Other critics have compared him to Douglas Coupland, Bret Easton Ellis and even Jack Kerouac, and these aren’t wildly off the mark, although Coupland is warmer, Ellis is nastier, and Kerouac is simply worse. But I was reminded, of all things, of the Evelyn Waugh of Vile Bodies, in terms of style rather than subject matter; mutatis mutandis, but Waugh’s deadpan reporting of telephone conversations and the emotional void of his characters is just the kind of technique that is being used here.
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From The Guardian’s review of Tao Lin’s Richard Yates.
Had never thought of the parallel to Vile Bodies before but it’s spot-on. Lin is important! And now I’m going to re-read Vile Bodies.
