I think Tao is angry that Richard Yates and Daniel Alacorn make up characters based on their imagination instead of just writing about themselves. At the end, Tao starts talking about relativism and even says some things about using correct context. He still talks about that today like when he tells a four-year old that his favorite color is red. In the comments, some people called Pete and Sam confuse Tao’s maverick ways for absolutes and accuse him of classism and sexism. For some reason, Tao feels obligated to defend his opinion. That wouldn’t happen today, maybe not defending your relativist opinions is a key to doing those things which I have not done quite yet.

The middle is confusing because one moment he is telling about why The Easter Parade makes him feel good and not understanding who you are at age 50 and then the next moment he is talking about the Hispanic problem. I think Tao tries to connect these two issues by talking about imaginary people, but it’s sloppy.

Most interesting is Tao’s “discussion” concerning Homer with no one in particular at first but then a person going by the letter D suggests that Homer was blind and that it would be irresponsible for Tao to travel back in time to hand out “take down” pamphlets about an 8-year old boy. I don’t think it would be irresponsible for Tao to travel back in time to say some bad things about a young Homer because probably he is right that it would be more interesting to hear stories about throwing spears in a war from someone who actually did throw spears in a war, unlike Homer. I don’t know why Tao cares so much though, Homer is so long ago that it doesn’t really matter now if Homer really did fight in some wars or was blind. The past containing Homer may as well be all fiction, in which case the most interesting story teller is the one who can tell the story.

I think if this were Tao’s first entry, then it was a good first effort on a new blog. But I don’t think this is the real first entry of Reader of Depressing Books.