Eeeee Eee Eeee [Paperback]

Tao Lin (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 1, 2007

"Tao Lin writes from moods that less radical writers would let pass--from laziness, from vacancy, from boredom. And it turns out that his report from these places is moving and necessary, not to mention frequently hilarious."
--Miranda July, author of No One Belongs Here More Than You

"Tao Lin is the most distinctive young writer I've come upon in a long time: the most intrepid, the funniest, the strangest. He is completely unlike anyone else."
--Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening

"I was immediately blown away: the stylistic audacity of [Eeeee Eee Eeee and Bed] is inspiring; despite the talking animals, these are dark works about the alienation of modern times."
--Tony O'Neill, The Guardian

"Eeeee Eee Eeee is an un-self-conscious yet commanding tour de force."

--Powells.com

"Eeeee Eee Eeee is one of the first novels in a long time that made me laugh out loud--a wonderful, honest and cathartic laugh. Finally, someone published something written by a young person about a young experience that feels organic and real..."
--Jennifer Bassett, KGB Bar Lit Magazine

"Stimulating and exciting...It doesn't often happen that a debuting writer displays not only irrepressible talent but also the ability to undermine the conventions of fiction and set off in new directions. Tao Lin, who is 24, does it."

--San Francisco Bay Guardian

"Later one day looking back at this review I'll know I wrote it after reading the novel twice straight through because it's hard to not want to write like Tao Lin but it's even harder to actually do it. I know people who don't read very often who should read this book because like Denis Johnson it's funny and addictive and talks straight into your ear instead of from somewhere far gone. I know people who read constantly who should read this because Tao Lin's sentences are so good they sometimes make me shudder. While doing so, or immediately after, or occasionally a long time after, they make me laugh. It's very hard to make someone shudder and then laugh. Tao Lin persists."

--Blake Butler, Bookslut

"Tao Lin's fiction will kick your ass and say thank you afterwards!"
--Amy Fusselman, author of The Pharmacist's Mate

"A revolutionary."
--The Stranger 

 "Prodigal, unpredictable."
--Paste Magazine

"...wry, imaginative and off-kilter...charts the tribulations of a heartbroken pizza delivery guy living in a suburb where bears talk and dolphins attempt to commit murder."
--Time Out New York

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Poet and blogger Lin's debut novel uneasily documents the life of Andrew, a recent college graduate working at Domino's Pizza while over-analyzing every aspect of his life: past, present and futureless. He drives through the suburbs reminiscing about college life in New York and his ex-girlfriend, stopping occasionally to express his boredom to his best friend Steve. When at one point, Andrew states that he wants to "wreak complex and profound havoc" upon capitalist establishments such as McDonald's, it feels like Lin is attempting the same kind of attack on organized art. The novel, while short on plot, makes abrupt shifts in setting and point of view, and is pierced throughout by celebrity cameos and surreal touches: bears, dolphins (who say "Eeeee Eee Eeee" to express emotion, in spite of their ability to speak like humans), Salman Rushdie, and the president make grandiose declarations that are heavily saturated with the same sardonic wit displayed by Andrew and his friends. The novel dips dangerously into metafiction, with Andrew in the middle of "writing a book of stories about people who are doomed." The characters' repetitive thoughts and conversations become strangely hypnotic, however, and Lin's sympathetic fascination with the meaning of life is full of profound and often hilarious insights.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover

Confused yet intelligent animals attempt to interact with confused yet intelligent humans, resulting in the death of Elijah Wood, Salman Rushdie, and Wong Kar-Wai; the destruction of a Domino's Pizza delivery car in Orlando; and a vegan dinner at a sushi restaurant in Manhattan attended by a dolphin, a bear, a moose, an alien, three humans, and the President of the United States of America, who lectures on the arbitrary nature of consciousness, truth, and the universe before getting drunk and playing poker.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 211 pages
• Publisher: Melville House (April 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933633255
• ISBN-13: 978-1933633251
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 7.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #34,937 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #57 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Satire

More About the Author

Tao Lin (b. 1983) is the author of 7 books of fiction/poetry. His 3rd novel TAIPEI will be published by Vintage in June 2013. He lives in Manhattan. (Photo by Noah Kalina.)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 70 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book about dominos pizza ever written. November 21, 2007

By Aziraphael

Format:Paperback

"Sometimes when dolphins went to playgrounds alone they did the monkeybars and went to the swings and on the swings thought, "I hate this stupid world."

