What happened to that kid Nick H. who in 5th grade I watched rip open the flesh of his hand with a pen expressionlessly in the back of math class

Weston Cutter profiled EVER on Corduroy Books, with some very kind words, including: "...Blake Butler’s one of maybe ten writers currently writing whose sentences are miracles." Dang, thanks Weston.

Also awesome write up in the same post, of J. Robert Lennon's two new ones, one of which I read when it came out in the UK, 'Pieces for the Left Hand,' which is incredible. Really excited for 'Castle'.




I think my goal for this year is going to be to read 30 or more books released by Dalkey Archive, not counting, obviously, the many I've already read other years. So far for '09 I think I've read 6 of their titles, so I have some work to do, but I have a big stack on hand.




Entries to the nasty contest (see post below this one) are open through the evening. Get it juicy, kids. Not that you haven't already. I actually got a little green during some of the posts, either from nast or envy. Prolly both. Do a join in.




Have almost finished a first draft of the EVER-related novel, which takes place in the same house as EVER, I think. Don't know how I got so into it, but I think it is almost twice as long as EVER. Or something. What. What else.

Gert Jonke 1946-2009

I was really sad to hear yesterday that the Austrian novelist, poet, playwright, TV writer, and arbiter of various other word-bound enterprises, Gert Jonke, had died of cancer at age 62 on Sunday. I had just that evening been talking up his work to Ken, saying how criminal it seems that he is not more well known and read in English, having written and published more than 17 novels in German that are just now, thanks to the ever-brilliant and vital Dalkey Archive, becoming available outside of Austria and the like.

Hopefully, if nothing else, his death will help bring even more attention to his brilliant and innovative work.

I had just recently discovered Jonke's work last month when I ordered his GEOMETRIC REGIONAL NOVEL from Dalkey during their amazing December sale. The copy for the book alone was enough for me to want it without knowing anything else about the work or the author:

Geometric Regional Novel is an innovative satire on the process by which bureaucracy and official regimentation insidiously pervade society. In a deadpan, pseudo-scientific tone, the nameless narrator takes us on a tour of a bizarre village whose inhabitants lead such habitual, regulated lives that they resemble elements in a mathematical equation. The traditional village leaders—the mayor, the priest, the teacher—uphold the status quo with comically exaggerated attention to ceremony and trivia, and nearly every aspect of life has been codified. Contrasting with the mathematical descriptions of village life are flashes of colorful, surrealistic writing, exemplifying the power of the imagination to counter the monotonous routines of daily life.

When the book arrived I read it from cover to cover without moving off my sofa. Jonke's rendering here of a ridiculous 'region' where science and law are so askew it is as if someone has taken a smear eraser to the city's face was something I had been looking to read for a long time coming. From page to page, literally, I was in awe of how Jonke was able to meld so many high concept ideas together into a narrative so immensely readable and downright funny. For every inch in that he is innovative (with paragraphs that recurse on their own logic in the mist of themselves, weird Frank Stanford-imagery of bulls and hollow trees and bridges that stretch on and on, sudden 'new law' attached to the community in the midst of its rendering that continue to skew the perspective, descriptions of traveling artists performing impossible tasks, etc.) he is also downright amusing and hilarious. This isn't one of those books that are so brash in their innovation that the reader is made to slog along: every page is literally one you find yourself want to read again as soon as it is over, if not to see how the hell he did it so smoothly, but just for the pure pleasure of it.

I could go on about the new new of the executions made in this book, such as the absolutely amazing questionnaire that is placed in the middle the book as a thing that must be filled out by the geometric region's citizens who wish to cross through a forest (before Barthelme did it with SNOW WHITE, as well as elsewhere). His employment of double-speak questions and Kafkaesque bureaucracy in form I literally had to stop and read aloud. I've never seen a questionnaire in a book work so well, and that is not to mention the other strange and amazing tactics employed here: the diagrams, the weird city ordinances, the disjoined post-fairy-tale language, the amazing logic, and etc.

