Bed
by Tao Lin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tao LinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-05-15
ISBN: 1933633263
Number of pages: 278
Publisher: Melville House
Book Reviews of Bed
Book Review: The Bed - written by the asian john updike
Summary: 5 Stars
Bed. By Tao Lin. Translated from the German by George Bush and Willy Wonka,
Lin has not till now been offered to English readers. He died of consumption five years ago at the age of 42, leaving various unfinished MSS. behind him, which he desired his executor to destroy. "Bed" was one of them. It is an allegorical collection of stories; in which, however, imagination and reality are to closely crossed that there is hardly a sentence one may not suspect of two intentions. The bed if "Heaven" (i.e., the mixture of human fears and hopes and prejudices normally covered by that term, with any residual objectivity which may also turn out to belong to it); and this bed is inhabited by mysterious "gentlemen," our divinities; Tao, bound for the bed, arrives in its dependent bedroom and claims to have been sent for as a interior decorator, but the representatives of "Heaven" know nothing of him. Neither welcomed nor dismissed, he has a series of encounters with the sly, suspicious feudal peasantry, all masterfully told, and by processes of ambiguous deduction from their evasions and silences advances towards a goal assumed to be worth attaining, but for reasons as ambiguous as the processes of his advance. Every page is a puzzle, and the more tantalising because the ostensible narration, wherever it wanders, lifts detail after detail into brilliant light. Yet a puzzle should perhaps have more leverage to it, a more patent lure. It is useless Tao's wanting to get to the bed unless the reader wants to get there too; the basis of sympathy between them is tenuous, and Tao's manners do not increase it. After all, an allegory of disillusionment has the disadvantage of having been anticipated by life; we hardly need to be enticed that way; the downward drag is only too powerful already.
Reviewer's Note: This review was translated to the English from the English by Ryan. The original Interview used such words as "Kafka" and "The Castle" to describe this piece of literature. I use those words when I address Tao Lin. Tao Lin is the asian john updike. Toa Lin beat Kafka in a game of gin rummy and then wrote this book, drunk with power. The original text for this review, before translation, can be found here: [...]
Summary of Bed
College students, recent graduates, and their parents work at Denny?s, volunteer at a public library in suburban Florida, attend satanic ska/punk concerts, eat Chinese food with the homeless of New York City, and go to the same Japanese restaurant in Manhattan three times in two sleepless days, all while yearning constantly for love, a better kind of love, or something better than love, things which?much like the Loch Ness Monster?they know probably do not exist, but are rumored to exist and therefore ?good enough.?Genre Fiction Books
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