Eeeee Eee Eeee

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

Just finished reading Tao Lin's debut novel Eeeee Eee Eeee. What can I say? It is unlike anything I've ever read before. It is on my reading list for a module I'm taking next term in twenty-first century post-modern fiction. I was surprised to find that Tao Lin is relatively unknown, with a close cult-ish following. I could use many adjectives to attempt to describe this novel - but I'm not sure that any one could do it justice, or that using many would help clarify Eeeee Eee Eeee at all. The novel could be pigeon-holed as being kind of surreally hyper-existentialist. It is almost Beckettian in its minimalism and snapishness. The novel seems to focus (of course you could make a massive claim -probably the most valid one- that there is no focus) on American collective identity through repeated turns of phrase and slang, as well as shared names and a sense of a depressive loss of individuality. By far the most confusing instances in the book (and the most notorious) are the set of unexpected conversations with talking bears, hamsters and dolphins . . . one of which result in a bear named Andrew, and a man named Andrew realising that they share the same name (and therefore identity?) It's a witty novel, without a doubt, with laugh out loud humour which will make you wince with its sarcasm. It is often a confusing read, but nevertheless one which does not leave you feeling out of your depth, or as if you've failed to understand something along the way. You learn very quickly that you just have to accept that that's the way it is. Eeeee Eee Eeee is a difficult novel to review, solely because it has no driven start to finish plot, it has talking animals, and is constructed in such a novel way. To present a plot synopsis would be ridiculous - in fact it would almost defy the way in which the novel is written. Tao Lin's prose is is aware of its fragmentation, and in being aware manages to smooth out the fragments and somehow fit them together into a coherent, flowing and whole piece of work (excuse my mosaic-esque analogy). Time itself is fragmented in the novel. It is only in the closing chapter of the novel, that we find out what happenned in the protagonist (dare I call him one) Andrew's life before the novel began - information which would surely be expected within the first few pages, to introduce us to him. The timeline of the book is indeterminably linear, but it is the indeterminability of its linearity which causes those questions to creep in, and for the rational part of the mind to be tempted to organise and make sense of what comes where, to try to establish a time/space linearity which we expect from most novels.

Needless to say (post-blurb), it is a peculiar novel. But amongst the mayhem, the teleporting bears, the murder of Elijah Wood by a dolphin, and the secret passages which lead to a secret animal world, are concerted criticisms on political apathy, identity loss, herd mentalities, terrorism and depression. Many of the reviews I've read have disregarded it for its alleged art-school pretentiousness. Pretentious or not, it is a novel which is engagingly short, easy to read, and seems to simplify, but still accessorise the genre of bizarro fiction while kind of fitting in with the glossy Generation X writers. I don't know if I'd go as far as labelling it 'literature' or saying that it was particularly enjoyable, or 'good', but it certainly is a breath of fresh air and unlike anything I've read before. (N.B. Just because it's refreshing doesn't mean it isn't strange and sometimes seems disconcertingly self-conscious...in fact Gawker magazine said that he is "perhaps the single most irritating person we've had to deal with" YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED).

I'm sure I'll be reading some of his other stuff as soon as I can get my hands on it anyway. He is certainly an interesting writer, even if I'm not sure what I make of him yet. Eeeee Eee Eeee has really confused me a great deal.

His new novel Richard Yates is released on September 7th (with speed and cunning).
Maybe if I enter enough of the competitions on his FRUSTRATINGLY TITLED BLOG (perhaps testimony to his being irritating), I'll be able to win myself a copy!