Eeeee Eee Eeee: A Novel

By Tao Lin

An absurdist debut novel with talking animals, celebrity cameos, and one anxiety-ridden pizza delivery man—“a commanding tour de force” (The Guardian)

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 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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 29, 2010
• ISBN: 9781612190266

Reviews for Eeeee Eee Eeee

[shmibs · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

tao lin's characters hateand they hate that they hateand they hate that nobody cares that they hateand you will hate themand you will hate that you hate them because they are so pitifuland you will find yourself hating everything they hateactually, nobody hates anybody, as that would require far too much effort and what's the point, really, when everyone else can do the hating for you and it won't accomplish anything when they do and thus you adding in your own hatred won't make anything any different and you'll all end up in the same place anyways, lonely and, eventually, dead.tao lin captures in writing what, for somewhat obvious reasons, other authors have pointedly ignored all throughout the history of the novel. he writes apathy, the state when actions are taken only in fits or starts, always on a whim and never followed through with, and in every direction at once so that the net motion is null.about halfway through this book, the copy i bought suddenly starts all over again; apparently the first half of the book got glued in twice. i couldn't think of a better piece of literature to which this could have occurred; discovering it made me laugh aloud for several minutes, disturbing all of the people surrounding me on the bus.

[willstoc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Eeeee Eee Eeee" is comparable to one long Zen koan. It forces you to analyze the legitimacy of your own logic after perceiving the world through the character's existential crises. Lin's writing style is minimalist with laser-like precision.

[kirstiecat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is pop culture at its finest mixed up, remixed, with some dolphins, bears and hamsters thrown in. It also makes me a little scared that all of the books written by my generation might be just rendered really intelligent psychobabble. I'm sorry if you can't process that statement but maybe that means you need to take your Ritalin.

Tao Lin is laugh out loud hilarious. He bangs you over the head at times and leaves you thinking around a party of dolphins. His novels make little sense and yet make alot of sense of what it feels like to live in the post corporate world..and truly, this generation does hold the keys to its own indie kingdom. We can literally drive these horrible mind numbing chains out of business by simply not supporting them even if there's a conflict of interest (the protagonist actually works at one).

But, even more than this, there's a sense of post-guilt. In other words, apathy. It's this idea that in the West we're causing so much damage and peril to the rest of the whole world down to such minuscule degrees that we just can't seem to cope with anything we do...then, we realize we're screwed either way and we get so jaded we feel like we can't win. Tao Lin's characters become homicidal, suicidal, any idal to feel anything at all...well, if they could get around to doing anything beyond shoplifting and pizza deliveries...well, mainly u-turn fails.


This is an enjoyable read that I'd recommend between two really huge otherwise serious novels. It's a good one to lighten up with though if you try to follow a cohesive plotline, you'll be trying to diagnose the protagonist as having severe schizophrenia co-morbid with ADHD. This reeks of Coupland's Generation X in a good way..though, it's of course quite some time after the fact...and truly, post Generation X, Y, Z...Tao Lin doesn't ask it but you realize even modern society admits pretty soon there will be nothing left.


I wonder what Tao Lin thinks about zombies.


Some quotes I liked:

pg 12: "Everyone is folding boxes. Feels like a David Lynch movie"


pg. 27: "It's depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then kill itself in hand to hand combat"


pg. 42: "In daylight, he feels like a bad actor in an independent movie, about to go on a melodramatic killing spree. At home Andrew writes, "Sorry" on an envelope. Below that, "For Real." On another envelope he writes "Really Sorry" and put two twenties in. Sounds sarcastic. On another "Sincerely Sorry," moves the twenties. The alliteration is too commercial. Writes "Sorry." Moves the twenties. At least they are a pair. The twenties are in love. Andrew is jealous."


pg 68: "He is against capitalism for some reason; something about how it directs human perception away from sentient beings and towards abstractions; he is also against being against things because the binary nature of the universe is against being against things. Still, he wants to cause destruction to McDonalds. It would be good to subvert all these places."


