 First edition cover | |
| Author | Tao Lin |
|---|---|
| Original title | Leave Society |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Autofiction, Literary fiction |
| Published | August 3, 2021, Vintage Books |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Book |
| Pages | 368 |
| ISBN | 1101974478 (US) |
| Preceded by | Trip |
Leave Society is a 2021 novel by Tao Lin. It is his fourth novel, and tenth book overall.
The cover, by Linda Huang, features what are described in the novel as "microfireflies" or "dustwinkling." [1]
Leave Society is in four parts, and is about a character named Li who is based on the author. The New York Times summarized the book as such: "Li has left behind speed, despair and his belief in Western medicine. (He refuses steroid shots for his back pain.) But what he is really recovering from is existentialism, the idea that life has no meaning other than what we give it. He now believes that the world has an inherent purpose. To get closer to its 'mystery,' and to feel less grumpy, he drops a lot of LSD and eats even more cannabis." [2]
Leave Society received rave reviews before its publication. In Spike Art Magazine, Dean Kissick wrote, "Rather than retreating into ourselves and our emotional subjectivity, which is the dominant approach in autofiction, social media, and the general contemporary condition, Lin writes to destroy the ego, to escape the atomisation of modern man and the feelings of despair, that life is meaninglessness and/or hopeless." [3] In the Washington Examiner on July 22, Alex Perez wrote, "It will probably be ignored or misunderstood by the ideology-poisoned commentariat that rules over the society Li is trying to leave. It was up to Lin, a writer who for so long seemed completely disconnected from his humanity, to write the most deeply human book of the year." [4] Publishers Weekly wrote: "Much of the action and descriptions are banal, and aside from the romance, this feels a bit too detached and devoid of emotion for a book ostensibly about learning to live. Lin’s fans might appreciate this, but it doesn’t offer anything new." [5]
On the book's release date, in The New York Times Book Review , Christine Smallwood wrote of the main character, "Li has left behind speed, despair and his belief in Western medicine. (He refuses steroid shots for his back pain.) But what he is really recovering from is existentialism, the idea that life has no meaning other than what we give it. He now believes that the world has an inherent purpose ... Stylistically, the book is artful, even radical ... Despite, or perhaps because of, its virtues, the novel doesn’t hold the reader in its thrall. It meanders, linking scenes of low-key bickering in a gentle ebb and flow of harmony and disharmony. It doesn’t seem to mind if you put it down ... But the novel has a vision, however cracked, an idea connected to its form, which is more than I can say for most books." [6]
Mixed and negative reviews followed, including in Bookforum [7] and The New Yorker , where Andrea Long Chu wrote:
The first sentence of almost every chapter contains at least one number, often several, like a medical record: "Thirty tabs of LSD arrived on day thirty-five." This kind of prose can be elegant; it can also feel like dieting ... But it’s most interesting to consider the book’s flat affect as a curious, sidewise effect of Li’s linguistic relationship to his parents ... There is a translated quality to this kind of writing, as if Lin were rendering Mandarin word for word; in fact, given Li’s propensity for audio recordings, this is likely exactly what happened ... the effect he’s created is a kind of fastidious plotlessness, one whose accuracy to life, affected or not, has the ambivalent virtue of being, like life itself, mostly boring. [8]
In a long review in the Los Angeles Review of Books , Lamorna Ash wrote:
Lin introduces a radical shift in outlook, a change from a posture of boredom to one of awe [...] The final sentence of Leave Society—"Li took a leaf"—echoes an earlier scene in which Li offers a leaf to his brother’s son. "What is it?" his nephew asks. "A leaf," Li tells him. "It’s just a tiny leaf." Literally, just a leaf, something that provokes awe by being nothing more than what it is. On my first reading of Leave Society, I did not know what, if anything, to make of the homophone "leaf" and "leave." On the second reading, when I was better accustomed to Lin’s humor and his delight in multiplicity, it seemed to me both metaphorical and literal, playful and quite serious, a brilliant, almost perfect ending. [9]
Existentialism is a family of views and forms of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence. Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. Common concepts in existentialist thought include existential crisis, dread, and anxiety in the face of an absurd world and free will, as well as authenticity, courage, and virtue.
Colin Henry Wilson was an English existentialist philosopher-novelist. He also wrote widely on true crime, mysticism and the paranormal, eventually writing more than a hundred books. Wilson called his philosophy "new existentialism" or "phenomenological existentialism", and maintained his life work was "that of a philosopher, and (his) purpose to create a new and optimistic existentialism".
Ram Dass, also known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and writer. His best-selling 1971 book Be Here Now, which has been described by multiple reviewers as "seminal", helped popularize Eastern spirituality and yoga in the West. He authored or co-authored twelve more books on spirituality over the next four decades, including Grist for the Mill (1977), How Can I Help? (1985), and Polishing the Mirror (2013).
Christian existentialism is a theo-philosophical movement which takes an existentialist approach to Christian theology. The school of thought is often traced back to the work of the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) who is widely regarded as the father of existentialism.
The Sickness unto Death is a book written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus. A work of Christian existentialism, the book is about Kierkegaard's concept of despair, which he equates with the Christian concept of sin, which he terms "the sin of despair". Walter Lowrie wrote that he saw the themes in The Sickness unto Death as a repetition of those in Kierkegaard’s earlier work, Fear and Trembling, and as being even more closely related to those in The Concept of Anxiety. Kierkegaard used two pseudonyms for opposite purposes: "Johannes Climacus" suggests that he is not a Christian, whereas "Anti-Climacus" suggests he is "an extraordinary Christian".
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Emptiness as a human condition is a sense of generalized boredom, social alienation, nihilism and apathy. Feelings of emptiness often accompany dysthymia, depression, loneliness, anhedonia, despair, or other mental/emotional disorders, including schizoid personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizotypal personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. A sense of emptiness is also part of a natural process of grief, as resulting death of a loved one, or other significant changes. The particular meanings of "emptiness" vary with the particular context and the religious or cultural tradition in which it is used.
Tao Lin is an American novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer, and artist. He has published four novels, a novella, two books of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a memoir, as well as an extensive assortment of online content. His third novel, Taipei, was published by Vintage on June 4, 2013. His nonfiction book Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change was published by Vintage on May 1, 2018. His fourth novel, Leave Society, was published by Vintage on August 3, 2021.
Autofiction is, in literary criticism, a form of fictionalized autobiography.
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