Tao Lin: The TNB 
Self-Interview

In your view is Richard Yates about the internet’s effect on a generation?

No.

What are some things you might do with 100 billion dollars?

Ask Dennis Cooper if he wants $5 million to fly to Seattle to write a book-length profile of Brandon Scott Gorrell. Ask various other people to fly places to profile various other people in 5000-word profiles to be published on Thought Catalog (if they and “TC” want that) or book-length profiles to be published by Muumuu House. Maybe buy every New York City McDonald’s, if something like this is possible, in some manner, and pay LifeThyme or Pure Food and Wine or Bonobo’s to open new locations in those former McDonald’s locations.

Pay someone to translate Hitomi Kanehara’s untranslated books into English. Pay someone to translate Kobo Abe’s The Flying Man into English. Pay someone to translate Knut Hamsun’s “travelogue” about America into English. Move into a studio apartment. Buy a trampoline, the most expensive blender that exists, the most expensive juicer that exists, a MacBook Air. Idly subsidize or very heavily patronize various organic grocery stores and restaurants. Buy a drum set for my studio apartment. Pay various people to make various documentaries and write various things and go to various places to do various things. Sponsor certain bookstores and organic grocery stores to give everyone whatever free books or fruits or vegetables they want, maybe like $100 worth a month per person or something.

What are some biographies you like?

Blake Bailey’s biographies of Richard Yates and John Cheever.

What is your favorite Jean Rhys novel?

Good Morning, Midnight.

What is your favorite Frederick Barthelme novel?

Two Against One or Bob The Gambler.