On "The Novelist" by Tao Lin (1503 words) ****

Of the many stories in Tao Lin's online collection Today The Sky is Blue and White with Bright Blue Spots and a Small Pale Moon and I Will Destroy Our Relationship Today, this concluding one is my favorite. It's about, well, a novelist, and about the way in which writers and artists tend to turn anything and everything that is an aspect of their lives into art, sometimes self-consciously so. Perhaps, as this story hints, we do art to add meaning to our lives, which, like the events in this story, are generally pretty nonconsequential, pretty mundane, unless of course they're in a novel--or about to be. Read the story here at Bear Parade.