Eeeee Eee Eeee: An Attempt at a Review
Dec. 25th, 2009 04:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedI've been getting a lot of mileage out of talking about this book in person, so I guess I will do the same here. Eeeee Eee Eeee is an avant-garde novel about depression: not Depression with a capital D, but different manifestations of major clinical depression which are represented in the novel by different animals. For instance, people who often worry about contributing to the sum total of evil in the Universe - who don't eat at MacDonalds because they know the money will go towards opening more MacDonalds franchises in Japan where formerly healthy middle school students will get fat and die - are Dolphins.
The authorial stand-in(?), Andrew, is a Bear... I was reading some reviews of Tao Lin's work that said it's about the Major Problem of modern life in the Web age, which is that we can do anything but end up doing nothing. I don't really agree - more on this later - but I could see it in a scene where a Bear rips the roof off Andrew's car, then promises "$100 and a free laptop computer" if he'll follow down a trapdoor.
I read this and I thought, Oh my God! That's the pop-up ad bear!! You know, the "hit the bear and win a free laptop computer" bear. And then I could see the author struggling late one night with his writing, in a dark room, lit only by "the soft blue light of Internet Explorer" (that's a quote from another book by Tao Lin). And then the bear pops up, and there is Tao Lin's inspiration and a device for moving the action along.
It's like this: each Bear gets three wishes, and they all wish for Teleport, first. So Bears can go anywhere they want to. They can see interesting and amazing things, whenever they want to. And they can probably do anything they want to as well, because who's going to stop a 500 pound bear from doing what it wants? And yet, Bears are lonely and bored all the time. This is kind of like being on the Internet, with the ability to read amazing and interesting things every second of every day... and yet finding yourself clicking on the stupid pop-up bear over and over in a trance, feeling bored.
It's kind of like that, but it's not really like that. Because that feeling eventually passes. For lots of people, it passes as soon as they get up from their computers and walk outside in the fresh air and sunshine. This is why I don't agree with reviewers who say that Tao Lin is trying to write about Modern Life. If I had to guess, I'd say that Tao Lin is trying to communicate a mental state. But communication is tiring, especially when people misunderstand you and you have to repeat yourself. Therefore, Tao Lin strives to never be misunderstood, by writing only in the simplest and most direct terms and eschewing all metaphor and metaphorical language.
(But he's also self-protective, in that 90s indie way, where you mask an underlying and painful sincerity in "irony" and dumb in-jokes. Tao Lin's totem animal is probably not the bear, but the turtle. Anyway, end tangent.)
The result is that his writing is always simple and concrete, even when he's summarizing complex ideas gleaned from many many hundreds of hours reading great works of classic literature - see the author's blog, "Reader of Depressing Books," for proof. XD; Anyway, Tao Lin's writing requires much less effort to process than the authors he is relating would require, and I believe this to be the source of his Power. (She says with fake-authority.)
Back to Eeeee Eee Eeee. Dolphins care intensely about everything. Bears don't let themselves feel much of anything. All their non-shallow thoughts are cut short. It gives the prose in sections from Andrew's POV a brutal, jumpy, ADD style -- which reminds me that ADD might have roots in anxiety, not following through on thoughts because you've been trained that the results will be bad.
The two other kinds of depressives in the book are Moose and Aliens: Moose have given up hope (they'll only be disappointed) and thought (their thoughts will only be negative). They live robotically. You wonder why they bother at all.You wonder why anyone bothers at all Woah, woah, let's not go there. Even Tao Lin doesn't go there. (Re-reading, I think Moose might be obese. They're all about not taking up space and not being noticed.)
There's a scene at the end of the book involving Aliens which is a highlight, so I won't spoil it for you, except to note that while Eeeee Eee Eeee has Dolphins and Bears and Moose and Aliens, what it does not have is: any character who is not depressed. XD; There's a very funny joke about this revolving around the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa.
What else. Sabina and I talked about the resemblance between Tao Lin' writing style and the Hipster Runoff writing style, and whether it was a coincidence or whether one inspired the other. Her take was that "the argument against the hipster thing is that they're faking it because they're afraid of committing emotionally. but if you can't commit emotionally because you're super depressed, it might sound the same but it comes from somewhere different. and anyway, I'm sure lots of hipsters are depressed."
R's take on all this is that she's disgusted with the author, who has obviously given up on ever not being depressed. She says that if you make something like depression a core part of your personality, you're never going to be able to put it aside.
Jony's take is that she's sick of hearing about Tao Lin just because he went to NYU (she's a student there).
My final thoughts on Eeeee Eee Eeee are that it's short, interesting... and infectious. It's idea-rich and it made me want to write - the way idea-rich novels always make me want to write. So I wrote - fifteen hundred words that I threw away because they sounded too much like Tao Lin.omg I've been infected.
