Early on in Leave Society, you write that Li was inspired to “try to understand his own reality” and so started paying less attention to “fiction, newspapers, and magazines” and began reading more nonfiction books. I have a question that might lead to more of me talking eventually. I’ve said more than you in this conversation so far. We’ve discussed this conversation-commenting on the slow rate of production, suggesting back-up plans-more than we’ve had the conversation itself. Jordan… It’s March 10, and we’ve completed one section. TAO: we started suggesting other ways we could do the interview. i feel like we didn’t even really criticize it though. we should have a section about the first section, criticizing it like we did, that seems original we still have a lot of time until the book comes out TAO: it seemed like we had a lot of time, and now it’s been 2 months TAO: finally stopping laughing and smiling. google docs, email interview… a dynamic mix of this kind of thing. the structure of the interview could be “experimental.” we could “throw it together” … from many different sources. imagining our interview just being mostly this, mostly trying to do it i had this in a document, re our most recent interaction in the google doc: “I vaguely remember, a long time ago, reading an interview in which you talked about how bands like Rilo Kiley had bleak albums initially, then something changed and they weren’t as bleak/relatable anymore… Do you remember this interview? Have we become ‘Kileyed’?” im not gonna start with that. it would be good to use one of these for one of the sections, or could be a meta section the commentary, in gchats etc, vs the actual content so far JORDAN: laughing a little re how this is going. The Novelist literally contains Taipei inside of Leave Society, since Calvin-a side character in Taipei -is in the narrator’s novel-in-progress, and Li-the protagonist of Leave Society -is in the novel itself. It would be like if my novel Taipei existed only as a fragment in Leave Society. It seems original to me that your dark novel about heroin addiction is embedded as a small thing within the more positive and hopeful The Novelist. His book takes place during three days in 2015, but has a flashback from 2014, and another flashback from “years prior” to 2015, and another undated flashback, during which “Calvin is Gmail-chatting with Paul-a character based on Li-and rationalizing their drug use: children were prescribed Adderall and Xanax, and in some cases opiates, to take daily others ate junk food which, in many ways, was less healthy than drugs Calvin listened to music every day, and while alone, which didn’t mean he ‘had a problem’ with listening to music drugs helped him to be productive, to cope with stress and anxiety and depression they were fun.” What time period does the novel that the narrator of The Novelist is writing span? Yes, I remember choosing the name Calvin. But the name of the protagonist of the third-person, autofictional novel he is initially trying to work on is named Calvin, which is the name you gave to the character based on me in your 2013 novel Taipei. In the context of your novel, the “Fuck off” is playful, causing the first-person narrator of your novel to grin. ‘Fuck off,’ the email said, simply.” I wonder what readers of that tweet-who know my novel’s main character is named Li-thought about that quote. I flipped around a little and saw and chose this: “I opened Gmail. Yesterday, I opened the galley of The Novelist and looked for something to quote in my tweet of a photo of it. That material has been shortened and then reorganized freely to suggest thematic continuities, but also discontinuities, in the time, mood, and medium of the interview. This conversation was composed from Octoto Jon Google Docs and sometimes on Gmail and G-Chat. Castro and Lin have been friends since 2010. Tao Lin’s Leave Society is about someone named Li who is writing a novel documenting his recovery from dominator culture. During this time, he sometimes G-chats and emails his friend, Li. Jordan Castro’s forthcoming novel The Novelist takes place over the course of one morning in which the protagonist tries to write his first novel. Castro and Lin working on their novels in 2019.
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