taipei. tao lin. (192)

i forgot what inspired me to pick up taipei  but i did.  i have read other works by tao lin but wouldn't call myself a fan.  as i wrote in my post for his work richard yates, i am not sure how i feel about lin.  on one hand, i am never fully engaged in his work, i read it like i read things online, half-focused, but then he is pretty spot on when it comes to the hipster culture.

taipei, is another novel that is actually an autobiography that is framed as a novel (see: shelia heti's how a person should be?) which as i said before, thanks for the honesty but i can't help but feel cheated.  i mean why not just say it's a memoir?

in any case, in taipai, i discovered that tao lin did a shitload of drugs.  i mean a shitload.  and the sad part was that he did them because he felt like he functioned better in the world with them.  to quote the ever wise cher horowitz (which i think i have quoted before for this blog) "it is one thing to light up a doobie at a party, but it's quite another to be fried all day."  doing the occasional drug is kosher in my book but i can't imagine to the point of recklessness that lin did, having memory loss and vomiting all over union square from snorting too much heroin.  though in lin's defense he wasn't too fucked up because he did keep his google document of notes and of course all the videos which helped him create this work.  i am assuming all of the videos were real, i tried to look up the mcdonalds one but saw on his website the listing of the MDMA videos under his work.  i mean in the end he was able to do all of those drugs, not die, and still created a novel. so kudos to him.

but i mean reading about someone on drugs gets old quickly which resulted in my half-focus as a i read.    because in the end, regardless of how interesting these moments were to lin and his friends, they are all "you had to be there moments" for everyone else.  i have often thought that my life could be a tv series (after seeing mtv's "my life as liz") or a novel, well maybe more a collection of short stories, but i feel like i can never recreate the magic of what happen to me because for it to truly be great, you had to be there.  i could describe it but it was only truly worthwhile in that moment.  taipei was just one big, you had to be there story.  paul and erin's filming of tawian's first mcdonalds was great but i am sure it was 100% funnier if you were on drugs and there.  the same can be said for the #xmenlivetweet, i can imagine how incredible it all was for lin but to read it secondhand it wasn't all that amazing.  and i know because i have had ridiculous drunken (not drugged) incidents like lin, but i recognize that i am the only one that truly gets their magic.  like all the times i have snuck booze into the theater, for example my friend cody and i took in a bottle of rum when we went to see "pirates of caribbean" and i turned to him and in what i thought was a whisper asked for the rum, only for him to knock over the bottle and everyone heard the clank of the rum bottle.  or the time that my friends larry, peter and i went to see "jackass" and drank too much, and i had to pee so i decided to run out during an old person skit, and i ran straight into the mens room, apologized to a man peeing and bolted out the door while the concessions stand workers just stood their and laughed at my dumbass.  hilarious but would people want to read it?  my version of taipei would be called cahuenga and would be all about the drunken fun my friends and i had on cahuenga blvd circa 2008-2010.  but i mean other than my friends, who would anyone truly appreciate it or get it?  i mean lin has his celebrity clout to keep his readers reading but i am a nobody.

oh and before i drop all the drug talk (though it is like the defining theme of the novel), i did appreciate the irony of paul's disgust with erin taking prescription drugs.  erin started taking a pill as prescribed by her doctor and paul lectured her on not needing it and her becoming dependent on it.  this fight then escalated to the point in which paul left.  it was brilliant because the druggie recognizes the harms of prescription drugs.  society condones the recreational use of drugs yet drug companies are constantly trying to fix ailments that a) either don't exist or b) manageable without drugs.  i mean the number one side effect of most prescription drugs is death.  might as well take drugs for fun then.

though i have to add lin does not believe in drug problems as seen in this excerpt:

“They began talking about a Lil Wayne documentary that focused on Lil Wayne’s “drug problem,” which Lil Wayne denied. Paul felt it was bleak and depressing that the filmmakers superimposed their views onto Lil Wayne. Calvin seemed to agree with the documentary. Paul tried, with Erin, who agreed with him, he felt, to convey (mostly by slowly saying variations of “no” and “I can’t think right now”) that there was no such thing as a “drug problem” or even “drugs” – unless anything anyone ever did or thought or felt was considered both a drug and a problem – in that each thought or feeling or object, seen or touched or absorbed or remembered, at whatever coordinate of space-time, would have a unique effect, which each ever-changing person, at each moment of their life, could view as a problem, or not, for themselves.”

this is an interesting reasoning, everythinf outside of this notion of "self" is essentially a "drug" because it has some effect on us.  so i guess drugs really aren't a problem just another stimuli of life.

aside from drugs, there is also paul's relationship with erin, his wife.  i still don't know how that marriage happen though i will say i have, at least twice, tried to get two sets of my friends to marry when we were in vegas.  sadly it didn't happen both times.

erin and paul's relationship interested me because it reminded me of my best friend and i during my cahuenga years (maybe i should write this book).  we had alot of fun together but we also had these random fights.  my friend was also passive aggressive like paul, expecting someone to read his mind when he was upset instead of communicating or saying he wasn't upset when he was.  but part of the issue for us was just like erin and paul was that most of the fights happen when we were really drunk so that caused alot more drama than was necessary.  for me, it was interesting because i didn't know how authentic paul and erin's feelings truly were, everyone likes to believe there is more honesty when one is on drugs but at the same time your mind is so fucked that it might be true but it's definitely askewed. in the end, it just demonstrated how drugs can ruin relationships in addition to people.

