Tao Lin

A bold portrait of a writer working to balance all his lives--as an artist, a son, and a loner. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL. In 2014, a novelist named Li leaves Manhattan to visit his parents in Taipei for ten weeks. He doesn't know it yet, but his life will begin to deepen and complexify on this trip. As he flies between these two worlds--year by year, over four years--he will flit in and out of optimism, despair, loneliness, sanity, bouts of chronic pain, and drafts of a new book. He will incite and temper arguments, uncover secrets about nature and history, and try to understand how to live a meaningful life as an artist and a son. But how to fit these pieces of his life together? Where to begin? Or should he leave society altogether? In his most recent work, Tao Lin delivers an engrossing and hopeful novel about life, fiction, and where the two blur together that builds toward a stunning, if unexpected, romance. Exploring everyday events and scenes--waiting rooms, dog walks, family meals--while investigatively venturing to the edges of society, where culture dissolves into mystery, Lin spins the ordinary into something monumental, and shows what it is to write a novel in real time. Illuminating and deeply felt, Leave Society is a masterly story about life and art at the end of history.

Leave Society

D D D 

“Taipei” but hopeful and healthy. Change from a posture of boredom to one of awe :) it’s just a tiny leaf

jack

i have a lot of thoughts on this. i think it is noble in presenting a path forward that isn't nihilistically peddling something, nor is it appealing to a process outside oneself to work itself out before any sort of bettering can be done. reminds me of the revelation levin has at the end of anna karenina (notably levin serves as tolstoy's self-insert in that text... something to be said there), where one must work every day to be better; enlightenment is not continual progress but has good and bad days. elsewhere in the novel i was frustrated by how hegelian it was re: history while denying any sort of western philosophical heritage. as a reading experience it is a lot less fun (to my eye) than taipei was. i can't tell if that is due to subject matter or style. i've been telling everyone in my life to read tao lin since i started reading taipei and no one has taken me up on it. whatever. here's a passage from this one i found particularly enjoyable:
"History could be like a years long stay in a forest-garden, observing and enjoying and learning, instead of a crazed visit, running through in an hour, out of breath and confused, yelling and killing. Maybe slowly was the only way to reach the other side of matter–not crashing through with time machines or electromagnetic interferometry, but crafting a planet-sized art object, a context lasting and magical enough for greater magic to appear.
The final, history-ending spell could be a book or a relationship."

Katie Chua

i think this book is personally more satisfying having read taipei. i know of people who haven't and still liked this book but this book seems more meaningful knowing that the same author who wrote a book like taipei also wrote this book. strangely hopeful. it made me want to hug my parents and thank them and also tell everyone i lvoe that i love them and i'm sorry for all the annoying things i do, it's probably because we're all being poisoned by living in modern society. but, and this but is important, we should all try and do better

From the acclaimed author of Taipei, a bold portrait of a writer working to balance all his lives—artist, son, loner—as he spins the ordinary into something monumental. An engrossing, hopeful novel about life, fiction, and where the two blur together. In 2014, a novelist named Li leaves Manhattan to visit his parents in Taipei for ten weeks. He doesn't know it yet, but his life will begin to deepen and complexify on this trip. As he flies between these two worlds--year by year, over four years--he will flit in and out of optimism, despair, loneliness, sanity, bouts of chronic pain, and drafts of a new book. He will incite and temper arguments, uncover secrets about nature and history, and try to understand how to live a meaningful life as an artist and a son. But how to fit these pieces of his life together? Where to begin? Or should he leave society altogether? Exploring everyday events and scenes--waiting rooms, dog walks, family meals--while investigatively venturing to the edges of society, where culture dissolves into mystery, Lin shows what it is to write a novel in real time. Illuminating and deeply felt, as it builds toward a stunning, if unexpected, romance, Leave Society is a masterly story about life and art at the end of history. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

Leave Society

Reviews