Talk With Tao
Tao Lin is the author of Bed and Taipei, among others. His newest novel Leave Society is forthcoming from Penguin Random House this summer. We’re seniors at NYU and Tao is our favorite author and therefore our favorite NYU alum. He’s sometimes playful and sometimes gloomy and ever comforting to us. This February, when the snow wouldn’t stop coming down in New York City, we stayed inside and spent extra time with all his books. Then we asked him about Leave Society, his life, and writing in general.
What is your writing practice like right now? Is it systematic at all? Is it daily?
When I was working on Leave Society, I worked every day for like 1-10 hours a day, working more on days before deadlines and less on days I had other stuff I wanted to do. Now, without a single large project to work on, I’ve been working on writing 20-120 minutes per day.
How have your parents responded to your writing in general, and to your writing about them? Have they read Leave Society yet?
They’ve been very supportive. They seem to like and even be excited about me writing about them. They’re far, far outside the literary world, living in Taiwan and not reading fiction, and so I think they mostly just like the attention I give them, and the attention I give to my relationships with them, by writing about them. They haven’t read Leave Society yet, no.
Why did you separate Trip and Leave Society at all, and into two different genres? Why is your visit with Kathleen Harrison detailed in Trip and not Leave Society?
I don’t know. It just happened that way. I started writing Leave Society first, and Trip was going to be expansion of my Vice column “Tao of Terence.” I tried combining the two into one book, but my editor and I decided it wasn’t working, so we decided to make them be two separate books. Both books reference non-fiction books in a non-fiction way, but Leave Society is more like a novel, with a linear narrative and various characters. I tried to keep the overlap minimal.
What was the editing process of Leave Society like?
From October 28, 2013 to January 24, 2018, I took 526,939 words of notes on my life. From sometime in 2015 until October 12, 2018, I edited down those words into a 143,452-word draft of Leave Society. From there, I kept working on it, producing these drafts:
Nov 22, 2018. 111,672 words, without prologue
Mar 6, 2019. 97,059 words, 7 parts, 50 chapters
May 7, 2019. 82,173 words, 4 parts, 40 chapters
Jul 21, 2019. 83,063 words, 4 parts, 36 chapters
Nov 4, 2019. 87,201 words, 4 parts, 35 chapters
Jan 17, 2020. 91,300 words, 4 parts, 32 chapters
I sent the 91,300-word draft to my editor. He got back to me with edits on February 25, sending me a long email and a file of the draft with his notes and edits.
I worked on it until July 15, creating a 82,205-word draft that was in 4 parts and 31 chapters. I sent it to him. He got back to me with more edits, and I worked on it until August 25, creating a 80,300-word draft that was in 4 parts and 32 chapters.
Then a copy-editor copy-edited it and sent the marked-up file to me in October. I wrote about copy-edits on my blog here. After copy-edits, there was another round of edits, called first pass. For first pass, I worked for around 3.5 hours a day for 9 days, making medium, small, and tiny edits and corrections, which I turned in on December 15. I got questions and comments from production on January 22, and worked on them until January 29, and I think it’s done now.
What do you think about MFA programs?
They don’t seem worth it if you need to pay a lot of money for one. I remember that, after college, I considered applying for MFA programs because it was something to do, but I felt daunted by the applications and needing to get recommendations and pay money. Also, I’d already finished a story-collection, Bed, by then, and didn’t think I needed an MFA to get published. An MFA could’ve been good for meeting people, but I was able to meet people outside an MFA by submitting to online literary magazines and starting a blog.
In Bed you wrote “He wanted to live ethereally, intrinsically, not doing anything—like a plant.” This is one of our favorite lines/metaphors so we wanted to know if you could say anything about writing it, if you remember.
Thank you for enjoying that metaphor. I remember liking the words “ethereal” and “intrinsic.”
Second favorite line in that book is “like a ghost with a cold.” Do you have anything to say about this one?
It seems Lorrie Moore-esque. She influenced Bed a lot.
The majority of your similes in Bed utilize animals, i.e. “like a rat in the stomach” and “like gerbils let into a swamp”. Why do you use small animals in this way?
I like animals.
What made you want to shift styles between Bed and Shoplifting From American Apparel?
I felt pretentious reading Bed-like writing aloud. When I started doing more readings, I wrote more things that I felt less pretentious reading aloud. Those things made up my first poetry-book, you are a little bit happier than i am, and the style continued in my fiction. But then I switched back to Bed-like writing in Taipei. Leave Society is a mix of the two styles, in my view.
Have you ever talked to Lorrie Moore?
I haven’t, no. I’ve seen her read twice, at Barnes & Noble in Union Square and at [I don’t remember where].
Do you like Chelsey Minnis?
I do. I recommend “Clown.”
Do you like Frank O’Hara?
I read Lunch Poems in college but don’t remember it now.
What do you like about Welcome to the Dollhouse?
I liked how depressed and upset the main character was, how awkward and deadpan everyone was, and the bleak but realistic-seeming ending.
Who is your favorite author from before 1900?
I like Ryōkan Taigu (b. 1758), Arthur Schopenhauer (b. 1788), Jean Rhys (b. 1890), and Fernando Pessoa (b. 1888).
What drug would you not recommend to the youth, ever?
Statins, Nexium, and other pharmaceutical drugs that disable an enzyme in a manner that’s supposed to help you but seems to just impair you and cause many problems while offering no recreational—no desirable psychoactive—effect.
How often do you do your dishes?
Once per day to multiple times per day. I like doing dishes.
What about Bobst (the NYU library) do you like? Favorite floor?
I like that it’s quiet and spacious and that it’s next to Washington Square Park. I think my favorite floors are the basement floors and the 8th floor, where the fiction is located.
Did you live in an NYU dorm? If so, which one?
I lived in Goddard and Lafayette.
Where do you get your hair cut?
I’ve cut it myself since I was around 11.
Did you have control over all your book covers?
No. I haven’t had control over any of them. I’ve liked all of them except for Richard Yates.
Do you go on walks? If so, where do you like to walk and for how long?
I do. I go on walks with my girlfriend. We walk anywhere. We walk from 5-180 minutes at a time. We don’t have a car. I recommend walking. You get to see things, and it’s good exercise.
How is Dudu now?
She is good. She’s 13. Here’s a recent photo of her with a fish:
Leave Society is available! For pre-order! At Penguin Random House!
Aurora Huiza is a senior at New York University. She writes fiction and essays.
Lily Burnes Heath is also a senior at New York University and from Brooklyn.
Together they built this snowman in their backyard.
