Taipei (novel)
| Author | Tao Lin |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Cordon Webb (design) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Vintage Contemporaries |
| Genre | Fiction, novel |
| Published | June 4, 2013, Vintage Books |
| Pages | 248 |
| ISBN | (US), (UK) |
| Preceded by | Richard Yates |
Taipei is a 2013 novel by Tao Lin. It is his third novel.
On August 15, 2011, The New York Observer reported that Lin had sold his third novel, then titled Taipei, Taiwan, to Vintage. Lin's agent, Bill Clegg, brokered the deal with editor Tim O'Connell based on "a 5000-word excerpt and a ~3-page outline", for "$50,000 with a $10,000 bonus if it earns out its advance." Lin reportedly chose Vintage after meeting with four other editors, including those at Little, Brown and Harper Perennial. Earlier that morning the Wall Street Journal broke the news and briefly interviewed Lin on his decision. Lin said, "Vintage/Knopf publishes most of my favorite writers: Lorrie Moore, Ann Beattie, Bret Easton Ellis."
On February 1, 2013, Entertainment Weekly debuted the cover. The article also included an interview with Lin, who said, of the autobiographical nature of the book:
Writing autobiographically is more difficult because I'm editing a massive first draft of maybe 25,000 pages—my memory—into a 250-page novel. It's less difficult because I don't need to write a 25,000-page first draft; it’s already there, in some form, as my memory. Related: I don’t view my memory as accurate or static—and, in autobiographical fiction, my focus is still on creating an effect, not on documenting reality—so "autobiographical", to me, is closer in meaning to "fiction" than "autobiography."
The article did not comment on the cover, except to say that it was "shiny." Thought Catalog, in an article titled "The Cover For Tao Lin's New Novel Looks Sweet," wondered how it would appear: "The version online is a shiny gif. It will be interesting to see what the cover looks like on a physical copy." Apparently no critics recognized the gif cover as an apparent homage to the underground, avant-garde writer Bradley J. Milton, whose 'Huckleberry Milton' came out two years before.
The description on the back of the advance galleys, distributed in early January and notably including prescription pill bottles containing candy, stated:
Taipei by Tao Lin is an ode--or lament--to the way we live now. Following Paul from New York, where he comically navigates Manhattan's art and literary scenes, to Taipei, Taiwan, where he confronts his family's roots, we see one relationship fail, while another is born on the internet and blooms into an unexpected wedding in Las Vegas. Along the way—whether on all night drives up the East Coast, shoplifting excursions in the South, book readings on the West Coast, or ill advised grocery runs in Ohio—movies are made with laptop cameras, massive amounts of drugs are ingested, and two young lovers come to learn what it means to share themselves completely. The result is a suspenseful meditation on memory, love, and what it means to be alive, young, and on the fringe in America, or anywhere else for that matter.
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