pg. 99: "What do you think about the president?" Andrew said. Mark put noodles in his mouth."I think he's smarter than people think," Andrew said. "He winked on TV. He winked fast so only a few people would see. I feel like hes being ironic all the time." Andrew stopped talking. Mark did not respond. "I mean everyone on TV is being ironic all the time," Andrew said. "But the president knows he's being ironic all the time, so he's twice ironic. You have to be twice ironic on TV to be regular ironic in real life. So, if you're not ironic on TV you're negative ironic in real lie. That sounds good. Negative ironic." Sounded like a rap-metal band with a right wing fan base, or else an inchoately independent but then MTV funded movie with a nihilistic premise but a feel good ending, that came out last year-that always came out last year."


pg 108-109: "He sometimes felt that life was something that had already risen, and all of this, the Jackson Pollock of spring, summer, winter, and fall, the vague refrigeration and tinfoiled sky of wintertime, was just a falling really, originward, in a kind of correction, as if by spiritual gravity, toward the wiser consciousness-or consciousnessles, maybe;could gravity trick itself like that?-of death."


pg 116-117 "Bears liked to put blankets on things. Sometimes a bear accidentally wished to have Sean Penn there. The bear would be watching TV. Thinking about the Pulitzer Prize. And go blank a little. And think, "I wish I could punch Sean Penn in Sean Penn's face." And Sean Penn would be there. Sean Penn would fight the bear when it got there. The bear would try to stop Sean Penn but Sean Penn had knives and the bear would crush Sean Penn by accident. The bear would think, "Oh god, oh my god." Then put a blanket on Sean Penn's head."


pg. 139-140 "Dolphins felt top-heavy, that year, most of the time, and wanted to lie down. When their heads weren't on top they still felt top-heavy, but metaphysically. In public places they felt sad. They went into restrooms, hugged themselves, and quietly went "Eeee eee eeee." Weekends they went to playgrounds alone. They sat in the top of slides-the enclosed part, where it glowed a little because of the colored plastic-and felt very alert and awake but also very sad and immature...Life was too sad and it was beautiful to really feel it for once; to be allowed to feel it for one year."


pg. 143 "...and thought about how as a young dolphin they had thought that the Gulf War happened in the Gulf of Mexico."


pg. 179-180 "A world without right or wrong invited you over, complained about you, and gave you cookies. Don't leave, it said, and gave you a vegan cookie. It avoided eye contact, but touched your knee sometimes. It was the world without right or wrong. It didn't have any meaning. It just wanted a little meaning."

pg. 194 "Patriotism is the belief that not all human lives are worth the same..."

pg. 196 "Death is the taking away of assumption and context."

pg 200 "If life was really meaningless, you wouldn't worry about things."

pg 206 "The President was playing poker with Salman Rushdie."

[hadriantheblind · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I can't even articulate by disappointment and frustration with this book properly, it's left me too scatterbrained. It somehow manages to be both over-saturated with surreal gimmicks, and somehow also deadening and dull. I am tempted to send a copy to Harold Bloom so that he can pontificate about the death of the novel.

I'm not sure if I can call it worthless. It's ... empty.

[noblechicken · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As great a premise that it reads on the back of the book, it is nothing like it. I was kind of hoping for more of a straight-forward narrative, but boy, did I get something else! It is quite interesting, Lin's prose style, which is absolutely absurd, funny, and exploding with energy. A post-modernists teeth sinker, reminds me sometimes of Kathy Acker, but it tends to drag after a while with redundancy and a lack of point, or if there is a point, so buried in the narrative that I could care less. I guess Lin will be one of those "love or hate" authors for people. I am glad I read it, but I think he needs to balance that energetic prose with more of an interesting yarn, otherwise, it just feels like a one trick pony.

[borisvian_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I heard hear about Tao Lin for some time and, after reading an interview with him in 3AM Magazine, thought I should finally check him out. This is a quick read, but very pleasurable; more than once I found myself laughing out loud, as they say. But beyond the pleasure of simply submitting to a fantastical narrative full of murderous dolphins and passive-aggressive bears that both harass and befriend the otherwise friendless cast of characters, there were other pleasures. The book was hilarious in an honest way, taking as a base for its humor the inevitable sadness and loneliness that comes with being a human - a J.K. Toole (RIP) sort of humor - as opposed to other kinds of humor, those that simply deride, mock, sneer, with clean hands and white teeth.Andrew - now delivering pizzas at his parents house in Florida after unsuccessfully integrating himself into any sort of community in NYC - and Ellen - a high school misfit prone to lying around motionless in dark rooms - are unable to establish any connections with other humans, oscillating between the inability to comprehend their own emotions and the sharp awareness and rejection of those emotions, end up climbing down ladders into the secret world of hamsters and bears, a world, it turns out, pretty much like their: confusing, ridiculous, absurdly chaotic. The desire for extreme action rises up in them (smashing shit, killing rampages) but fades just as quickly, like wild fireworks, then the blackness of existential impotence and ennui with the knowledge (self-professed or otherwise) that it's all just too much work.This is not as bleak as it all sounds. Lin's deadpan prose and ridiculous animals lighten it all up. Fun for the whole family. Elijah Wood gets killed by a dolphin, and for that fact alone the novel is worth purchasing. I would recommend reading this in a crowded public place when you feel like you'll never be loved again.