as i mentioned earlier, lin is spot on when it comes to hipster culture.  i will admit that i loved the random asking of "do you like rilo kiley?" (for these that are curious, i do).  i also loved that marina abramović's "the artist is present" was mentioned because i sat with her for that piece.  goodreads was also namedropped though i don't think it's hipstery, i just use it.  but i guess everything felt very relevant but then again it was just his life.

i read it, not sure i would recommend it but at least i can say i read it.  which i guess is the point of reading tao lin.

how should a person be? sheila heti. (187)

i can't recall how i came across how should a person be? by sheila heti.  i thought it was via lena dunham's instagram but when i went to look for it, i did not see it there.  however, i know that i read this because of lena just not sure where i read her endorsement.  i did google "lena dunham how should a person be?" and articles about lena and sheila being friends came up, so i didn't make up this connection. (correction made 5.7.14:  ha!  just saw that i found out about this book because it was on flavorpill's 10 books that will fill

the girls-shaped hole in your life article for season 1.  so yeah this is now i discovered this novel.)

i will admit that i was also excited because of the miranda july blurb on the front.  i had high expectations for this book, especially with its description as "a novel from life".  life is one of my favorite nouns, i'm always "sorting out life", "figuring out life", "getting life" together, so "a novel from life" had to be interesting.

and interesting it was, amazing, not so much.  i am not familiar with heti or her life, but this book read just as though it was her life.  i mean from the viewpoint of the writer, it is quite daring, to just record your life via a tape player and then let the world read about the personal lives of you and your friends. as an expression of the self, i find it quite beautiful and artistic.  however, from the viewpoint of the reader, i can't help but feel cheated.  its quite narcissistic and lazy of heti to just use your life so blatantly.  i know, i know, author's use their lives as the basis for their works, which makes sense, however, this was too direct.  i like to be able to read between the lines instead of having it all put out in the open like this.  but again i have to say kudos to heti for her honesty.

the novel as the title suggest is about how should a person be? though specifically it's about how heti should be.  its hard to apply this work to yourself, unless you are a) a writer or another form of artist or b) hang out with a bunch of artists.  this is why miranda july's blurb is true for her, but random person on goodreads who bitched about july's blurb couldn't relate.  i am neither though i do appreciate art and go to museums and galleries, i never have to question who am i and what am i trying to project into the world via my art.  i mean as general question of life, yes i do ask myself (minus via my art), but in the specific way that heti was addressing these questions in her book, i became bored.  i am sure that i could have taken the discussion between margaux and heti about their expressions of their selves in their art and applied it to my life but that required too much thinking.  i mean i am sure the struggle is real for artist, but i felt like just create your art and who gives a damn about how it is perceived.  i am not an artist so this might just sound mean but i was tired of the bitching especially when heti did all she could to avoid writing her play.  then she created this novel based on margaux's encouragement and allowance to use her words in a work, which kind of felt like a cop-out.  really heti couldn't put a play together?

heti is a great writer, i just wasn't interested in her life so directly.  i mean there were some hilarious parts.  for example, "we live in an age of some really great blow-job artists.  every era has its arts form." i also enjoyed the eavesdropping of the girls as at the deli, "what is american cheese anyway? i heard of them say.  her friend replied, 'i think it means there is a chemical in it." and "he was in the tech industry, and she once told me that the had asperger's syndrome.  then she reassured me that silicon valley boys aren't so bad to sleep with because they've read all the manuals." i am now tempted to sleep with some silicon valley boys. and "we tried not to smile, for smiling only encourages men to bore you and waste your time." we have all been there when at bars.

and i must admit there was some beauty:

in their quest for a life without failure, suffering, or doubt, that is what they achieve:  a life empty of all those things that make a human life meaningful.

but for the most part, it was just about heti's insecurities.  to a certain extend it was just girls season 3.  heti and hannah are pretty much on in the same.  in girls, adam plays the part of margaux.  they are both writers struggling with their art from while in a relationship with an successful artist which results in issues in their relationship.  but whereas i could enjoyed this season of girls because there were other characters distract me from hannah's narcissism, there wasn't anyone interesting in heti's novel.  the friend suffering from depression after the ugly painting contest (really?), the hair salon (seriously she felt that deep of a calling there?!?!),  and the asshole she hooked up with (i know sex can be amazing but was his really worth the verbal abuse?!?!?!).  okay i can admit i was a bit intrigued by the asshole, not because of the sex, but because i was in disbelief of the way he talked to her.  i will also add the dinner party discussion about the men going to africa was great.  that is how i feel about bono being in africa and all of his projects.  it's like really bono you have millions and millions of dollars and you are asking me to donate money for a cause so you can feel better about yourself?

maybe i just wasn't in the right head space for this, though i am just as lost as heti is about how a person should be.  in the end though i feel like the she did watching the handball match.  here i though this novel was going to stand for something like the match, but in the end, just like they didn't know what they were playing, heti didn't really know what she was writing.   (that sounds so harsh but really, this book should have just been a blog, one more time, the honesty of it was beautiful, but in the end, i really wasn't that interested in her life.)