I find it pretty interesting, too, that this book was originally published in German in 1969, predating Calvino's INVISIBLE CITIES by three years, and pretty much accomplishing everything Calvino set out to do in that book, but tenfold, and with even more zeal and audacity I think.

That more people in English do not know this book is something that should change. Fans of other curious books in such as a Jesse Ball, Matthew Derby, Brian Evenson, and Kelly Link, as well as Borges, Robert Pinget, Beckett, and others of the magic weird camp should most certainly check him out. It's literally been a thing I've not been able to get out of my mind, a book I've continued to carry with me every day since I read it just to touch and hold and open just to look. It's gotten so into my mind that literally the same day I started writing a book out of the mind Jonke's awoke in me, and haven't been able to stop fixating on it since.

I am excited, too, that the other Jonke title released so far by Dalkey, Homage to Czerny, is sitting on my desk waiting for the right moment, and sounds like a completely different bag from the other, which is exciting. I can only imagine what treasure awaits in all his other works, and hope that Dalkey and other mindful presses will continue to make his work available (I believe I heard Dalkey has another of his titles coming out in 09, as does Ariadne Books).

So far I've only been able to find one other English obituary reference outside of Dalkey, which makes me like him even more:

I asked if [Jonke] would be willing to come to the U.S. for a reading tour. He politely declined, saying he wasn’t really interested in coming to the States because there’s no where you can smoke in this country. And he wasn’t sure if Red Bull would be as accessible here as it is in Austria . . .

There is also a really great criticism casebook arranged by Dalkey on the GEOMETRIC REGIONAL NOVEL.

Do yourself a favor and explore some Jonke. You will be glad you did.

What I Read in 2008

I read a lot this year. 84 books by the list I keep (and including the 'La Medusa' I am currently in the middle of), though sometimes I forget to mark them down, and mostly not including chapbooks or magazines or manuscripts, etc., and also not including those I gave up on in the middle (except one, which I almost finished, and still really liked certain things about what I did read mostly).

A lot of these I blogged about or reviewed but I decided to write little blurbettes about each, which just took a really long time, had I realized I read so much, oh well.

I can't think of which of these are favorites of the year, I read so much that absolutely killed me this year and was fueled by it so much. What you read is just as important to the writing itself as anything else I think, and so in some ways to some extent this list was my year in full, at least in mind. I started to star the ones that really nailed me, but there were so many, and in different ways, that I decided to just go with the list as list, in the order they were read. Ratings are overrated.

A strange year, outside of booklife, the first half mostly sucking dick, the second kind of magic enough to make up for it and more. Thanks to all who have been a part. The internet is my anti-lipid mommy.




2008 Reading List

1. Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein: I think I started reading this on New Year's Day as a joke, I think this is the greatest standup routine ever written, it is very funny, I think it was funny on purpose for all reasons, I want to lick Gertrude Stein's nose.

2. Ovenman by Jeff Parker: Fun and funny book, a page turner with poise, and nails a voice that you almost never hear in fiction: the slacker. Fun.

3. Grim Tales by Norman Lock: my review in the Believer

4. Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch: I should have done this on audio book because hearing Lynch talk is hilarious, on the page it is less interesting, but still fun for the tidbits like his comment about the blue box in Mulholland Drive: "I have no idea what that was."

5. St. Lucy’s School for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell: I don't remember finishing this, it was okay.

6. Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead by Alan Deniro: This read like something you find buried in the cookies of an old hard drive, again, a really strange voice and I can't think of many books like it.

7. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson: Most people know this one already, really interesting format for book: prose poetry almost with narrative, good, vivid.

8. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje: like the Carson but of a more collagist ilk, I should probably read more Ondaatje, there are good violences in this bitch

9. Tortoise by James Lewelling: god, weird book, I really like the way he made the paragraphs bleed into one another by using slight repetitions, I think I ripped some of this off in a my PRETEND chapbook, the airplane scenes. Very strange and cool.

