Technical Statement
My work can be viewed primarily as a continuation and/or “progression” of two literary traditions: (1) the tradition of minimalism (itself a tradition of a kind of realism practiced by Ernest Hemingway, Jean Rhys, Richard Yates, and others) as practiced by Ann Beattie, Joy Williams, Frederick Barthelme, Raymond Carver, Bobbie Ann Mason, Mary Robison, and others most noticeably in the late 70’s until the mid to late 80’s, characterized by a concrete, calm, detached prose style and a focus on ordinary people doing ordinary things often to humorous and emotional effect and (2) the tradition of the 20-page realistic short-story as realized most consistently, in my view, by Lorrie Moore (and many authors in the “minimalist” tradition, listed above) and made widespread and popular, among other ways, by the Best American Short Stories series and wide-circulation magazines like the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly.
My work is, to some degree, and among other reasons, a “progression,” or re-actualization from my unique (in the sense that we are all unique) perspective, of the above in that it (1) sometimes incorporates absurdist, and at times surreal, or “magical realist” elements and (2) sometimes employs a more extreme minimalist prose style than previous used by authors in this particular mode of writing and (3) is sometimes more openly and directly and self-consciously and “unabashedly” autobiographical and (4) treats its characters’ detachment and calm as within a Buddhist tradition and desirable (something to work towards) rather than something vacuous or “empty” or “nihilistic” (to be warned against or avoided).
- from Tao Lin’s 2009 ”New York Foundation for the Arts” $7k fiction grant application
