G D C S + S W D P

books @ Vice

2011-12-21T16:10:00.006-05:00

a weekly series of posts on books and shit

(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

2011-10-14T13:19:00.006-04:00

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

2011-10-12T13:11:00.001-04:00

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

30 Under 30

2011-10-03T12:05:00.003-04:00

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

2011-08-11T22:50:00.000-04:00

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

2011-07-30T15:11:00.002-04:00

Globs on a box of a pile of dogshit claim rainwater leaked along the cardboard bent in hands that wiweuhasdifoasiud oaid oiaus dofiu aosid jfuahsdfhak jsb kjhas kdjh;aush fo;fhas d;ofha;osidf;aiufiausoifuaoishdf;oha;sdhf ;ohajdhj ahnsdj nas;djh;oauhsdo;fuh asohdf ahsodifjo aisjdfi jalsdkjnv laskjd lkjalksdjf lkajs;lfdk ja;lskj dfl;kajsdl fkjal;skdjf l;kajsd ;fljas;dlkjf;adsjf;hasjdh ;ohdofijai jfp’I jasdjf lakjsd;fjasijdfiajsdhfljahsdljhfla;sjhlfkjs lkjf laksjdf;klja sldkjf l;aksjdf ljasdl;fkja;lskdjfl ja jfkajs ;dkfja;l sjfo;iasj d;oifj a;jsdh f;o sd;ofij h asl;dhf;owheoidoigha;sjdhasjhdoahds ou ;oiadu fiua aiuf’oi a;osih ;aojsd ;jan;jvn;jxnc;ojva;osh;ouahs;oga;osidhg;oasuhdofiuao;sidufoaisuf;oiausd;iouf;oaisudfo;iua;osidu aoiduf ;oaisud;ofiuas;doiuf I oiasud ;oiudao uaoisdu ;oifasud ;ofiuaspidu foaisu p’fiuaspidu fpiasudf;oias;oduhf aisgdfjhsgdjhfgsjhabsdl faslhkdf kjahsdkj hasjd hflakjsdkl jhasd jhfa;osu dhfa h;of ha;osd h;ouau h;ou h;ou h;ouf h;aou shd;ou ahsdo uha;do uhf;aousd h;oau ds;ou ;ouah sd;ofuh as;dou fha;osu ;ou ahd ;oufha;s df ;oiauhs fouahs;ouf ha;osuhf ;oasudh f;oiashdfo;ihaso;difj;aoisdhfo;iahsdofuhas;odihf;oaisjd;ofijhas;oidjfaisjdf;oias;odifh;aosidjf;oiajsd;oifja;sodif aoisdj ;oia ;oidu oi ;oi iou I oi ;ofia ou idjo as;oi ;ao ;aoi uf ;aois idu ;oiua;oi o8u0er8uo8wueoruhahxbvcjhzvjhvczjhvxb kzcb .knzbx.cnvbznxbcvn,zbx znmb cknvbzxkcjbvliashdvliuahsr iufahe;ofua;oiewuf;oaiwue;foiauweo;ifuao;e89uf09ause09fua0s9dfu[a0s9udf0[9asudf[09aus09fuas0[d9uf[a80sduf[a8sd[f098ausd0f98ua s[dfu9a-su9dfa9sudf09uasd[-fu9as-dfu9[a9sudf[-9uas[9uf[a9sud [a9s udf[09uas09fu0asdu9f[9uas[df9u[as9duf[0as9ud[0f8ua08u 0[98ua sdf90u a08sd 8 duf[0a9s8u df08uas[0d8fua[08sdyu f[089ausd[09f8ua08sduf08ausdf08uasd8ufasiudf8asu 80 0[8a udf08 a08 0[a8fu 0a8duf uahsd;oufhalksdhblkhzxbcvlkhzbxldkhgflaksdhfliuehriuwyoufhasioduhf;OUhdf;jkabse;ufha;ksjdhf;oauwehf;oasdbf;aosudhf;oasudyfo;ueyw;o ;wou ye;fou a;ouiw a;oi f;ouah ;fou a;ois foai sefoa;osu o;uasyd ;ouahdf ou;ahsd ;ouhasdo;fh a;osdh f;jashd;fljha ;oh ad;ofhajl;sdhf ;ljahs d;lfjha;sldjh foaisufoua 8uaf ;ouas ufaois oiasdoifu aipusdfp’iu aipsudf aipus p’iu adp’sif uap’isdu fipaup’iu aip’sdu faipusdfipuasdipuf’pai ‘pidu faipusdfipuasdipfuaip’u d’p adipufaipsudfipuap’sidu ‘apiud fip’ uasdipufaipsudf ‘paiu dfipua sdipfuaps diu ‘paisdu f’paisud pia udipsufaipsudfaipusp’iuaps’idu ‘paiusdf’p uaips’duf p’aisdu ‘paisud ‘piausdfp iausd fipuasd piuadipfuaipsdufaipsud p’I a’piua sp’I ufap’isud ‘apisdu p’iuasdip uaips’duf aipusdf aip’sdu f;aiosudfoiasdoi ufaipsud fp’iausdop’fi p’aosidfop as’pdo fiaops’id afopisdfopuaipsdufiausd fipuasdipufaipsudfipuasdipfuaipsdufaipusdfipuadisufip’ausdfipudisfaipusd’ pa’disu faipsud p’aisud fipuasdip’fu

2011-07-24T17:38:00.001-04:00

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

2011-06-27T15:25:00.002-04:00

In the Heart of the Country by Coetzee is really fantastic

2011-06-17T01:54:00.001-04:00

things are gpomg tp get worse arent they

2011-06-17T01:24:00.001-04:00

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

2011-06-12T21:47:00.003-04:00

"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

2011-04-10T14:06:00.002-04:00

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

2011-04-05T11:50:00.003-04:00

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.

2011-04-03T14:45:00.001-04:00

"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."

4 Recent Internet Shits of Me Running My Mouth Etc

2011-03-17T12:36:00.004-04:00

Profile of myself & HTMLGiant & There is No Year at the NY Observer: concerning David Lynch, internet machines, ego blur, and getting shit done

Excerpt from There is No Year at the Collagist: three consecutive scenes from Part 2 of 4, re: the mother's relationship with a polymer egg and a lawnmower

Interview at Bomb re: 4-night marathon reading of There is No Year in NYC, the internet as place, metaphor as fartcity, etc.

q/a & new short text "Hexagon" @ The Center for Fiction's The Literarian: a recursive piece concerning fornication, hibernation, wanting, pig babies, ass ends of the universe(s), etc. (connected in some way to this other short piece published earlier this year at Guernica, "I do love god"

+ + +

Also to announce, my 4th book, a nonfiction work about sleep and insomnia, titled Nothing, is slated for release this November.

No Year Prelease NYC marathon events

2011-02-28T17:34:00.002-05:00

2011-02-18T13:08:00.001-05:00

"Are you in there?" "In where." "In you." [shakes head no] "Where are you then?" "I don't know." "Where would you like to be?" "I don't give a shit." "What would make you happy?" "I don't know." [drinks V8]

There is No Year reviewed by PW, Kirkus, Library Journal

2011-01-31T14:03:00.002-05:00

3 nice reviews from nice places seems nice

from Publishers Weekly:

Butler's inventive third book is dedicated "For no one" and begins with an eerie prologue about the saturation of the world with a damaging light. Suitably forewarned, the reader is introduced to an unexceptional no-name family. All should be idyllic in their newly purchased home, but they are shadowed by an unwelcome "copy family." In the face of the copy mother, the mother sees her heretofore unrealized deterioration. Things only get worse as the father forgets how to get home from work; the mother starts hiding in the closet, plagued by an omnipresent egg; while the son gets a female "special friend" and receives a mysterious package containing photos of dead celebrities. The territory of domestic disillusion and postmodern dystopia is familiar from other tales, but Butler's an endlessly surprising, funny, and subversive writer. This subversion extends to the book's design: very short titled chapters with an abundance of white space. Not so much a novel as a literary tapestry, the book's eight parts are separated by blank gray pages. To Butler (Scorch Atlas), everything in the world, even the physical world, is gray and ever-changing, and potentially menacing. (Apr.)

from Kirkus:

A family lives in a house in which strange things start to happen (or—it’s a new novel by Blake Butler).

Love him, hate him or feign indifference: There’s really no other way to react to the work of writer/postmodernist/multi-hyphenate Butler (Ever, 2009, etc). For those who like their prose fresh out of a cleaner and more traditional wellspring, Blake’s writing can prove tedious at best and arduous at worst. But for those who lean toward writing that is more visceral, taxing or outright demanding of the reader, this might be the right cup of tea—see Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), to which this novel owes some debt. The book concerns a family of doppelgängers so featureless that Butler doesn’t bother to give them names (or more accurately, likely purposefully washes them out to their elementary characteristics). So, the father, the mother and the son live in a house, just like the carbon copy father, mother and son had done before them. The father stares at a computer screen. The mother stares at her lined face in mirrors and thinks protective thoughts about her son, who suffers from a disease that nearly ended his life. The son goes to school, makes a friend and watches television with his family. It’s all presented in hushed, monochrome language that gives the whole enterprise a sense of menace from the beginning, even before Butler introduces the father’s paranoia that things in the house are changing without his knowledge. And then things do start changing.

