Friday, April 18, 2008

PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE

My ebook/chapbook is now online:

PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE.



You will be able to buy printed versions of the chapbook for $4 in the near future. Supposedly they look really nice.

The easiest way to read this on ISSUU is there's a little button on the screen when you first go there with a double arrow at a 45 degree angle. That pops the book out to full screen mode and makes it easier to zoom rather than dragging it around as it is in default.

Massive thanks to Adam Robinson @ Publishing Genius for all his hard work designing and tasteful edits and just being a bitchin dude in general.

Thanks to Heather for causing me the title and for being an awesome friend and person and girlfriend during these weird times.

The book has a little blurb by Josh Maday. Josh Maday wrote several blurbs. Here are some of the others:


"PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE by Blake Butler is waking life broken into pieces and reassembled in a dream, an assemblage of tectonic plates with words and sentences smashing into each other, rubbing in a sexual way, and copulating with the reader’s mind. The aggregate of words and sentences vibrates at 8.6 on the Richter scale. This ebook is a seismic wave radiated by the earthquake that is Blake Butler."


"PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE by Blake Butler:

grows inside your head.

fucks with fine motors skills.

is best commented on by itself.

is the leading cause of sexual pleasure.

produces a feeling like jalapeƱo eye drops.

creates and discloses waking life in the dream.

does with words what David Lynch does with film.

catches the eye like those pointy old fashioned breasts.

crawls inside the gut, circles around before lying down.

taps your mind and soul and lingers long after it has left.

takes your mother on a date and leaves her on the porch.

leaves you alongside the road, but it always comes back.

moves into and out of and back into your unconscious.

throws you off balance like a low-swinging belly.

wields language in ways that provoke envy.

leaves imperceptible scars on the eyes.

may cause swelling, bleeding, joy.

Results may vary.

Unlikely."


"This ebook made me feel excited, sad, and other feelings named by inadequate words. When I came to the end I wanted it to go on, probably forever. Blake Butler is an earthquake. I enjoyed PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE. It is not allowed to say it is good, but I still think it is good."


"This blurb is regarding PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE by Blake Butler, Esq., Earthquake, Etc. PIATBVL features a narrator who I would have liked to talk forever, a dog with a festering tumor, and a girl named Emily who is a spambot. Blake Butler shatters waking life and reassembles the pieces into a dream; or he shatters a dream and reassembles it in waking life. The disjointed narrative slides seamlessly along in this waking dream, touching tendrils of happy, funny, sad, and lonely. Blake Butler writes out of a chocolate energy. His words rub together in provocative ways and come together like Diet Coke and Mentos."


"This ebook by Blake Butler, it made me feel like I had soaked my contact lenses in jalapeno juice. I felt like I had sprayed twelve bottles of Afrin up my nostrils. My hair felt shiny and powerful. My teeth felt scared and alone. My fingernails felt hard and tremendous. This ebook by Blake Butler wanted me to eat it. I would eat this ebook if I found it on my plate in a restaurant. The words, they got inside me, and they grew. I liked PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE by Blake Butler very much. I liked it in a superlative way. The language in PIATBVL is chow mein. The sentences are teeth. I enjoyed living in this waking dream. It was strange, comforting, foreign, and familiar like a David Lynch film. I squirmed with anxiety and I liked it."


"PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE took me by the nose, held a gleaming straight razor to my neck, and looked me in the eye. When I walked away my neck was clean and my beard meticulously groomed. Inside, though, I was hemorrhaging."


Here are more blurbs other people wrote:


PRATHNA LOR: "reading this book made me feel itchy"


KEN BAUMANN: "PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE made me physically shake at times. I never felt scared, though. Something written in the book would seem too familiar, and I would shake. This happened many times. I really like this book."


BRADLEY SANDS: "Everybody likes stories about a boy and his dog, a girl who may only exist within the imagination of an email spammer, and a house with secret rooms that may not be real. I would doubt the existence of anyone who did not like these things. Therefore, I doubt there is anyone alive who would not like Blake Butler's Pretend I Am There But Very Little."


SHANE JONES: "PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE has everything I like in a story. It's funny, it's strange, the language snaps. It also has something that is hard to fit into a blurb and that I have found with most of Blake Butler's writing in that it fucks you up to a certain extent. I like this feeling very much and I'm thankful that Blake Butler has written this lovely little ebook."

That's a lot of words. Shit.

Thanks to everyone and thanks for reading the ebook when you can.

12 comments:

Ken Baumann said...

blake: yes. i read it again. i really really like this. great job to all. i will buy a hardcopy soon.

brandon said...

i liked that

Prathna Lor said...

fancy interface

BLAKE BUTLER said...

thank you ken and brandon.

prathan, yes issuu is awesome and free.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

sorry prathna

Michael Kimball said...

This is great, Blake (and Adam).

BLAKE BUTLER said...

thank you michael.

tammy said...

I printed out your book and read it during lunch. I'm glad I wasn't eating spaghetti (had a veggie & cheese sandwich from Subway). After I finished the book, I left Subway and drove over to the bank. I never think to go to the bank but the person in front of me was turning, so I did too. I was the only car at the drive-up ATM. After the computer asked me if I wanted to continue, I chose yes, and then a dog barked. It was a loud, yelping kind of bark (and only once). Definitely not coming from a trunk.

Your book is awesome.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

tammy, all of this makes me very happy. thank you.

Matt Bell said...

"Another room contained a baby and a sea."

I seriously cannot get this sentence out of my mind. I'm just wandering around my house thinking it over and over. It is not making me feel like a person with an abundance of mental health.

Great fucking work here, Blake. One of my favorite things I've read of yours.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

thanks matt i feel good

sasha fletcher said...

so it's over a year later, and i just wanted to say again how much i love this book. that's it. that's all.