Tao Lin is the author of five books, including the novels Shoplifting from American Apparel and Richard Yates.

Most reviews of your work focus on your personality or internet
presence, rather than your writing. What do you wish critics would
focus on?

I don’t think I wish critics to focus on anything. I think everyone will focus on different things, and what they focus on isn’t something I feel like influencing. I think there are aspects of my writing that not many critics focus on, though, and maybe critics who want to not write the same article that’s already been written could focus on those things.

In an email exchange cited in the London Review of Books review of your novel ‘Richard Yates’, David Gates says to Jonathan Lethem: “if I write about people for whom the internet is—as far as the reader can see—peripheral or nonexistent, am I not essentially writing historical fiction?” Unlike most contemporary writers, the internet is a natural part of the lives of your characters. Are writers who avoid talking about the internet (or cell phones) writing historical fiction?

I don’t know. It depends on the definition of historical fiction. I think what seems constant throughout hundreds of years of writing are psychology, human desire, and humans communicating via language. I think those can be conveyed as dialogue in person or as typed on a computer and, to me, would be the same either way.

What is the most memorable thing you’ve ever done in a library?

My wife and I recorded ourselves Gmail chatting with each other on LSD for something like 2-hours without any pauses, I think.

Why should public libraries put your books in their collection?

I don’t know. If they want to they can. If you don’t want to they don’t have to.

What are your favorite small press books from the last year or two?

My favorite small press books that I remember currently from this or last year are THE INSURGENT by Noah Cicero and PERSON by Sam Pink.