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kennethwade's review
dark
funny
sad
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
“But was this how you went about getting a life? You went bowling, some other things happened, and then, finally, you were awarded a life? Greg had to try. ‘Okay,’ he said. He nodded a few times. People were always talking about getting a life, as if there were a store and it was just a matter of going there, picking one out. It annoyed Greg. Though in his sleepier moments, he believed in this store, understood that it was in Europe somewhere, or else deep in Russia. One of those two places. He’d sometimes wake up sad because the store was so far away. Why did it have to be so far away?”
This collection of short stories is characterized by general anxiety, depression, and characters who do unexplainable things. It’s sometimes very funny in a dry way and sometimes feels sad and hopeless. The characters and plot-lines mostly
blend together, with few of them standing out. The stories are mostly enjoyable but by the last 100 pages, the reader can’t help but wonder what the point is, are any of these stories going somewhere? I would like to see Tao Lin push his unique writing style to develop into something more.
This collection of short stories is characterized by general anxiety, depression, and characters who do unexplainable things. It’s sometimes very funny in a dry way and sometimes feels sad and hopeless. The characters and plot-lines mostly
blend together, with few of them standing out. The stories are mostly enjoyable but by the last 100 pages, the reader can’t help but wonder what the point is, are any of these stories going somewhere? I would like to see Tao Lin push his unique writing style to develop into something more.
carolinefaireymeese's review
challenging
funny
medium-paced
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Tao Lin was one of the first fiction writers I encountered during my formal creative writing education. We read "Love is a Thing on Sale for More Money Than Exists," a story included in this collection. Revisiting Lin's absurdist prose, oscillating wildly between pessimism and optimism about people's innate ability to connect and find/elicit meaning from life, felt like returning to a dysfunctional home for the holidays.
I did read this article in the New Republic recently, however, which mentioned Lin not necessarily negatively--just that race and racial identity is absent from his work. (https://newrepublic.com/article/159951/can-black-novelist-write-autofiction) That's an absolutely fine personal choice. But it does create a semblance of a post-racial world, or else a world that caters to white readers' expectations. Lin himself said that his target audience is everyone, but more specifically, "hipsters, depressed teenagers, depressed vegans, happy but sensitive teenagers, people of any age who are severely detached from reality, Europeans, all college students, and I think sarcastic vegans."
It's tough to imagine anyone experience racial discrimination feeling "extremely detached from reality," but perhaps through a different lens, that is the goal--to be able to write anything for anyone. It's an opposite lens to the Toni Morrison viewpoint, which rejects a standard white experience of language and crafts from within her own experience to speak to Black people, women, and Black women specifically. But what else has Tao Lin done besides rejecting anything standard? His style is so completely his own. All these things can be true at once. I'm going to continue reading both Morrison and Lin, and countless others who write newness into the world.
I did read this article in the New Republic recently, however, which mentioned Lin not necessarily negatively--just that race and racial identity is absent from his work. (https://newrepublic.com/article/159951/can-black-novelist-write-autofiction) That's an absolutely fine personal choice. But it does create a semblance of a post-racial world, or else a world that caters to white readers' expectations. Lin himself said that his target audience is everyone, but more specifically, "hipsters, depressed teenagers, depressed vegans, happy but sensitive teenagers, people of any age who are severely detached from reality, Europeans, all college students, and I think sarcastic vegans."
It's tough to imagine anyone experience racial discrimination feeling "extremely detached from reality," but perhaps through a different lens, that is the goal--to be able to write anything for anyone. It's an opposite lens to the Toni Morrison viewpoint, which rejects a standard white experience of language and crafts from within her own experience to speak to Black people, women, and Black women specifically. But what else has Tao Lin done besides rejecting anything standard? His style is so completely his own. All these things can be true at once. I'm going to continue reading both Morrison and Lin, and countless others who write newness into the world.
cynicalworm's review
5.0
Fantastic prose. The stories did blur a little into each other so others may not enjoy it as much as I did. To me, this was the perfect dose of absurdity and restlessness I needed.