A gruesome slice of familial oddity that demonstrates its author’s versatility.

from Library Journal:

Butler keeps the reader guessing in his latest novel. A family moves into a house where another family lives—a lifeless, unseeing copy of the family. The family goes through individual psychological and paranormal experiences that make one wonder about the origins of the family’s demise—Is it the son’s carefully mentioned past disease? Some metaphysical demon in the son’s subconscious? Or does the newly purchased house cloak discontented poltergeists? Whatever the cause, each family member endures a private psychological hell that is disturbing in its authenticity. VERDICT This artfully crafted, stunning piece of nontraditional literature is recommended for contemporary literature fans looking for something out of the ordinary. Butler integrates unusual elements into his novel, such as interview-style monologs and in later chapters poetry-like stanzas. Also recommended for students of literature, psychology, and philosophy, as the distinctive writing style and creative insight into the minds of one family deserve analysis. [Eight-city tour.]—Jennifer Funk, Southwestern Illinois Coll. Lib., Belleville

2011-01-12T21:27:00.001-05:00

"When the notes were all burned, all that writing, as Franz expressed himself, he, Wertheimer, called up Salzburg and ordered the piano and Franz distinctly recalled that during this telephone call his master kept insisting that they send a completely worthless, a horribly untuned grand piano to Traich. A completely worthless instrument, a horribly untuned instrument, Wertheimer is supposed to have repeated over and over on the phone, said Franz."

2011-01-03T12:14:00.001-05:00

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2010-12-28T01:22:00.000-05:00

you don't have to beg a dog to shit in the house they just do it

Luger

2010-12-15T14:00:00.001-05:00

"The Make-A-Wish Foundation ceased granting hunting trips in 1999, amid criticisms from animal rights groups. The Foundation explained that the decision was based on the danger of having a child in a weakened state handling firearms."

2010-12-08T23:31:00.001-05:00

i finished reading foucault's history of madness today, it was spectacular beginning to end

00

need room

2010-12-01T13:43:00.003-05:00

trying to pare down my home, i have too many boxes

if anyone wants to buy some books, i will throw in some other books

$10 each for Scorch Atlas or Ever, including shipping

if you buy one i will include a free chapbook or drawing or something
if you buy both I will include a free bonus book worth reading

you could also buy Kristina Born's One Hour of Television ($8), or No Colony #1 ($5), which is almost sold out. Issue 2 is sold out. Issue 3 will be coming by the end of the year. it is ridiculous. i will include free stuff with those too

my paypal is my email address which is my first and last name all one word no space at gmail

2010-11-22T13:30:00.003-05:00

odd anchoring of twin but different ache in both arms: Left, a sore node on the bulb on top of the shoulder; Right, a longer running, more slowly throbbing warm glow near the elbow, months along; forced to sleep mainly on my back as one side or the other aches the other harder

everything is mostly fine; i am eating a lot of meals consisting of saltines paired with something i.e. honey or shredded cheese; those are actually the only two things, so there are two modes too

i've been sleeping rather fine. tired earlier than ever most nights and sleeping heavy without waking which i have not done in years and seems to spill over also into waking still, like more tired because of the backlog of approaching rest; i think we are going to go to kentucky for a minute next month and i am looking forward to old rooms

i wrote this thing about wallace

i have a new piece of a long novel in the new issue of this, an earlier chapter from the same piece that was in redivider last year or earlier this year, whichever that was, i can't tell what a day is anymore; i feel kind of itchy

just began a second section of what i think will be a five part novel that is different from whatever else i've done if i can remember anything about that

how bout ice cweam

2010-11-07T15:52:00.001-05:00

"LaBianca had on pajamas, and I later found out that his wife had pulled the blue dress she was now wearing over her pink nightgown after Charlie had suddenly appeared in her bedroom."

2010-11-06T20:37:00.006-04:00

wrote three paragraphs this morning
went to help move my father's things out of half of his room at the rest home, which will result in $1000 deducted from the rent, and will open the space for someone else to move in and share a room with him in the event the place becomes filled; he seemed upset my mother, sister, brother in law, and i were all there; he kept saying "I don't know what this is;" he did not at all notice the room's alteration
wrote one more longer paragraph between the moving and going to dinner with the same people except dad, washed my clothes
my mother and sister ordered the same thing to eat: tofu, vegetables, and sauce
i ate very much sushi wearing three shades of blue and a green shirt long as a dress
after dinner we stopped at a used store and my mom bought a beckett play, i bought nothing, my sister bought something i can't remember
returned to mom's and got in the bathtub and read the first half of christian hawkey's ventrakl until i felt so warm i put the book down and fell asleep in the tub
getting out standing in the mirror noticed a large vein seeming larger, darker
mom asked why i did not tell her she'd been wearing three earrings all evening
left my mom's house to go home, forgot my clothes in the house, had to come back
still feel too warm
going to run 6 miles and come back and read the rest of the hawkey
drink the rest of the diet ginger ale in my fridge, maybe the gin, maybe watch a movie, probably sleep early if i can

2010-10-20T15:16:00.002-04:00

Porn star "Savannah" aka Shannon Wilsey killed herself at age 23 in 1994 after recording the following films:

All American Superstars (1998) (V)
Direct Dial (1997) (V)
Bums Away (1995) (V)
Where the Boys Aren't Part IV: Boarding House Blues Too (1995) (V)
Savanah Unleased (1994) (V) (as Savanah) .... Angel, Nurse
Sinderella 2: The Stepsister (1994) (V)
Summertime Boobs (1994)
Battle of the Superstars (1993) (V)
Deep Inside Racquel Darrian (1993) (V)
Hollywood X-posed (1993) (V)
Hustlers, The (1993) (V)
Naughty Butt Nice (1993) (V)
Savannah Affair, The (1993) (V)
Secret Fantasies 3 (1993) (V)
Starbangers 1 (1993) (V)
Superstars of Sex: Racquel Darrian (1993) .... Biker Chick
Superstars of Sex: Savannah (1993)
Wet Event (1993) (V)
Angels (1992/II) (V)
Best of Footworship 3 (1992) (V)
Dixie Dynamite and the All-Star Tit Queens (1992)
Flash Floods (1992)
Hot Holes (1992) (V)
House of Sleeping Beauties (1992) (V)
House of Sleeping Beauties 2 (1992) (V)
Indian Summer (1992) (V)
On Trial 3: Takin' It to the Jury (1992)
On Trial Part 4: The Verdict (1992) (V)
Savannah R.N. (1992) (V) .... Nurse
Sinderella (1992)
Art of Desire (1991) (V) .... Alexis
Autoerotica (1991)
Autoerotica 2 (1991)
Blonde Forces (1991) (V)
Blonde Savage (1991) (V)
Camp Fear (1991) (as Shannon Wilsey)
Ecstasy (1991) (V)
End Results (1991) (V) (as Silver Cane)
Execu-Comp #169 - Classic Super Sex (1991) (V)
Forever (1991/I) .... Kim
Happy Endings (1991) (V)
Hot Savannah Nights (1991) (V)
Hurts So Good (1991) (V)
Indian Summer 2: Sandstorm (1991) (V)
Laying the Ghost (1991)
Legal Tender (1991) .... Mal's Gals
Made in Heaven (1991) (V)
Nasty Reputation (1991) (V)
Naughty Nymphs (1991) (V)
New Wave Hookers 2 (1991) (V)
No Boys Allowed (1991) (V)
On Trial 2 (1991) .... Ellen Fargo alias Scarlett
On Trial Part 1: In Defense of Savannah (1991) (V) .... Savannah
On Trial Part III: In Defense of Savannah (1991) (V) .... Savannah
On Trial Part II: In Defense of Savannah (1991) (V) .... Savannah
On Trial Part IV: In Defense of Savannah (1991) (V) .... Savannah
Roxy (1991) (V) .... Roxy
Savannah Superstar (1991) (V) .... Savannah
Spectacle, The (1991) (V)
Surf City Sex (1991) (V) (as Silver)
Virgin on the Run (1991) (V)
Vision, The (1991)
Vow of Passion (1991) (V)
Invisible Maniac, The (1990) (as Shannon Wilsey) .... Vicky
Racquel's Addiction (1990) (V) (as Silver Kane)
Sorority House Massacre II (1990) (as Shannon Wilsey) .... Satana
Trouble Maker (1990)
Every Man's Fancy (1988)
Reflections of Innocence (1988)
Telemates (1988)
Turn Up the Heat (1988)
Tight Fit (1987)

1963

2010-10-20T12:49:00.002-04:00

INTERVIEWER: Now, when you say like, it takes about an hour--do you spend most of your time painting?

ANDY WARHOL: No.

INTERVIEWER: You don't. What do you do? Besides, I know you've made a movie and you're going to make another one.

ANDY WARHOL: I don't know.

INTERVIEWER: You just live.

ANDY WARHOL: Right. No, I don't live.

INTERVIEWER: Do you want to qualify that statement?

ANDY WARHOL: No.

2010-10-18T21:18:00.002-04:00

"If I've written about my dilemma with this highhanded treatment of details and lack of concreteness, hiding behind a stiff, somewhat old-fashioned voice, it's because I'm embarrassed, shy--and afraid. Because I'm not free. Because I am what I am. Because I'm a member."

2010-09-19T03:04:00.005-04:00

walk to my house

i am not inside my house, walk to it anyway, open the purple curtain

behind the purple curtain someone is making pie

it will be a delicious pie when it is sursurrated hard and long against the open sweetness of your bald throat, sure

so have some of the pie

come back when i am tired and i might be actually inside the house, i will be warm

i will negate you for your asking for the warmth of me also but i will give it, it is not a warm warm, it is a sash

it is the longest sash anyone inside this country with a shirt has ever put across his left breast laughing in this year, this is a thing you can believe

there are many things you might believe about the color of the circuit system above your heart's mash, but this is a mistake, it is not a mistake i'd prefer to correct in you most likely as when it becomes correct you might have something sharp to say

i don't need the sharpness, or the knocking, or your food or any shirts

there will be a great circus that comes to town soon, surely, and when that comes you will be an ash inside the the ash, blur thrown by the circus friendlies for a great gnashing when their teeth respond in tandem to the color of your maximizing flesh exposed to rain

all this rain i ate might make me heavy someday but i am done with that

i have the surface area divider on lend from koresh and judson

i have the box

come back here to the house and look again

come back and ask a question for god if you have the fuckmaster cojones, which you don't

"no god"

"no god"

2010-09-19T03:03:00.002-04:00

blah blah blah beckett blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah beckett blah blah blah blah blah blah

2010-09-18T21:00:00.001-04:00

the remainder of this year in my life belongs to joey f. snordsen, and he alone.

