Tao Lin Matures, Sort Of

Taipei by Tao Lin
256 pages
Vintage Books
June 2013

Tao Lin’s major press debut, Taipei, is his most complete work to date. Set to be published in June by Vintage Books, Lin seems to have gone back to the drawing board in terms of execution, if not subject matter. It’s still laced with the notable Lin issues of drug use, alienation, anxiety, and twenty something life but Lin gives these topics a more thorough examination than he’s done previously. Reading all of his works to date, I’m left wondering if his previous novels Richard Yates and Eeee Eee Eeee were merely warming up acts, a writer finding himself, honing his voice. If it was the publication of the novella Shoplifting From American Apparel that gained him notoriety in the burgeoning alt lit scene than Taipei is what should cement his stature in that community as well as mark his emergence on the bigger landscape as a young writer to watch.

My favorite book of his was the story collection Bed but Taipei has made me reconsider. In all honesty I feel as though his social media antics are now justified with his latest release. I’m a fan, not a follower. I haven’t, and probably will never, get into a bidding war for any of his random personal things on eBay. His output, to date, has been rather impressive but it seems as though he’s stepped up his game with Taipei. Maybe we’re seeing a more mature Lin? I can’t ever envision him writing a family saga or a historical novel but with Taipei Lin has turned a corner, if only slightly.

The recollections of the narrator’s childhood, his memories of moving around and of school are what gives this story an emotional anchor. Surrounded by adult drug use, wandering the globe, searching for a connection to other people in any conceivable way, it’s the childhood moments that really shine through. The moments overseas, when going to visit his parents are touching as well as Lin has managed to keep his character’s both very American (the scene of the narrator walking through the downtown shopping district, laptop in hand, recording everything reminded me just how connected we are) as well as part of a larger global family (his mother’s email correspondence about his drug use is hilarious and poignant, serving as a reminder that this book isn’t just about our little percentage of twenty somethings.)

Lin’s willingness to bare all w/r/t to his narrator and his emotional vulnerability provides the engine to keep Taipei moving along at a brisk pace. I found this protagonist, Paul, to be his most fully formed yet as the scenes of him interacting with himself, trapped in his own head, while at a house party or literary reading, provides another layer of emotional authenticity that elevates him beyond his daily drug use.

Some of the secondary characters, namely the females, could’ve used a bit more description. I felt they were, in a way, caricatured and pigeonholed to be nothing more than drug taking partners. The rotating cast of people, even some of the males that come in and out of Paul’s life, suffer from a lack of description that renders the majority of them faceless, making them hard to differentiate.

Taipei isn’t a perfect novel but it’s Lin’s best effort to date. He’s managed to delve into his areas of alienation and drug use and anxiety while also breaking new ground by giving this book a global touch and examining the divide between not only different cultures but also different generations. This book is a good place to start for someone new to his work. It’s good enough that it almost quiets out all the noise brought on by his social media persona, and that’s saying a lot.

jmww now open for submissions!

We are reading submissions of fiction, flash, and poetry for the summer issue of jmww! Our guidelines and submission manager can be accessed here. Good luck!

April Literary Events and Workshops in Baltimore

FICTION READING/FUNDRAISER

Alice McDermott

Wednesday, April 10, 2013, 7pm, Notre Dame of Maryland University, 701 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21210

$35 

Join the Continuing Education Chapter of Notre Dame of Maryland’s Alumnae and Alumni Association for a delightful evening with renowned writer Alice McDermott. The author of Charming Billy, Child of My Heart and At Weddings and Wakes, Ms. McDermott has won a National Book Award and is a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.  On April 10, please gatheral at Doyle Formal for a wine reception at 5:30pm and dinner at 6pm, at a cost of $35 per person ($20 for SSNDs). If you would like to attend the lecture only, there is no fee to attend, but registration is required. The lecture, discussion and book signing will begin at 7pm.

 

Please register at rsvpbook.com/mcdermott.

 

PUBLIC PROGRAM

CityLit Festival

Saturday, April 13, 2013, 10-5pm, Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Free

The very first CityLit Project event took place in April 2004 at Pratt Library. Called CityLit Festival, it featured an array of concurrent programming from diverse writers representing a variety of genres, numerous panels, the first incarnation of the Literary Marketplace, and Pulitzer Prize winner author Edward P. Jones. Since then, every April, CityLit Project and Pratt Library have presented world famous writers, critically acclaimed poets, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners, the region’s very best literary artists, and hundreds of journals, organizations, and self-published authors in the Literary Marketplace.

Our 10th annual edition of CityLit Festival promises to be the best version yet, with special guest GEORGE SAUNDERS.

