TAIPEI By Tao Lin (Vintage), 248 pages, $16.95 paper. Rating: NNNN
Tao Lin has the good fortune (or bad luck) to be seen as a symbol of his generation, which means most reviews of his work end up telling you more about the reviewers’ feelings about 20-somethings in general than about Lin’s work.
Whether they’re sneering at him or cheering him on, putting so much emphasis on Lin’s use of Gmail chat for dialogue, his semi-autobiographical over-sharing, his notorious guerrilla online self-marketing, unabashed drug use and overall internet-ness ends up turning discussion of his work into a big conversation about kids-these-days (which isn’t fair to the kids, or to Lin).
It shouldn’t be seen as particularly significant that a 29-year-old writer makes online communication such an integral part of his style. Nor do we need to say much about Taipei being obviously based on his own life. (A writer goes on a book tour, takes lots of drugs.)
Much more central is the palpable tension created by his attempts to describe vaguely felt emotions with extreme specificity, and his use of a peculiarly detached and cold voice to pursue that precision. His characters rarely seem to know exactly how they’re feeling in any given situation, and regularly attempt to express that absence of certainty in short, awkward sentences that can feel embarrassingly familiar.
It’s an approach reminiscent of the experimental composer John Cage’s famous quote: “I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry.” And like Cage’s music, Lin’s writing also makes some critics worry that they’re being mocked.
Previous books by Lin made me want to punch him in the face at various points (although I kept reading). Taipei, on the other hand, mostly made me want to give him a big hug – a sign that the stoic functionalism of his prose is somehow becoming more relatable even as it becomes even more sadistically minimalist.
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