Our life, then, might be within the imagination of some vast "overmind," he proposes at one point. Defining things a bit more precisely, a novel is a way of looking at something from a level of remove. Within Li's view of writing as his primary means of deep communication, he thinks at times of life as like a novel. ![]() This interchangeability of Du and you takes on further relevance within Li's recurring dissociations. They know they keep calling each other Du, but recognize it as a sign of love. What occurs often unintentionally becomes a narrative frame. In one scene, Lin writes, At dinner with thirteen relatives, everyone held up tea or water for a toast. The tender concern shared by all for Dudu offers some escape, and serves as a central, implicit example of how we can learn to be other than what we are now and why we might want to do so. Socially, he finds, we live according to dynamics of force, fear, and heirarchy which have not always been the case – and yet it can be difficult to move outside of his impulse to, for instance, yell at his parents when he disapproves of something. This can occur on a chemical level where certain processes are suppressed through electromagnetic radiation in cities, while elements found in natural settings promote healing within the body. Through ongoing research outside of mainstream threories of history, culture, medicine, and so on, Li finds that much of society is actively harmful to humans. Li wants to be nicer to his parents, and his parents want to fight less around him and not make him feel sad or judged, but human flaws get in the way, and the inhuman Dudu short-circuits their nasty impulses. A recurring joke throughout the novel is characters accidentally calling one another "Du." Each character goes through moments of physical pain, self-consciousness, impatience, and other frustrations, and so often it is only through Dudu that this family can be wholly, unreservedly kind to one another. Even though Li cannot always be honest with his parents in speech, he follows up with email exchanges and they resolve conflicts and all continually grow into more understanding people.Ī striking detail of the novel, however, is that while this mediating role of email continues throughout, there is another crucial mediator: Dudu, Li's parents' four-pound white poodle. Late in Leave Society, Lin writes that Li "viewed writing, not speech, as his means to communicate at a 'deeper level.'" This is what he learned to do to navigate the world, and it can even be effective. Back in his first publication – you are a little bit happier than i am, a poetry collection from 2006 – Lin begins a poem titled "i am about to express myself" with "i want to check my email" and then, as he struggles to stay serious, suggests, "i think email changed me." Literary writers writing letters is nothing new, but the largely text-driven world which Lin grew up in is on a vastly different scale. One thing lost is the imaginative work in navigating all that, and with Leave Society, Lin gets more overtly interested in the imagination and everything at work in the background of his life.Īs occurs throughout his fiction, email remains a primary mode of communication – even to speak to his parents in the next room, even as he recognizes the practice can have an alienating effect. If in real life he lays around for hours staring at his phone to browse the Internet, he will simply describe that action. Lin does not warp his writing to find some grand dramatic use of computer networks. ![]() One thing I heard about Taipei from several, wholly disconnected sources is a combined sense of wonder at how well Lin captures the mundane character of online life and frustration at his plainly descriptive style. Lin published his previous novel, Taipei, in 2013, and Leave Society picks up shortly after, as Lin/Li gets contracted both for the current novel and his nonfiction book, Trip (2018). Tao Lin's latest novel, Leave Society, follows a Lin-like figure named Li (who, in turn, writes novels about narrators who are very much just himself).
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