10. The Human War by Noah Cicero: I borrowed this from Tao, I don't think I got it.

11. Arkansas by John Brandon: I thought the first chapter of this was great and the rest was all kind of repetitive and went nowhere, don't really understand the hype. But the opening is rad.

12. Clown Girl by Monica Drake: Another strong sentenced page-turner, like Ovenman in that way of strange voice and can't stop reading, plus a great premise with execution.

13. Dear Mr. Capote by Gordon Lish: Not my favorite Lish by any stretch, I think I actually stopped reading it halfway through and came back later in the year, it works less than his other books to me.

14. Creation Myths by Mathias Svalina: I'm not a big fan of chapbooks usually but this one really works, great imagery and concept, funny and sticks in your teeth, probably my favorite words I've read by Svalina.

15. Bad Bad by Chelsey Minnis: Certain poems in here killed me, some of the------- stuff I wasn't as into, but that earrings poem and a few others that were more with words are worth the price of the book alone. What a freak :)

16. Seaview by Toby Olsen: I loved the shit out of this book, anyone that can write about golf and make it seem magic is a master, wrote about it here

17. A Green Light by Matthew Rohrer: This is a really fun and uniquely voiced book, I pick it up and look at random pages a lot.

18. The Stupefying Flashbulbs by Daniel Brenner: I read this several times in a row in a few days, it has some incredible cubist-like, data-imagery, I can't think of many books like it, I think he wrote it in a week or two or something, not enough people talked about this book, it has a presence like the Mulholland Drive cube to me.

19. Pilot by Johannes Goransson: I read this on a treadmill and it made me dizzy, Johannes is doing some of my favorite work in brutal and new phrased words right now, really awesome, more lineated than his 2 other books from this year.

20. Bob, or Man on Boat by Peter Markus: unlike any other book this year, I reviewed it here

21. Remainder by Tom McCarthy: Another book I did not understand the hype of: all premise, stuck in its own execution. Not 'that bad' but not a big deal either

22. Bear Stories by J’Lyn Chapman: This is a beautiful taste treat, I interviewed J'Lyn about it here

23. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola: among my favorites of the year and 'why the hell had I not read this,' I think it influenced EVER a lot and did a lot for my thinking of the way narrative can move in ways outside A to B without being pure ridiculousness, a must read for most

24. Motorman by David Ohle (2nd time): hadn't read this in years since I first bought it, does a lot of things no other book I can think of does, again weird vaguely scientific logic, post-Burroughs in the way that reinvents the genre

25. Carrying the Body by Dawn Raffel: a creepy and almost breathless book, maybe made me want to really focus on writing about destroying children, this is like Edward Gorey on brain destructing downers, awesome poise

26. Actual Air by David Berman: hilarious and weird, most would say a classic, great

27. Flet by Joyelle McSweeney: god, Joyelle is really doing some new things with narrative, making this hyper-worlds out of style and language that really get my brain jarred and apt for making )*(&*#&$ come out of my eyes: some of her passages are just so new its like you are not reading and instead are in a very fucked video game made of deleted language, I read this on a mountain

28. Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link: I love the shit out of Kelly Link, you have to

29. A New Quarantine Will Take My Place by Johannes Goransson: probably my favorite of Johannes's 3 books this year (not counting his translations), this is one of those they'll be realizing what happened in it years from now: a new genre I think, names are a waste of time.

30. Kissed By by Alexandra Chasin: certain stories in here nailed me, others left me a little cold, though I read most of it on a plane and I hate planes, she is 'breaking rules'

31. Oh Baby by Kim Chinquee: Kim can pack more into a paragraph than a lot of people, using words you have heard but not that way before, a very smart book that weighs much more than it feels in hand, magic

32. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy by Tao Lin: I wrote about this book and interviewed Tao here

33. The Changeling by Joy Williams: an amazing book that makes you feel like you have a fever and are at the people zoo, this is by far the best Joy Williams book I have read, massive sentences and amazing ideas: best rerelease of the year by far, wrote about it more here

34. Yes, Master by Michael Earl Craig: I like the strange imagery here, and the jokes, it is funny

35. How Much of Us There Was by Michael Kimball: second time reading this book, crippled me some, wrote about it more here