They thought, "I hate it."

They cried a little with the wind against their face.
They felt so bad that they went away.

And found Elijah Wood and told Elijah Wood to go with them and Elijah Wood went--because he thought it was a movie. Elijah Wood and other celebrities like Salman Rushdie rode dolphins in rivers. Salman Rushdie felt proud and famous. And the dolphins swam to islands and beat Elijah Wood and the other famous people with heavy branches. They cried when they murdered human beings, and it was terrible.

One dolphin had a battle axe and killed Wong Kar-Wai."

That's an excerpt from Tao Lin's new book Eeeee Eee Eeee. I'm pretty sure the book doesn't mean anything which is why you should read it. It's about post-ironic boredom and laziness and saying things like "I don't know how to have fun" all the time.

If you care the book is kind of like if Holden Caulfield wrote an autobiography in the middle of a Hunter S. Thompson freakout. It is very "Kafka-esque" which is a phrase that annoys the hell out of my friend Rachel, and rightfully so because it's a dumb thing to say.

Go pick it up and read it and hate it (probably), but read it. It will change nothing about you but it will make you think about bears teleporting and throwing blankets on top of moose(s), which is so much better than most things.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars SPOILER ALERT April 29, 2007

By suburban sig

Format:Paperback

Andrew just graduated college. He has no job, no friends, and no funds. He moves from New York City back to his parents' house in Florida and gets a job as a delivery guy for Domino's Pizza. After a socially awkward experience of bringing some pizzas and his coworker Joanna to her house, Andrew is approached by a bear who leads him down a secret passageway under a patch of grass to an underground world in which bears coexist with moose, dolphins, hamsters, and aliens.

Enter the literary world of Tao Lin's Eeeee Eee Eeee: self-conscious, surreal, and ambivalently nihilistic. The novel is at the same time heartbreaking and hilarious. Tao Lin's bleak and syntactically direct style undermines the notion of an overt social commentary, but the novel is chalk-full of it. The main character Andrew is lonely, spends a lot of his time isolated, and pretty much ponders the absurdity of everything. Eeeee Eee Eeee alludes to the absurdity of social etiquette, commercialism, unity, separateness, Modern thought, Post-modern thought, other binary philosophies, and even meaning itself.

Take for example when Andrew meets the President of the United States, who is really just a bored alien in need of a goal. The president concludes that life is meaningless, but then questions "If life was really meaningless you wouldn't worry about things." Andrew worries about a lot of things: why his internet girlfriend Sara never comes to visit him even though she promised, why people confuse his jokes for complaining, why the bear never finishes the novel he is writing, and why the dolphin he is talking to murders Elijah Wood and then "drags Elijah's corpse into a cave and then sits on it."

Truly, Tao Lin accurately depicts the mind of the socially isolated with his subject Andrew. Although the reader can recognize Andrew's symptoms of Midtwenties-itis, Eeeee Eee Eee is far from your typically romanticized "Oh no I just graduated college and I don't know who I am or what to do with myself" novel. Anyone who has ever questioned their existence should read it. Perhaps it would make a thoughtful gift for someone who will or has recently graduated

38 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Tao Lin's best April 14, 2007

By P. K. Almond

Format:Paperback

Although Tao Lin has been consecutively strong in all of his books so far, I think EEEEE EEE EEEE is his best. The book not only confronts the indifference of the universe but sarcastically laughs in its face. The book has a lot of dolphins and bears trying to cope with life's disappointments such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Elijah Wood, and the DaVinci Code. The DaVinci Code isn't actually mentioned in the books as the other things are but if it were a moose would probably look at it and then scream in agony before running in front of a subway train. I recommend this book for all ages. I first read it with my kids and they both liked it and often beg for me to read chapters of it to them before they go to sleep.