Customer Reviews

you are a little bit happier than i am

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4 star:		(2)
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you can tell when you've been reading tao lin. you look at the world differently, you mood is different. its hard to describe, but its definitely worth reading.

ok. well.
this book started out a little strong.
i really wasn't expecting that.

i mean JESUS.

an AXE &a CELL PHONE?

too many things. too soon.

but then
it got a little racist
against spacemen.

and that's good
because i hate
spacemen.

Motifs in _you are a little happier than i am_ include emails, fruit, hamsters, loneliness, beauty, and sadness--what would have been a difficult and problematic combination of objects and abstract terms in the hands of a less talented poet. Tao Lin, however, links these elements effectively with plain, frank language that conveys immediate feelings and observations, often with sympathetic or humorous results.

The surprising concerns in these poems range from the personal to what many readers may resonate with. For example, in the poem "thanksgiving," Lin writes:

i feel most comfortable around middle-class japanese people
i know they are all thinking the same things as me

WHY ARE THE LINES SO LONG?
WHY AM I IN NEW JERSEY?

though their faces appear calm
their thoughts are exactly like i just put them
(Lin)

It does not seem to matter here whether the people are middle-class Japanese or middle-class any-other-American-or-foreigner. Lin points out how anyone might feel in this situation: the lines are long, and (more philosophically) why New Jersey? The contrast between calm faces, yelling interior monologue, the poet himself and Japanese people proves humorous when one reads Lin's conclusion to the poem "we just want to get our food/ and eat it/...and go to sleep."

An uniquely enjoyable, highly recommended collection. Tao Lin's other books include Bed, Eeeee Eee Eeee, and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.

I don't think I usually like poetry. I went to a poetry reading tonight and I did not enjoy it. I liked this book. It was like reading transcripts of my own thoughts. It validated my thoughts somewhat I guess, in letting me know that other people thought similar things, and that other other people were publishing transcripts of them. I think writing like this is positive in that it encourages calm reflection on one's own life through direct analysis of another's. I feel like an idiot right now. I have tried to describe why I like this book. I like this book.

people i've known who call themselves poets and like saying "i'm a poet" seem to have this certainty about what poems are and what it means to call themselves "poets." my friends have invited me to poetry readings, which i've sat through mostly feeling bored and annoyed and like everyone is in on something i'm not, and i've just thought "okay, poetry isn't for me, poetry is like sports." i don't think i would've bought "you are a little bit happier than i am" (or "cognitive-behavioral therapy") had i not read other things by tao lin and felt intrigued about how he would treat what i previously considered the foreign, alienating world of poetry.

the poems in this book seem like the antithesis of poems to me. i read them all in one sitting, feeling like i had broken into a more interesting, slightly more disillusioned male version of jenny lewis' apartment and found this under his bed, and like i needed to hurry and finish them before he came in and found me.

"You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I Am": not an unfamiliar phrase for myself to hear (in a variety of ways) as a mental health professional. Incidentally, viewing others as having something I don't--happiness as some kind of external quality in which I am deficient at attaining--is essentaiily what kickstarted my (as it turns out) lifelong quest for happiness (still looking). Tao Lin has experienced such disappointment from others, from the world, and himself at times--all of these are feelings so many of us seem frightened to examine. There is a diarylike quality of these poems, which made reading them seem like they're not poems at all...I experienced a distinct sensation that this collection of words was a kind of metaphorical lighthouse, sending out a searchlight containing "pledges of honesty" (which Lin makes to both himself and to the reader), to search for what it is that makes us human and when we catch a "glimpse," to write it down--maybe as a service to the Self or to the Other or Universe in general, though it seems like it almost doesn't matter.

I think "you are a little bit happier than i am" is usually the first book people read by Tao Lin, as it is his first. I read it last. I think when people always refer to "Tao Lin" style poetry they're referring to this book. Seems like the iconic first doctrine of self-conscious, disappointed with people/the universe/the self (to some degree) poetry.

