Tao Lin's Blog

Future posts will be at taolin.substack.com.

 I moved this to taolin.substack.com.

I published three essays this year—

"New Cosmologies" (Document Journal, ~2000 words) 

"The Purpose of Dreams" (UnHerd, ~1300 words)

"The Story of Autism: How We Got Here, How We Heal" (Mars Review of Books, ~7000 words)

Me and LeoI'm working on three books—

Self Heal. Nonfiction in which I share how I cured my autism, ankylosing spondylitis, eczema, migraines, chest pain, etc. naturally. Includes chapters on mind, love, and my physical deformities.

True History. Nonfiction in which I tell a fuller, m...

It's been two years since I started selling prints of my mandalas. I've enjoyed having this fully-me-controlled source of income. 

My prints were shown at Ka-Vá, a kava/kratom bar in Brooklyn, in April/May. Photos of the show are here. I didn't attend because I live in Hawaii.

Nini in a box. He likes to pee in boxes.I've sold 401 prints. I've sold these amounts of these prints:

66—water

57—mandala 13

55—numbers 

47—mandala 25

31—Dudu 

27—mandala 12

23—cats/aliens

19—torsion

17—mandala 8

13—autism

10—symbols

1...

Dudu ascending stairsThis year, I published a novel, a ~5900-word essay on Giancarlo DiTrapano, a ~6300-word essay titled "Partnership Before Sexism and War," some poems, and I read 90 books, including ~50 nonfiction, ~22 fiction, ~7 poetry (approximations because some were hard to categorize and I probably counted wrong). 
I wrote about 30 of them below (see full list here).

NOVELS
The End of the Day (2020) by Bill Clegg. I liked its intricacy and range—how it zoomed in and out of minds and bodies...

Tank Magazine published a ~6400-word essay by me on human history. It's titled "Partnership Before Sexism and War." 
Referencing Riane Eisler, Marija Gimbutas, James Mellaart, and others, the essay covers the past million years, with a focus on 12,000 to 6,000 years ago. I argue that mainstream human culture across Eurasia lived in peaceful, class-and-gender egalitarian partnership societies, worshipping nature as a female deity, until around 6,500 years ago, when dominator culture began to gain ...

I first noticed microfireflies on June 10, 2016, in Washington Square Park. I ended up writing about them in Leave Society, and they're depicted on the cover, though in real life they seem to be cloud-colored, not yellow. Below are all the mentions of them in my book. These passages are in third-person, about a character named Li, but they were written as nonfiction, based on my experiences.

Cover design by Linda Huang

From page 144:

Supine in Washington Square Park one day, Li saw flitting, epheme...

I first noticed microfireflies on June 10, 2016, in Washington Square Park. I ended up writing about them in Leave Society, and they're depicted on the cover, though in real life they seem to be cloud-colored, not yellow. Below are all the mentions of them in my book. These passages are in third-person, about a character named Li, but they were written as nonfiction, based on my experiences.

Cover design by Linda Huang

From page 144:

Supine in Washington Square Park one day, Li saw flitting, epheme...

Leave Society's epigraph—"Nothing is as it appears to be. This is not glib."—is by Kathleen Harrison, whom I wrote about visiting in Trip. 

My fourth novelIt's my first epigraph. It was easy to choose. I didn't consider anything else. 

I considered using just "Nothing is as it appears to be" but decided, at some point, to include "This is not glib" because it seems true and because I feel like some-to-many people will think or feel something like "That seems glib" after reading "Nothing is as it a...

I read 73 books this year. 31 nonfiction books, 18 novels, 8 poetry collections, 7 story collections, 2 graphic novels, 2 literary magazines, 1 anthology. I read 2 books twice. I read 8 books I'd already read, 9 translations, and 10 unpublished books.
NOVELS
Chilly Scenes of Winter (1976) by Ann Beattie. I read this when I was 20 or 21 and again later in my twenties and a third time this year. It was like I remembered—funny, tender, bleak, vivid. 
science-fictionConcrete (1982) by Thomas Bernhard. ...