Some days prior while I was scrolling through my Google News Feed I came across an article, which had been written some days prior to my rThe Reviewer
Some days prior while I was scrolling through my Google News Feed I came across an article, which had been written some days prior to my reading it, by Kate Knibbs titled "Finally, a Novel That Gets the Internet Right". That seemed interesting so I read it and by the end I decided I'd try reading it at some point, despite the obvious red flags, or perhaps because of the red flags in this particular case.
Then came the end of the month, which was the halfway point of the year and my Goodreads Reading Challenge stood at ninety-nine of a hundred books read. More accurately it was sixty-eight novels, sixteen anthologies, seven collections, five short fictions, and three novellas. I thought back to this novel, which at around forty-thousand words, could've been classified as a novella with a few deletions. After considering both its length and content, I decided it would be an entirely appropriate accompaniment to the arbitrary accomplishment of completing the self-set vanity challenge.
How much I would enjoy reading it had already been decided by my prejudice against alt-lit and my unreasonable dislike of Tao Lin, for both his style and his pervasiveness a decade ago in a certain corner of the Internet I frequented. So, while it wouldn't quite be a hateread, it would be a relative thereof. I confess that the main reason I read this was to write about it afterwards.
Almost right away the narratives goes towards the scatological, the importance of which over the course of narrative becomes almost eschatological. The various absurdities of the book overshadowed the mundanities. I don't regret reading this, but I was disappointed by it, even with my low expectations. Though, I'm also not the target demographic, for the most part anyway.
Now it's the day after I read the novel. I had slept on it and thought it over more, which didn't give me any further appreciation of the novel itself, but I did find the context of the author more interesting, if not the author himself. The conversation between Castro and Lin in the The Paris Review was rather informative, if only because I wasn't that aware of the background details. There's so much more that I could write about this, but the time and place where I would doesn't exist in this timeline.
TL;DR: This is a novel-length shitpost. What you think of that will probably determine what you think of this more than anything else.
Li and I had probably been pooping at the same time. I was delighted. Li is Tao Lin's stand-in for himself. There seems to be a considerable amount of intertextuality with his works.
The physical makeup of the mug was exquisite. Which is described quite in detail and is one of several times where a spotlight is thrown on some arbitrary subject and explained in elaborate detail but doesn't really say anything. It isn't so much filler as it is an ambient experience.
I hadn’t understood her pride in having sucked a bigger penis than her friend, and it affected me. I understood now why one might feel proud of sucking a large penis This is excerpt bait. If it were an article it would be clickbait.
“really taste the difference between organic and inorganic bananas.” This was the exemplar of sincerity in the face of absurdity that reminded me of why I disliked this style.
Jordan Castro fans seemed troubled. I won't disagree with that. Jordan Castro is mentioned forty-six times. It's narcissistic to say the least to have your narrator be obsessed with you and all but worship you. The Jordan Castro in the story isn't the author, but I only see that as a dodge.
“People don’t know the difference between the opinions others want them to have and the opinions that they actually have; people mistake how they think they should think for how they actually think, and how they want to seem for how they are." One of the few parts that I liked and that was only because I agreed with it. Which naturally means it's repeated over and over again, consecutively.
I often wondered if my entire worldview when I was young had been based on aesthetics rather than the kinds of ideological convictions I’d imagined myself having. As far as I can tell this is unfortunately common in online spaces, regardless of it may be about. Sometimes it happens outside of that as well, but that usually seems to be from the same people who are unable to distinguish any difference between the two any longer.
Jordan Castro’s first novel, which critics had said contained only one flat female character—the narrator’s girlfriend This is his first novel and that's exactly what it contains. I don't know what preempting potential criticisms of your novel in the text itself is called, but it ought to be a word.
Eric This was the low point for me. I don't know whether Eric represents his disillusionment, but it really goes on at length about how they were best friends but now he utterly loathes him in every way. The other low point was the self-pity and sense of persecution.
many such cases Oberlin graduate There were a lot of signifiers scattered throughout the text like this, many of which were ambiguous as to whether they meant what I thought they meant. But why obliquely reference various memes that may not be relevant to your audience, or at least I wouldn't think I would be, but maybe I'm wrong.
I didn't believe what I was typing I can believe that, which goes back to the phrase he repeated over and over again. There are a quite few times where the narrator's actions line up with he professes to loathe, which is also what he says truly matters.
My choices, over years, had stacked up on top of each other until they felt like external forces, walls that obstructed my view and confined me; even this morning, I considered, I’d made terrible choices unceasingly Reminds me of Kafka's A Little Fable.
The coffee dripping sounded exactly like Violet peeing I remembered, or imagined remembering, listening to my first girlfriend pee I imagined hearing my most recent ex-girlfriend pee I had never been in the same room with Violet while she peed There's also a lot about his own as well.
into the hallway and projectile shits onto the walls. He falls down the stairs while shitting—“speckles the banister,” as it’s rendered in the novel—and continues before sitting down on the toilet, spraying the seat with shit and then squishing down into it
Calvin showers after projectile shitting, then continues shitting in the shower
Calvin walks past his girlfriend the next morning, while she is crying and cleaning the bathroom, before going back to bed and passing out.
As a note, Calvin is Tao Lin's stand-in for Jordan Castro.
I did not want my first novel to be so vulgar as to not get taken seriously—I was a serious person, who deserved to be taken seriously, and I wanted to have a career. eyeroll
Writing about myself in third person allowed me to take a third-personal view of myself; a view which eliminated the possibility of choice. Without choice how I could possibly be personally responsible for anything that I do?
girl who was reading Lolita, who I had sex with for months afterward, who had the word “Cocaine” tattooed in cursive on her back. facepalm
It was all, in large part, half-formed sentiment and navel-gazing drivel, seeming more to have dribbled out of the author’s mouth than been penned with any intent. Yes, yes, it was.
I was not smart enough to write the kinds of books I wanted to write; it was entirely possible that no matter which novel I worked on it would never come out anyway. Then again, I felt confident that some independent press would put it out; independent presses put out anything now; there were a million of them and they all, more or less, put out anything. I nobly resolved to be fine with this. Being traditionally published still retains that authoritative sheen as compared to self-publishing....more
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