Tuesday, March 20, 2007

reviews and dumb

I have a review of Myfanwy Collins's flash fiction piece 'Quarter' now up at Smokelong Quarterly. The review is longer than the story.

I also have a review of Tao Lin's upcoming novel EEEEE EEE EEEE coming in the next Bookslut. Both that novel and his story collection BED can be ordered at his website by clicking on that link. And they are well worth it, as I'll talk about in the review.

I'm trying hard to blog more but I lose track of these things so quickly.

I have been writing about 40 hours a week on a new novel, almost immediately after finishing a previous one. After finishing it I wasn't satisfied with the ending and I felt too tired to rework it. I'd been in that same mode for so long and the work felt too difficult. My characters in the novel were all unsympathetic. I like unsympathetic characters. I like to imagine the thoughts of people I wouldn't mind seeing get hit by a car. The mainstream reading public, and probably the majority of even the literary public, does not like unsympathetic characters. And so this book will exist on my hard drive for a while, until I get the nuts to go back and fix it, but for now I kind of like it there.

To get away from unsympathetic characters I am now writing a novel about an accused pedophile. That's a good idea, Blake.

Blake is a smart fucker.

Blake wins by only thinking.

Hallelujah.

If god wrote the bible, why did he stop there? Is he a one-trick pony? Fearing the sophomore slump?

Shush, dick.

3 comments:

Tao Lin said...

i linked you. your blogging skills are pretty good. i enjoyed reading.

Myfanwy Collins said...

Thank you so much for your review of Quarter, Blake. I really enjoyed reading it.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

thanks tao, much appreciated.

myfanwy, my pleasure. i'm glad you saw the review and liked.