Taipei

Starred review from February 25, 2013
For all its straightforwardness, Lin’s previous work—with its flat, Internet-inspired prose issued by small presses—has presented a stumbling stone for readers who fall outside his North Brooklyn contingent, for whom he is the standard bearer. This will change with the breakout Taipei, a novel about disaffection that’s oddly affecting. The story of Paul—with its book tours, Wikipedia binges, and on-again-off-again romances—smacks of autobiography. Similarly, the specificity of the Brooklyn that Paul and his cohort of blithe, pill-popping ironists occupy—the pop-cultural immediacy of the names of bands, books, and bars there—blurs the distinction between fiction and reality. The thin plot follows Paul in and out of parties, drug trips, and relationships from August to December 2010 (“during the filming... of X-Men: First Class”). Everything about Taipei appears to run contrary to the standard idea of what constitutes art. And yet, the documentary precision captures the sleepwalking malaise of Lin’s generation so completely, it’s scary. Trips to Vegas with an Internet crush (they marry on a whim) and the Taiwan residence of his understandably worried parents underscore the profound dislocation of the information-fried urban hipsterati. Yet for all its emotional reality, Taipai is a book without an ounce of self-pity, melodrama, or posturing, making the glacial Lin (Richard Yates) the perfect poster child for a generation facing—and failing to face—maturity. Agent: Bill Clegg, WME Entertainment.

March 1, 2013
Lin (Richard Yates, 2010, etc.) focuses on the lives of post-post-modern Gen Y artists in his third novel. No action-adventure herein. Think internal dialogue. Think angst-filled, uber-jaundiced existentialism. A hundred pages in, protagonist Paul is still prowling Brooklyn parties and bars. He's made a quick trip home to Taiwan, but little happened there either. Back in the borough, Paul has moved from one maybe-a-girlfriend to another, met dealer friends who trade in recreational pharmaceuticals--Xanax, Adderall, cocaine, 'shrooms and MDMA--and ruminated a bit about his novel, soon to be released. The narrative drones along with flat affect, thoroughly reportorial in style, right down to the quirky introductions of characters with a newspaper-style name/age format: "When Paul woke, the next afternoon, Laura, 28, had already friended and messaged him on Facebook." And so it goes, artistic Weltschmerz profundity. Paul is intelligent; his IQ is "either 139 or 154." He invites friends to watch Trash Humpers, uses a MacBook and iPhone, and his life is rendered with a fondness for commas. "When Gabby finally looked at him, seeming more confused than agitated, Paul sarcastically sustained a huge grin, which Gabby stared at blankly while appearing to be thinking, very slowly, due to alcohol, about what, if anything, she should do about what was happening." There begins a book tour (mind-altering drugs fueling readings), perhaps best characterized as a geographical relocation of the same hipster existentialist remove from all but what happens between Paul's ears, the exception being his companion, Erin, a young Baltimore woman he meets via the Internet, whom he marries in a nothing-better-to-do Las Vegas decision. Post-Taipei honeymoon, with Erin bouncing between Baltimore and Brooklyn, the marriage seems off-again, on-again, spiced by avant-garde MacBook-filmed self-documentaries and drug-addled conversations and text messaging both childish and surreal. Very much au courant, a meditation on "the nonexistent somethingness that was currently life.."

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May 15, 2013
This novel follows Paul, a young, Brooklyn-based author, as his drug addiction spirals out of control. Though he experiments at first in the name of artistic expression, Paul becomes consumed by apathy, tripping during interviews and drifting out of touch with old friends. He meets and marries Erin, a fellow artist drug user, and they move to Taipei, Taiwan, where they become performance artists, videotaping themselves while on drugs in public. As their relationship breaks down, Paul nearly overdoses and is finally thankful to be alive. The characters are visibly suffering from loneliness, desperately wounded self-esteem, and an aimlessness that leads them to wander from poetry reading to movie theater to party to party, making the briefest and shallowest of encounters with those around them. Tao Lin's writing style is definitively unique and mirrors the shifting reality his drugged characters perceive when submerged in their daze. At times, however, it is a haze too thick for the unencumbered reader to peer through.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)