If you want to know about the highlights and lowlights in the publishing world, go to MobyLives. The brainchild of Dennis Loy Johnson, it began life as a syndicated newspaper column and then became a blog in 2001. The original website went quiet in 2006, but it came back to life (in a new location) in October this year.
And it's been fantastic so far. The latest post on Google and the publishing deal they've struck with American publishers is rightly critical of the over-simplification of the issues (you can read another take on the deal by Krystelle here on Meet At The Gate), the newest shared video is of Tao Lin bewildering hip New Yorkers with a reading / performance about fishing (we dare you not to laugh), and the piece about the UK searching for the next poet laureate begins with an original limerick (what could be better than that, we ask). If you want a critical and fairly objective opinion on literary current affairs, MobyLives is a must-visit.
If you've got a website or podcast you'd like to submit for Site of the Week consideration, send us an email (make sure the recipient is Website enquiries).
Guest
Date: Thu Dec 04, 2008 04:04 AM GMT
Spex,
I disagree that Tao is 'hero-worshipped'. Maybe because he is very accessible to his fans, they talk about him more than other authors.
Stewart,
I find Tao's sentence structure and their relationship to concrete subject matter appealing. I think people who call 'imitators' are ones who read Tao and find him helpful to their own writing. I think pretty much anything you read you are an 'imitator' of. To say you don't find him appealing and that 'imitators' make him even less appealing is sort of an abstract judgment.
Spex
Date: Wed Dec 03, 2008 12:45 PM GMT
I think Tao Lin might be a victim of his own success - if he wasn't so hero-worshipped we'd probably think he was just fine.
Stewart
Date: Wed Dec 03, 2008 09:31 AM GMT
I like Melville House's Contemporary Art of the Novella series, and have recently been popping back and forth to MobyLives. I never knew it in its original incarnation. While I laughed at Tao Lin's reading, I really don't see what the appeal is with him. (What makes it worse is his imitators.)