5 Selected Goodreads Reviews of Scorch Atlas

2010-09-18T20:48:00.003-04:00

"This was maybe the worst book I've read in five years. The author is trying too hard to be unique, but doesn't have the talent to pull it off. Instead the book ends up feeling adolescent, indulgent and clumsily written." - "Kristen" 1 of 5 stars

"A novel featuring all-new scenes, Scorch Atlas is literature." - "Mickey" 5 of 5 stars

"The prose is quite good, and the premise is interesting, but wow is it ever disgusting. Some of the descriptions were so vile that I could barely make it through the book--and it gets more repulsive as the book goes along. I think the author is talented, but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone." - "Sarah" 1 of 5 stars

"It's amazing that a book this poorly written could actually get published . . . These stories read like a bad imitation of Samuel Becket. Artsy, self-indulgent, pretentious, and just really, really bad. The kind of stuff I used to read and make fun of in my undergraduate writing workshops. Wish I could give this one less than one star." - "Lee" 1 of 5 stars

"Makes the characters from The Road look like a bunch of pussweeds." - "Andrew" 5 of 5 stars

2010-08-31T23:07:00.001-04:00

"In polite stories the world had been made acquainted with the picturesque lives of these commonplace but worthy people. In detail their story had been told. Over the precipice in Yosemite the Bridal Veil Falls had been launching its water for a thousand years and ignorance was fattening his belly apace."

William Carlos Williams, The Great American Novel, 1923

SCORCH ATLAS BIRTHDAY DESTROY CONTEST

2010-08-18T12:00:00.001-04:00

via Featherproof, on the forthcoming 1 year anniversary of the book:

Once upon 2009 we decided, since Scorch Atlas was a destructive force, to offer destroyed copies on pre-sale, to the brave few who would let us mangle their copy. That looked like this:

Scorch Atlas (destroyed) by Blake Butler from featherproof books on Vimeo.

We got a surprising amount of requests for mutilated books, and happily complied. Blake was so happy he got hungry and started to eat the book. That looked like this:

Blake Butler eats Page 1 of Scorch Atlas from blake butler on Vimeo.

Despite a few protests from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Everything, the idea spread. Mike Kitchell exploded one:

Sean Lovelace shot some arrows at one:

And it became clear. The only way to truly finish Scorch Atlas was by destroying your copy. Thus: we propose a new contest. Destroy your copy. Better than any has destroyed before you. Smash it smear it, pepper it with flak, and digest it thoroughly. We want you to do your worst. Also acceptable: creative methods of destruction that don't necessarily destroy the book physically but endanger it, terrify it, or brutalize it. Like humiliating the book in public, or changing the text, or reading it aloud to your grandmother wearing a gas mask.

Post your video to YouTube or Vimeo. Let us know you did so at contest@featherproof.com by September 9th, 2010 (Scorch Atlas's birthday.) Then we'll pick a winner based on criteria of Risk, Bloodlust, Derring-do, Internet research, Smarts, and Pheromones Released.

ONE GRAND PRIZE WINNER will receive: the complete featherproof fiction catalog of books, including a signed, first edition (blackened edges) Scorch Atlas, in clean/perfect/mint condition, Ever by Blake Butler, both issues of No Colony, a t-shirt that says 'Knife That', mini-books, Kristina Born's One Hour of Television, stickers, a packet of Blake's hair, a book that Blake loves destroyed just for you, and a drawing he made in his sleep. It sounds like a joke, I know. But this grand prize package is SO NOT A JOKE. It's for real.

FIVE FIRST PRIZE WINNERS will receive a signed, first edition (blackened edges) Scorch Atlas, in clean/perfect/mint condition. To replace the one you mangled.

THE REST OF THE LOSERS just fucked themselves.

Have at it.

2010-08-16T12:33:00.002-04:00

issue 7 of The Lifted Brow is out, it has some freakshit, cover my Matthew Furie, words by Diane Williams, Matt Bell, Ryan Call, Jimmy Chen, Brian Evenson, Kim Chinquee, Mike Meginnis, Zachary German, Gabe Durham, Sam Pink, and a shitload of lot other. A section from Ricky's Anus serves as an introduction to the issue.

I don't have anything else to say about fucking life

2010-08-12T17:13:00.005-04:00

small year in Disgaza w/ my seizure
glowdoze slicing the house into what i can fit & can not fit
smaller than a life coach with white hamstrings
the zap will kill one of 11 mimes in me

2010-08-08T05:46:00.002-04:00

my inner black child is exploding

2010-07-20T01:03:00.003-04:00

today at the home when we came in there were four women singing together in a room full of older people sleeping. they were singing words without music, "oh i want to go home now, but the water is too high, oh i want to go home now." their voices were old and out of tune and strange in the room following my mother to wake my dad who almost never looks up these days from the ground.

later my mom told me that the song was a song one of the women had written and begun singing to herself around the home for weeks. at church sermons in the home on sunday she would sing it instead of hymnals, though on the days outside of church she would steal the tune. in this way others began to pick the song up. now they sing it often in long loops.

later in his own room my father recognized the first thing i've seen him recognize without prodding in the last few times i've seen him, the brief prechorus of an old 60s soul song that goes "oh oh oh." he sang it as if he had been cued to join in, then went back to trying to put the cookie on the floor.

2010-07-19T14:29:00.003-04:00

there must be 8 more replicants of 7 to complete the 7 sets of 7 sets of 7 comprising the fourth section of the text which has no beginning and no end

2010-07-09T19:49:00.008-04:00

nobody really actually believes anybody else or often listens
many of the things i have loved best i have never even seen
tonight the light coming through the red curtains has it apple-shaded enough to want to bite through, i think of someone's skin, i think of my skin
any hour i don't talk to my mother i am growing very old
though often when i am actually around my mother my skin makes such loud noise i can hardly think
another house
i should probably bite the skin and eat it and digest it, it would birth a set of clothes
i would wear the clothes and go near people, it would stink loud
today at the glass door to the backyard the blue bird from yesterday appeared again he seemed to knock twice i was looking for food
two bananas and various forms of pretzel dipped into wettish substance i read your instructions for how to not want to eat, the worm of slight repetitions under long mind, something stretched in big sound of fire at an asp
in the bathroom i read john cage saying in so many words because there is no message there need not ever be response
the buttons on this machine could find a way to type a message to someone larger than this home i'm sure but i don't have the sight inside me any more this year or i am too smushed or stupid or there is the color of my bones
i don't think i need to be any body ever over numbers, there could exist a perfect mall, another one and i could buy a machine that stitched itself against this one here and sent itself into the center of the lock
the rhyming machine the color machine the ten boxes of brownie mix
my father's ring somewhere hidden in the house unless mom found it, i can't not remember which, i can't not remember if i actually can not remember or if i am willfully allowing disambiguation in the name of saying something more indirectly in the hope that something like a hole or god could find its way into the stupid typing these days do not even demand but more likely give me something i can bend, something worth laughing at in public and ignoring every night now that i have been remaindered now that everyone is grease
can't even remember the last time i saw an insect other than the one i crushed the other night under a soft book
i had not read the book and likely never will

2010-07-07T16:21:00.002-04:00

the machine in my house won't stop beeping, someone is there
around 4 am i climbed onto the bathroom again and tried to hoist
black shit on my arms, found pieces of the swiffer under my pillow
sometimes there is this weird dark dust on the seat of the toilet
i think i talked to the two men in the guardroom for 15 minutes about god
but they were talking about ladders and i kept trying to close the door
"Here he moved, to and fro, from the door to the window, from the window
to the door; from the window to the door, from the door to the window;
from the fire to the bed, from the bed to the fire; from the bed to the fire,
from the fire to the bed; from the door to the fire, from the fire to the door..."
i need to begin again at something, no food, no light, no speech, no persons outside
get a little longer in your mind's bitch before i come back and there's a darker knob
make a sandwich have a baby bring me the plastic doll i asked for age three to have something to beat the shit from and did not get until it was too late

2010-06-15T22:59:00.002-04:00

"what we were then each for himself and for the other

glued together like a single body in the dark the mud

how at each instant each ceased and was there no more either for himself or for the other vast tracts of time"

2010-06-12T17:28:00.006-04:00

I had microsoft word summarize the sections I have deleted so far from my nonfiction ms about sleep into 100 words or less, here's what it said:

In my head the light went white. I lay face-up in my bed, the room full of a soft light. The color of all sound. The light contained infinite terror, growing slick up my insides. The light continued. A gone light.
The circuit woke.

The horror of bodies, speech. If the sleepwalker walks through unknown cities then there must also be a language for the people there lit inside the tunnels of the head.

Dern shoots again. The same light. Piano sound. Dern shoots again. Exits.

