His latest novel, Richard Yates
, is about a young New York writer and the New Jersey teen he meets online. The book's title is not to be confused with the author of Revolutionary, nor should his characters Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning be confused with the child actors of the same name. Tao Lin is a poet, publisher, illustrator, novelist, short story writer and blogger with an acknowledged and authored past as a shoplifter. He has been called a revolutionary and a rogue, and, by the gossip blog Gawker, "perhaps the single most irritating person we've ever had to deal with." But he commands no armies and seeks few conquests beyond enough money so he can write the kind of books he likes to write, as might have come from Ernest Hemingway, Ann Beattie or "Kmart" realists such as Joy Williams and Bobbie Ann Mason.He's been getting a lot of attention in literary circles, by those both impressed and annoyed with this work. (Though I think being called "the single most irritating person we've ever had to deal with" by Gawker is a pretty impressive distinction.) Here another article on Tao Lin from Salon: Tao Lin: Lit "it boy" for the Internet age.
"I'll say it's definitely not a response to anything," he says of his work. "It's mostly a desire to recreate work I have read and liked."
"Richard Yates" mentions the author of "Revolutionary Road," but otherwise the title is a non-sequitur, words to fill a space, like a "Beware of Dog" sign without a dog. The main characters are called Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning, not because they are like those actors, but because he preferred famous names to making up new ones, or to using his own.