Sleep Waking: Tao Lin 
"I think I'm screwed if I want to get into college. I do not know where to go. And I have only 1,100 points in the entrance examination. "
" Do not worry about it. Probably kill yourself this year. "
" Aha. You're right, "said Dakota Fanning.
Tao Lin, Richard Yates , Alpha Decay, Barcelona, \u200b\u200b2011. Strong Tarín July translation.
sleep Waking
Anyone who has lived recent years in America knows is, today, a sad country. A disoriented nation, which inevitably begins to lose its privileged position in the world, or in some aspects has already lost to China, and does not know how to digest this change. The prominence was one of the core of American popular culture, and their evacuation more economical create such mismatches identity that has put the country of caffeine to tea. Since the mid-sixties American novels have criticized the American dream, many stories that herald its decline. But perhaps Richard Yates is the first real-time tells in this, the awakening of that old dream of dominance no time limits. Almost all reference American symbols in the novel and are shipped with apathy or indifference, in some cases, raw irony
"Where is our Nobel Prize . All former winners of the Nobel Prize were depressed existentialist. Now all are sociologists or so, since North America has been gaining power " (p. 86, see also p. 105)
And the fact that the Day of Action Thanks have an important place in the novel, with its load of symbolism emptied and filled with festive conventionality (ie, its conversion into a antifiesta ) further reinforces this discourse cracked and disturbing about the future of a country and the feeling of helplessness that has its citizens, especially young people. Since 2001 something has broken in the U.S., and there seems no way to recover. Let me quote from a Douglas Coupland, an expert storyteller detect this collective feeling, "Well, maybe people like the idea of \u200b\u200bthe things Americans ... pre-2000 " . The description of the United States that results from reading Richard Yates is a monumental morgue. I think one of the great strengths of this book is its sociological dimension, which will return after making a detour by the ...
psychological dimension
Tao Lin's characters seem stupid , but the narrator's merit is its ability to capture those intimate moments in which we are alone and really stupid. That nurtured array of superstitions, tics, end thoughts, fears unjustified pieces of immaturity, interviews before the mirror, embarrassing grudges against those things or made by the couple, emotional cruelty, misery internal recriminations ominous, etc., who have or have the people and never recognize or concede to the other, represent much of the difficult and dark psychological framework is Richard Yates . A deep and complex book terribly cynical guise of simplicity. Although the Lin stripping many critics have similar misconduct, a sign of lack of literary quality, I recalled, and sorry for the blasphemy, Beckett's characters, especially those of the trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. Dakota and Haley have the same inability to speak, listen and understand, and if Beckett's prose personal breakdown is evident in the language, word for word, Lin would be reflected in the phrasal structure, paragraph by paragraph. Sorry to make this comparison, but I think it can make things clear:
"I have not sent anything yet," said Dakota Fanning. "What if I have kept coming. I've stolen foot cream, lemon. I think it must be nice to put it in the face. Once I set foot cream on your face and it was nice. "
" I wish I would have sent something to have it today. "
" You " Dakota Fanning said. "I'd tomorrow if it was sent before today."
"Remember when you said that you send me something every day."
"Yes," said Dakota Fanning.
"I will kill myself soon," said Haley Joel Osment. (Lin Tao, Richard Yates, p. 135)
I kept waiting. Nothing more. A bike!, I cried. But there are millions of bicycles Hole! What kind of bike? Reflected. Barata, ventured to say. What if you find it cheap?, Said. You have told me cheap, he said. I stood in silence. And if you do not find it cheaper, I finally said, are you going to do. I have said, he said. How he lies on a brief conversation from time to time. (Samuel Beckett, Molloy )
communication becomes an exchange of silly, cleverly repeated that cause irritation to the reader, a no anger directed toward the narrator, who orchestrates harmony wrath, but to those characters so incomprehensibly inept to be understood. How this writing, almost zero degree , accomplishes this resonate with some readers (in other produces a sharp denial), among whom I count myself, is a mystery worth the dig.
