Nightmare, Novel, Allen Ginsberg

I am addicted to em-dashes. I have about half of a novella I was working on before the novel and it is stuffed end to end with those fuckers.

I am (I think) done with a good draft of the novel. Now.

Night before last I had the worst dream of my life. It lasted three days in dream time (though only about 2 hrs in real) and had thousands of scenes. The one scene I most vividly remember I was in a very large building with many floors that only had one glass elevator. Everyone knew something bad was happening to the air. Everyone was acting however they wanted as they thought the world was ending. My girlfriend was several floors up in my room. I knew men were doing things to her. I was trying to get on the elevator to go up and stop them but other people, including friends of mine, were intentionally jamming the controls so that they could keep me away. People all around me were beating the shit out of the walls and each other and breaking shit and taking shits and squealing and the building was huge and flat on the inside. My friends were laughing and sneering and they were waiting for their turn. I knew more of what they were doing but it is too disgusting to repeat.

The world did not end. Near the end of the dream I was given a reparations package containing $30.55 in loose change and a cookie sheet. There was a station outside my new shitty apartment manned by a small black man in a bellhop coat who gave me the paperwork I had to fill out to get the change. He was very polite. There was a small swimming pool right behind him. Then I was told to go pick up my car and they dropped me off in a lot where all the cars in the world had been relocated and I was supposed to find my car in the lot and it was very hot and I had a tricycle to ride. The lot went on forever in all directions, all cars in the light.

I think those are 2 scenes out of several thousands of scenes. I was trapped, and could not wake up and it all felt very real. I felt sick when I did finally wake up, really fully ill.

I swear the door just opened in the room where I am typing and there was no one there.

Adam Robinson is now offering a free copy of EL GREED by David NeSmith to the next 10 people who buy my chapbook from PUBLISHING GENIUS. I am still offering $1.50 toward the $4 price.

I watched I'M NOT THERE last night. I don't like Bob Dylan, but this movie was really good. Epic in a Scorsese way. It had Heath Ledger in it, that seemed somehow weird. Randomly, David Cross appears as Allen Ginsberg. He looks just like him. It made me laugh. I had to rewind it. Allen Ginsberg was the first writer who made me want to write. I am going to go read KADDISH again right now. It's been more than 10 years.

Here's Bill Burroughs and Ginsberg in their pajamas (photo by Patricia Elliott Marvin):

PRETEND & abstractions

You can read that there. Or you can order a print version of PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE from Publishing Genius. It is $4. The next 10 people who email me that say they're going to buy it I will send $1.50 through paypal. That reduces the cost of the chapbook to $2.50. I am serious. Don't feel bad asking me for the $1.50. That would be the same or less than if I printed and sent them to people myself. I am lazy. They are nice to hold.



Last night I ordered Peter Berghoef's chapbook NEWS OF THE HAIRCUT from Greying Ghost Press. It seems like a very good adventure. They are releasing stuff by Brian Foley and Shane Jones and several others also. Tickdf.


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Soon I think I am going to post a review of Tao's new book. I am going to have a review that is a real review somewhere. My post on here will be about how all my favorite parts of the book are abstractions. It's true. Tao is an abstractionist in denial.

The thing with people putting supposed abstractions in 'quotes' is starting to drive me batshit.

I can't say it's not appealing to do. I caught myself doing it for a while. But this idea seems to want to have a philosophy behind it. People who do it might say that's not true. But it does.

If you are going to 'quote' abstractions, you need to put quotes around everything you say. Simple sentences do not negate abstraction.

'Jon' 'ate' 'the' 'orange.'

What is a fucking Jon? Ate it how? Like he took the whole thing into his mouth with his mouth? Didn't chew? Chewed and spat it out? The? As in 'the only orange in existence'? The only orange is St. Petersburg FL? Ate the color orange? Ate an orange tictac? The orange woman floating over his bed? 'Jon ate the orange' is way way too abstract.

In fact 'I felt sad' (which seems to be a popular sentiment) is way way more abstract than a language poem sentence like 'Courage syrup skronked the beeble.'

Why is that blabber less abstract? It's not assuming you can decipher it. 'I feel sad' is assuming you know exactly what it means. It is assuming you somehow can feel empathy with an expression so common and potentially expressible by any human ever. 'Courage syrup skronked the beeble' knows it will only ever be defined in the brain of the person who reads it. It has no implication, it has no intention, it only develops out of association. It is truly more free from abstraction than 'I feel sad' or 'I searched myself on Google and found a photo of a chocolate cake.'

'I feel sad' isn't really saying anything at all.

I will forever identify much more strongly with 'Courage syrup skronked the beeble' than 'I feel sad.' And get more out of it. And suck its dick more. And for the most part I find language poetry boring as fuck.

The best writing (I will not quote 'best') is a balance of these two camps. Abstraction and clear speech, with some teeter totter on both ends.

Here is my favorite section from COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY, which I think fits this description, and may be my favorite moment of all of Tao's lines:

"then i saw beyond the window to the tree, the house, and the street
the house and the street made mysterious binary noises
that negatively affected the tree's immense happiness
i observed this neutrally, without falling out of my chair"

Tao Lin is ghost-writing the next David Lynch movie.

Tao's book is good. Buy it.

