Best Comment Exchange Ever?
Maybe the sommelier will pick this up later but: This just in: READ MORE >
In Memoriam Blake Butler (1979-2009)
on the train... receding, receding, receding.... (sniff, sniff)
Yes, sadly, Blake Butler passed away last night. The omnipresent electronic friend-of-everyone expired in an insomnia-induced rage of language and, like the Monty Python parrot in that famous sketch, is now an ex-Blake.
No more, alas, will schoolboy-grinning Blake Butler apocalypse creation in every sentence. No, strike that! In every phrase! No, strike that! In every syllable.
Make room now O Pantheon of young ones ripped from us far too early. Jesus, move over. Joan of Arc, a little to the left. Catullus, get your cock out of JFK’s ass. And give Blake some space. (and Seth, quit gawking).
And, Mr. Chicago pastry-delicacy chef get your ass in gear (so safe on earth) and start on something. Seth was a swan– what will you make of Blake? A peanut butter rabbit? A marshmallow weasel? A treacle beagle? woof-woof!
And just thinking now of Man’s Best-Friend I am bawling. Bawling, bawling, bawling.
What internet void has our great leader Blake Butler left? What cold and massive black hole of rubbish will form around his e-grave?
And, no, Blake Butler is not dead. This is a fake obit.
And I’d like to see more actually. Bring them on.
Greener (and sweeter) pastures now-- bawl, bawl, bawl,.....
Three Cheers for Blake!
Hey remember when Blake posted about how major publishing houses have basically stopped taking on challenging, innovative fiction? Well it looks like big publishing has Struck Back. From Our Man’s personal blog, posted last night-
Sign of good times, indeed. Blake joins a team that already includes Dennis Cooper, Tony O’Neill, Kevin Sampsell, uh me, The Great Short Works of Tolstoy, the Six Word Memoir series, and all those amazing philosophy re-issues originally published in the Harper Torch series. Welcome to the family, brother!
Special Butler+Harper Bonus Reminder: “The Copy Family” at Fifty-two Stories. Remember back when this happened? I think it’s when HP’s love affair with Homebutler began. Which incidentally reminds me that it’s been way too long since we touched based with Fifty-two Stories. Cal, if you’re reading this- I’m on it.
Power Quote: William Hazlitt (for Blake)
Nature seems (the more we look into it) made up of antipathies: without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action. Life would turn to a stagnant pool, were it not ruffled by the jarring interests, the unruly passions, of men. The white streak in our own fortunes is brightened (or just rendered visible by making all around it as dark as possible; so the rainbow paints its form upon the cloud. Is it pride? Is it envy? Is it the force of contrast? Is it weakness or malice? But so it is, that there is a secret affinity, a hankering after, evil in the human mind, and that it takes a perverse, but a fortunate delight in mischief, since it is a never-failing source of satisfaction. Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, wants variety and spirit. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.
Jimmy Chen—
Um, EVER, Scorch Atlas, Lamination Colony, No Colony (w/ Ken Baumann), HTMLGIANT (et al.) — and now Year of the Liquidator (w/ Shane Jones), please where is my elephant tranquilliser gun? I need to shoot someone.
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Major Book Announcement : Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler pre-sale/firefight
Scorch Atlas (destroyed) by Blake Butler from featherproof books on Vimeo.
Master and commander/Brother Butler/Crier of The Good Lit/Partygirlin Eater of Babies/W.I.B. BLAKE BUTLER has announced that his novel in stories, Scorch Atlas, can now be pre-bought before it’s 9/9/09 release date — and for a 33%off, i.e. $10! — from the inimitable Featherproof Books. And not only can they be paid for, but you can secure a limited edition ‘destroyed’ copy, i.e. a book that’s been punished brutally by our beloved friend Blake, & his company. Or, you know, you can just get a plain old regularly clean version of the book too, if that’s what you’re into.
I have been more excited to subsume this set of words than any other set of words in ________.
Buy this book.
Matthew Simmons—
Dear Leader’s book is in. Two things. 1) Book seems to have sustained water damage in shipping. (Har har.) 2) If his description of seeing the book for the first time is accurate, he was naked when he opened the box. NICE!
Haut or Not: Baby Butler
Blake Butler’s penchant for fascism, literary or otherwise, may have begun earlier than we thought. Is that a two volume set of Adolf Hitler, or does his mom (whose bookshelf this is) just need an extra copy to bear through Yom Kippur? Throw in Southern Baptist evangelist Billy Graham’s Angels in the mix, and the phrase ‘white power’ comes to mind — of course, I am joking; everyone knows that Blake is the blackest person here (his wicked tongue cadence actually comes from the best rap). What concerns me isn’t the Christian or Nazi fascism — it’s Your Erogenous Zones, probably stained, because, let’s remember, that is his mom’s book. God, I just had a flash of Mrs. Butler discovering Chapter 3 with a bedpost. For those who aren’t catching the allusion, it’s Freudian: we deny our birth by entering the less ‘viable’ orifice. Some people are anal and vacuum all the time. Blake is anus, so let’s not think about what’s inside that diaper.
Shane Jones and Dear Leader have a conversation
Kevin Sampsell (seen above dancing) made our friend Shane and our Dear Leader talk about small press issues and being an “internet writer.” The conversation appears on the blog of the mighty, mighty Powell’s Books.
It’s a mighty fine conversation. Here’s an abridged highlight:
Blake: People call you and me “Internet writers” in certain forums, though I don’t necessarily ride that term at all, and think mainly it comes from people not understanding the Internet as a tool. Have there been things you’ve done that you thought effective? Have there been things you would like to do but haven’t, or are not sure how?
Shane: …The “Internet writer” thing is just a label. I don’t consider myself, or you for that matter, an Internet writer.The “Internet writer” thing is just a label. I don’t consider myself, or you for that matter, an Internet writer. I think it’s because we both have blogs and publish online that some people call us this. But we also have printed stuff in journals and printed books, so I don’t really get it. I do know that starting a blog was probably one of the most important steps I made in my writing “career.” I became involved in a community of talented writers and it let me expose my own writing to a community of readers. And that’s very important…
Blake: Yeah, saying “Internet writer” is about as arbitrary and misplaced as saying “typewriter writer.” People so desperately want to name things.
WHAT IS A SCENE?
people use the word scene for many things. like, music scene, there’s probably a rollerblading scene, and maybe a cooking scene. what is a scene and how does it apply to internet literature? and is blake butler racist?