Schedule here

 

POETRY PARTY

Smartish Pace Reading and Party

Saturday, April 13, 2013, 7-11pm at CopyCat Building, 1501 Guilford Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21202

 $10

 

Issue 19 Reading & Party featuring poets Aaron Belz, Joseph Capista, Michael Collier, Patricia Davis, Deborah Doolittle, Hayden Saunier, and Amy Woolard followed by the super hot The Great American Canyon Band! $10 gets you a copy of Issue 19, free beer/wine & a mindblowingly good time. All profit goes to Smartish Pace–a nonprofit organization–and helps fund the printing of our next issue.  More information here.

 

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CLASS

Self-Publishing Your Book

Saturday, April 20, 2013, 9:30-12pm, Anne Arundel Community College, 101 College Parkway, Arnold, MD 21012

$44 (AACC registration)

Led by Gregg Wilhelm, publisher and literary arts center director.  Examine self-publishing options and assess the potential advantages and disadvantages. Explore e-publishing and on-demand publishing. Outline steps and financial commitments for self-publishing. Assess popular self-publishing companies and identify methods of promoting publications. $44.  Register here.

 

CITYLIT WRITESHOP (CRAFT)

Revise Your Poems

Saturday, April 20, 2013, 2-4 pm at Union Mill, 1500 Union Avenue, Baltimore MD, 21211

$60

What if Robert Frost had ended “Stopping by Woods on Snowy Evening” with the line, “And ten miles to go before I sleep”? This workshop will focus on the most crucial stage of writing a poem, when you get rid of everything that is weighing the poem down and let it get up and walk in whatever direction it needs to go.  We will look at some well-known poems and examine what went on “behind the scenes” as they were being written, and we’ll share some of the strategies other poets have used to get “unstuck.”  As you get older, the poet Geoffrey Hill once said, the inspiration comes at the end, not at the beginning.  So join us as we free our poems and see where they take us.

Your instructor, Sue Ellen Thompson, is the author of four books of poetry and winner of the 2010 Maryland Author Award. Since moving to the Eastern Shore in 2006, she has taught at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda and Annapolis, the University of Delaware, and the Bay-to-Ocean Writers’ Conference. You may have heard Garrison Keillor read her poems on “The Writer’s Almanac” or Tom Hall’s interview with her for WYPR’s “Maryland Morning.”

TO REGISTER:

Send a check ($60) by April 18 made out to CITYLIT PROJECT to:

CityLit Project

120 S. Curley Street

Baltimore MD 21224

Or pay by credit card at the link below. Click on DONATE. Simply insert this message in the message box:

“Registration for April 20 2013 poetry workshop”

http://citylitproject.org/index.cfm?page=donate

Review of Robert Vaughn’s Microtones

jmww flash editor Robert Vaughn’s debut collection, Microtones, received it’s first review at Fictionaut, and it’s a good one:

Reading Microtones as one story in which the characters, while inhabiting different worlds, represent archetypal opposites of Mother/Father, Lover/Abuser, but also Consciousness and all forms of Death (disappearance, absence, escape, separation, etc.) is like listening to a ballad with a rich harmonic structure—of course all of this in miniature.

You can order your own copy of Microtones from Červená Barva Press

Congrats, Robert!

Win a copy of Jen Michalski’s COULD YOU BE WITH HER NOW

You want to win a copy of jmww editor Jen Michalski‘s collection of novellas from Dzanc Books (COULD YOU BE WITH HER NOW), THE UNCHANGEABLE SPOTS OF LEOPARDS, 4 other great titles, and a $100 Threadless gift certificate from Largehearted Boy: A Music and Literature Blog? Well, here’s how you do it:

Go here:

http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2013/03/contest_win_the_12.html

And follow the instructions. Good luck!

Writing the Pitch: A Workshop for Aspiring Authors

jmww‘s MFA My Way columnist Christine Stewart is teaching “Writing the Pitch: A Workshop for Aspiring Authors” throught Johns Hopkins’ Odyssey program here in Baltimore. This class fills up fast, so if you’re in the greater Baltimore area, consider signing up!

Have a book of fiction completed or almost there? Ready to look for an agent? This is a workshop for writers with a completed work of fiction (or nonfiction) who are ready to find an agent. Participants will learn the five parts to a pitch, read and discuss examples from contemporary books, then begin writing their own, to be edited and refined over the course of our three sessions. Participants will have the opportunity to read drafts of their pitch as practice, receiving presentation tips from the instructor. We’ll discuss and analyze the elements of a writer’s “platform” (or bio), along with workshop presentations on how to structure your query letter, and about which conferences to attend to make your pitch to agents and editors and to receive valuable professional feedback.

