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If you haven’t read Tao Lin, you might not be ready for Tao Lin. As with the induction of microwaves, bowl cuts, online porn share sites and cubist art, things that act as ‘new,’ or seem to reinvent their form by the sheer disregard, slander or reburping of what is known, Tao’s art tends to polarize audiences into those who want to be him, those who want to eat him, and those who acknowledge that what he do is unlike most any other literary art.

What I’m saying is, if you haven’t read his first few books, YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM (poetry), BED (stories), EEEEE EEE EEE (a novel), then you should do yourself the favor.

Tao’s new book, COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY from Melville House Publishing, takes any expectations and/or residual ideology left behind in Tao’s earlier work, and kind of escalates it to another. The thin hot pink cover with a small green scribbled animal staring up from the page is an excellent gateway into a world of work that somehow melds existentialism, the absurd, the laugh out loud ridiculous, the internet, obsession, vegan food and ideology and a complete will to bend most any moment into what you least expect it. Tao Lin is truly capable of making even the most commonplace or anti-poetic-seeming elements (such as shopping at Whole Foods, poems written by ugly fish, repeating of online-speak-like phrases) not only mesh together into some new hilarious hybrid , but also manages to hit you in moments that you least expect in ways that you least expect. Reading this book makes you feel both connected and disconnected, alone and less alone, scratched and itching, confused and glad to have eyes.

Tao Lin’s work is the kind you might lay beside you on the bed and pat with your hand in the dark and be glad it has not moved.

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