Blake Butler

http://www.gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com/

Blake Butler lives in Atlanta. His third book, There Is No Year, is forthcoming April 2011 from Harper Perennial.

Lindsay Hunter’s Daddy’s

Today marks the release of a book I’ve been waiting for itchingly for a good long while now: Lindsay Hunter’s could-not-be-better-titled collection Daddy’s, new from Featherproof. If you’ve ever seen Lindsay read live, you already are probably pressing buy: she slams heads. The book is shaped like a tackle box and guaranteed to be stuffed full of more freak than you might be able to handle in one read. She kind of makes Harry Crews and Angela Carter look like Jerry Seinfeld.

“In Daddy’s, babies mean blood, and nipples are like “lit match heads.” Lindsay Hunter transgresses where others fear to tread.” —Terese Svoboda, author of Pirate Talk or Mermalade

“Each tiny, diamond story—precise, comic, poised at the edge of surreal—contains one brutal life force tearing itself off the page. You can hold Daddy’s in your hands and feel it breathing.” Deb Olin Unferth, author of Vacation

“Lindsay Hunter won’t be caught lie-telling in the name of nice. The miniature stories in Daddy’s are fierce and unapologetic. When the We’s she voices say the axblade was bloody with dirt, what they mean is the neighbor’s swingset creaked and moaned next door and we heard a child’s voice say Never ever. When I’m looking again for my next undoing, I’ll crack open Daddy’s, and get the true news they tell us we’d be better off not hearing.”—Kyle Minor, author of In the Devil’s Territory

For a taste, here’s one of the stories from the book, about a messed up baby: That One.

Get a further peek inside and place your order here.

Author News / 37 Comments
September 1st, 2010 / 12:05 pm

@ Fury.com, a series of conversations between random AOL IM users and a psychoanalyst program named ELIZA, which operates by asking questions based on the previously entered text:

fiftyeight: Hello, a/s/l
AOLiza: hi. what seems to be your problem?
fiftyeight: just looking for random people to talk to
AOLiza: tell me more about that.
fiftyeight: I like to talk to random people from all around it is fun. But enough about me, lets talk about you.
AOLiza: tell me more about that.
fiftyeight: Lets talk about you… where do you hail from?
AOLiza: you’re not really talking about me — are you?
fiftyeight: Yes, I am.
AOLiza: please go on.
fiftyeight: well in order to talk about you tell me about yourself
AOLiza: suppose i did tell you — what would that mean?
fiftyeight: that would mean that this was a conversation
AOLiza: that is interesting. please continue.
fiftyeight: conversations are fun
AOLiza: what if they were not fun?

(continued)

New online issues of Action Yes and Gigantic be rippin it like it s’posed to be ripped.

PW’s Top 50 Whoompers Programs for 2011

Get out your diapers, sluts! PW weighs in with the top 50 MFA programs. My dad says this is totally out of whack with the actual parameters of what young thugs want in language learning these days. What are you to think? (click img for larger versions)

Behind the Scenes / 161 Comments
August 25th, 2010 / 2:56 pm

Craft Notes & HTMLGIANT Features

On Begetting

Sorry, the Bible’s a really rad book. It’s really funny. I wish I’d written it. I feel like if like Action Books or Dalkey Archive had published the Bible instead of whoever it would be a really respected work: I mean, respected by atheists who think the Bible is dumb and only like like poetry by James Tate or something. I read a whole bunch of the Bible the other week in the swimming pool. It was my sister’s copy from when she got baptized I think. She hadn’t touched it since then. I think I have one from that day too but I think it’s buried in a closet somewhere. I got a bunch of poolwater on the book and later my mom told me not to do that because my sister would probably want it. I can’t imagine my sister wanting the Bible. Somebody should make the Bible into a cool movie or like a reality show.

Today I found a website that has a bunch of Sacred Texts, which features holy books of everything from the bible to wicca to Nostradamus to Tolkien to the Book of Shadows to deleted scenes from the Bible, all kinds of stuff. It’s Sacred-Texts.com: how’s that for marketing. One could spend probably years here, on this one site. It’s a popular hit for a lot of searches on google. I found it googling ‘ham begat’.

READ MORE >

94 Comments
August 24th, 2010 / 3:04 pm

@ Urlesque, Mark Baumer is interviewed about his walk across America: “Q What surprised you about your trip? A: People are good and god might be real.”

Starcherone Prize 6 & 7

Sarah Falkner wins the 7th Starcherone Prize for her novel Animal Sanctuary, selected by Stacey Levine. It sounds quite look-forward-to.

Last year’s winner, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by our own radical Alissa Nutting, selected by Ben Marcus, is coming out October 1st! It’s going to eat your hair. You can preorder it now from Starcherone or wherever great books are. Here’s a taste, from Fence.

Presses / Comments Off on Starcherone Prize 6 & 7
August 23rd, 2010 / 2:44 pm

What are some awesome Must Read more experimental or weirdo graphic novels? I enjoy, like, Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes but I feel severely out of touch.

A Letter to the Editor from Gary Lutz, 1988

A letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 8, 1988, from Gary Lutz:

[via Caketrain]

Behind the Scenes / 35 Comments
August 21st, 2010 / 4:53 pm

Zach German’s books i read in 2010 blog is pretty funny or fun, e.g. “how did i like it: i didn’t like it. i really didn’t feel like i got anything out of it. i guess i learned the names of a lot of people, whose wikipedias i looked at after not recognizing them in the poems. i feel like with killian’s style of poetry it is difficult for me to know whether it is good or bad; like i assume killian is a ‘good’ writer, but i feel even if a ‘bad’ writer wrote some poems in this book’s style i would probably take them the same way, idk. that being said i feel like i would like him if i met him….”