Oh dear. Christian Lorentzen, who is funny and smart, has written a New York Observer profile of writer performance artist Tao Lin, in the author’s flat, intentionally irritating style (think third-tier Nouveau Roman reject, some sexless Claude Simon groupie). It’s painful. They go to Five Leaves. Lorentzen says this:
Your Concrete/Literal Style rolls back all the advances Flaubert made in the representation of consciousness. But by rolling back modernity, you’ve also advanced the novel by exposing its distortions.
I weep for us all.