If there's a "flaw" in the book it's that it takes you to a sad lonely place, and doesn't tell you where to go from there. This might be a cult book but it's not the kind of cult book you can use as a recipe book. There are no solutions - except maybe to open a new tab in Internet Explorer and start writing.
****
What a post for Christmas Eve. ^^; But I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands. Merry Christmas, everyone! PS I reserve the right to edit this post sometime that's not 4am.
The authorial stand-in(?), Andrew, is a Bear... I was reading some reviews of Tao Lin's work that said it's about the Major Problem of modern life in the Web age, which is that we can do anything but end up doing nothing. I don't really agree - more on this later - but I could see it in a scene where a Bear rips the roof off Andrew's car, then promises "$100 and a free laptop computer" if he'll follow down a trapdoor.
I read this and I thought, Oh my God! That's the pop-up ad bear!! You know, the "hit the bear and win a free laptop computer" bear. And then I could see the author struggling late one night with his writing, in a dark room, lit only by "the soft blue light of Internet Explorer" (that's a quote from another book by Tao Lin). And then the bear pops up, and there is Tao Lin's inspiration and a device for moving the action along.
It's like this: each Bear gets three wishes, and they all wish for Teleport, first. So Bears can go anywhere they want to. They can see interesting and amazing things, whenever they want to. And they can probably do anything they want to as well, because who's going to stop a 500 pound bear from doing what it wants? And yet, Bears are lonely and bored all the time. This is kind of like being on the Internet, with the ability to read amazing and interesting things every second of every day... and yet finding yourself clicking on the stupid pop-up bear over and over in a trance, feeling bored.
It's kind of like that, but it's not really like that. Because that feeling eventually passes. For lots of people, it passes as soon as they get up from their computers and walk outside in the fresh air and sunshine. This is why I don't agree with reviewers who say that Tao Lin is trying to write about Modern Life. If I had to guess, I'd say that Tao Lin is trying to communicate a mental state. But communication is tiring, especially when people misunderstand you and you have to repeat yourself. Therefore, Tao Lin strives to never be misunderstood, by writing only in the simplest and most direct terms and eschewing all metaphor and metaphorical language.
(But he's also self-protective, in that 90s indie way, where you mask an underlying and painful sincerity in "irony" and dumb in-jokes. Tao Lin's totem animal is probably not the bear, but the turtle. Anyway, end tangent.)
The result is that his writing is always simple and concrete, even when he's summarizing complex ideas gleaned from many many hundreds of hours reading great works of classic literature - see the author's blog, "Reader of Depressing Books," for proof. XD; Anyway, Tao Lin's writing requires much less effort to process than the authors he is relating would require, and I believe this to be the source of his Power. (She says with fake-authority.)
Back to Eeeee Eee Eeee. Dolphins care intensely about everything. Bears don't let themselves feel much of anything. All their non-shallow thoughts are cut short. It gives the prose in sections from Andrew's POV a brutal, jumpy, ADD style -- which reminds me that ADD might have roots in anxiety, not following through on thoughts because you've been trained that the results will be bad.
The two other kinds of depressives in the book are Moose and Aliens: Moose have given up hope (they'll only be disappointed) and thought (their thoughts will only be negative). They live robotically. You wonder why they bother at all.
There's a scene at the end of the book involving Aliens which is a highlight, so I won't spoil it for you, except to note that while Eeeee Eee Eeee has Dolphins and Bears and Moose and Aliens, what it does not have is: any character who is not depressed. XD; There's a very funny joke about this revolving around the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa.
What else. Sabina and I talked about the resemblance between Tao Lin' writing style and the Hipster Runoff writing style, and whether it was a coincidence or whether one inspired the other. Her take was that "the argument against the hipster thing is that they're faking it because they're afraid of committing emotionally. but if you can't commit emotionally because you're super depressed, it might sound the same but it comes from somewhere different. and anyway, I'm sure lots of hipsters are depressed."
R's take on all this is that she's disgusted with the author, who has obviously given up on ever not being depressed. She says that if you make something like depression a core part of your personality, you're never going to be able to put it aside.
Jony's take is that she's sick of hearing about Tao Lin just because he went to NYU (she's a student there).
My final thoughts on Eeeee Eee Eeee are that it's short, interesting... and infectious. It's idea-rich and it made me want to write - the way idea-rich novels always make me want to write. So I wrote - fifteen hundred words that I threw away because they sounded too much like Tao Lin.
If there's a "flaw" in the book it's that it takes you to a sad lonely place, and doesn't tell you where to go from there. This might be a cult book but it's not the kind of cult book you can use as a recipe book. There are no solutions - except maybe to open a new tab in Internet Explorer and start writing.
****
What a post for Christmas Eve. ^^; But I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands. Merry Christmas, everyone! PS I reserve the right to edit this post sometime that's not 4am.