Absent For A Bit ....

I am away for a little while working on a few or more episodes for The Adventures of My Space Alien Alter Ego story ... will return (to Earth) soon!

Notice: Blogger has screwed up and lost a bunch of photos out of my blog! They are replaced with a gray silhouette of a human head. I will eventually get them replaced with the correct photo, it may take a while to find and fix everything. So some of my stories don't make much sense without their photos, sorry for the inconvenience.

esbb

2012-02-09

My Review of the Book 'Eeeee Eee Eeee' by Tao Lin

I looked at a sample of the book Eeeee Eee Eeee, by Tao Lin, online, and bought the Kindle version. I have read several pages (laughing a few times) and here is my initial review:

There is a theory called the Infinite Monkey Theory that states that if you let a monkey bang away randomly on a typewriter for an infinite period of time he will eventually type the complete works of Shakespeare. From this theory I have derived the Quarter Monkey Theory that states that a monkey using only one hand instead of two and using only half of infinity instead of all of it, could write the book Eeeee Eee Eeee.

[For those weak in mathematics, one half times one half equals one quarter.] Do keep in mind I mean this as a compliment to the author.

After I read the complete book I will make a recommendation.

Warning: The book contains some naughty words.

Update: This has nothing to do with the book. I semi-randomly read an article on the Korean alphabet named Hangul, and now I think it a very wonderful way of writing. The shape of the letters has to do with the shape of the mouth while speaking, and syllables are a collection of sounds that are wrote as separate groups. Of course I say that only knowing about the language, not actually using it or learning it. But its adoption by the Korean people for a written language instead of using Chinese characters made it easier to have a higher literacy rate, especially among the poor people. I will give you a separate review of my attempts at learning Korean. But I can tell you this much: I studied it an hour or so ago and I still remember how to write 'ganada' in Korean. That is the equivalent of English for ABC, the first three letters of the alphabet.

The Hangul arrangement is called the ganada order, (가나다 순) which is basically an alphabetical order named after the first three letters (g, n, d) affixed to the first vowel (a). The letters were named by Choe Sejin in 1527.

Link to the Korean Alphabet

Update: Friday morning pre-chicken sandwich - I have made it eXactly halfway through the book Eeeee Eee Eeee. What shall I compare it to? In some ways it is like every snowman I have ever built-made-gave life to that is now just a puddle somewhere or a drop in the ocean, and a perceptive child walks by and looks at his reflection in the puddle, and forces his mother to stop as he points, and she says, "What is it?" and the child smiles and says, "It's a snowman!". Or it could be like a shark that was swimming through a drop of the ex-snowman and he suddenly thinks, "That bit of ocean was a little colder and less salty than normal".

I got to the very middle of the book and imagined being on a Bell Curve, eXactly halfway, like you were done climbing up the side of the curve ready for an easy ride down, but then you notice that the curve has suddenly inverted and you NOW have to make the same climb back out of a Bell Curve shaped hole. Ugh.

On my way through the book I get the idea to make a list of all the naughty words, and then make a frequency diagram, maybe color coding each naughty word. I am not sure just yet what kind of graph it will be.

The writing is eXcruciatingly random to the point of slowly nearly inducing pain, but then just as you think a tiny piece of pain is going to happen within you, suddenly you laugh, and say out loud, I can't believe people pay money for this. Or else you fall asleep and think you read something, but it was reaLLy just a dream.

I am off to feed the dog and then myself in that order.

Update: Monday morning with headache - I decided to read the second half of the book backwards, sentence by sentence. I figured it would probably make just as much sense to do it that way as to go forward. So here is my review of the entire book: I believe that most anyone could write a book very similar to Eeeee Eee Eeee by following these steps.

 A) Find someone who would agree to take LSD and be interviewed
 B) Prompt the someone with questions about bears, dolphins, girlfriends, hampsters, Obama, pizza and space aliens
 C) Follow the someone around recording everything they say and do
 D) Ask the someone questions if they stop speaking
 E) Stop when you have 211 pages of material

Would I recommend reading this book? No, but I am going to scan it again so I can create an accurate chart of naughty words. I certainly would not recommend that anyone read this book while taking LSD or while confined to a psychiatric ward.

