SANTA MONICA, CA (2010) Tao Lin @ Barnes & Noble

What would his fans be like? How would they dress? Was there an alt-lit “look”? It seemed possible there might be.

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I was living in Venice Beach, CA in 2010, when I saw that author Tao Lin was doing a reading at the Barnes and Noble in nearby Santa Monica. This was to promote his just-published novel Richard Yates. I carefully wrote down the date in my day planner.

Tao Lin was very important in my mind. Though still in his twenties, he had become the figurehead of the alt-lit scene, which was a loose grouping of new writers who began to appear around 2005 to 2015.

The writers in this group weren’t necessarily connected by style or subject matter. To me, the thing that joined them was their innovative use of the internet.

I would occasionally wander around inside this new online literary world (usually beginning on Tao Lin’s website) and marvel at how fresh and exciting it seemed.

Hyperlinks were still new. The inter-connectedness felt almost magical. And the clean, precise look of words on a computer screen made it feel like you were visiting the future.

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I first came across the name Tao Lin when I stumbled on a grainy flip-phone video of a reading in New York City. This was 2006-ish? I don’t remember the website.

The event looked like it was in a basement. The participants, standing around with beers in their hands, looked like NYU students. Or about that age.

Maybe the video was shot by Tao? Or Tao was one of the readers? He was associated with it in some way. And his name being unusual, I remembered it.

Not long after that, I came across a written account of a similar New York literary event. It went something like:

“During the Q & A, the audience member asked a question, attempting to defeat the author with his wit and superior knowledge. But the author deflected the question, calling on a more appreciative audience member and thus asserting dominance over the antagonistic audience member.”

Something like that. You get the idea. It was a funny riff on the unspoken competition that goes on at readings. For some reason, I associated this bit of commentary with Tao Lin as well.

This seemed to be his style. To proclaim some controversial truth in a flat, robotic way.

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