Last year, while procrastinating for several months over whether or not to buy the book Mr G by Alan Lightman as a Christmas present for my dad, I became aware, due to the proximity of Lin to Lightman on alphabetically organised bookshelves, of an author called Tao Lin. I must have browsed in at least five bookshops, each time refraining from buying for various reasons (my dad might prefer a science book; it would be heavy to fly with books on my way to see him; I should get it delivered to him now and get a more expensive present for Christmas…), and each time my eye would be caught by the name to the left of Lightman, and the attention-grabbing titles. Shoplifting in American Apparel was surely a signal to a young city dweller like me - a secret handshake in amongst the grownup stuff - and I would flick through it, then Tao's poetry collection You're a Little Bit Happier Than I Am. Then I would pick up the thickest of his books, Tai Pei, with its glitter hologram typeset title, and I would read Brett Easton Ellis' quote proclaiming Tao the voice of his generation, and I would procrastinate over whether or not to buy it as well.
I realise now that my actions during that time were very Tao Lin in their nature, and when the time came that I actually bought the book, I came to realise that most of what comes naturally to me is. I wanted to call Brett Easton Ellis and tell him he was right. I am marginally younger than Tao. We are statistical members of the millennial generation. Definitions for what makes a millennial tend to be derogatory but in a loving way - one article from comedy outlet the Onion stated "the average millennial needs 4 to 5 positive affirmation from friends and authority figures an hour", while Time magazine referred to us as the "lazy, entitled narcissists", the "me me me generation" who will go on to save the world.
Time can rip as much as they want. The thing about millennials is that we love to see our own image, even, as is usually the case, we're being teased. We also love to project our image - most of the affirmations are expected to come immediately from peers on social media. I follow thousands of people online whose blogs and interactions reinforce how much the Internet figures in my day to day life, but Tai Pei was the first novel I read that reflected my online life in a real way. Dave Eggers' The Circle satirises Google, and Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story paints a dystopian future of social media, but in Tai Pei, Tao will check his Goodreads queue, or message someone on Twitter. It is precisely its mundaneness that makes it so unique. If you find it self-indulgent, have you read a blog recently?
Consistent with someone whose output is 50% poetry, Tai Pei sings in its attempt to circle truth. Don't be fooled by the repetition and the looseness, the constant use of "vague" to explain something that Tao felt but could't quite describe. (One of my friends synopsised Tai Pei like this: "I texted some girl, I was high.") These tiny jottings are actually put together precisely. Like the mandala drawings for sale on Tao's website, Tai Pei is a large picture formed of seemingly throwaway details, scribbled within a structure provided by a short-lived marriage and a trip to Tai Pei to visit his parents. If you follow articles and posts by Tao and his friends, you will realise that the novel is a barely fictionalised version of his real life. You can find his ex-wife Megan on Vice, reviewing his bedroom. You can find one of the episodes in the novel as a video, having been filmed on the trip to Tai Pei before it was written.
As well as our shared age group, Tao's writing touched me in the part of me that is a Western girl with parents in China. I really never thought I would read a book where someone shared my ethnicity and didn't feel the need to talk about spices, or use the phrase "fragrant soup". When I read his descriptions of Taiwan and they were mostly of fast food restaurants and brightly lit malls, I could have wept. It felt like permission.
Emma-Lee Moss reads while walking, reads under the table at important dinners, is reading now. She is a Scorpio with Leo rising, and lives between Los Angeles and London, which according to Google maps, is Newfoundland.
