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biblio_belle 's review for:
Eeeee Eee Eeee
by Tao Lin
3/5. Pretty hard to rate honestly. It’s like — um wtf but okay i think i’m following.
This is a book on nihilism (pessimism?). The asinine plot, the sentient bears and moose and hamsters and aliens, and the sporadic sentences show that. I think that’s the argument here— life doesn’t make sense and there’s no point. Don’t try to figure it out. It just is.
Every character is bored or homicidal. Dolphins are depressed. Bears are curious but aggressive and like to throw blankets over peoples heads (what’s that mean? naivety? darkness? nothing at all?). Andrew, our mainly-main character, is bored and lonely and can’t figure out how to have fun.
Some other reviewers said this felt like an acid trip. Sort of. To me, it felt like being inside the mind of a person slowly slipping into madness. Someone just barely making it through daily life while engaging with delusions of animals and obsessive visions of an old love.
The end rant (where Andrew has dinner with the president, joined by animal-bodyguards) makes the philosophy quite clear*. I read this coming off [b:Looking for Alaska|99561|Looking for Alaska|John Green|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1652042180l/99561._SY75_.jpg|919292] so it reminded me of the discussion of how to get out of the labyrinth of suffering that is life. This was just quite a different take.
Ultimately, I sort of liked it. I appreciated the humor, and developed some connection to the characters. I could actually kind of keep track of the plot, which is often hard in experimental/abstract books like this.
But can’t say I loved the vibe— again, every character is depressed so it’s not super pleasant to read. It made me feel weird, kind of like Murakami. Hard to shake the fever dream. Don’t know if I’d recommend, unless you have 2-3 hours and no expectations.
“Do you have a name?” Andrew says. “Do bears have names?”
“Andrew,” says the bear.
Andrew feels nervous. “I’m Andrew.”
“My name is Andrew,” the bear says.
“No,” Andrew says.
“Uh, yes,” the bear says.
“Oh,” Andrew says.
“Go again,” the bear says. “We’ll have fun.”
“How will it be fun?”
“We are both named Andrew,” the bear says. “I don’t know.”
“Your name isn’t Andrew,” Andrew says.
“My name is Andrew,” the bear says. “What the fuck?”
*(part of) the rant in question:
“I’m the president, I think. There is no good or bad. You arrive. Here you are. No one tells you what to do. So you make assumptions. Or you believe someone else’s assumption. A common assumption is that pain and suffering is bad. But how do you know if an action will increase or decrease net pain and suffering in the universe from now until the end of time? You can’t know. Impossible. You don’t know if drawing your friend a picture will or will not cause fifty thousand years of suffering to ten million organisms on Alpha Centauri one billion years from now. So you create context. A common context is one’s life plus the next few generations, not including animals, plants, or inanimate objects, and only on Earth, with emphasis on one’s own country. So now you’ve made an assumption and also blocked out more than 99.9% of the universe, 99.9% of all life on Earth, and an infinite or unknown amount of time. You live a horribly distorted life. You don’t know anything. Fuck you if you feel angry at someone else. I’ll kill you. You are stupid and boring. Killing isn’t bad. The only thing to be angry at is existence itself. We all force our assumptions and contexts onto other people. Each thought influences our actions and each action exists inside—and so influences— the world. That is politics. But who cares? How can you be angry at someone else’s assumption or context that was arbitrarily chosen or adopted as your own? If you unsarcastically feel anger at anything except everything it means your context does not include the information that assumptions have made and contexts have been created; so anger is okay I guess.”
This is a book on nihilism (pessimism?). The asinine plot, the sentient bears and moose and hamsters and aliens, and the sporadic sentences show that. I think that’s the argument here— life doesn’t make sense and there’s no point. Don’t try to figure it out. It just is.
Every character is bored or homicidal. Dolphins are depressed. Bears are curious but aggressive and like to throw blankets over peoples heads (what’s that mean? naivety? darkness? nothing at all?). Andrew, our mainly-main character, is bored and lonely and can’t figure out how to have fun.
Some other reviewers said this felt like an acid trip. Sort of. To me, it felt like being inside the mind of a person slowly slipping into madness. Someone just barely making it through daily life while engaging with delusions of animals and obsessive visions of an old love.
The end rant (where Andrew has dinner with the president, joined by animal-bodyguards) makes the philosophy quite clear*. I read this coming off [b:Looking for Alaska|99561|Looking for Alaska|John Green|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1652042180l/99561._SY75_.jpg|919292] so it reminded me of the discussion of how to get out of the labyrinth of suffering that is life. This was just quite a different take.
Ultimately, I sort of liked it. I appreciated the humor, and developed some connection to the characters. I could actually kind of keep track of the plot, which is often hard in experimental/abstract books like this.
But can’t say I loved the vibe— again, every character is depressed so it’s not super pleasant to read. It made me feel weird, kind of like Murakami. Hard to shake the fever dream. Don’t know if I’d recommend, unless you have 2-3 hours and no expectations.
“Do you have a name?” Andrew says. “Do bears have names?”
“Andrew,” says the bear.
Andrew feels nervous. “I’m Andrew.”
“My name is Andrew,” the bear says.
“No,” Andrew says.
“Uh, yes,” the bear says.
“Oh,” Andrew says.
“Go again,” the bear says. “We’ll have fun.”
“How will it be fun?”
“We are both named Andrew,” the bear says. “I don’t know.”
“Your name isn’t Andrew,” Andrew says.
“My name is Andrew,” the bear says. “What the fuck?”
*(part of) the rant in question:
Spoiler
“I’m the president, I think. There is no good or bad. You arrive. Here you are. No one tells you what to do. So you make assumptions. Or you believe someone else’s assumption. A common assumption is that pain and suffering is bad. But how do you know if an action will increase or decrease net pain and suffering in the universe from now until the end of time? You can’t know. Impossible. You don’t know if drawing your friend a picture will or will not cause fifty thousand years of suffering to ten million organisms on Alpha Centauri one billion years from now. So you create context. A common context is one’s life plus the next few generations, not including animals, plants, or inanimate objects, and only on Earth, with emphasis on one’s own country. So now you’ve made an assumption and also blocked out more than 99.9% of the universe, 99.9% of all life on Earth, and an infinite or unknown amount of time. You live a horribly distorted life. You don’t know anything. Fuck you if you feel angry at someone else. I’ll kill you. You are stupid and boring. Killing isn’t bad. The only thing to be angry at is existence itself. We all force our assumptions and contexts onto other people. Each thought influences our actions and each action exists inside—and so influences— the world. That is politics. But who cares? How can you be angry at someone else’s assumption or context that was arbitrarily chosen or adopted as your own? If you unsarcastically feel anger at anything except everything it means your context does not include the information that assumptions have made and contexts have been created; so anger is okay I guess.”