Customer Reviews

Eeeee Eee Eeee

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"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.

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.

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

Right after I finished Eeeee Eee Eeee I laid down on my couch and stared at the ceiling and wall for a little while. I didn't feel like moving for a while so I just stared at the ceiling and wall.

After that I got up and put on my shoes and went down to the basement and I broke a chair that was missing its back cushion.

This is a really good book because books don't make me do that.

I got this book in the mail in the summer. I read it on the couch. I only got up once, to pee and make and eat a salad. I enjoyed reading the book. It was funny and irreverent. Reading Eeeee Eee Eeee felt like talking to someone who was nice and wouldn't judge me. I felt like the things that made the main character feel certain ways had made me feel the same ways in the past. It helped me understand my situation in the world a little bit. After I read it I rode my bike past a coffee shop where people that go to art school hang out. I felt good. I would suggest this book to people that like Ann Beattie's first two books, Lorrie Moore, Joy Williams or Miranda July.

I bought this book because of the title. Little did I know that it would turn out to be the best book I've read in a very long time. I have a hard time considering it a piece of prose. It is pure poetry. Tao Lin is my new favorite writer.

It was like being depressed and on shrooms without having to be on shrooms (was still depressed, yes, that part was all me), which is convenient, because I can't always find shrooms, and sometimes I like to feel that way. I'd like to read while on shrooms for real, maybe, unless that would completely break my brain, which it might, so I might not like to do that, actually. But it's comforting to read, mostly by being extremely uncomforting. If I could make sense of how I felt about this book I would probably not like it nearly as much.

I received this book in the mail yesterday and read it in one sitting. I am a poor college student, and enjoyed it very much - I may or may not be the target audience for this book. During my writing class this morning, I deliberately placed the book above my desk. At the end of class, my professor asked me, "Is the title of that book Eeeee Eee Eeee?" I said, "Yes," and showed it to her. My professor has published many, many books; most of them are funny; as a younger woman, she was very attractive.

eee is really good. i was immediately interested about one page in. it's funny, sad and weird. it goes from being a "realist" book at certain points, to a "surreal" book, where bears and dolphins kill people. the book handles third person really well, and i feel like i learned from its technique. my favorite part of eee, is the way things are repeated. like, the main character Andrew, he'll think things in the moment, and then those things will recur in his thoughts later on. it seems to create a sense of reality as something arbitrary, and always related to a single person's representation, which is important to schopenhauer's philosophy (which is referenced throughout). the ending is really good. after reading eee, i felt very sad but in a way that made me want to keep living and have fun.

I read "Eeeee..." in 30-60 minute installments while walking ~3.5mph at a 15.0 grade incline on a treadmill in 2009. I remember feeling like I hadn't read anything like that before, where it seemed like the author was writing from a place of hopelessness/dissatisfaction with the world that lead them to ask questions like "why do I feel unhappy so often, why aren't there more choices for me?" and "what if a bear approached me while I was sitting in my car and took me to an underground world of dolphins?" but paid maybe more attention to the second question because it provided a more constructive (or at least more interesting) way of thinking about their life. I also liked how the prose style seemed to want to mimic how thoughts and feelings interplay (i.e. Andrew will see something which reminds him of a memory with Sara, so the sentences will be something like "Andrew looked out the window at the tree. Sara sitting in the tree, laughing. Sara's face.") to directly relate an experience and sort of ignore it in the context of it being the subject of a book.

I also noticed and liked the scene where Andrew and his friend see a waitress at Denny's who they went to high school with and leave without paying and that the story "Sasquatch" in "Bed" is written from the perspective of a waitress at Denny's who sees people from her high school enter Denny's, doesn't want to wait on them, and watches them leave without paying.