'I' 'didn't' 'mean' 'to' 'write' 'all' 'that' 'just' 'now' 'it' 'just' 'happened'.

888888888888888888888888888888888

You can now order print versions of my chapbook PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE via Publishing Genius, or you can use the files on the site to print your own for free. It's $4 on the site or something. That is cheap.

I have read Kevin Wilson's THE DEAD SISTER HANDBOOK from Diagram 6.1 countless times in the past week. I just kind of leave it open and stare at it. Another instance of employing cultural objects imbued with some kind of transmutative sensing. I would like to make an anthology of those kind of texts.

Nearly finished redrafting WHERE AM I WHERE HAVE I BEEN WHERE ARE YOU. Is that the name? The first redraft added several thousand words. There are now 43664 words. I only deleted two paragraphs from the original writing. Brief sections are coming out at Wigleaf, Pequin and Brian Foley's brand new forthcoming web journal SIR!, and I think a couple other places. I am still thinking about the nature of the whole.

I don't want to say anything else.

Except today while running I saw two huge ducks on the lawn outside my old middle school. There are no bodies of water near the school. They were just standing there on the lawn looking around. I tried to get near them and they wouldn't let me. I don't blame them.

Day 5: Bldsirue

Do a read on this story from Barrelhouse by Matt Bell. It fuses cultural object with mysticism in a new way, which is the kind of writing I've been most interested in lately. Excellent story. Matt's story from Caketrain 4 (I think it was 4) is also supremely killer.

Ryan Call sent me KISSED BY by Alexandra Chasin, which seems to have come like a key into a room at a perfect time in this time of Massive Heat.

At 4:50 pm today there are 22,698 words. Didn't crunch as many numbers today due to last night in the bath I figured out something important about the novel and its beginning and went back to adjust some things about the beginning and add on in certain places and delete/reword a couple key graphs. Then and this afternoon I finished what is now PART ONE of the novel. I will take a short breath tonight and maybe into tomorrow and then return at the door to PART TWO. There will be two parts and a brief introduction and maybe an appendix.

Sharon Tate and Krissy Taylor are in the book now. As is a girl who can see through other people's computer screens from her computer. As is a woman named Ribbit, Shawna, Santa, Ricky, Rick, Sandwich or Blake.

** Please read

PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE.

I would like that. It is different than most things I have written but I think in several ways connected to novel.

I am very fucking tired.

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 jalapeño 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.

Day 2 etc.

Today is the second day of my 10-15 day novel. Today at 6:11 PM I have 10,282 words. I started today at 11:00 and took a break to go running again. I drank a whole pot of coffee and ate some dried cranberries and bran cookies and a couple handfuls of oatmeal cereal. I am hungry now and feel very buzzed out. I am going to go eat four turkey dogs with a little Mexican cheese and hot sauce and then I may either stop for the day or keep going. I wrote more today in less time than yesterday.

This novel is beginning to take form. I feel energized writing each sentence. I do not feel like I am writing shit I will have to delete. I am finding things out while I am writing.

The novel is about a house. There is a family in the house and none of them know what is going on. The mother mows the lawn over and over again. The family members get lost in the house. The 8 year old son has a red cell phone that receives phone calls. The mailbox fills up with things and receives packages.

I think the house may be the same house as in the beginning of LOST HIGHWAY.

Last night I watched INLAND EMPIRE until the part where Laura Dern goes into the room full of women and they talk to her and then she goes through the window to Poland.

When she went to Poland I turned the movie off and tried to go to sleep but couldn't for several hours.

I am reading Johannes Goransson's A NEW QUARANTINE WILL TAKE MY PLACE. I like it a lot.

I think this novel is also connected to Ol Dirty Bastard's NIGGA PLEASE. I think NIGGA PLEASE was recorded in a very short time also.

The working title for NIGGA PLEASE was BLACK MAN IS GOD, THE WHITE MAN IS THE DEVIL.

I wish I could name my novel that.

People are very sensitive.

My ebook/chapbook PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE will be released this Friday. It looks really nice, I am very happy with it. Adam Robinson is doing some really awesome things with Publishing Genius which you can read about on his blog.

I will post links to it when it goes up and I think you will be able to order print copies for $4 or there will be an option to print them yourself. It will also feature original artwork by Lauren Bender.

There are other things coming up to talk about.

PRETEND I'M THERE blurbs

Thank you to those who have written blurbs for my ebook (which will be out in a few months).

Here are 3 by the magesterial JOSH MADAY which touch me on the ass a little:

'Blake Butler writes out of a chocolate energy. Rumor has it his sideburns shanked a guy in prison, though they don’t like the way the words shanked and prison interact. Canned corn didn’t make it into the final cut of PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE, but, thankfully, a singing tumor survived intact. The sentences are short and sharp like daggers thrust through the eyeball and into Broca’s area in a fit of hyperbole. PIATBVL starts innocently enough, with the sale of teeth to a museum and the money spent to replace a deceased dog. The replacement dog ends up being a diseased dog. Emails are written to Emily, an unresponsive spambot. But soon the story slips into a Lynchian waking dream where a sick, motionless dog has the power to terrorize and the interior of a house expands and contracts like the inside of a lung.'

'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.'

I will post some more blurbs later so people will squeeze my name between their tits a little for a minute.

Today is going to be.