will eventually be 75% good, if I edit it for a longer amount of time it can eventually exceed 80% good; after it becomes 90% good it will take a lot of time to make it better, the 'returns' on 'time spent' decrease as it gets closer to 100%."

For example if I just write a poem really quickly I'm sure I could write something funny and readable and consistent in terms of the amount of "non-sequitur" from "thought to thought" and in terms of "tone," but if I then edit it, now using "self-aware" "logic" instead of "intuition," it will no longer be consistent in terms of "non-sequitur" and "tone," and I will then need to edit it a lot just to get it back to "the level of the first draft," after which each edit will only "improve it" a little.

Concrete examples of this are Kurt Vonnegut and like Charles Bukowski and like Lorrie Moore. Kurt Vonnegut said he just wrote a book line by line. Charles Bukowski seemed like that also. But Lorrie Moore works on things a lot. I feel like I "chose" to be more like Lorrie Moore, and work hard on things, but I seem to have published a lot of things already; if I looked at my bibliography I would think I wasn't working that hard on books but I feel like I am. A lot of the time when I read something (whether it's in a tone or style that I like or in some other tone or style) I feel like they have written a first draft and then edited it some so that it is now "below" the level of the first draft, and they did not work on it long enough to make it be back at the level of the first draft, and they did not work "nearly long enough" for it to exceed the first draft. I'm trying to say I like to read things that have been worked on for a very long time (like Lorrie Moore), or things that have not been worked on at all (or only a little bit, maybe just one edit, like Kurt Vonnegut or someone; like The Quick and The Dead by Joy Williams or Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie), but not as much things "in between," which I think is most things.

BB
I want to ask you about abstractions in writing, particularly in your writing, particularly in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. You have said you don't like abstractions in writing, or that you try to minimize them. I think, though, at the same time, that there are a lot of abstractions in your books, though they tend to involve concrete ideas or images used in surreal methods, such as the line 'the house and the street made mysterious binary noises / that negatively affected the tree's immense happiness / i observed this neutrally, without falling out of my chair'. I love this image and love the feeling it causes in my brain, though I wonder about your relationship with these sorts of tonal or emotional abstractions vs. the kind of abstractions you mainly talk against, which I think would be saying 'There lugubrious trailer park burned through my susurrating nodules.'

TL
I'm not sure about this anymore. "I just don't want to think about it anymore." There are certain examples that something something something, I don't know. If someone says the sentence "amorous teal insensitive laurels of my mouth insentiate the diabiographic tambourine basketball" is really amazing and is their favorite line in contemporary literature, and is really political, then I believe that that is true to that person. That person really feels that, I honestly believe that that person thinks those things and that it is not any more 'valid' than what I think of that line. My view on art and writing makes me want to kill myself or something if I think about it too long. I think my main view on art, and life, maybe, is "what difference does it make" but not literally, more like a feeling.

BB
What did you read while you were writing these poems and/or editing them? How much does what you are currently reading while you are writing affect what ends up coming out? I have found the more I pay attention to what I am taking in, it seems, at least in my mind, I am able to influence the 'feel' of what I'm doing. Maybe that's just mental, for me.

TL
I was reading Ben Lerner a lot I think and Richard Yates. And I'm almost always reading Joy Williams and Lorrie Moore. I don't remember what I was reading. I just saw myself reading Work by Stephen Dixon, so I guess I was reading that also at some point. I just saw an F. Scott Fitzgerald book but on a bookshelf, so I was not reading that. I wrote the poems over a long period of time so I don't know. At this point in my life I have been reading the same writers repeatedly for 4-5 years, without finding anything "new" really in terms of tone and, like, sense of humor, that I like, that has affected me to the same degree as the same writers I keep rereading, so I am no longer really influenced by what I am currently reading while writing. I don't remember when I first read Ben Lerner. The main people maybe who have influenced my writing are Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, Ben Lerner, and Matthew Rohrer. When I read Ben Lerner I thought he must have read Matthew Rohrer and been influenced by him, so maybe that combined is one influence to me. I am leaving out some names. The name "Jean Rhys" and some other names should also be in this paragraph. I have read and tried to copy "effects" created by people I link to on my blog. They have influenced me. I used to "strive" only to write like Lorrie Moore, I'm not sure what happened to me to make me write like how I did in you are a little bit happier than i am, which is really detached and concrete or something.

BB
You said that while you were editing the book you laid out all the pages on the floor of your room in Florida and moved them around and wrote on them to get them the way you wanted. This sounds comforting. How long did it take you to get the order perfect? Do you feel even now like it is exactly as it should be?

TL
I don't remember how long it took. I started looking at it in terms of a book probably 6-8 months before doing that thing in Florida maybe. I think the first 20-30 pages are okay, after that "it is really messed up a little" sort of "who knows." If my book's creation was explained as a theme park's creation I would be building it and then I would build it wrong but the roller coaster materials would already be ordered and then it would have to be built or delayed 3-5 years and I would feel a lot of despair most of the time. When it was finished I would just want to sell the theme park to someone else, but I would think about one part of the theme park a lot, like the fish pond, and feel okay. It was really "a terrible process of despair" or something not unlike being in a relationship and like fighting a lot at night and "needing resolution" before going to sleep. I'm not really sure if this is all true, I think I remember one time reading the book and feeling like it was really good. Yeah, I remember like eight weeks ago I read the book again "in one sitting at like 4 a.m. in bed" and then did something like emailed myself something to indicate I should look up poetry prizes to tell Melville House to enter my book in, feeling strongly that I could win the Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award or something. I thought about Mary Ruefle or Charles Simic or something reading my book and feeling it should deserve a prize. I thought things like, "My book talks about 'the human condition' and also includes politics and it doesn't block out death and it is all in a setting of a romantic relationship, 'it has everything needed by serious literature people.'"

BB
The line 'and i made you a meat helmet out of computer paper' made me really laugh when I read it, and the second time, a real laugh. Do you think people who date you feel confused?

TL
People who "date" me? I feel confused. When? The book just came out, how many people have "dated" me? I guess that question, that I just typed for you, will never be answered. This is the end of my answer.

[BB NOTE: I think I was trying to ask if in past relationships Tao had confused the person he was in relationships with gestures such as a making a meat helmet out of computer paper, or that sort of gesture, which I find comforting in a nice way, but that others might not, or something. I realize the question was mostly dumb and poorly worded and I would have deleted it if I didn’t like Tao’s answer probably more than the answer I would have gotten had the question been right.]

BB
Who plays Tao Lin in the movie of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy? Who plays the hamster? Who plays Bruce Lee? Who plays the ugly fish?

TL
All the animals should be played by Elijah Wood. Bruce Lee should be played by the person who played the Japanese person in the Tom Cruise movie, I think more than one Tom Cruise movie. I want Christian Bale to play me.

BB
You have said this book is written for 'hipsters.' Once the hipster purchases your book, where is the best place for a hipster to go with your book in NYC and how would you recommend they use the book to increase their social value and/or image?

TL
Attractive hipsters should read my book on the internet, on Youtube or something, and blog about me and my books. I think I feel really capable of targeting hipsters. I think there is a kind of person that I like, I don't know. I think there used to be something called "quirky" or something but now there seems to be something else or something. I don't know what to type. I just held my head in "despair" sort of. I held two parts of my hair with both hands but I felt okay.