Summary
The author of "Shoplifting from American Apparel" on writing his latest novel, written in meticulously careful prose.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation. |
| 0:04.0 | Boots! |
| 0:09.0 | Where would we be without boos? |
| 0:12.0 | Where would we be without good? |
| 0:15.0 | No, Timberd. |
| 0:16.0 | It's a rhetorical question, sir. |
| 0:19.0 | But where would we need without books? |
| 0:23.5 | From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. |
| 0:29.4 | Today, my guest is Tal Lin. |
| 0:32.1 | His newest book is the novel Taipei. |
| 0:35.8 | It's published by vintage. Tallin is a writer who has been |
| 0:42.3 | inspiring controversy. People have described him and his writing as autistic. They've named |
| 0:51.3 | him the Ritalin Kid. He's everywhere on the web. You can't tweet |
| 0:57.6 | without knowing him. And people have gotten infuriated. Personally, I find his writing beautiful, |
| 1:09.7 | haunting, moving, careful, and that of all the writing I've read by younger |
| 1:17.8 | writers, he's in his early 30s, I find it to be the most moving depiction of the way we live now. |
| 1:28.3 | By which I mean it has become hard for people to talk to one another, and Tal Lin has |
| 1:35.3 | developed the ability within his books to describe that difficulty, not talking, but how we do not talk, not moving one another, but how we try to. |
| 1:52.3 | And I find it to be inaudibly moving. |
| 1:58.0 | Now, Tao, you've mentioned about this book that this is the one where the themes of the book |
| 2:05.6 | are balanced most carefully and that it's hard to talk about the book because everything is held |
| 2:13.6 | in equilibrium. |
... |
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