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Tao Lin, the alt-lit author and magazine writer, that was publicly accused of plagiarism and statutory rape, has returned to the spotlight with a new book of tweets.

Lin teamed up with  poet Mira Gonzalez on the book, “Selected Tweets,” which comes out from Short Flight/Long Drive Books later this month. It includes their Twitter conversations, as well as “illustrations of each other’s tweets, short stories, essays, and a long poem,” says the Amazon listing. Here is an excerpt:

MIRA GONZALEZ: I wouldn’t necessarily say that I tweet what makes me feel uncomfortable, I think it’s more that I feel comfortable tweeting things that I would never feel comfortable saying in a real life conversation, or even in other places on the internet. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, Twitter is a place where I don’t feel ashamed to say my most shameful thoughts…

Writer Tao Lin has landed a $50,000 deal with Vintage Books for his novel, Taipei, Taiwan. According to The New York Observer, Lin (pictured, via) will also receive an additional $10,000 bonus if the profits for his novel earn out his advance.

Lin hopes to finish the manuscript in fall 2012 and expects publication in 2013 or 2014; he intends to make it a “short” book one “could almost memorize” (between fifty and sixty thousand words). Literary agent Bill Clegg of the William Morris Endeavor negotiated the deal. Associate editor Tim O’Connell will edit the project.

In a previous interview with The New York Observer, Lin revealed: “The novel is autobiographical and begins in 2009 when the protagonist is 25. It spans ~2.5 years and is set in Taiwan, NYC, Las Vegas. It contains a marriage, somewhat extreme recreational drug usage, parents, a book tour. It’s written in a Lorrie Moore-esque prose style but denser, like my first story-collection but more refined. The protagonist in my 3rd novel experiences Siddhartha-like unhappiness and confusion.”

continued…

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let me go eat some salmon

why are there coke cans in the river

what if i wore a bullet proof vest during hunting season

i’m a bear; i walk in the forest and look at the river and the river is cold

i saw campers today and they ran away and i was alone and i destroyed their tent

let me go scratch my paw on a tree

let me go eat a salmon

last night i cried onto my salmon

the salmon was sad but it still wanted to live

it wanted to swim and be sad and i ate it under moonlight

i saw a moose scream the other day

it screamed quietly under a tree

i felt embarrassed and sad and i thought, ‘oh, no; oh god, oh my god’

sometimes i climb a tree and sit there and sing very quietly

sometimes i want to go to a shopping mall and chase the humans and claw them

i’ll ride the moose into the shopping mall and ram the humans

the moose and i will ride the escalator and i will hug the moose and the moose and i will cry

i will eat the moose

i don’t care

i will scream and throw the bubblegum machine from the second floor to the first floor

i felt compassion for the salmon and now i don’t care anymore

i’ll walk into a parking lot and chase a large human and hug the human and cry

i’ll walk into a house at night and push the humans off the bed

i’ll stare at the bed and i’ll feel fake


*
A Bear Poem by Tao Lin

I am thrilled. After relocating to a major large city, I thought it would be a snap to find a job as a librarian. I must have been mushugana. I beat the pavement for nearly 2 months...day in and day out before the offers started to literally pour in. The hardest part was watching my savings account get smaller and smaller and smaller each week. I was glad I rarely touched my vacation time, as