xterminal's review
3.0
Tao Lin, Bed (Melville House, 2007)
Eighties fiction still lives, and lives large, in the work of Tao Lin. These stories are eighties fiction writ large, but with slightly more contemporary settings to explore those same eighties-fiction themes (restlessness, alienation, ennui, and the like among the twentysomething generation). The big problem with eighties fiction, of course, was how unsatisfying it was; it takes all the angst of existential literature, but fails to inject any of the timelessness one expects after reading the finest existential works. Not that this necessarily has to be a bad thing; if you're fond of the big names in eighties fiction, especially those who were most associated with the trend (McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, and Janowitz are the Big Three, but one could also rope in just about anyone who got a volume of short stories published by Vintage Books between 1983 and 1989), you'll probably find quite a comfortable home in Tao Lin's fiction. If, however, you always gravitated towards the authors who were constantly pushing the eighties-fiction boundaries (Vanderhaeghe, Chabon, Ethan Canin, chaps like that), then this will likely feel like an underinflated retread. I chose to think of it as a nostalgia trip; interesting, but not necessarily something I'm going to need to revisit for another decade or so. ***
Eighties fiction still lives, and lives large, in the work of Tao Lin. These stories are eighties fiction writ large, but with slightly more contemporary settings to explore those same eighties-fiction themes (restlessness, alienation, ennui, and the like among the twentysomething generation). The big problem with eighties fiction, of course, was how unsatisfying it was; it takes all the angst of existential literature, but fails to inject any of the timelessness one expects after reading the finest existential works. Not that this necessarily has to be a bad thing; if you're fond of the big names in eighties fiction, especially those who were most associated with the trend (McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, and Janowitz are the Big Three, but one could also rope in just about anyone who got a volume of short stories published by Vintage Books between 1983 and 1989), you'll probably find quite a comfortable home in Tao Lin's fiction. If, however, you always gravitated towards the authors who were constantly pushing the eighties-fiction boundaries (Vanderhaeghe, Chabon, Ethan Canin, chaps like that), then this will likely feel like an underinflated retread. I chose to think of it as a nostalgia trip; interesting, but not necessarily something I'm going to need to revisit for another decade or so. ***
grouchator's review
4.0
I think the writing here is very proto-Taipei. That book expresses what this book kind of orbits around, but it has an absurdist/surreal edge that Taipei doesn't. This makes it more entertaining, but as all the characters felt pretty similar, I had to read it in chunks so I didn't get numb after a while.
I'd tier and list the stories as such :
A-tier:
-"Cull the Steel Heart, Melt the Ice one, Love the Weak Thing; Say Both of Consolation but Irreverence, Disaster, and Nonexistance; Have No Hope or Hate - Nothing; Ruin Yourself Exclusively, Completely, Whenever Possible"
-"Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues"
-"Nine, Ten"
B-Tier:
-"Insomnia for a Better Tomorrow"
-"Sasquatch"
-"Sincerity"
-"Love is a Thing on Sale for More Money than Ever Exists"
C-Tier:
-"Three Day Cruise"
-"Love is the Indifferent God of the Religion in which Universe is Church"
I'd tier and list the stories as such :
A-tier:
-"Cull the Steel Heart, Melt the Ice one, Love the Weak Thing; Say Both of Consolation but Irreverence, Disaster, and Nonexistance; Have No Hope or Hate - Nothing; Ruin Yourself Exclusively, Completely, Whenever Possible"
-"Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues"
-"Nine, Ten"
B-Tier:
-"Insomnia for a Better Tomorrow"
-"Sasquatch"
-"Sincerity"
-"Love is a Thing on Sale for More Money than Ever Exists"
C-Tier:
-"Three Day Cruise"
-"Love is the Indifferent God of the Religion in which Universe is Church"
otterno11's review
3.0
“Life wasn’t some incredible movie. Life was all the movies, ever, happening at once. There were good ones, bad ones, some that went straight to video. This seemed right. That’s exactly, literally, right, Aaron thought, already mocking himself.”
- From Tao Lin’s story Sincerity, included in this collection
Some of Tao Lin’s earliest published works of fiction, Bed has a lot of interesting scenes that capture the yearning sense of ennui and aimlessness of young adulthood after college, with Lin developing the detached, deadpan, semi-autobiographical yet surreal style he came to be known for.
The stories deal with those post-collegiate feelings of alienation, of being cut adrift, of not really knowing how to be an adult, what one wants, or where one is going. Working in a dead end job after college with a bunch of teenagers, say, or trying out sharing an apartment with an SO, going on vacation with your family, or hanging out with a sadly platonic college friend at an underground punk show, Lin is very effective in his depictions of the feelings of these relatable characters in the early 21st century United States.
For the most part, I felt the stories went on a little longer than necessary, though, becoming repetitive and, on occasion, somewhat interminable. There are some definite elements that tend to pop up multiple times, as characters go on bizarre, meandering tangents, asking each other “what if” questions on absurd possible events, and fixating on strange thoughts. However, the meandering pace can also be reflective of the disorganized, vague feelings of daily life and Lin can really make some great similes and vivid descriptions of the kind of wonder of the contemporary world. It really is a great depiction of the time it was written, and will be a perfect time capsule, I think.
- From Tao Lin’s story Sincerity, included in this collection
Some of Tao Lin’s earliest published works of fiction, Bed has a lot of interesting scenes that capture the yearning sense of ennui and aimlessness of young adulthood after college, with Lin developing the detached, deadpan, semi-autobiographical yet surreal style he came to be known for.
The stories deal with those post-collegiate feelings of alienation, of being cut adrift, of not really knowing how to be an adult, what one wants, or where one is going. Working in a dead end job after college with a bunch of teenagers, say, or trying out sharing an apartment with an SO, going on vacation with your family, or hanging out with a sadly platonic college friend at an underground punk show, Lin is very effective in his depictions of the feelings of these relatable characters in the early 21st century United States.
For the most part, I felt the stories went on a little longer than necessary, though, becoming repetitive and, on occasion, somewhat interminable. There are some definite elements that tend to pop up multiple times, as characters go on bizarre, meandering tangents, asking each other “what if” questions on absurd possible events, and fixating on strange thoughts. However, the meandering pace can also be reflective of the disorganized, vague feelings of daily life and Lin can really make some great similes and vivid descriptions of the kind of wonder of the contemporary world. It really is a great depiction of the time it was written, and will be a perfect time capsule, I think.
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