2010-06-12T16:59:00.002-04:00

i have changed my name to joey, please only refer to me as joey from now on if you refer to me which isn't required

pretty much on the desk here there are a few things including a letter from my mother about why her computer does not work and a red marker and a black marker and a chip clip but no chips

i can't stop saying the phrase 'they were eating it up like dowgs' which is something that a now dead person said in one of his several hundred recorded songs. the phrase has learned to override the words coming out of other people too

the other day my mother put her hands on both my sides and said that i looked very thin

i have already this year read more books than i read last year because of the bike machine which by the time i am finished with each session has two huge pools of sweat beneath the parts where my arms are above it during the time i ride on the bike that does not move. many of the people who bike or lift or run will come and wipe down the machines they've touched when they are finish but i don't do that. the other night there was a corner of a piece of velveeta cheese on the concrete it made me sad

i don't like the guard guy who won't ever raise his hand or speak to me no matter how directly i say hello or wave at him, i think he talks to other people fine

i think big boi was grillin out with some of his dudes by our pool the other day, he was turning meat with a large silver thingie

there are games you can make up it is fun when you make up games it is like there was something waiting to be played all this time and you found it just like that

i am conie the sellfish punk but i would rather be conie at the stroke of midnight like my sister is

have you read prunebomb

have you eaten anything great

things are pretty nice if you like them

2010-06-01T13:00:00.002-04:00

"there is also disappearance, contagion, military murder, telekinetic fire, hurricane, catastrophic subsidence, infant death, mutation, being eaten by animals, oceanic evaporation, suicide, glutinous rain, quicksand topographies made of mud, sky lesions, a massive wall overtaking the earth and total flooding of the landscape... Far from an escape into some sort of monumentalism of destruction, this anti-realistic concentration of ruin perfectly zeroes in on our inveterate inability to actually picture the end, to consider its lobster. It’s in this act then that the true momentous dismay and oppressive compulsion to want to avoid disaster that the inevitability of apocalypse should spirit into us (but doesn’t) is recuperated in the form of an apocalypse of such total immensity it could never come telling us that we risk facing not the impossible but the all too possible."

--- David Rylance, from an essay on my body of work, The Darkest Fits of Light: on dwelling in Blake Butler's de-compositions

Massive thanks to David for this beautiful, generous, and transcendent (beyond myself) text.

this house is getting smolderer

2010-05-26T11:55:00.001-04:00

2010-05-22T00:31:00.001-04:00

the emotional monologue about speed eating in Taxidermia is the big light

2010-05-20T23:04:00.001-04:00

"Will you forget when I forget / that we are come to that"

2010-05-16T15:11:00.003-04:00

coming up out of the pool water opening my eyes at the same time today i saw my father in a fraction half-deleted standing halfway between me and the house turned profile and much younger with his head down he was wearing all white the gray of the house in partial shade matched exactly the shade of the concrete of the deck and in the instant of his pixel damaged body disappearing again in the shaking off the water from my face skin and my hair it was as if i had become living in a version of the house left otherwise somewhere else which in the lapping level of the water at my chest was the year my mother found me facedown in the deep end and the gray was also on the air

2010-05-13T00:13:00.001-04:00

"A girl who's riding with neither spurs nor stirrups is trying to make her white mare go into the ocean; the mare is shying water is spurting out from all sides under its shaking hoofs among the clear laughs of the Amazon whose body is as sharp and bright as metal, suddenly, what I see, in this shifting light this."

2010-05-10T16:38:00.004-04:00

i gave blood to the red cross eleven times today
i drew up a bunch of badges with different names and costumes
the one lady with the cookies recognized me after the 6th giving and wouldn't let me have any more cookies
she winked about the blood part, she had diamond grillz
now i'm emptied out pretty good
i hired a mexican woman to drive me home, her name was portcullis, i shit you not
i'm going to have a baby

Courtney Love's titties

2010-04-30T15:31:00.002-04:00

Dazed & Confused Magazine did a page on me in their Jan 2010 issue, the one with Courtney Love's titties in it. Thanks to Tony O'Neill for the props.

14 rap artists i have been listening to a lot lately + 2 showers

2010-04-25T23:47:00.009-04:00

QUASIMOTO how much can you delete i can delete a lot, the way madlib trades verses with himself as quas in shifted pitches hurts my gristle like a good light
GUCCI MANE jumping big rocks in the street even the dogs here will walk out in front of your car like who's this mofucker
BONE THUGS the subs in my car make the metal go like the car is dead inside, it sucks to rolls the windows down cuz it kills that ouch, makes me breathe my air over and over
THREE SIX there are clear castles between the traffic lights, you can go in the stairwells where the bums piss and it's like something rising through you, across the street from that is the sub shop where they give you love for coming in the door
TUPAC even while you get an older body there's the year you drove late in florida and that street wouldn't come back now if you went looking for it but it's out there
BIG BOI don't need a largess need a game machine and someone for sundays, some grits and cheese and a doughnut and a mouth to see it beside
FAT PAT grillin up in the white apartment closet laughin and makin candy out of days that felt like nothing "see a different level of the game fo sho"

most days i take two showers, one when i get up and one covered in sweat
sometimes i combine the two into one

DOOM i would be better off with a set of sweatpants for sure, or a tattoo of the pants along my knee; hide out and make money for your child, even if the child doesn't exist
PROJECT PAT this room could be even smaller than it is, there are never enough cookies, get a houseparty started in your kitchen, sweatpants
Z RO let the game squirt w/o you, show up when it's hot, get a box and take some home
MIKE JONES today my father pulled a black hair out of the pad holding him in his wheelchair and held it up at light, said "we need to make me a dress out of this one"
DIZZEE RASCAL don't leave come back sit on the bed with me smile and let's have cookies and come around or do what you need i want to
BUN B "ain't nothin changed everyday aint nothin chay-ange" the long rhythm of the tree that isn't under this house and the rat that ran wet through here and died so i came home to smell, i don't plan on leaving again lately, it's still small
T.I. the roof on the building i walked into looked like it had been set to the edge with a big bic lighter and clicked and dragged, lunchmeat shaderoof and an erased playground, they had ice cream inside

2010-04-17T02:49:00.001-04:00

this year can eat my #2 pussy

2010-04-17T02:24:00.003-04:00

chont dont motherhoue
i am the large as
as wouelad

neighbor scared
she has dog of
she is scared is
i ate 2 doughnuts

margarietas and the nachoe
with chips plus cheese
ran a car
girl looked said go back to friends
girl looked and was a lez

i have nothing for it
i have no dogs
dead mouse smelled like me

i was going to eat dinner with mom
she was late
she saw my father pushed behind a desk couldnt move
he had teeth still
i am going to not go

hung out with the cat hastings
he didnt want to talk
threw a ball for him to look at
he half ate
he stayed in the stayroom

i left

i have a friend york he's nice
we rode the white van
we disliked similar
and liked similar
there was a mexican band

two doughnuts is trouble
if you are trying to drive and peopple have problems
bithcass neighbor with the blackheaded dog
saw me coming didnt front like she wasnt going inside cuz she saw me
just went on in

cool
good move ill rep it too if i can get my hard shit
tupac is dead
bone is trying
i am dogs
i am tots

no more candy for fuckface

Where

2010-04-01T12:37:00.006-04:00

I am guest editing Everyday Genius for April, have a lot of fun and messed up googa to throw at you, beginning today with Laura Carter. Look on there weekdays this month and words will be there.

Thomas Kendall wrote about reading Scorch Atlas at Transductions, which has become one of my favorite sites. He goes, "Scorch Atlas punches evolution in the kidneys."

going to Houston tomorrow to hang with Gene at the Houston Book Fair, then we ride in a van to the AWP. scheduled a lot of crap in many arenas over a breadth of time, whoops, here's where i will send a body of me:

Thursday, April 8, 2-4pm at Stella's Coffeehaus - Dewclaw w/ a ton of friends, Mike Young, Claire Donato, Dottie Lasky, Matt Salesses, Jen Tynes, Amina Cain, Jac Jemc, Matt Simmons, some other freaks

Event Title #2: Orbiting Salt: A Quarterly West/Western Humanities
Review/Barrelhouse/Versal Reading
Scheduled Day: Thursday, April 8
Scheduled Time: 4:30 PM to 5:45 PM
Scheduled Room: 111 - CCC
w/ Cris Mazza, some other freaks

Thursday, April 8, 2010: 9 PM - A Reading: Northwestern University Press, &Now Books , and Artifice Magazine The Celtic Tavern, 1801 Blake Street, w/ Lance Olsen, Christian Bök, Jeffrey DeShell, Davis Schneiderman, Teresa Carmody, some wildnesses

Event Title #1: Indie Mags: Publishing Outside of MFA Programs and Other
Institutional Support
Scheduled Day: Friday, April 9
Scheduled Time: 12:00 PM to 1:15 PM
Scheduled Room: 108 - CCC
w/ Aaron Burch, J. Wang, some other freaks

friday, at 7pm (maybe 8) at the Skylark:: Featherproof w/ the Featherproof crew Shorts n Shots and some freaks

live it

Daniel Bailey is a mage

2010-03-27T04:26:00.002-04:00

swordfishies

2010-03-26T12:34:00.005-04:00

some sofa opened a can of bacon on me in pretend last nite on the sofa where you used to sit and i would sit on the other sofa and

everyday in the wall on the opposite side of my building a man comes and opens a box and puts abodhfoaiusdofiuasodifuoasiudfoiuasodifuaposidufpoiausdpoifuaposidufpoiausdpofiuasopdifuopaisudfpoiuasopdifuaopisdufopiajsd;ofja;skdjf;lkajsdl;fkja;slkdjfl;kajsd

why am i bothering to pretend i care about anything but tacos today or yesterday and not even tacos but the negative image of them leaving me in the gym room where every night for the past two weeks this kid has come in right after me around 11 pm and turned on the tv as loud as it will go to watch espn while i am on the stationary bike reading a book because i fucked up my ankle kicking the wall in the bathroom out of terror even if that's not really what i did

with the tv on and running my muscles there are two sets of words

i can place the brain on one or the other mostly and sometimes there are whole walls that get made

the kid always comes in before and leaves after me

the other night another guy told me not to drink the water from the cooler because there is black mold in the spigot, i have been drinking the water every day for as long as i can remember since we moved back in, except for the weeks they blocked the gym to do landscaping though i never saw anybody doing any work

that one night there was the naked woman having pictures taken of her in the window and i was walking past below and i did not stop even when she had her hand on the glass between us and was smiling

when i came back after exercise she was gone

i know i went and stood a second near the brick beside the pool and there wasn't any smell

the night we had to leave and go see a movie because the a/c broke

yellow undertone of bathroom light that isn't really a color at all

you took one mirror i kept the other
please come get mine
or bring yours back

boy aphex twin mostly sucks
but a lot of people still have him on their computers

not going to say anything else about anything else except the crap ringing my ears from the blue earstopper things i got from jamie's wife that block out so much sound, it's like sleeping in someone's armpit, i still haven't washed the sheets since the last day your stuff was all over the floor

the color of the floor is dark enough that when you scratch it it really shows

in the ice machine there is one huge crag of ice that almost all the cubes that come out stick to, and then there are the dozen or so cubes that hang out around and underneath that and are easy to pick up and use to cool a drink

i bought three kinds of soft drink last time i was at the grocery but two of them have caffeine though they did not seem to have caffeine when i bought them so now there's only one kind i feel ok enough about to drink at night, and i still don't stay home in the day, so

the neighbor's dog started barking again
i guess she took off the machine that squirts it
in the face when it makes noise

in bed i think about cutting a hole into her apartment
so i can go sit beside the dog and look into his mouth
when the other neighbor lived there for a while i thought
he was making meth in the bathtub and maybe the station might blow up
that was before the tornado hit the building and after that you moved in
i'd put an official count here of the number of days
but i have no ideas

2010-03-24T14:35:00.004-04:00

Joyland published the first to exist excerpt from Ricky's Anus. It's from somewhere near the end of the first third of the book. Don't know what else to say.