Death is an abstraction to anyone who is alive, but it's also inevitable that everyone will die. The person writing this book seems to have known this for a long time, and it has maybe influenced their worldview in that it seems like there is something fundamentally unavailable about being alive, it will never be fulfilled in itself or reach some 'level' where 'it all makes sense.' It has to end by dying. We can never know what everything we've done in our lives has amounted to, because we're dead. A lot of the poems in this book are about how relationships (both platonic and romantic) are also unfulfilling. Relationships seem out of control because their outcomes aren't just determined by your thoughts alone. Another person perceives and decides things too, and they might decide something that makes you feel bad and it's impossible to predict that happening, fully. The person writing this book seems to find comfort in their imagination because it is something certain that he can know, I think. It seems comforting to add sarcasm to the image of yourself getting rejected by the National Book Award, because it draws attention to the insignificance surrounding the feelings of rejection/the self/the National Book Award/writing/everything. There is another poem where Lin receives the Nobel Prize for telling his mom she only thinks [something] because she watches Fox News, but then the Nobel Prize committee asks him to continue and he earnestly describes his feelings of confusion about the nature of consciousness/perception and what it means to have finite thoughts in an infinite universe. That poem, "poem to end my head off" starts with this:

i haven't told you what i found out yet

that in life
when tabby dies
she dies by the laundry machine

Death happens in laundry machines to pet dogs. His mom accidentally text messages him that life is too sad without "tabby" (accidentally sent, perhaps, because of thinking "I don't want to bother anyone with my sadness" or "my sadness isn't validated even though I am still saying it is the saddest thing in the world"). Seems really vulnerable, and also true. Later in this poem, Lin says he wants "laundry machines to drink coffee at night and secretly collect things that no one else will." He wants the world to be different and better, I think. In your imagination the world can be different and better. He wants a world that makes sense even on the tiniest level of wanting "Tylenol cold" to be one word. I felt very affected by this poem.

Reading "yaalbhtia" feels like having a conversation with the voice inside of Tao Lin's head, which seems to be the only reliable thing in an unstable world, and so it feels like a 'glimpse' of what it would be like to know someone in a way that really is never fully possible (but often sought-after, and impossible to not seek if you are a person who feels lonely and somewhat 'cheated' by the nature of existence), I think.

Sometimes, I run out of realistic life things to think about, and instead wonder how to escape from the bottom of a swimming pool that was entirely filled with bubbles. Tao Lin explores other similarly important scenarios, like if you are a police officer and hit yourself, can you be arrested for assaulting an officer of the peace? Also, where other poems take a long time to say "I am f---ed existentially", Tao Lin will just say it repeatedly, which really streamlines the process because I understand his point very clearly even just skimming a poem which covers two pages. I'm not trying to be critical. I feel like my college humanities classes would have gone a lot faster if people could have just said what they meant. The only things I don't like about this book of poems is when Tao Lin expresses fondness and longing for a random female, which I can't relate to because I don't like others. However, he also writes poems about wanting to kill his literary agent, and I can relate to the lazy, noncommittal misanthropy. He also sometimes writes about eating pasta after having engaged in a violent or dramatic act, which is exactly what I would do because pasta is my favorite food. I think I might be Tao Lin's target demographic because I like gchat, and would use it a lot if all the people I know weren't using facebook instead, which makes me feel bored. But I am also gainfully employed and not depressed or lonely, so I think you can still enjoy Tao Lin's books even if you do not feel hopeless and confused. I hope in a future novel or poem, Tao Lin will address how mermaids have sex. I have wondered about this for a really long time. Also, Tao Lin does not censor the f-word like I just did in this review, which I only did because I thought amazon might not allow the review to exist if I didn't only include that one letter.

I enjoyed this short book of new poetry. Tao Lin is ordinary and honest, making him an excellent poet.

required reading for anyone who has a brain, or access to one. Tao Lin is a genius, and this book is a masterpiece. I would give him the Nobel Prize if I had one, or if I had a replica of one, and then it would just be the thought that counts. If you like this book, check out "Blinking with Fists" by Billy Corgan. It has some similar characteristics, and you won't be disappointed. The only thing I would change about this book is that it would be nice if it were longer, or if it were a shiny new robot that could move furniture with telekinesis. :]