36. In the Blind by Eugene Marten: top 5 older of the year for me for sure, kind of mind blowing, wrote about this more here

37. Grim Tales by Norman Lock (2nd time): reread again for review purposes, and for brilliance

38. Speedboat by Renata Adler: I read this from having bought it because it was taught by DFW, it is clear why, a totally brilliant and hardcore book, maybe the most packed paragraphs ever

39. Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball: one of the best of the year, and new, I reviewed this here

40. The Levitationist by Brandon Hobson: god, such a brain eater of a book, dream imagery perfected, an example of the best ways fiction can be imagistic and mindbending, an important book

41. Minor Robberies by Deb Olin Unferth: One of my favorite shorts of the year was in here, I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head but really a cool and bizarre collection

42. Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen: stilted some but had its moments, i felt bored most of the time reading it, but got to end, the final chapter was excellent and made me wish the rest of the book had been as such

43. It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature by Diane Williams: reading Diane Williams makes me want to write almost every single time, no one really writes like this, such weird twists

44. The Spectacle of the Body by Noy Holland: worth it for 'Orbit' alone, which is one of the greatest stories of the past 10 years, if I had to teach voice to writing students I would use this book

45. Marsupial by Derek White: I think this is a branch of a new genre, for real, I wrote about it at length here

46. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (reread): hadn't read since 10th grade or something, great sentences, duh

47. The Tormented Mirror by Russell Edson: Edson is a nutcase, in a good way, he can 'do anything' and get away with it I think, maybe though I think he is slightly overrated, 'when he is on he is on'

48. The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zach Mason: certain sections of this made me go 'wow,' a really great concept for a book and very smart in execution

49. Remainland by Aase Berg: I had this book open at my desk when I was writing one of the novels I worked on this year, really brutal and juxaposing imagery, fantastic fuel

50. The Boy Who Killed Caterpillars by Joshua Kornreich: this book seriously made me feel dirty in a way unlike any book ever, I don't know why, a student of Peter Markus, it is about a kid whose father's shit seems to have strange properties, really disconcerting in its aura in a way I can't explain, I mean I really felt like the same way I did the first time I saw the film Salo, totally bizarre

51. Dear Ra by Johannes Goransson: I loved this book like Kenneth Anger and wrote about it at length here

52. Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine by Stanley Crawford: I want a passage from this book tattooed on me, I might do it, this book quickly jumped into my top 20 of all time I think, what a brain bruiser, I wrote about this and asked Stanley to be my grandfather here

53. Boring boring boring boring borning boring boring by Zach Plague: best book design of the past 5 years I think, and with a story that meshes so many strands of storytelling, I can think of another book like this in any way

54. Waste by Eugene Marten: Another by Marten that killed me, I loved this and wrote about it a lot here

55. The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford: still in the middle of this, and maybe will spend years finishing it, but page for page this book probably has more meat inside it than any other book ever written, no kidding, one page could set you up for weeks, that is not an exaggeration, huge

56. Nylund the Sarcographer by Joyelle McSweeney: Connected to the FLET, another brilliant mashing of language and some genre I can't quite put together, Joyelle I think is doing something with image and language and the surreal that no one has done, I hope she makes more books in this vein

57. The Singing Fish by Peter Markus: reread this also after a while since having done the first time, I don't know how Peter is able to use such spare evocation and make it sing so hard, he is like a tree with blood rings, these images cut

58. Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth: a truly strange mash of things going on in this book, it felt 'all over the place' in a good way, she maybe has one of the strangest tones in books right now

59. Stories in the Worst Way by Gary Lutz (2nd time): I really need to read this at least once a year, a formative book for anyone who touches it, that is not an exaggeration, Lutz is king

60. Hogg by Samuel Delany: yeah, brutal, but in the end it kind of got old, I love brutal violence but this at some point felt routine, still though the images stick in your head regardless of how you want them to, and certain passage like where the guy sticks the nail down his pisshole will keep in your forever likely