919.297.01 Homewood
$69.00 (3 Sessions)
Tuesdays, Apr. 2-16, 2013, 7-8:30 p.m.
Limit: 22 students

Christine Stewart, M.A. and M.F.A. in creative writing and poetry, and recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, is founding director of the Write Here, Write Now workshops and current director of Maryland’s Poetry Out Loud competition for the National Endowment for the Arts; she is editor of Freshly Squeezed and has been published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Blackbird, The Cortland Review, and other literary magazines.

jmww AWP Report, Part II

Because we couldn’t fit all the goodness in one post. jmww Flash Fiction Editor Robert Vaughan ponders his AWP mind warp:

I might have guessed when I arrived at the Milwaukee airport last Wednesday morning and was informed my flight had been cancelled (through Newark to Boston), it would set the tone for the entire AWP Conference. A UWM English professor I know, Liam, was already negotiating with the agent at the adjacent desk. It was cinematic, an indie movie, or a television commercial. Simultaneously we’re searching iPhones for any open airports east of Chicago, while the agents are on their telephones calling every other airline getting negative responses. Solution? Hop a bus to Chicago, and hope I could beat the Nor’easter racing rapidly through northern Virginia and Baltimore, threatening to hit New England. Moving toward Boston, my destination.

Arrive, I finally did, too late to share a cab with my pal, Meg, to the Marriott Copley Place, but not too late to read Wednesday evening in The Festival of Language at Dillon’s. This is an annual event hosted by Jane L. Carman, and brings together roughly 5 hours, in three sets of amazing talent, reading in 5 minute slots. Gathered there, I ran into some old friends like Jane, Bill Yarrow, Len Kuntz, Chris Allen, and met many new talented writers. This fraternal feeling is much of what AWP is about. We’re all in this huge, messy talent pool together, so there is both a feeling of gratitude combined with an overwhelming sense of mystery. So many writers! And yet, a magnificent dinner at Capital Grille with friends Len, Karen, and Meg re-assured me that I have a place at the table.

Thursday morning arrived none too soon: off to see Gloria Mindock of Cervena Barva Press and my new chapbook, Microtones, at her table in the humungous book fair. Row after row of booths, including everything from the bi-coastal giants right down to the internet sites or multiple independent presses. Mostly awkward conversations. Loaded opinions about writing. We finally located P-11, and there it was! Nothing quite like the shock, satisfaction, and glee of holding your own anticipated book in your hands. I had to hold back tears. And the three friends who shared those moments all scooped up copies for me to sign. I was so grateful. I still am. That evening the snowstorm slammed Boston—we attended a reading at The Greatest Bar—hosted by Best of the Net/ Connotation Press/ Sundress Press/ Boxcar. This brings up one of the most challenging things about not being able to morph yourself into four places. You have to choose your readings carefully, and regardless, will miss others in doing so. The highlight of this reading was to witness tremendous fiction from Sara Lippman, Alex Pruteanu, and Angela Woodward, and many outstanding poets like Doug Anderson and Al Maginnes. Another highlight was seeing the first book from Connotation Press: Smoking Mirrors! It’s an anthology filled with stunning art from Matt Tuite, and 18 short ekphrastic fictional gems.

Friday, snowing, blizzard, white-out. Felt the same inside the tunnels that connected the Marriot to the Sheraton to Copley Place to conference center. What am I doing here? Sometimes you happen upon a reading, spontaneously, which we did that morning, watching Matt Hart read on the Alice Hoffman Bookfair Stage. Then oh yes! I was to replace a host for the HEAT reading at Dillon’s! Poor Anna March was ill, so Laura Bogart, Meg Tuite, and I stepped up, and had a blast hosting three solid hours of incredible talent. The Dillon’s room was packed, and the readers really seemed to enjoy the event. Certain readers like Andrew Keating invoked audience participation (“HOT!”), and Joseph Quintela was half-rapper, half-quixotic magician-wordsmith. Never a dull moment.

Saturday was open to the public at the Book Fair, and the prices drop significantly, so we ran around trying to fill our suitcases up with every chap, snap, pop, and NAP we could possibly jam into our vessels. As the weather turned sunny and warmer, we decided to venture out to the North end, and tramp around the tight, trendy neighborhood filled with pastry shops and pizza. We ate another incredible meal at Mother Anna’s on Hanover Street where our waiter, Adam took pride in his family restaurant. As the Chianti was flowing, the conversation was fantastic. Back to the Marriott for one more round, then it was packing, and wake-up calls at crack of dawn because of the Daylight Savings time changes.

The best part of AWP for me is the friends I have made over the years: Len, Meg, Chris, Michael, Bill, Sara, Ken, Janee, so many I can’t possibly mention them all. And then to meet the new friends I’ve already “known” online: Alex, Pat, Laura, Bonnie, and numerous others. One of the challenges is always to figure out where I am going, but that’s the same as it is for me at home. If you hang with Len, he is usually willing to navigate. And if you want to know about classes and schedules, ask Michael Maxwell, jmww flash fiction editor. He attends everything you possibly can and takes copious notes. A friend suggested better signage might help. (In my case, probably not.) Another friend asked what does AWP spend all its money on? Surely they could alternate to a Southern city, Austin, or Miami? Who knows, but next year it’s Seattle. See you there?