Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin

8.5/10 dropps

Plotless novels* make the easiest reviews. Reviews of plotless novels should, so it seems, also be plotless. That means no one knows anything about your opinions on the novel because the novel itself has no real opinions. Points normally made in reviews are absent in the review of a book that has no real points. Some may defend the lack of a(n) opinion/point as a point and/or opinion in and of itself. These defenders allot intrinsic meaning to absence. This may or may not be true/important. Tao Lin’s debut novel is Eeeee Eee Eeee.

Tao Lin is the cyber-hare trickster god of the American postmodernists. He wrote the novella Shoplifting from American Apparel. I have not read the novella but it is sold at my local Barnes & Noble Booksellers. I remember that when I was in high school my local Barnes & Noble Booksellers had to move all of the Chuck Palahniuk books behind the checkout counter because kids were stealing them. The staff of my local Barnes & Noble Booksellers must not have appreciated the fact that kids were ‘getting’ Palahniuk’s fat-free brand of consumer nihilism.  If I’m not mistaken, American Apparel stores sell/have sold Lin’s novella Shoplifting. I am befuddled by the overwhelming irony enfilade that results from merchandising like this. American Apparel and Tao Lin are really ironic. They are bouncing irony rays off of each other. Tao Lin taunts with, ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue…’ or perhaps Dov Charney chants the aforementioned Lin’s way. Either way, both have established their own brands of fame: Charney in the company of spritely models, Lin in the company of nothingness.

I just killed an ant on my arm. Now the area in which I killed the insect is smudged grey-black. I cannot decide if the bug bit me moments before I killed it or if I am conceiving my own bad luck. The color of the smashed bug on my arm is a naturally-occurring metaphor for Tao Lin’s literary ambiguity.

Eeeee Eee Eeee has a protagonist named Andrew. Andrew could be anyone. He works at a Domino’s Pizza. He is plagued by bears, dolphins, and hamsters, all of which naturally occur in the surreal post-suburbia Lin conjures. All of the characters in the deadpan narrative, animals included, are racked by anxiety. They make confused statements, forget what they are doing, and change their minds. They are imperfect. They are murderers. They kill celebrities like director Wong Kar-Wai and novelist Salman Rushdie. None of this is important, however. Lin is constantly shuffling the cards, and each moment in Eeeee is replaced by another, stringing together a series of seemingly meaningless vignettes.

And maybe that’s the point. Lin celebrates the absurd and meaningless lives of bored and anxious people. Lin is celebrating what many intellectuals have considered the overriding emotions of the past 70+ years. Eeeee Eee Eeee is bleached and purgatorial, but also interesting, especially if you have ever stumbled across the thoughts “does my life have no meaning?” and “a plotless novel might be fun to read.” If you’re looking for a novel with interesting twists, endearing characters, and emotionally charged moments, you should get something else next time you go to your local Barnes & Noble.

*Semantically speaking, the reviewer realizes that concepts of “plot” can be argued and, like most of linguistic context, is malleable and subjective. Therefore, the reviewer conceits that a loosely defined plot can be applied to Eeeee Eee Eeee, undermining most of the first paragraph of this review and, debatably, the review in its entirety.

-Barrett White