61. Changing by Lily Hoang: this book made me gasp when I saw it, she took the I-Ching and turned it on itself in these strangely formatted, textual objects, Joyelle's blurb on this is right on about how it is an impossible thing, a dream object, or however it was put, I have also not seen another book like this ** JUST CAME OUT FROM FAIRY TALE REVIEW PRESS **

62. The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti by Stephen Graham Jones: a very short novel about being inside a video game, I loved the premise and could not stop reading it, the suicide letters that intersperse the other text are black comedy at high mark, SGJ has extreme output

63. Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca: god, another weird book with tone I can't quite put a finger on, a mix of early McCarthy and those dreams you have after ingesting too much sugar, at some point near the middle I texted Nick and said, dude you did it, or something, thankfully saved by Word Riot Press

64. Fog & Car by Eugene Lim: Ellipsis Press really killed it with the debut this year, both titles being of such high quality, I loved and wrote about this here

65. Slouching in the Path of a Comet by Mike Dockins: Dockins can do the tongue in cheek weirdo monologue like no other, he makes me laugh out loud, no one is writing poems like this but Dockins because only Dockins can, a really strange book of verse and prose poems, Dockins knows lists

66. Creamy Bullets by Kevin Sampsell: Sampsell is a magician, and reminds me of Sam Lipsyte when Lipsyte is really on, but also can change gears like maybe no other person writing right now, this book spans masses, the story that was in 3rd bed totally kills me as one of the best 'like a dream' narratives I can think of

67. Holy Land by Rauan Klassnik (2x): I read this twice back to back, Ron makes violence do the new, and his brand I think cripples the earlier mentioned 'Hogg' in that he makes the putrid spiritual or at least transcendent, he is important

68. Atlassed by Jane Unrue: Somewhat on the Joyelle McSweeney page maybe, Unrue creates these worlds that exist nowhere but in her books, like little mirrored halls that go on forever, and new new new language mashes, I loved this, 'The Snarl is on the Mask' is one of my new favorite stories

69. Last Days by Brian Evenson: new Brian Evenson is like a party, no one can render hysteria and the tension with such clean sentences and such ouch, this book is a haunter, just like everything this man has ever written, he is an idol

70. Disciplines by Diana George: like walking down a poisoned hallway or something, I don't know how she makes these completely objective massively layered world, another haunter, and in like 30 pages, I need another book from her

71. Parabola by Lily Hoang: this book takes metatext to the next level, Lily seriously pulled out all the stops on this and kind of invented her own genre that still tells a palpable and family centered story line, this is like a magic textbook, but compulsive, she is a powerhouse

72. In the Colorless Round by Joanna Howard: another great chapbook from Noemi Press, Joanna Howard is another I want more of, sentences, sentences

73. Dad Says He Saw You At the Mall by Ken Sparling: another of my new all time favorites, absolutely hilarious and new, Knopf at its best, I wrote about this here

74. The Haunted Hillbilly by Derek McCormack: McCormack has done work with Sparling, and this book is also creepy in a way I can't figure out, who else write books like this, no one, extremely clipped sentences that still evoke a ton and unlike the rest

75. The External Combustion Engine by Michael Ives: in the vein of the Unrue, these are stylistic masterpieces when they are on, this made me want to steal a lot from him, and made me think a lot about form and how it dictates language

76. Stories in Another Language by Yannick Murphy: fucking brilliant collection again from Knopf, maybe one of my favorite collections for how every story pretty much is a gut puncher, and sentences like brick houses made of candy, jesus

77. The Inland Sea by Brandon Shimoda: one of my favorite covers I've seen in a while

78. The High Traverse by Richard Blanchard: had this on my shelf forever, and has a Lish blurb, weird boyish sentences in clipped list-like manners, I can't think how to explain what this book does, if you like Lish you need this

79. The Way Through Doors by Jesse Ball: I will be reviewing this for the Believer in April, it is a truly insane feat that he pulled off here, and I think even more electric than Samdedi The Deafness, which is saying a lot, this book is important and post-Calvino, magic