Yesterday was probably a benchmark in my life and i barely went outside

I got some new popsicles tho

2010-03-18T11:58:00.001-04:00

"That’s right, wordshit, bury me, avalanche, and let there be no more talk of any creature, nor of a world to leave, nor of a world to reach, in order to have done, with worlds, with creatures, with words, with misery, misery."

shitdick central

2010-03-07T05:10:00.003-05:00

no one was what god is what god is what god is
gos god is gog gog is gods godds is is is is is is i
looked in the window of the window and the window was
was was window was was i looked looked hard and
and was window where was i am no one was anything to me
there there i was
look at the window of i i am am am am i was is is is is
i could have seen you so hard
could have licked that where the ice
and the time was
was
was
was
was
nothing looked long enough in eyes
in eyes of god of gos of no one looking
eating ashing crud of mother of the shit
cried in a bar this night at someone saying go off
for wanting to die when
when when was was was was was wwas was was
i don't have the wherewithall to be the person i know i am
i have the no door in the ass
i can't even say hi to the one room
saying
saying
saying hello saying hi or no
the smell of my clothes the touch of half legs halving
having nowhere to know for dinner
wads of say

bopdump

2010-03-03T12:51:00.003-05:00

The Believer has shortlisted Scorch Atlas for their Believer Book Award, up with 4 superfreaks, wow, feels really nice.

The new issue is the film issue and is repping a new Heather Christle poem as well! Boom Heather!

Susan Tomaselli interview me at 3 AM, about Scorch Atlas, what destruction is, Beckett, my insomnia book, The Black Gazebo, editing, and other.

Foot is kind of fucked, not sure how but have been limping for two weeks. Switched to stationary bike in the meantime, which is actually giving good results in change of moves. Also able to read fatter books in the process there, about halfway now through Joshua Cohen's Witz, which is just something I've been waiting for for a long time, and delivers even more than I expected. Review forthcoming.

The 2nd issue of Gigantic is out, and I have a list in it, along with a slew of amazing others. The design on this issue is just insanely nice and new. $7 is unbeatable. They are doing it right.

Problemz this week.
Ok.

Come watch Dorothea Lasky read live tonight at HTMLGIANT, 9 PM Eastern. Her new forthcoming book Black Life is just gorgeous, and power.

Western schools

2010-02-28T12:50:00.006-05:00

12/17/09 Mike Kitchell typed: "i’ll make a video of myself setting a copy of scorch atlas on fire amid the snowy landscape of northern illinois after i finish reading it if you send me a copy to read"

12/18/09 I put book in mail

3/28/10

3/28/10 Anyone else interested in reading/burning/filming please inquire

Jobs by Steve Jobs

2010-02-23T18:05:00.002-05:00

900% of persons appearing are to be appeareing ierjeirj aij jijijijijijijijiijijij

800% of persons sodijoidjroaijsdkfjaskdjfakjsdfkjal sjdkfjalskdjlf ajslkdjfa

700% of any persons who have done the talk

600% fhisdfioasjdofijaosidjflakjsdlfkjasldkjf;askjdf;lkjas;ldkjf;alksjd;fkja;lskjdf;lkjas;kd f;ajsdl;kf jal;skjdfl;akjs ;dlkfj;alk sjl;kfja;dskjf;l kajsdlkfja;lksjdf;ljasd

500% give back any inch you had planned to give back to give back to

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Let's have a walk to the Tunica

2222222 ni ininnni ninnninn ninin KA ka ca cacacacacacacaca

Barrettes in the bareijarlkjs lkdjf a;lkjds; kjas;lkdjf;lkajsdlk
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Badges for aoils aj oil will have dinner if
Beebees for BB
Baabaablacksheep if you alihjsdl fjao shofhaojdhf;oahjsd;ljf;lajsld;kjf
Hornbucket
Past person

#11 diuretic stimulus pancreatic dementia sundowner tablet box

Today I watched my dad pour OJ on cereal, he said it was good
The cereal went in the fridge
Still haven't found the OJ

Easy click kat no hello no buybybybye
Instant message

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box o babs

boods if u r r r rrrrrr rice

the letter e

the letter e

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2010-02-16T14:43:00.003-05:00

being home is good. feel kind of like a moron a lot. had a good time out west though. saw some people i'd known a long time and never met, relaxed, ate food, ate mexican food every day but one, played live cards for the first time in more than a year and won $, spent $ at powell's which was a very nice store, spent 4 hours at city lights and bought nothing on purpose, had a car campout, petted simmons's cat who i liked even though i couldn't breathe him, talked some, slept some, didn't drink that much, liked the west coast feel.

jamie blogged about an odd thing that happened on our flight to san francisco.

i probably won't be going anywhere for a while.

while i was out Molly Templeton wrote a review of Scorch Atlas for the Eugene Weekly that is very excellent and kind indeed: "I think I fear it — its relentless and overwhelming vision, and the power Butler has to drill a hole in my chest with language. But Butler’s strange masterpiece doesn’t ask for your love. It demands your attention."

Nicolle Elizabeth wrote a review for The Brooklyn Rail that is also very kind: "Performing as an ashen, crumbling work in our hands, the work urges us to push forward before it—and we—turn to dust."

having returned home i am on a new regimen. no drinking, except special occasions, which was pretty much true anyway. running 7 miles at least 4 days a week and 3.5 miles the other three days. reading a lot. putting final edits on this novel, very close i think. more sleep book work and beginning a collaborative project that is very exciting and that will stay quiet for now, except to say it is with two people i admire massively.

something something fuck it

pear-0ae9ra04

2010-02-01T18:35:00.006-05:00

A chapter from my completed-last-year novel-in-waiting, Decade, appears in the new issue of Redivider. It's the first long section of the book to be published, maybe the only. There's some weird typographic layout shit going on in it, which looks nice in the Redivider style. There are at least 5 voices going on at various times. It is called, "Our Anniversary, Repeated." Thanks to Brooks Sterritt and Matt Salesses for the time.

Michael Kimball, Dan Chaon, and many other excellents also appear.

A week from today Jamie Iredell and I are going to the west coast for a brief-ish trip, doing some readings.

Here are dates:

February 8 - SAN FRANCISCO - Dogeared Books 630PM w/ Meg Pokrass
February 9 - SAN FRANCISCO - tba
February 10 - RENO - some college I forgot to ask Jamie
February 11 - RENO - something else I forgot to ask Jamie
February 12 - EUGENE - Live Lit West 4. 6:00-6:45 at Tsunami Books on Willamette St.
February 13 - SEATTLE - Neptune Coffee 7PM

Hey, shitty job putting dates up Blake. I know.

Hey, shitty we aren't going to L.A. or Spokane or Portland, dude. I know.

We will stop in Portland for a lil though for sure, and hang out.

If you are around these places come out, or email me or something?

We are probably going to be thrown into a squat of pioaer.

um, editing editing editing
hide hide hide
life

&&@@@(((@@@(((((((((((

2010-01-28T02:19:00.002-05:00

crod in the box
box dad
dad was a weeblo before me in the same cult
cutting little ones for strip bars
eating dice
i am hungrier when u r
when u u would have
hey
hey i am seven dollars short of a biggurl pony to take away
america is the best
of the best of the weeblos when we eat those cakes shaped like trees
that aren't trees but have lights on them also
shit
you shouldn't say crod in the box when you are a box dad
and will never have a son
except to go to clubs with
throwing animals out of the way to get to the big door
the bigger door than that

OO#r9u89

2010-01-25T17:29:00.004-05:00

fine tuning this novel is making me dizzy. near the end of turning in a draft. i think it is called The Black Gazebo.

in the editing and fine tuning it is gathering some kind of exponential gathering i had only guessed in knowing as make, it is funny to stare and sudden click after many peerings

read this past weekend in Ann Arbor for the kickoff of Great Lakes Great Times reading series with Brian Evenson and Joanna Howard. was very calm and nice and good, good crowd, felt exciting

the first night i had nachos. the second night Brian ordered nachos and i felt glad

i am reading Wayne Koestenbaum's biography of Andy Warhol, called Andy Warhol, which is really interesting. i didn't know Warhol had made an early adaptation of A Clockwork Orange where his worker Gerard plays Alex and is subjected to drugs, actual drugs, during the treatment, a torture scene of sorts. i don't know where if anywhere you can find this

oh, it's called Vinyl. it's on youtube. there. not that cool. don't watch it. just think of what you think it could have been.

last night I watched the movie Sugar, it's probably the closest thing I've seen to a film version of Ever, at least in parts, though there is murder in it. it's a woman locked in her apartment. it's worth seeing, some amazing tactile scenes

very nice review of Ever by Angela Stubbs at The Collagist, thank you Angela and Matt

listening to Acid in the Style of David Tudor a lot, especially while editing, it makes me feel itccccccccccccc