Note: I have no personal eXperience with illegal drugs. I have just seen the effects on others and heard a lot of stories. And I'm a chemist.

13 comments:

Rob Z Tobor said...

Well Mr ESB I think I should refer you back to my blog entry of the 27th Jan titled ...... The famous Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel and the best selling book "How to disguise yourself as a traffic cone"....... Not only did I discuss the monkeys but I used them within a famous mathematical paradox, the so called (Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel). I think Mr Tao Lin or as he is affectionately know by his mother Toe The Line as a result of his skill at drawing a line in the sand with his Tao which people have always found difficult to cross because on the other side are an infinite number of moneys writing plays.

esbboston said...

Rob Z T: I didn't remember anything about that post that you did Jan 27th. I was sure that I was reading you at that time, so I went back and found the comment that I had left on that post, which I now remember writing because your post that day completely befuddled me.

My comment:
All I can say today is 'What?'
It is late and maybe there is something wrong and tomorrow I can say 'Oh.'
But for now it is 'What?'



Have you read the "Eeeee Eee Eeee"?

Rob Z Tobor said...

Sorry I never really finished what I was saying. Yes Mr Line (sorry Lin) may be able to prove Eeeeeee Eee Eweeeeee is equal to M.C. squared by getting a huge pile of moneys together but .......... .............. ............. ............. ......... ............. ........ ............ .......... ............. ............. .......... .. that was a pause for a brilliant punch lin (sorry Line) but sadly non of the monkeys or me have thought of one.
I blame that Bloody Shakespeare

esbboston said...

Rob Z T: If the book title "Eeeee Eee Eeee" represents twelve e's multipled together, then e raised to the 12th power, then the mc squared on the other side of the equals sign would be m to the 12th and then c raised to the 24th power. I tried to type the equation with fancy eXponents, but I couldn't find a tiny four.
BUT if Mr Tao Lin was thinking of e as the base for natural logarithms, or approximately equal to 2.71828, then e raised to the 12th power would be approximately 162753.

Actually, when you read the story very early in the book you find out that the 12 e's are related to gravity in a bad way, odd a bully.

Rob Z Tobor said...

I think that about sums it up rather well.... And a well is a bit like a black hole and so ...... No maybe not I will not say another word

Badger said...

Sissi regularly sits on my keyboard and types 'words' but I would wager that 60 zillion Sissis are not going to produces anything in 60 Zillion years that you could read.

Word very 'Redglum' a sad looking Australian gum tree.

esbboston said...

Badger: Maybe you have figured out that monkeys are more random than cats! With m for monkey and c for cat, this makes for a whole new set of eXperiments for Einstein's e=mc squared equation, ah, Schrodinger's Monkey!

Aysh said...

Ahh does that mean you've got bored of it!? I still wanna read it though :D

esbboston said...

Aysh: Bored? No, it isn't reaLLy boring because it is so random. Its just, well, um, I'm just glad its only a couple hundred pages long. If it is was twice or four times longer there could be an increase in suicides and novel induced insanity. I am now thinking about reading it backwards on a sentence by sentence basis.

esbboston said...

Aysh: I forgot to say thanks for your book selections!

Stephanie said...

I haven't yet decided if this review makes me want to read the book or not. Intriguing!

esbboston said...

Stephanie: I haven't decided either ...

&^)

Aysh said...

You are very welcome dear *thumbs up*

New Blog for My Abstract Art ... Come Visit

Click HERE for the Art of Ernest S B Boston

These are pieces that I have generated mainly using computer art tools. Enjoy !

Something New:

I am also in the process of linking my poetry blog entries together. This project is only partially finished. A "Poetry LINK" at the bottom of the blog entry points to the next older piece of poetry.


First poem in the series of linked poems ....

Turn Gold Out of the Darkness

Turn Gold Out of the Darkness

Blog Archive

My Art

These are some of my abstract art pieces. They are available as prints, send me a note if you are interested.

Couch Glow

Couch Glow

Gold As Smoke

Gold As Smoke

Flowing Wood

Flowing Wood