The Vulnerability of Withdrawal: Between the Sentences of the Early Prose of Tao Lin

Brian Willems

doi:10.4312/an.55.1-2.193-208

Authors

Brian Willems University of Split, Croatia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4312/an.55.1-2.193-208

Keywords:

Tao Lin, vulnerability, incomplete information

Abstract

In Tao Lin's early books Eeeee Eee Eeee (2007), Bed (2007), Shoplifting from American Apparel (2009), and Richard Yates (2010) vulnerability is linked to a lack of context. Passages and sentences are semantically removed enough from each other that a space of vulnerability opens in which the unexpected can happen. Using the work of Quentin Meillassoux, Judith Butler, Jacques Rancière, and Levi Bryant, among others, this sense of vulnerability is argued to be the primary experience of our lives, but we often forget it. Lin's work makes this primary vulnerability visible in the three works analyzed using three different techniques: incomplete information, withdrawn context, and a monstrous vulnerability. In this sense, the author makes his writing vulnerable to the very problems that it foregrounds.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Aarseth, Espen. 1997. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Aristotle. 1984. The Complete Works, Vol. 1, Jonathan Barnes, ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Brown, Patrick. 2021. On Vulnerability: A Critical Introduction. Oxon: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429347740

Bryant, Levi. 2020. “A World is Ending.” Identities. Accessed Oct 31, 2021. https://identitiesjournal.edu.mk/index.php/IJPGC/announcement/view/21.

Burk, Jeff. 2009. “A Rant from the Editor.” The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction (1): 3.

Butler, Judith. 2016. “Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance.” In Vulnerability in Resistance, edited by Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti, and Leticia Sabsay, 12-27. Durham: Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11vc78r.6

Châtelet, Gilles. 2014. To Live and Think Like Pigs: The Incitement of Envy and Boredom in Market Democracies. Translated by Robin MacKay. Falmouth: Urbanomic; New York: Sequence Press.

Dederer, Claire. 2017. “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” The Paris Review (Nov 20). Accessed Oct 31, 2021. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/20/art-monstrous-men/.

Esslin, Martin. 2001. The Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Vintage Books.

Fernández-Santiago, Miriam. 2019. “Narrative Exhaustion and the Posthuman Narrative Self in Tao Lin’s Taipei.” In Exhaustion and Regeneration in Post-Millennial North-American Literature and Culture, edited by Julia Nikiel and Izabella Kimak. 59-70. Berlin: Peter Lang.

Fish, Stanley. 1970. “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics.” New Literary History 2 (1): 123-162. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/468593

Forte, Steve. 2014. “The Ultimate Cooler (Interview).” Collapse 8: 107-189.

Ganteau, Jean-Michel. 2018. The Ethics and Aesthetics of Vulnerability in Contemporary British Fiction. London: Routledge.

Hansen, Mykle. 2008. HELP! A Bear is Eating Me! Portland: Eraserhead Press.

Heath, Stephen. 1981. Questions of Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16579-7

Ionesco, Eugène. 1994. Rhinoceros and Other Plays. San Francisco: Grove Press.

Jones, Allie. 2014. “Alt-Lit Icon Accused of Statutory Rape as Hipster Scene Falls Apart.” Gawker (Oct 2). Accessed Oct 31, 2021. https://www.gawker.com/alt-lit-icon-accused-of-rape-and-abuse-as-hipster-scene-1641591034.

Lin, Tao. 2007a. Bed. New York: Melville House.

Lin, Tao. 2007b. Eeeee Eee Eeee. New York: Melville House.

Lin, Tao. 2010. Richard Yates. New York: Melville House.

Lin, Tao. 2009. Shoplifting from American Apparel. New York: Melville House.

Lin, Tao. 2013. Taipei. New York: Vintage.

Malabou, Catherine. 2012. Ontology of the Accident. Translated by Carolyn Shread. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Meillassoux, Quentin. 2011. “Excerpts from L’Inexistence Divine.” Translated by Graham Harman. In Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making, 175-238. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Meillassoux, Quentin. 2012. The Number and the Siren: A Decipherment of Mallarmé’s Coup de dés. Translated by Robin MacKay. Falmouth: Urbanomic; New York: Sequence Press.

Radić, Nika. 2011. “Niklas Luhmann: The Improbability of Communication.” In Nika Radić, Moramo se razgovarati/We Need to Talk, 17-29. Zagreb: HAZU Glipoteka.

Rancière, Jacques. 2009. The Future of the Image. Translated by Gregory Elliot. London: Verso.

Shildrick, Margrit. 2002. Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self. London: Sage. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446220573

Stephens, Paul. 2020. Absence of Clutter: Minimal Writing as Art and Literature. Cambridge: MIT Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12603.001.0001

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. 2007. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York: Random House.

Willems, Brian. 2016. “Hospitality and Risk Society in Tao Lin’s Taipei,” In Security and Hospitality in Literature and Culture: Modern and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Jeffery Clapp and Emily Ridge, 225-240. London; New York: Routledge.

Willems, Brian. 2017. Speculative Realism and Science Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474422697.001.0001

Žižek, Slavoj. 1999. «The Obscene Object of Postmodernity.» In The Žižek Reader, edited by Elizabeth Wright and Edmond Wright, 37-52. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.