books @ Vice

a weekly series of posts on books and shit


(7) "The Shining 2 by Jonathan Franzen" by Stephen King
(6) I Talked Books to Bros on Chatroulette
(5) Nikanor Teratologen's Rolodex of Atrocities
(4) Selected Unread Books I've Had On My Self For 5+ Years and Why I Haven't Read Them yet And/Or What I Think They Might Be About
(3) Injecting Mercury: A Review and Interview re: Ariana Reines's Mercury
(2) The Multiplying Hells of Pierre Guyotat
(1) All Language Is Murder

Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia

My first book of nonfiction came out this week.



Review in Time

Review in Creative Loafing

Review/interview at Fanzine

Interview in Interview

Radio Interview on The Brian Lehrer Show (WNYC)

Podcast at Other People

* * *

You can get Nothing now at Amazon, SPD, stores, etc.

i gave my dad some candy

MOM: What do you say when someone gives you something you want?
DAD: I want this.

30 Under 30

i have extra copies of this 30 Under 30 Anthology of younger innovative writers I edited with Lily Hoang, out a month or so ago. if you would like one, paypal $12 to blakebutler [at] gmail [dot] com (shipping included)


"30 Under 30 offers an impressive cross-section of innovative American fiction by young writers. If you're tired of the 'authorized version' and want a sense of where fiction is really going, what its future shapes and forms are likely to be, this is the place to start." - Brian Evenson, author of Fugue State and The Open Curtain.

"Cops in the clouds, a father and daughter’s mythic severing, fictions of spreadsheets, a story ending in future tense. For those young enough still to live in language, words are tangible as slivers, as hard candy in the mouth. These thirty assemble the outlandish, the ecstatic, the wild, and there’s a conviction they can just do this." - R. M. Berry, author of Frank and Dictionary of Modern Anguish

CONTRIBUTORS: Joanna Ruocco » Brian Oliu » Michael J. Lee » Angi Becker Stevens » Shane Jones » Devin Gribbons » Christina Kloess » James Yeh » William Seabrook » Danielle Adair » Megan Milks » Rachel Glaser » Michael Stewart » Sean Kilpatrick » Andrea Kneeland » Zach Dodson » Beth Couture » Mike Young » Kathleen Rooney & Elisa Gabbert » Joshua Cohen » Matt Bell » Adam Good » Andrew Farkas » Jaclyn Dwyer » Ryan Downey » Ryan Call » Kristina Born » Conor Madigan » Rebecca Jean Kraft » Evenlyn Hampton

what would happen if a private source offered $5 million to 1st American who can convince someone in their family to commit suicide on film

This story is called wrote a new story today

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you can now get my book EVER in ebook form for $6 from Calamari Press

In the Heart of the Country by Coetzee is really fantastic

things are gpomg tp get worse arent they

sometimes
book
reviews
make
me
wonder
if
there
are
really
any
people

"There was a wall in him that no one reached. Not even Clara, though she assumed it had deformed him. A tiny stone swallowed years back that had grown with him and which he carried around because he could not shed it. His motive for hiding it had probably extinguished itself years earlier. . . . Patrick and his small unimportant stone. It had entered him at the wrong time in his life. Then it had been a flint of terror. He could have easily turned aside at the age of seven or twenty, and just spat it out and kept on walking, and forgotten it by the next street corner.

"So we are built."

There is No Year reading tour

Going out for a little stretch on the road to do reading junk from There is No Year; if you are nearby, would be rad to hang out!

Monday, April 11, 2011
POWELL'S BOOKSTORE
1005 West Burnside Portland, OR 97210
7:30

Tuesday, April 12, 2011
UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE
4326 University Way Seattle, WA 98105
7:00

Thursday, April 14, 2011
CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE
261 Columbus AVE San Francisco, CA 94133-4586
7:00

Friday, April 15, 2011
SKYLIGHT BOOKS
1818 N. Vermont AVE Los Angeles, CA 90027
7:30

Sunday, April 17, 2011
Largehearted Lit series - at WORD
126 Franklin ST Brooklyn, NY 11222
7:30

Monday, April 18, 2011
MCNALLY JACKSON BOOKS
52 Prince ST New York, NY 10012
7:00

Wednesday, April 20, 2011
BROOKLINE BOOKSMITH
279 Harvard St Brookline, MA 02446
7:00

There is No Year drops today

Seems wild to already be at April 5 2011, but here we are.

There is No Year is available widely, including online at several places found here.

Amazon has it for like less than $9, and there are the brick stores that are alive.



An immense honor to have blurbs from two of my favorite writers of all time:

“If there’s a more thoroughly brilliant and exciting new writer than Blake Butler, . . . well, there just isn’t. I’ve literally lost sleep imagining the fallout when There Is No Year drops and American fiction shifts its axis.”
— Dennis Cooper

"Blake Butler, mastermind and visionary, has sneaked up and drugged the American novel. What stumbles awake in the aftermath is feral and awesome in its power, a fairy tale of an ordinary family subjected to the strange, lonesome agony known as daily life. There is No Year is a merciless novel cleansed of joy, pumped full of fear and awe."
— Ben Marcus

Thanks again to all who've done so much for me and continue to do so much. I couldn't feel happier.

I hope you'll check out the book if you feel it.

"In fantasies of romance it was she who fought and overcame thereon to rescue some object or figure that never in the reverie resolved or took to itself any shape or name."