Events

 A Litquake Featured Event    “[A] deadpan literary trickster.” – The New York Times     TAO LIN Richard Yates   Tao Lin’s trademark minimalism takes on a much darker edge as he narrates the story of a young man dealing with the consequences of an affair with an underage girl, in a startling change of direction for this cult writer. Buried within Lin’s work is a troubling question – what exactly constitutes illicit sex for a generation with no rules?   Richard Yates is named after real-life writer Richard Yates, but it has little to do with him. Instead, it racks the relationship between writer Haley Joel Osment, a New Yorker in his early twenties, and Dakota Fanning, his 16-year-old lover. Moving between Fanning’s suburban New Jersey home and Osment’s Wall Street apartment, the couple increasingly shuns the outside world as they work to navigate the moral ambiguity of their relationship. But as that relationship grows more obsessive and Osment becomes more intimately involved with Fanning, she reveals her increasingly disturbing and self-destructive personality. Osment’s own guilt and anger entrap him as they find the relationship – and their lives – hurtling out of control. "Richard Yates is hilarious, menacing,and hugely intelligent. Tao Lin is a Kafka for the iPhone generation. He has that most important gift: it's impossible to imagine anyone else writing like he does and sounding authentic. Yet he has already spawned a huge school of Lin imitators. As precocious and prolific as he is, every book surpasses the last. Tao Lin may well be the most important writer under thirty working today." -- Clancy Martin     Tao Lin is the author of numerous other books, including Shoplifting from American Apparel, Eeeee Eee Eeee, and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.    Preferred seating with the purchase at The Booksmith of Richard Yates beginning 9/7. Seating vouchers will be given with purchase while supplies last.