As fault point, think there is a lack of precision Lin focus when female characters that seem somewhat stereotyped. Although the novel is narrated in third person, only thoughts are narrated Haley (cf. p. 39), but not the Dakota. As if Lin could not get the head of a woman. There is a time when we read this sentence: "In one scene, a man reportedly doing a monologue, the camera spinning around your head with a continuous movement of three hundred sixty degrees" (p. 167), to get to it I thought it was an accurate description of the novel itself, fore seems tiring, though virtuous, an abominable character named Haley Joel Osment.
metaphysical dimension
said he had ridden that day and had noticed that he thought "Life is stupid. I'm stupid. " (P. 8)
"Life bores me," thought Haley Joel Osment. "Or, wait. I do not know. Never mind. "(P. 9)
" Dakota Fanning said the house and said that the person who lived there did not have to go to school suffering from a deep depression. Others talked about their city that they had to go to school because they were deeply depressed. She said she was deeply depressed and still had to go to school. Haley Joel Osment said she needed to attempt suicide. Dakota Fanning said that other people did not attempt suicide. Haley Joel Osment said that perhaps she needed antidepressants. Haley Joel Osment said, "Why everyone is so fucked up here?". He said this was the best place to live because it was fucking crowded and the weather was very good. He said the city should be advertised with the slogan "People fucking, great weather." (P. 19)
"When Haley Joel Osment thought Dakota Fanning's father envisioned a seemingly ordinary man sitting on the edge of the bed in the morning, standing in an office his face expressionless, walking to his apartment at night, walking to his bedroom, closing the door carefully, screaming jagonía, brushing teeth, sleeping. (P. 20)
thought of nonsense. He felt himself as a nonsense. Life had no sense. He thought for a little acceptance. It focused on the acceptance. Subsided. (P. 48)
" That Fuck everyone. I hate everything. I'm confused "(p. 63)
" We should not commit suicide, "said Haley Joel Osment. "Not yet. Great. Postponed. "(P. 67)
I chose some pieces, if I had to play all the result is Richard Yates . The characters created by Lin are cruel and selfish to inconceivable limits (cf. pp. 1972-1979). Almost everyone is depressed and taking medication, or drugs, or both, and most have suicidal thoughts. "If you are depressed is that you are crazy" (p. 81), says Julia, one of the secondary characters. Sometimes make things absolutely absurd ("Haley Joel Osment walked to the post office. Sent some batteries stuffed in envelopes to Mexico and Tennessee by post "; p. 173), say things inane and swim in complete nonsense. They are subject to a full drift, eat garbage, trash drink and have no work or refuse jobs, living garbage. "" I want a baby driving a garbage truck to my house and go on my bed while I sleep, "said Haley Joel Osment" I have a philosophy here that, sorry again my audacity, also reminds me of Beckett, in particular those characters Endgame , Nagg and Nell, who spend all the work inside dustbins.
social dimension
"I like Kill Your Idols." "No," said Haley Joel Osment. "Okay," said Dakota Fanning, and sent him a song.
Tao Lin, Richard Yates
powerful feelings end up being successful almost imperceptible
Tao Lin, in a translated poem here
said that the most important virtue of Richard Yates is, in my opinion wrong and foolish, as its size group portrait figurative and metonymic. To think that Lin has tried to make the epochal novel, sociological, the data leads me away from the relentless producing the names of the characters. Dakota Fanning and Haley Joel Osment are the names of the protagonists, but in "real life" there are two famous Hollywood actors involved in blockbusters blockbuster as The War of the Worlds or The Sixth Sense called Dakota Fanning and Haley Joel Osment. Even the late writer Richard Yates, the title of the book is a well known figure in the American common culture, following the award-winning film adaptation of his novel Revolutionary Road . The anonymous and mediocre Lin's book characters take the name of Hollywood stars is in itself very significant. But even more so than, at any time of the novel, however many are the times in which they are mentioned, no longer "Dakota Fanning" and "Haley Joel Osment", instead of becoming Dakota and Haley, as would any normal account. For example:
was a friend of the editor of a magazine that had published poetry by Haley Joel Osment. The mobile phone rang Haley Joel Osment. It was Dakota Fanning. Haley Joel Osment got the phone to your ear. Dakota Fanning said ... (P. 79).
