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A review by xterminal
Bed by Tao Lin
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. ***