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ccc
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c
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c
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c
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# version too many times to give a dingdong

days measured in days

Ujdjjjjdjj

2010-01-14T17:32:00.002-05:00

Dash Snow freaks me

Crackshit on Vice with Gian and Ken

At 31 today, still feels nice to hear my mother say she doesn't know what she'd do without me

At 31 I feel ahead of where I'd planned to be and that is nice

I am thankful, could always be more thankful

My father said something else today to me that I know I won't forget, pointing at himself, the room, the backyard

Ever bestselling fiction of 2009 top 25

Sitting in this particular chair makes my head spin

New Sleepingfish has massive amounts of great, a piece of what is i think a companion to Ever, a draft here somewhere

thankful for Derek and people like him who continually give and make

the new John D'Agata book is beautiful and new

Creative Loafing listed my HP novel as among most anticipated of 2010, the working title they have there is not the final title

Depeche Mode

margaritas

sorry

MURRRRMLANNAMURRRRRRRRRRMAMAAAA

2010-01-07T16:36:00.004-05:00

"Sourcebook" (from Tyrant 7) is published now at Vice

it is long, but maybe the story length thing i am most happy with of mine

it has an illustration by Atticus Lish, thanks to the Tyrant

it has more eating in it also

eating

i don't know what else

" "

2010-01-04T14:48:00.002-05:00

TABLE 1
Most Commonly Used Torture Methods Applied to Victims
Seen at the Danish Centre for Rehabilitation of Torture Victims

Physical Torture

Beating, kicking, punching (with fists, rifle butts or truncheons)
Electricity (via cattle prods, pointed electrodes or metal bed frame to
which victim is strapped).
Burning with cigarettes, hot oil or acid
Submersion of the head in water until partial asphyxiation occurs (also called "submarino" or banera".)
Forced positions
Prolonged standing
Rape and other sexual assaults with foreign objects
Cold exposure
Dental torture
Repeated blows to the ears rupturing the tympanic membranes (also called "telefono").

Psychological Torture

Witnessing torture of others
Sham executions
Sleep deprivation
Continuous exposure to bright light or noise
Solitary confinement
Total sensory deprivation
Threats

------

Kevin Sampsell incluced EVER on his 9 Best from Small Publishers of 2009. Thanks Kevin.

Flavorwire goed that i'm a hipster

i have a profile in the new issue of Dazed and Confused, courtney loves shows her tits in it too or whatnot

i hate ringing phones
i see email and see it

trying

"It's inadvertent. It triggers something."

2009-12-28T22:54:00.004-05:00

I just read The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis by Mark Gluth, a novella, it felt aurally pleasant in a way of great refreshment, with mirror time worming and layers of photography and weaving of levels of consciousness and continuity, all in very brief, clean sentences; a beautiful package with one of the most memorable endings I've read in a while. Feels of classical short French writing but in modern American scenery, which I can't remember having happened in other books. A lot of people I will know will really like this.

I'm selling myself into reading from here on out, reading like happens in a bath, except I won't always be in the bath. I've read quite a lot in the days since Xmas. The sleep book is eating much of my air.

My dad's brain is going quickly.

I published an ebook on Lamination Colony: Georgic, With Eclogues for Interrogators by Mark Cunningham. It is different than most things that have been on the site. I have a huge triple-sized issue that is going up hopefully soon and then another ebook. Then I am not sure what I will do with the site.

I just remember this bit I published last year or something on Wigleaf is one of the only published parts of the novel that will come out from HP next year.

.

For the new year we are going to the mountains to hide and eat food.

Year

2009-12-22T17:30:00.006-05:00

3:AM Magazine named Scorch Atlas their 2009 Novel of the Year, very thankful and honored.

Dennis Cooper included on his list of Favorites of 2009, as well as Kristina Born's and several other friends, beyond kind as always.

Robert Lopez shouted at it on The Millions, thankful to Rob.

Thankful as well to all those who've listed it and Ever on their year end lists, very kind and thankful all around.

I read 106.2 books this year, here is what they were.

Life is kind of crunchy mix of weird and nice right now, my time has been mostly spent in mind throughout this season, and the season before. It was a nice year. It went fast and mostly in rooms. Next year is the same day.

Seeing an end at least now to insomnia book, MS word stops showing the word count at 100,000, which is good, because words

oinkfudglet

parrotcud

s

Story by Story: Brian Evenson's 'Fugue State' (18) 'Traub in the City'

2009-12-20T23:33:00.003-05:00

It's been several months since my last speech re: Fugue State. I've been in a blank mode of my own, circling, recircling, in small rooms, reading texts within texts, thinking about sleep. In this time I've read this next text in the order, next to last, also the shortest, 'Traub in the City,' at least a dozen times. This weekend, I reread The Open Curtain, followed by The Wavering Knife, and then returned again to pick up at the second to last and smallest text inside this book, and found there in the shortest scrim the longest shouting. The book enveloping itself. This is not surprising in Evenson at all, considering his propensity for disclosing volumes within volumes (today 'Moran's Mexico' from The Wavering Knife about made me dizzy, with its room of teeth and tunnels in), and that even in seeing the small spacing of the two pages I knew something laid there ready to eat again in its eating, having learned what I've learned since last touching its face. These ideas could be called hyperbole in their intent, but this year for certain I've begun to feel that the certain thing I've tended toward in these last years can be felt only in such terms, or in the description around the center of the center, as I've gone on about here: that certain things have hyperbolic faces because the body on which they sit is made of something else. I won't continue in the circling of the circling of that meat body, but to say that herein, in the several months since returning to this two page spread, having read Deleuze's Difference and Repetition, and his Cinema 1, and with them begun searching for doors beside my doors, literally, this text, in two pages, owns a context for perhaps a whole body of work, an understanding, the groundwork on which Evenson's fictions sit gathering their power not even out of simple sound, as I've rattled on about in past months, but also in the borrowing of an other dark, of "several faces, coming one after another, quicker and quicker," all while underneath a very fine and sublime curtain, such as the curtains described in 'House Rules' from The Wavering Knife that, when lifted, show that the windows outside the house have been boarded down, allowing in only little stream of light where cracks make the space between the boards, hardly enough to illuminate any part of the whole house. As Traub here sees the bodies of a public metro all part of one vast and unnameable body, continually shifting and amorphous, he continues to try to draw the spaces, knowing he can not, knowing even in that vast amorphous massively spread face the air that makes the room around him does not touch any other object there inside it, does not touch him correctly, like all these texts in their becoming in this book here, in all the books, only a slightly further stretch to define that nowhere space, himself an oddly renamed image of a body already depicted in this very book, the mirror elongation of the slightly earlier 'Bauer in the Tyrol,' and yet he can not disturb that will to draw that space, confining and confined, elongated over several books within books, each ejecting and drawing into their black centers some massive fabric that will not be delineated or erased, will not lose its way in magic among these sentences and the rendition in their flood of something that is just above us and something in the stomach of this stomach in and of this house, a skin.

2009-12-20T13:47:00.001-05:00

if anyone has had experience with the out of body or lucid dreaming as related to maps or homes or tunnels or film please email me

mmusic

2009-12-16T15:20:00.001-05:00

"I'm laughing!"

2009-12-11T00:27:00.005-05:00

Tim Horvath writes an extremely generous and wonderful review of Scorch Atlas for Identity Theory, I mean the whole damn thing is worth excerpting, and wow: "Scorch Atlas is quite possibly the most visceral book I’ve ever read, and in its uncompromising slog through muck and murk, boot-heeled in language, the book carves out a style which, once experienced, feels necessary. As flickering lights can induce seizures, Butler’s prose seems prone toward causing synesthesia; touch permeates and choke-holds all the senses, rendering images tactile, reinventing sounds, smells and tastes, even air itself, as palpable spatio-temporal entities."

Many thanks to Tim and the IT crew.

Also today, the always kind and bounteous J.A. Tyler reviews Kristina Born's One Hour of Television and interviews me, Shane, and Kristina for Rumble.

The review contains excerpts from the book that if you haven't bought it yet, I feel like it could make you want to.

I made a list of 25 important books of the 00s for HTMLGiant

Going to Boston Saturday to lecture at Emerson on sentences, including sentences by a slew of people, D. Williams, Hannah, Goransson, Kilpatrick, Glaser, about 12 others, if you are in Boston maybe you can come or something, here's a flyer:

Fuck, Tyrant 7 is an ill ill motherfucker. I don't think I wrote my story that is in it, my mother's computer did. It's my best story. Still reading slow, haven't read anything that hasn't spinecrushed.