[kontam_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Hands down the funniest book I've ever read in my entire life. Absurd, simple but absolutely unputdownable, I carried this book around with me until I finished and convinced friends to purchase it because it was that funny. Talking bears, crying dolphins, aliens, moose, everything you could possibly want, I was laughing out loud so many times people were looking at me funny. Very emotional at the same time, it has a lot to say under the surface, so even though it was hilarious, it didnt feel empty.

[bettie_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is about bears and dolphins and moose(s?) and Elijah Wood. This book is about everything and nothing. This book is uplifting and depressing. I want to hang out with Tao Lin. And a bear.

[larrydarrell_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tao Lin's Eeeee Eee Eeee is a strange novel about a number of aimless young characters who interact with each other. I cannot decide if I think that anyone could write this book, or no one but Tao Lin could write this book. His characters are bored/boring, empty, and real in a way that most authors do not approach. The book is sad and funny, and interspersed with surreal scenes of teleporting bears, talking hamsters, suicidal dolphins and indie filmmaker Wong Kar Wai. I've heard he wants to call his next novel "The statutory rape of Dave Eggers by Al Gore."

[amydross · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tao Lin‘s Eeeee-Eee-Eeee may be considered a 21st century follow-up to Albert Camus’s L’Étranger — only instead of an Arab being shot to death by a confused and amoral colonialist, Elijah Wood is clubbed to death by a dolphin.If you’re the kind of person who read that last sentence and immediately wondered how an aquatic mammal with flippers could club a human to death, then this is probably not the book for you. Eeeee-Eee-Eeee is Tao Lin’s world, and you’re going to have to learn to go with the flow — talking dolphins, teleporting bears, nervous hamsters and all.Of course, there are human beings in Lin’s world, and not just celebrities. Unlike the animals, however, the human characters find themselves incapable of acting, despite a universal longing to engage with the world around them. Andrew, a morose and underachieving pizza-delivery boy/writer, fantasizes constantly about going on killing rampages but finds he lacks the energy and stamina for murder. Mark hopes to find authentic experience in pop culture, but is regularly frustrated by Andrew’s sarcastic jibes. Ellie seeks purpose in political activism, but is stymied by philosophical contradictions. Ultimately, all the characters are so overtaken by anomie and ennui that they can’t even conjure up more than the mildest bemusement at the talking menagerie around them.Which brings us back to those dolphins. It’s not clear to me whether Lin is portraying an alternate reality in which hyper-intelligent animals have always coexisted with humanity, but I prefer to think that the animals are a new feature, and are acting as harbingers of some great societal cataclysm. The biggest hint of this is a conversation between Andrew and a hamster, during which the hamster seems to be trying to convey a warning of some sort. Unfortunately, the hamster isn’t very bright, and keeps forgetting what he wants to say. Eventually, he’s attacked by an owl, and Andrew is left as befuddled — and unconcerned — as ever.And so it goes in Tao Lin’s world — everyone is so deadened by the banality of existence that even the truly absurd fails to make an impression. Even more tellingly, the bears and dolphins are almost as depressed and disillusioned as the humans. In fact, the only characters who seem to have found any pleasure or meaning from their existence are the celebrities — Jhumpa Lahiri on her diamond yacht, Salman Rushdie feeling proud and famous, Elijah Wood and his (apparently unreturned) respect for dolphins.Maybe Lin’s point is that pop celebrity is the only truly authentic experience available to us in a postmodern world. In which case, I hope Elijah Wood hears about this book, and how in it he was murdered by a dolphin, and I hope it makes him so mad that he sues Tao Lin. And I hope Tao Lin manages to milk the controversy for all it’s worth, until he attains the kind of celebrity status that may one day redeem us all.