80. Lucky Unlucky Days by Daniel Grandbois: hilariously strange flash fictions that reinvent fairy tales and spin them in ways you would not have expected, new

81. Island People by Coleman Dowell: the first 60 pages of this beat my head in, and I could not stop thinking about it, near the middle it started to sag for me a little and the premise got old and I put it down, it is very heavy and complex, but for the first 60 pages alone this thing is worth checking out, maybe I got impatient too fast, that happens with books I end up loving, jury is out

82. The Tree of No by Sandy Florian: Action books eats my face throbbingly, this book is worth it if for the 'Parables' section alone, a post-Biblical freakshow, awesome

83. Geometric Regional Novel by Gert Jonke: I read straight through this in one sitting and had my head lopped off by it, in the mind of Invisible Cities but even heavier and more inventive, and funny!, and fun to read, this immediately made me start writing in the mind of it, and got me working on a new novel, one of my favorite finds of the last several years, totally in need of more attention, a true hidden gem if there ever was one, god bless Dalkey Archive

84. La Medusa by Vanessa Place: (in progress) Just started this yesterday, the biggest book I've seen out from fc2 (500 pages), a mammoth in size and in concept apparently, so many voices based mostly in California and very sentence-oriented (Mike Young, I think you would eat this for supper), I am loving it so far having read the first 120 pages or so, looking fwd to heading further in

Goal for 2009: read some older shits, some longer shits, and maybe somehow more than 84 shits, if I can maintain the hide

'Yo mammy and yo pops, man, they bout to find yo body'

Rauan Klassnik, author of the really brutal and beautiful HOLY LAND, just posted a long process-oriented interview with me about EVER, including 'Physics, The Universe, Charles Simic, Cormac McCarthy, Tea or Coffee' and shit. Ron also interspersed some critical thinking on the book's text as well as some quoted sections and etc. His questions were really on point.

I think Ron is the first person besides Derek and those who blurbed who has read the book, excluding Peter and 2 or 3 who saw a really early draft. Thanks to Ron for the really nice words, and for the interview. Please have a peek.

And then (inhale), you can still buy EVER for $12 plus a buck and a half for shipping, which will come with free new life and maybe a cheat code for Arkanoid and some other things.




If anyone else is interested in doing an early review or other, I can probably get you a pdf version to checkout. Other press people please drop me a line for paper version when it arrives.

Thanks again to everyone who has checked it out so far, the response has been really nice for just a few days on the block.









If you feel like getting one of the best deals I've ever seen on amazing books Dalkey is doing a huge amazing sale. I already spent $60. If I didn't already own a huge portion of their catalog I would probably have done the 20 books for $110 twice. Amazing.

For $60 including shipping I got:

Geometric Regional Novel by Gert Jonke
Homage to Czerny: Studies in Virtuoso Technique by Gert Jonke
Pigeon Post by Dumitru Tsepeneag
The Bathroom by Toussaint
The Complete Butcher’s Tales by Rikki Ducornet
Temple of Texts by Gass
The Conversions by Harry Mathews
Romancer Erector by Diane Williams
The Obstacles by Eloy Urroz
The Mirror in the Well by Marcom

They have also released some of my favorite books ever, including The Tunnel, Magnetic Field(s), several of Markson's, Ben Marcus, the new Stanley Crawford rereleases, Nightwork, Coover, Barthelme, Elkin (oh god I should fill in my Elkin gap: THE MAGIC KINGDOM is one of the all time greats). Just too much.








I read the first half of Jesse Ball's THE WAY THROUGH DOORS last night. It is utterly insane. Sort of like IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER if it had been written on even less sleep. Be excited for it.







twitter is actually kind of calming

"It's a question of several persons who were each several persons, in different places at the same moment."

Keith Montesano wrote a really generous and 'from the gut' review of SCORCH ATLAS in manuscript form, I look fwd to being able to write one in the same vein when Keith's incredible GHOST LIGHTS aka WTF CITY comes out, which I feel will be soon. If there are any publishers reading this who are looking for a killer poetry ms, he is the one to talk to.









