Tao Lin

'Something that stutters sincerely'

Contemporary poetry and the aesthetics of failure

[T]o be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail … all that is required now … is to make of this submission, this admission, this fidelity to failure, a new occasion, a new term of relation, and of the act which, unable to act, obliged to act, he makes, an expressive act, even if only of itself, of its impossibility, of its obligation. — Samuel Beckett, Three Dialogues[1]

Into the Field: Tao Lin

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Tao Lin is a novelist, poet, and provocateur currently living in Brooklyn. He has written six books of fiction and poetry, including Richard Yates (2010), Shoplifting from American Apparel (2009), and cognitive behavioral therapy (2008). Lin runs the publishing imprint Muumuu House, and you can find his website here. He also occasionally contributes to the blog Thought Catalog. I spoke with Lin in his bedroom in June of 2010.

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