I ate too much meat today, I'm a gooby

2009-12-09T14:37:00.001-05:00

“Ethics requires a subject bearing everything, subjected to everything, obedient with an obedience that precedes all understanding and all listening to the command. Therein lies a reversal of heteronomy into autonomy, and this is the way in which the Infinite comes to pass.” - Emmanuel Levinas

ooooo ooo uj hh ooo ooo o

2009-12-07T00:15:00.007-05:00

oh got a joint in the new New York Tyrant #7 i think it is the longest story I have published besides "Seabed"

it is called "Sourcebook," and is about a mother destroying her child inside their house and the sounds the child makes and what a family is is is

other in Tyrant: Alex Balk, Aaron Burch, Blake Butler, Erich Hintze, Danni Iosello, Brian Kubarycz, Christopher Kennedy, Joseph Cardinale, Jason Schwartz, Greg Mulcahy, Luca Dipierro, Rachel B. Glaser, Atticus Lish, Ken Baumann, G. David Schwartz, Peter Gajdics, Peter Markus, Shane Jones, Conor Madigan, Scott Indrisek, Harry Cheadle, Joshua Furst, Michael Kimball, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

hey hey hey

hey hey

hey a goony goo goo

hey

um oh i also have what they are referring to as 'fan fiction' in a fan fiction section in Opium 9, it is about Cliff Burton, it goes along with a piece by Matthew Simmons about Geezer Butler, there is some other magic in that boink

Iredell in there, Evenson, some somes and whatnot, Gabbert, Greenman, Boudinot, Rooney, Raffel, Baumbach, Young

tired o typing into machine
that is not the machine

if'n u want to
if'n u wanted
to to
if'n if'n
$$$
kit

um let's see i had a question but now the poker is on the tv

your seriousness is very not serious today

2009-12-06T23:48:00.005-05:00

killkillkillkillkillthepoor
killkillkillkillkillthepoor
killkillkillkillkillthepoortonighighighighighighighighight

killondemandwasthebestbandthateverplayedinthatonebackyardwhereallourbandsplayed
jeffcouldfuckinggrowl

onmydeskisstillthe3000pagepharmocologicalbookacortazarbookasartrebooktwoinsomniamanuals
tonofpapershittissuesandnotestoselfandmarkersarolloftape
todayisthefirstdayivewatchedpokerontvinalongtime
ihaddinnercookedformeithinkalmosteverynightlastweekathouses
foods

killkillkillkillkillthepoortonightighighighighihgihighghihihgihgihihihighighihgihg
gutshit
pence

Vasopressin is a potent nonselective vasoconstrictor

2009-12-01T13:03:00.003-05:00

Kristina Born's One Hour of Television is in the house. I've been shipping them in batches, so if it's not there yet, it will be shortly. They turned out as good as I had hoped:

You can still do an order for the preorder price for the next few days until I update it and add a dollar. So maybe consider it? Year of the Liquidator. I think it's a fine deal. The book makes me excited to think.

Also new is the inaugural issue of an online journal I've been stoked for since I heard about it, Gene Kwak's We Are Champion.

It's gots Higgs, Glaser, Svalina, Lutz, DiTrapano, Gould, Robinson, Papas, Annarummo, Harris, and I have two links bits that came from my attempt at appropriating Bernhard's The Voice Imitator.

Among those, really stoked that people will be able to read Rachel Glaser's Pee on Water online, as it is still one of my favorite stories ever.

And the DiTrapano comes from the first story in the first issue of No Colony, for which we are working hard on issue 3. It's gonna rip.

Another new online journal is Truth Sauce, who published this short thing I found I'd written on my hard drive and hidden in a series of nested folders, unless someone else wrote it and hid it there.

I like this proliferation of the online new.

Insomnia book is at 69269 words as of this minute. Today writing about dementia, Satanism, and Diane Arbus.

I have a 3,000 page book on my desk that I am reading a little.

The new Beach House album Teen Dream is the best album I've heard come out in a long while.

abcdefghijkl

2009-11-25T20:27:00.011-05:00

a took my dad took wendy's today cuz he wanted to and he ordered 3 asian chicken salads into the machine, tried to get me to get 4 instead, we took em home and ate em then came down the hall and gave me a box of blackjack cigars, he'd been hiding 3 boxes from i don't know who in his workshop, it seemed important when he gave me the cigars

b took a bath reading the city and the city with a lot of lights on in the tiled area, i like this book, i'd like this book to have been edited also by a machine and perhaps translated into a different alphabet some, one of the books inside the book talks about having a different language with 34 characters

c earlier today i told my mom i was thinking of jumping out of a window and she said make sure the window's not closed, she meant it in a good way

d eating snow cream ice cream it's like that ice cream we'd make as kids scraping fresh snow off the diving board and mixing it with sugar and vanilla though the last few times i tried to do that again it tasted like shit

e insomnia book today is at 57977 words, it is less insomnia and more ____, it is doing some things. i think this manuscript is going to turn out quite something long, seems like i am just getting started, seems like

f sleeping troubles still shitting on america inside our household, last night H slept on the sofa by choice cuz of how i kick and bash i guess when i am sleeping, she's said the other night inside my sleep i said i want to shit on someone and something else i can't remember

g earlier today dad couldn't find the blue cup he likes to drink juice out of and so poured a lot into a blue bowl and sat it on the counter and left it there and kept looking for the glass

h i feel like i've gotten a lot older this year like my body is being older i've been finding it harder to run as long as i'd like to, there are people who come into the gym almost all the same times as i do and none of us ever talk to one another except there used to be that woman who came in with a different dude each time and they would stand behind her and watch her ass while she did the step machine and looked at a really loud tv

i i have been feeling really flatly emotional about a lot of small things like certain kinds of food and in certain minutes where the desk is almost turning to look at me but it doesn't, sometimes there are little bugs crawling up the glass inside this room

j made a mix cd for the first time in a long time the other night downloading music off the online, trying to find some new music again that i can be ok with, trying to be nicer, to think longer before i say things, to be more resilient or careful in certain ways but the more i do that the more it seems it comes out the wrong way, seems like being literal is not appreciated or not ok, seems like there is paper made of hair somewhere in this house all underneath me and

k i don't know, like chris farley said inside that other person, 'who gives a rat's behind,' earlier today and just before we went to wendy's my father told me something about a machine that had broken his 73 year old heart

l reading james merrill

2009-11-23T12:32:00.003-05:00

writing about insomnia is returning my insomnia

i wrote a book notes for largehearted boy for scorch atlas, a soundtrack, musics

there it is

i'm going to be gone/quiet for a while i think/hope
maybe not

ay ay oh tob ay it it et

2009-11-15T16:14:00.004-05:00

A rad dude made a flyer for my lecture at the New College of Florida this saturday:

Shit, libraries are cool, it's like candy store when it hits you, in the library right now at Emory, gotsded:

Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist
Joseph Cornell's Dreams edited by Cathering Corman
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover

libraries are the old new Napster

it's like America in a can

refound on blog where I kept track of the writing of the novel that will come out next year

here

day 1 is at the bottom up to day 10 in the end

necklaces and dogs

america is a planted

America

2009-11-13T17:10:00.000-05:00

Organism (1975)

2009-11-08T21:58:00.009-05:00

Killer short film @ Ubu by Hilary Harris, made 7 years before the much more popular Koyaanisqatsi:

This other things is is weird too
by some group called JODI

this is kind of what life is:

it is titled: My Desktop OS X 10.4.7 (2007)

Reading You Bright and Risen Angels by Vollmann after years of it on my shelf. Holy what the fuck. Might have a new book in my top five.

The softest location in the house.

2009-11-07T13:41:00.006-05:00

Radical Chris Higgs interviewed radical Kristina Born @ The Faster Times about her forthcoming book, which I swear to shit better be in my hands from these printers on Monday and shipping out to you. Printers dumb. Anyway, yeah, next week. Last chance to preorder.

I am becoming sponge this month so far, filling in some gaps on films I'd meant to see and hadddnt

Le Cercle Rouge
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
Orpheus
Suspiria(finally from beginning to end)
something else I ain't remembrin

Dogs are vacuums I realized

I accidentally started writing a book about the Crips

Rereading The Age of Wire and String is making me feel like I like in an excellent palace somewhere by myself without balloons

Thinking too hard on accident about what kind of people become the people who produce the bulk of art makes my hands ache like the only part of my body not in a hot bath.

I am tired of gender and not person

Person

Op

I want some really good curtains to eat off of

Please stop whatever you are doing right now and go buy and read Robert Lopez's Kamby Bolongo Mean River. I'm not kidding. Whatever you are doing.

i'm back

2009-11-05T14:46:00.002-05:00

D. B. Cooper, skyjacker, collected a ransom of US$200,000 then jumped from the rear stairs of the Boeing 727 at a height of 10,000 feet (3,000 m) over the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, somewhere between Seattle and Portland, Oregon. The FBI believes Cooper did not survive the jump, and had acted alone; originally presuming him to be an experienced parachutist, they later concluded that an expert would not have jumped as Cooper did (at night, in a rainstorm, wearing loafers and a trench coat, with no idea of where he was, and apparently failing to notice that his reserve parachute was sewn shut). In 1980, $5800 of the ransom cash was found on a Columbia River sand bar, about 15 miles (24 km) from the estimated drop zone area, but exactly where he landed, his true identity, and his fate all remain unknown.

i want to chew on carolyn's fingers

food is everywhere

kitkats

"I threw one away just before I started this. I tried and tried. But it wasn't any use."

i said i'm back

then i'm goin fo they sista

2009-11-02T12:20:00.003-05:00

'The Gown From Mother's Stomach,' originally published in Ninth Letter, is running this week at HP's 52 Stories. This seems to be the most common 'favorite' of the texts in Scorch Atlas for some reason. I'm OK with that.

Halloween I saw a Black Sabbath cover band and a Misfits cover band, both did a good job, H and I dressed as pregnant Floridians and spent some like $100 on booze, I am told I did pushups on the dance floor alone, both of my knees feel fucked up.

If you want to dance let's dance.

Approved final proofs for Kristina's One Hour of Television, they should be printed up and done by the weekend, then shipping. In the meantime, K has made a video promo, it kind of freaks me out:

Next 3 people to preorder will receive a special bonus magical insert in their package.

Reading on Friday night in Athens with John Dermot Woods and Sabrina Orah Mark, if you are out there come widdit, 700 PM at CINE.

Um, this week is mine.

00kk

2009-10-29T11:47:00.005-04:00

@Diagram, Kim Parko contributes a review of Ever b/w Shane Jones's Light Boxes, including mini-interviews with both of us, and lots of wild thought: These books are creation stories, funeral dirges, and the mystifying yawn between. Thanks Kim!

I am reading Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero right now on a whim, and man so far it is gorgeous. Huge. Hope it continues in such way. Seems like it will.

Halloween. Everybody getting boners or throwing up some. I wish I was 12 again. I wonder how my life would be different if that year I was 12 I hadn't stopped my friend and I from walking down the hill in the neighborhood down from my house, where in the light off of the tall lamp a van had parked and as we crossed some grass these two men came walking as if to cut us off, no one else anywhere around. I stopped and said we'd missed a house behind us and my friend said no we hadn't and I said yes we did I'm going back and the men were getting closer and my friend didn't get it and I grabbed his arm and we started up the hill again and the men walked faster and we ran. That night a few other kids were abducted in our area by men inside a van.

