I'm not sure what the point of autofiction is quite yet. Maybe I haven't read enough of it, but I have a sense that autofiction as a project just isn't for me. Or for Taipei specifically, the similarities between me and him might cause me to find Taipei more banal than it is. Tao Lin's base elements of expression (like mine!) clearly come from an engagement, through the internet, with mathematical and logical structure as bases of thought; infinities often collapse into points and his writing circles shark-like around thoughts and feelings that are "irreducible as prime numbers". Neurotic self-consciousness isn't played out for me just yet--Proust still holds domain over my mind--but the affectless, turned-outwards-then-back-in self-consciousness of Taipei is trite and lacks substance. Alienation is reified in Taipei in both content and form--but if Taipei knocks on every facet of modern life and finds each hollow, the author's lack of curiosity or a misguided commitment to "perfect", anti-narrative replication are plausible etiologies. That isn't to say I think Tao Lin is necessarily a poor writer--there are some flashes of descriptive brilliances throughout--but if he deigns to stare so long at the hollow core of modern life, why not take a real bite?