![]() Not a happy ending but something hopeful. I remember wanting a hopeful ending to my book. Leah: Thank you! I appreciate you saying that. I remember reading it in one or two nights. ![]() I admired and enjoyed your memoir Vanishing Twins-how you used your own life and relationships, threading in research and giving it a form, to create a work of art. I imagine the autobiographical aspect attracted you too. It’s about change and optimism instead of stagnancy and disaffection. When I read the synopsis of Leave Society, and saw that it was about the narrator visiting his parents for months at a time, and healing through diet, I felt like, Finally, a Tao Lin book for me! I always picked your prior novels up at the bookstore and looked through them, but the drug use and disaffection depressed me, so I avoided reading them even though I appreciated what you were trying to do. Leah: To be honest, this is the first book I have read of yours. It also made me want to write, which the best books often do. I just read the end of your book again and it made me cry a little even on second reading, which to me, means it really worked. Leah: As a former calorie restrictor and current health food enthusiast, I could go on and on about the particulars, but in the interest of getting to feelings rather than facts, I’ll resist the urge to turn this into a health and wellness interview. Tao: It’s humic and fulvic acid, which are in dirt. I’ve never heard of a ‘soil-based supplement.’ I’m assuming it’s…dirt? Leah: That’s pretty much what I was hoping for: incredible specificity. I’ve also eaten half a papaya and interacted with my partner and our cats so far today. ![]() After doing stuff online for a while, I drank some more coffee with 0.3 grams more kratom powder and printed an interview to edit by hand, and then I answered emails and am now working on this interview. I brought the drink to my room and drank it while checking email and social media. While the water was heating, I stood outside and flapped my arms while looking at and around the sun. ![]() Tao Lin: I woke at 6:30 a.m., meditated for 15 minutes, drank a tiny amount of a soil-based supplement, made a blended drink containing hot water, a tablespoon of cold-brewed coffee, four raw eggs, honey, a teaspoon of cacao powder, 0.3 grams of kratom powder, two capsules of cow organ powder, and two capsules of cow bone and marrow powder. What did you do today and what have you eaten? I’m curious about your own wellness routine. Leah Dieterich: So much of this book involves the main character, Li, healing himself through diet, breathing, psychedelic drugs, cannabis, yoga, an inversion table, the list goes on. While I cannot answer these questions, I do know that I appreciate that this novel and its author are oriented toward finding a better way of living. I see my own similar tendencies and wonder whether they are paths to transcendence or just ways to focus an unrelenting anxiety. Lin’s narrator’s relentless self-improvement feels at once familiar and alienating. It’s an idea I myself have considered many times in recent years, as have a lot of people if social media’s obsession with #vanlife and Cabin Porn are any indication. Leave Society is not just a title, it’s his personal goal. ![]() While traveling back and forth, he incites and tempers arguments, uncovers secrets about nature and history, and tries to understand how to live a meaningful life as an artist, son, and partner. His new novel, Leave Society, follows a novelist named Li over the course of four years as spends an increasing amount of time with parents in Taipei, and falls in love with a woman in New York. And full disclosure, my editor is his partner, which certainly made me want to try to get to know him better, at least through his work. But many things have changed since Lin published his last novel Taipei in 2013, so I was more open to giving his new work a chance. I found the tone depressing with its bleak outlook and flat affect. I’ve appreciated Tao Lin’s worth ethic and output for years from afar, but I could never quite get into his novels. In conversation with Leah Dieterich, the writer speaks on trusting nature, believing no one, and drinking dirt for breakfast ![]()
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