That is better than being around more dumps getting drunk.

Longest thread ever at HTML Giant is weird.

I am doing a photo shoot tomorrow for a profile in a big UK based magazine, I think I'm supposed to destroy something in the process, if I want to. I think we're going to a ghetto strip mall and an abandoned bunch of tiny buildings.

New proof of Kristina's book looks amazing and beautiful, should have them hopefully by end of next week, which is later than I'd hoped but they will be just right and magic. If you'd like to review the book or interview Kristina please drop me a line. She's funny.

BEEOUU

2009-10-26T13:23:00.006-04:00

@htmlgiant 17th review of Brian Evenson's Fugue State for the titular story

Yesterday I caught up on some reading, still way way behind, I read

* Babyfucker by Urs Allemann (forthcoming from Les Figues, amazing)

* Glory Hole by Dan Hoy / The Hot Tub by Jon Leon (new from Mal o Mar, really loved the Hoy)

* Fences by Ben Brooks (new from Fugue State Press, felt good and fresh)

* The Fatalist by Lyn Hejinian (old from Omnidawn, stole a quote from this for my insomnia ms)

* rereading several essays in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace (I think I might have an argument with the TV essay now, as well as it is written. the end section of Tornado Alley essay blows my mind every time)

* first half of Killing Kanoko by Hiromi Ito (forthcoming from Action Books, is amazing, she writes a lot about feces and bodies and babies and jacking off, will post more on her when I am done reading)

Really enjoyed all of these.

Here is Ito reading on youtube

I don't know, something else

Something else also

TIXE

2009-10-20T15:51:00.002-04:00

@Keyhole, a long interview w/ Molly Gaudry re: Harper Perennial deal, Year of the Liquidator, Scorch Atlas, etc. Thanks Molly!

The new Flaming Lips sounds like Oneida. I'm not sure yet if this is a good thing, but it seems better for them somehow.

The new Themselves has me excited, downloading now. I think I am irretrievably stuck listening to rap for the rest of my life, except in small spurts of other, as it is the only music that still innovates, while still repeating itself. In this way it is like Gordon Lish.

I am going to be lecturing on Three 6 Mafia and Gordon Lish and why Chekhov is bad advice at the New College of Florida next month.

Reread the proof of Kristina's book last night: it is fucking amazing. There is no other book that reads like this book. I can't wait to get it into people's hands. We're aiming at Halloween, but may be a couple days late due to fucking with the printers. The cover is bright red and came in burgundy. Proofs are smart.

If you are in Atlanta, Heather Christle and Chris Deweese are reading at Beep Beep on Thursday at 700. You should come. They are both hilarious and amazing. Heather's book just came out from Octopus. I am going to buy it from her there.

After &now I have decided to spend all of October and November focusing only on perfecting the novel, which is due in December or something. Editing is kind of fun and kind of gritty. Feels like the book is coming even more alive. Feels like there are still mirrors hidden in it that I have to turn around and face the other way in the paper.

Book inside a book.

I kind of want to call the novel Ever also. Can I do that? Can I just keep writing Ever for the rest of my life, over and over again?

This download needs to hurry up.

I tricked Apple into replacing the battery on my laptop after 380 cycles, 15 months later. I didn't know their coverage of the battery supposedly stops after 300 cycles. If your battery has changed at all in quality and you have Apple Care and you are nearing 300 cycles you should call and make them replace it.

There is a big difference between nice and kind. I like to think I'm kind.

Beehiveded

2009-10-18T14:57:00.004-04:00

Jereme Dean again benevolently bought a bunch more copies of Scorch Atlas to give away. For one, just comment on this thread with anything and I will put you into a drawing for it, done on Tuesday.

I killed all of my links mostly, cuz linking 50 people seems insane, and not linking 200 other people seems insane. I've had complex linking guilt for a long while now and so just decided to erase it. I will link things now from the postbody, as they are better there. What is linking.

@Deckfight, a list of the 5 best things I've read lately

@Holy Land, Rauan Klassnik talks about his experience so far 45 pages into Scorch Atlas: "like biting into a burning apple. A sizzling cherry. Each taste's a piece of fire that whirrs on the tongue and surrounds the brain in a live-dead sack of cold-burning aura. This book's going on my night stand next to Finnegan's Wake..."

@htmlgiant, I wrote about my experience of the &now conference

Should I call my novel Beehiveded. No. I want to just call it Exit. I like the long title but maybe should just make it brutally short. Should it be called O0o0oo000oo, or another unspeakable chain. I don't know. No. I'm way behind on everything.

The rest of this year will be spent focusing.

Adifjdofi

2009-10-11T16:32:00.003-04:00

The benevolent J.A. Tyler reviewed Scorch Atlas for Tarpaulin Sky: Scorch Atlas is a world of mold, a world of festering wounds, a world of hurt. Scorch Atlas is a carefully and meticulously distraught world of language, a trembled and shaken line of thought, a vibrant dead trance of phrasing, the measure of words put together all and in the right ways. Blake Butler has made something enormous here, in the reams of his Scorch Atlas, and if nothing else, we are simply destroyed by it, mistaking our skin for its cover, our blood for its damage, our eyes for its violent and broken images.

Kind thanks to JA.

K. Born's book is on it's way to the printers, expect preorders to ship by Halloween. Boom!

Leaving tomorrow for Chicago book release party at No Coast at 7 PM, then Quickies on Tuesday night, 730 @ Innertown Pub. Then Wednesday through Saturday evening in Buffalo at &Now, including a panel for the 30 Under 30 Anthology on Thursday at 1130.

Let's get it.

Ook

2009-10-08T14:06:00.004-04:00

Unsaid has a new website, with a lot of issue 4 all available online. People aren't full of shit when they say this might be the greatest issue of literary magazine of all time. I still haven't stopped reading its 500 pages, a bit every other day or so.

I have 3 pieces in the issue, one of which was part of EVER. This piece is a section from something much larger. The emdashes are fucked up online, but yeah.

A rather long and in-person interview I did with the rad Ben Spivey is up at Writers Bloc.

Dennis Cooper mentioned Scorch Atlas as a book he's recently read and loved.

The new issue of Make is out and I have a list in it, along with work by Dorothea Lasky, Stephen Elliott, Claudia Smith, Tomaž Šalamun, a lot of other good, it is beautifully designed.

Researching roleplaying games and BBSs and bikini briefs and sleep disorders and plastic money is giving me sleep problems again.

And I am actually listening to the new Pearl Jam, it's like an ass tattoo.

See you at &Now?

Kristina Born's One Hour of Television

2009-10-07T11:32:00.006-04:00

Year of the Liquidator, the press Shane Jones and I started earlier this year, will release its first title, Kristina Born's One Hour of Television, on Halloween.

Designed to run as a series, the books, as we hopefully put out more, will form a continuum of design and style, like a little freakhouse on your nightstand.

People have already said nice things:

To read One Hour of Television is to flip channels between a 50’s science film on the joys of nuclear prowess and a heist-driven road movie set in a late-imperialist apocalypse. In Born’s hands, all social code is a recipe for deadpan horror. Strained domestic tableaus are intimately wedded to carpet bombings and crowd control, and our best chances at intimacy arrive via gruesome medical emergencies. This book is in revolt against language as an anesthesia machine. It's in revolt against an empire in which any vote you cast necessarily ends up as a vote for genocide.
- Lara Glenum, author of Maximum Gaga

One Hour of Television's recurring headwounds make an apt symbol for the work as a whole; urgent and insistent, the oozing gauze on an otherwise lovely skull. Would that all flash fiction be this deadly.
- Amelia Gray, author of AM/PM

You can read an excerpt and preorder One Hour of Television now for $10.

Thanks!

Lamination Colony contest issue

2009-10-04T14:10:00.004-04:00

New contest special issue of Lamination Colony is now live, with the contest winner Bobby Alter, as well as 9 finalists: Mark Doten, James Chapman, Mel Bosworth, Christian Tebordo, Darby Larson, Sasha Fletcher, Drew Kalbach, Andrew Borgstrom, Ben Segal. Feel really excited by all of the work in this issue, like it demonstrates a coming explosion. I like to stare.

Chicago folks, there will be a release party for Scorch Atlas on Monday October 12 @ 7 PM at No Coast, readings, bands, stuff. Trying to rummage up a baby to take a bite of.

Also going to the &Now Conference from Wednesday to Saturday, a panel on Thursday at noon for the 30 Under 30 Anthology, with tons of good readers. Come hang out. Free with attendance is a copy of the &Now Anthology of Innovative Writing, what they are calling the anti-Pushcart, which I have a piece in, and Giancarlo Ditrapano's piece from the first No Colony also is in.

Speaking of No Colony, we have just reopened for submissions, looking only for long works, from at least 8000 words up to whatever. The issue will probably 3 or 4 very long pieces only. Don't send short, we'll have to delete it. We don't wanna do that.

Sleepfuck + Scrotal Cash hard

2009-10-01T14:59:00.007-04:00

Have you ever written or invoked a language in your sleep?

We are thinking about printing up a limited run of hard copies of the Scrotal Cash remix of Scorch Atlas. They would be rather expensive since they'd be in very short run, probably like $20-$22 apiece, at like 180 pages, but would look really nice and I think the work is powerful enough that it warrants book object? If you would be willing to buy a copy at this price, please comment? I will throw in some extra junk like a soundtrack and some other goodies to help increase value. I would really like as many people as possible to read the incredible work of remixed here (still available for free.

Contributors would obviously need to give their seal of approval on this, which is pending, and we couldn't afford to buy everyone one out of pocket, but if there is sufficient interest and everyone is cool with it, it will go down, and be a cool limited edition object of sorts. Holla?