Published in 2018 (first published 2015)
707 pages
Megan Boyle (born 1985) is an American writer and filmmaker. Boyle grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and rose to prominence among the Alt Lit and internet community after writing popular articles for Thought Catalog and marrying writer Tao Lin. Together, Boyle and Lin created several movies for their company MDMAfilms, which they began in 2010. In 2011, Lin published Boyle’s poetry collection, selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee, which garnered favorable reviews.
From 2011 to 2013, Boyle wrote a column for Vice Magazine called Boyle’s Brains. From March to September 2013, she “liveblogged”, documenting her daily activities on Tumblr; the liveblog reached 350,000 words and was called a “painfully honest and raw record of a person’s life.” Tyrant Books released a print edition, Liveblog, on September 27, 2018.
Reviewing Liveblog for Bookforum, Lauren Oyler wrote, “In subject matter, Liveblog also resembles recent novels depicting female disillusionment—among them Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Catherine Lacey’s The Answers, and Jade Sharma’s Problems. But while the narrators of these tight, polished novels speak in steady tones of sly nihilism or emptied resignation, as if their authors have dressed them in large sunglasses and T-shirts that say “Nothing Matters,” Megan desperately wants to believe something does.”
What is this book about?
In 2013, Megan Boyle was unhappy with the life she was living and wanted to document it on the internet for an audience. Her hope was that if she documented each thought and action on the internet, then she would begin to behave in a manner more appropriate to the life she wanted to live. She needed a judge and a jury to see her crimes and non-crimes, her actions and thoughts, and her life. The results are an illuminating text of great length with poetic insight on every page. It is a reading experience that leaves a little bit of Megan Boyle inside of you long after you have finished reading it. This is akin to Karl Ove Knausgard’s My Struggle and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, yet totally different and new―and it is a book of daring length.
Drugs, love, home, parents, friends, life, death, work, and the internet. LIVEBLOG is an historical text, extremely unique and shockingly human.
