Eeeee Eee Eeee
by Tao Lin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tao LinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-05-15
ISBN: 1933633255
Number of pages: 211
Publisher: Melville House
Book Reviews of Eeeee Eee Eeee
Book Review: Tao Lin: Part 1
Summary: 4 Stars
I came across Eeeee Eee Eeee by accident, spotting it on the clearance table at Dog Eared Books on Valencia St in SF I immediately took a liking to its dadaist title. I don't know what about it strengthened my resolve to purchase it. I remember it was either that or an old paperback copy of The Man In The High Castle by Phillip K. Dick.
After reading it, it seemed almost too obvious that I would have bought it at that particular bookstore, what with its prime Mission District location and little notes on the shelves in the Critical Theory section helpfully advising lost grad students: "Looking for Tintin? Try graphic novels!" Also, I think I got roughly the same intellectual mileage out of it as I would have if I had bought Dick instead. But that's getting ahead of myself.
I read it while sitting in the rooftop garden at SF Moma, drinking an overpriced museum cafe iced coffee. I read it on the red eye to Atlanta later and then finished it on the connecting flight to Philadelphia, unable to sleep in the frigid air of the nearly empty plane. I read EEE and liked it and felt it deeply, to an almost embarrassing degree.
Most of all, I wondered what it feels like to be Tao Lin. I later found out, though this did not surprise me, that the author lives his life as a kind of public artist. Something in the prose, its wavering between nihilism, absurdity and the peculiar type of introspection practiced by the deeply depressed prepared me for that revelation. The label "voice of a generation"--or at least a particularly culture-savvy subset of a generation--seems like a burden he either cultivates or accepts.
I don't know how I feel about that. Think of how many promising writers exposed to Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, David Foster Wallace or Bret Easton Ellis at an impressionable age are ruined for life because they artlessly take on the stylistic peculiarities of their literary heroes. I can only imagine what kind of terrible, painfully unreadable pastiches of Lin's work are currently being churned out in college creative writing classes. I don't blame him for that but I thought I would mention it.
The novel is powerful because, at surface level, it tries not to be. It is accessible and stupid and about nothing at all but then Lin writes something that means more than it should, an unexpected truth or a recognition of a common but difficult to articulate ennui.
I hesitate to use the word 'ennui' because it has become a kind of affectation assumed by the people who I envision read books like EEE; I honestly don't think its the right word but it comes immediately to mind when discussing his work. I think the author is much, much smarter than he lets on and that the way he presents this nebulous concept is one aspect of his role as an important media figure. Its either that or he's an incredibly emotionally naked artist. What combination of those two things makes up the actual truth is a bit of a mystery to me.
I don't know how many "helpful" things I can say about Eeee Eee Eeee or that its really susceptible to to review. I do think its worth reading and would recommend it.
Summary of Eeeee Eee Eeee
?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
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.
?Tao Lin?s fiction will kick your ass and say thank you afterwards!?
? Amy Fusselman, author of The Pharmacist?s Mate
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