Eeeee Eee Eeee

I am apparently writing the first review of this book on here since 2008 and that makes me feel old, but also reminiscent. This book is… irrational, impossible, and honestly, the other reviews on here are better than what I can write about it. Read the title as the sound a dolphin makes, because the book has talking dolphins. Read the book by yourself in a dark room, because I think that’s how it was meant to be read.

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.

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.

"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.

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

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.