The procedure is forced, but must ask the why a narrative and radical choice. And hint two possibilities: first, less risky, is that Lin wants the reader always keep a distance from the characters that make it impossible to empathize with them and end up putting on your skin. To understand this well from outside the United States, imagine that the characters in the novel is called Shakira and Cantinflas. For concentrated read a novel, could not stop watching at any time the singer and actor: his celebrity and his recognizable faces would be imposed on the ability of any narrative to create solid characters. Thus, Lin forces the reader to hold a tremendous distance from what is read, far from feeling sympathy or affinity with the young protagonists, the reader becomes a judge who evaluates continuous shares , and they can not see a subjectivity that perennially stolen, castrated, by Lin.
There is another possible interpretation, which I will take more liberties, to say the risks. Consider the fact that use is not a celebrity, but the "name" of a celebrity. A celebrity is a kind of brand advertising subjectified, a label that itself generates economic and expectations. Remember, anecdotally, that one of the characters of that Generation A, Douglas Coupland, created a website with mobile phone ring tones consisting of silence Celebrity Room . The usual sharpness Coupland here becomes absurd symbol of our society, the famous glow up at / by his absence, just as God by his silence thunders in the famous poem by Blas de Otero. Here are also the famous ghost in , they are not, but his name is like an emblem, a logo narrative that completely depersonalized characters. Many times we have known or imagined people living traumatized or upset by the same name as that some famous, may be tempted to feel at times that are not anyone that their identity has been cleared because his name belongs to someone else known to them, by whose standards are always measured his own. And is that the issues of appeal to the possibilities. We like Wagner, who plays Ignacio Vidal-Folch, who "maintained that name things not knowing is not understanding its essence, and if something bothered him was like confusing" . The Cratylus , surely round after the text Vidal-Folch, we made clear the importance of understanding a concept name, and a person does not cease to be a bio-identity concept individual meat.
And so, in this case Tao Lin is relentless with their characters: they are forced to always pass through the filter of other Hollywood gloss, further exacerbating, if anything, its nothingness and nothingness. After such use, in my view as risky as working, Tao Lin seems to be telling us that our contemporary execute to the "normal" people every time sanctifies a celebrity, and celebrity hagiography already Creek to the core of our Western societies surface is forcing us all in an unconscious way to be famous, at least the Warholian 15 minutes, not to seem unsuccessful. This senseless vicious circle is of particular concern in the United States, as you know who know the country well. To cite one dramatic example, Joyce Carol Oates stressed in a distant the appellant setting of a crowd of young Americans, marginal, or in and of pure crime, who dream of being of major movie stars, athletes millionaires: celebrity, in short. They think models like Capone or Dillinger and believe that you can also get the fame crime through . Someone has to Capone and model may be alienated, but so can a man be called Al Capone and spent all his life a prisoner of jokes about his name because model has fallen on him all its suffocating weight of the media, for life. Lin puts his characters famous names to prevent the lifting, not to let them be them, and also to remind us that stereotypes of fame we are constantly pushing, pushing it to be others who are not, well be no one, since hardly anyone knows us. In this cruel system of mandatory stardom, you only want one without being a loser when you so famous that pursue re anonymity. It's like the goose game, winning only the one at the point of departure after having left it at some point.
This is even more significant if we add the data on which are rare now because a review is no place for it, that Lin is surely The young writer who has done things most incredible and absurd to try to be famous at all costs.
conclusion
would not close without mentioning the tight July translation Strong, who has dealt with a bull temperance rather complicated, precisely calculated by the simplicity of expression, I had access to the English original and I think the translator has understood perfectly the spirit of the text of Lin and was able to recreate it in Castilian. This edition further revaluation of Alpha Decay, hampered only by a small typo ("I said I do not want to interrupt people," p. 140), but the English public offers a valuable book.
This review, to do justice to the end of the novel by Lin, ceremonial ends without unnecessary pomposity.
.
.
.
(Critical Value of the author or publisher: none)