For clarity's sake: I don't hate meaning. I hate forced meaning, statically intended meaning, 'themes' 'thematic orchestration' 'this is who my character is' 'forced arcs' 'forced illumination of character's love life history and upbringing, as if we are programmed by what we've done' 'I want to know how this character makes love' No thanks. As if anyone could palpably know something that nobody else knows or has never said enough to say it in a clear way, or by studied evocation. As if all themes haven't been handed to us on plates and again and again and again for years and year. There is a reason you don't watch books on TV.







I enjoy watching THE PICK UP ARTIST 2 & I miss I LOVE MONEY already, I really do.








I am reading, among other things, Robert Pinget's TRIO right now from Dalkey, a French surrealist from the 50's, hung with Robbe Grillet and shit, the intro to the book is all him talking about how writing should be a process of total discovery, and how he refuses to go into his work knowing anything beforehand.

It is a really sexy book, pure black slick cover with nails on it.



TRIO, which is three novellas, I recommend heavily, it's kind of like the post magical realist stuff a lot of people do now, where weird shit happens and its cycled into these crazy offshoots and weird images that begin to tie into one another but in bizarre ways, but mixed with the everyday, a kind of collision of layers, kids vomit jam, boys stuff cucumbers full of explosives and chuck them at people, a guy finds a stairwell on the beach to nothing, but in a metered mind, this paragraph:

"All night long he annotated the text. The next he'd got the formula off by heart. That evening, without even thinking, he recited it. The penknife with which he was about to cut a slice of bread plunged itself, of its own accord, between his two eyes."

All this is in like the first 25 pages, awesome. Way head of its time.

It has an intro by Updike, if that makes you feel better.








I am the #1 google hit for 'blood comes from vegina while fucked by black brutally'. Super neat.








In other news, I am now coediting with Lily Hoang an anthology of innovative writers under 30. Yeah, I know it sucks that you are 30 or more, I am gonna be 30 in a couple months. But I think it's time there was an anthology focusing on really young weird voices. So Lily and I are really excited about this thing. Here's the call (please no personal emails re: this):

Lily Hoang & Blake Butler are now in the early stages of putting together an anthology to feature innovative writers under the age of 30. The anthology has interest from a respected small press.

Please submit no more than 15 pages of prose/poetry/whatever goes to: thirtyunderthirty@gmail.com by January 15. Send as .doc or .rtf attachment. (For truly exceptional cases, we will consider longer submissions.) Previously unpublished work only please. Also, all submissions should be open to editorial review.

We’re looking for the innovative, fresh, exciting writing, and as long as you’re under 30 & doing new things with words, please submit.

We want to find some really crazy shit, form and language innovation is what we're after, so send the weird shit, the new.







Tomorrow or next day will post about publication search history for SA. Thanks to everyone for all the kind words and salutation. It means a lot.

WHERE AM I excerpt @ Pequin

There is a new excerpt from my 10 day novel, WHERE AM I WHERE HAVE I BEEN WHERE ARE YOU, now live at Pequin >>>> The Son's Book

It is very short and random, more a moment than a 'scene,' and fairly unlike most of the novel (ie: this one and this one) though all of the novel's many little sections are pretty different from one another, while still remaining somewhat narrative I think. Somewhat.




I am reading the Dalkey Archive rerelease version of Stanley Crawford's THE LOG OF THE S.S. THE MRS. UNGUENTINE and so far it is one of the most unexpected and refreshing things I have read in a long time. I mean it is goddamn amazing.


It has a new afterword by Ben Marcus.




I wonder if Ben Marcus has a new book somewhere forthcoming?

I wonder if I could get Ben Marcus to blurb EVER? I think I am also going to try to dig up David Markson.

I think too much.

Bookslut gave me a shoutout.

Lily Hoang's THE WOMAN DOWN THE HALL will debut later today or tomorrow, depending on certain things.

Time to begin writing something new so I can shut up some.