Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Bed Paperback – May 15, 2007
"Tao Lin writes from moods that less radical writers would let pass — from laziness, from vacancy, from boredom. And it turns out that his report from these places is moving and necessary, not to mention frequently hilarious."—Miranda July
A startlingly original voice announces itself immediately in this collection of award-winning stories. Tao Lin’s absorbing writing style matches a minimalist prose with a lyric sensibility, poignant compassion with a hysterical sense of humor, bitter reality with enchanting fantasy, and youthful outlandishness with a gentle, mature perceptiveness—all in shaped stories that are a tribute to the form.
In a series of pinpoint portrayals, Lin’s tales depict young people in a surreal place between irresponsible youth and workaday adulthood, wanting to reject both cultures in order to craft something different. But such rebellion is harder than ever in a culture dominated by outrageousness, and Lin sensitively portrays the struggle in a way that is highly entertaining, impressively smart, and ultimately moving.
It will leave some cheering the war against a dumbed-down culture, others laughing at the tactics, and all concerned feeling like they’ve got a new champion in Tao Lin.
Tao Lin, also author of the novel Eeeee Eee Eeee, lives in New York City.
- Print length278 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMelville House
- Publication dateMay 15, 2007
- Dimensions5.31 x 0.84 x 7.47 inches
- ISBN-101933633263
- ISBN-13978-1933633268
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
- Leave Society (Vintage Contemporaries)Paperback24% offLimited time dealFREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Wednesday, Apr 3
- you are a little bit happier than i amPaperbackFREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Wednesday, Apr 3Only 8 left in stock (more on the way).
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Melville House; Third Printing edition (May 15, 2007)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 278 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1933633263
- ISBN-13 : 978-1933633268
- Item Weight : 11.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.84 x 7.47 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #775,058 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #292 in Absurdist Fiction (Books)
- #7,539 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #14,469 in Short Stories (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Tao Lin is the author of ten books, including Leave Society (2021), Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change (2018), and Taipei (2013). He's working on a nonfiction book titled Self Heal: How I Cured My Autism, Autoimmune Disorder, Eczema, Depression, and Other Health Problems Naturally. He lives in Hawaii. Visit his website at https://taolin.us.
Related products with free delivery on eligible orders Sponsored | Try Prime for unlimited fast, free shipping
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
I read Bed over the course of two afternoons at a table outside Good Karma Cafe in Philadelphia, drinking a series of iced coffees and taking advantage of the spectacular girl-watching opportunities of that locale. Over the course of my unemployment, this shop became my go-to destination for wasting away the afternoon with a good book. The friendly atmosphere lent itself to conversations with other patrons. I noticed that gay men tended to strike up conversations with me when I read Haroki Murakami, pretty girls when I read David Foster Wallace or Rivka Galchen. No one spoke to me when I read Tao Lin.
This was a bit disappointing, since I feel like Bed marks the author's most accessible work. I generally stuttered and mumbled extremely unsatisfying descriptions when asked about EEE or SFAA but I feel as if I'd have had some really cogent and specific things to say about Bed, if only anyone had bothered to ask. (Thanks, internet.)
The short stories in this collection seem focused in the way that Lin's novels are sprawling, while still maintaining the major stylistic and thematic elements of his work. That's probably a function of the form more than anything else, but regardless of the reason, its nice to see a slightly different version of what the author is capable of as a writer.
For anyone less inclined than I was to enjoy Tao Lin's work, I would recommend Bed as your starting point. Its a decent primer on the talent behind the author's polarizing public image.
If you are looking to start reading the works of Tao Lin I feel as this is a great place to start.
i like just holding the book and looking at it too. its a really nice publication.
This is the first Tao Lin book I bought and it's pretty great. He goes to weird places in people's heads like few other author do. Encapsulates the struggle of connecting the world inside your brain with the outside one. The stories are lonely and funny. If you're a David Foster Wallace fan, you will love this.
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. ***
Top reviews from other countries
SAVE YOUR MONEY.
There is nothing to see here.