>Paul cried the first day of preschool for around ten minutes after his mother, who was secretly watching and also crying, seemed to have left. It was their first time apart. Paul’s mother watched as the principal cajoled Paul into interacting with his classmates, among whom he was well liked and popular, if a bit shy and “disengaged, sometimes,” said one of the high school students who worked at the preschool, which was called the Discovery Center. Each day, after that, Paul cried less and transitioned more abruptly from crying to interacting with classmates, and by the middle of the second week he didn’t cry anymore. At home, where mostly only Mandarin was spoken, Paul was loud and either slug-like or, his mother would say in English, “hyperactive,” rarely walking to maneuver through the house, only crawling, rolling like a log, sprinting, hopping, or climbing across sofas, counters, tables, chairs, etc. in a game called “don’t touch the ground.” Whenever motionless and not asleep or sleepy, lying on carpet in sunlight, or in bed with eyes open, bristling with undirectionalized momentum, he would want to intensely sprint in all directions simultaneously, with one unit of striving, never stopping. He would blurrily anticipate this unimaginably worldward action, then burst off his bed to standing position, or make a loud noise and violently spasm, or jolt from the carpet into a sprint, flailing his arms, feeling always incompletely satisfied.
how good is tao lin?
Zachary Ramirez
4.5/10
Luis Miller
cajoled is entirely the wrong word to use here. Pretty low effort material.
Jacob Gutierrez
why? I literally cant think of a more appropriate one to use
Asher Sullivan
>tfw I cried too when I started going to kindergarten I think that shit is unnatural, one was made to grow up in ones home
Aiden Nelson
ppl criticize a particular word or grammar thing when they don't actually have any useful/intelligent criticism
Easton Thomas
>how good is tao lin Pretty crap. Only successful because lol so hipster xd I know it's early but go to bed Tao.
James Gomez
lol That's good user. Because you clearly have no idea what I mean by it, insult me instead. I found his use of cajole here nothing but jarring. It's in absolute discord with the mood. It's the first word he thought of and ignored its failure to integrate. Dude's lazy.
Grayson Foster
the narrative isn't bad, it's just that he staccatos the flow of his sentences with speed-bumps of odd wording or punctuation. Not in a good way, it breaks the flow without introducing anything beyond a verbal obstacle.
also he needs to calm down with these commas, another byproduct of odd sentence structure.
Noah Young
I was such a wreck that my parents pulled me out of kindergarten after like 2 weeks. Have to agree with you.
I unironically enjoy his stuff. Taipei, at least, haven't read anything else. I can very easily see why somebody wouldn't like him, though.
Christian Price
sweet
Ryan Sanchez
seen worse t b h
Like, a lot worse and right off the things that are considered le patricean litereture
Camden Carter
pretty alright.
Gavin Morgan
Suggest a better word. If you want to pick on a word, I'd go for "undirectionalized" which is really ugly
Carson Baker
I'd have to think about it. Cajole feels unnatural and detached for the intimacy of the situation. I don't hear that word in my head when I picture a child's sadness in their first break from their mother. Bottom line, the word cajole doesn't shed tears. I think his entire approach is horrible and disengaged, I'd have to rewrite the excerpt to find a fitting word. But, if I must give a substitute, perhaps soften. Coaxed, which sounds less destructive at least.
Eli Johnson
Kys
Benjamin Moore
Taipei was lazy in structure. Probably because of all the auto-biography. A lot of anecdotes or moments like this, where the styling manages to wrangle a distinct look (I mean, just by the affect it creates, even if much of it is appropriating from other authors. He did attempt to integrate the ticks of contemporary youth), but none of it binds. As if the novel were just a long collection of the vignettes, from a prior serialization somehow. He could've done what he did, and still create context. Fucking performative shit.
Ian Sanchez
ew dude youre a bitch
John Taylor
formalists get out
Ian Carter
unironically better than everything i see in the critique threads here
Jayden Reed
this is actually true but maybe the good writers don't post in critique threads
Adrian Torres
Give a few examples of these worse books so I can know how seriously I should take this post.
Jose Howard
>Paul >mandarin
Paul is so uncommon a person of Chinese descent's name. I guess this writing is meant to be observations the reader can relate to? 'Hey...I played a version of that don't touch the floor game' or 'Hey...I cried like that too, I wonder if my mom was secretly watching I bet she was because all moms probably do.' But I guess, and I'm overly critical of modern lit, it isn't actually hitting at anything important to me. It's the equivalent of '90s kids will get this' but it's not trying to be a meme.
Ayden Myers
You're not being overly critical. That's exactly what's wrong with contemporary fiction. It's all built on the most banal and insipid shit with the aim of targeting whatever most people will relate to in the most shallow ways.
No one who's been published this Century (the past 16 years) is really willing to take any sort of risks with what they're writing. Not even the guy whose middle name is risk. It's all about the trappings now and the content is largely interchangeable.
