Bøger af Blake Butler

One of the most acclaimed young voices of his generation, Blake Butler now offers his first work of nonfiction: a deeply candid and wildly original look at the phenomenon of insomnia.Invoking scientific data, historical anecdote, Internet obsession, and figures as diverse as Andy Warhol, Gilles Deleuze, John Cage, Anton LaVey, Jorge Luis Borges, Brian Eno, and Stephen King, Butler traces the tension between sleeping and conscious life. And he reaches deep into his own experience?from disturbing waking dreams, to his father's struggles with dementia, to his own epic 129-hour bout of insomnia?to reveal the effect of sleeplessness on his imaginative landscape. The result is an exhilarating exploration of dream and awareness, desperation and relief, consciousness and conscience?a fascinating maze-map of the borders between sleep and the waking world by one of today's most talked-about writers.

"Blake Butler and Molly Brodak instantly connected, fell in love, married and built a life together. Both writers with deep roots in contemporary American literature, their union was an iconic joining of forces between two major and beloved talents. Nearly three years into their marriage, grappling with mental illness and a lifetime of trauma, Molly took her own life. In the days and weeks after Molly's death, Blake discovered shocking secrets she had held back from the world, fundamentally altering his view of their relationship and who she was. A masterpiece of autobiography, Molly is a riveting journey into the darkest and most unthinkable parts of the human heart, emerging with a hard-won, unsurpassedly beautiful understanding that expands the possibilities of language to comprehend and express true love. Unrelentingly clear, honest and concise, Molly approaches the impossible directly, with a total empathy that has no parallel or precedent" --

One maniacal killer. One tortured police detective. The end of the American story.

In this striking novel-in-stories, a series of strange apocalypses have hit America. Entire neighborhoods drown in mud, glass rains from the sky, birds speak gibberish, and parents of young children disappear. Millions starve while others grow coats of mold. But a few are able to survive and find a light in the aftermath, illuminating what weve become. In The Disappeared, a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. A boy swells to fill his parents ransacked attic in The Ruined Child. Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butlers full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William H. Gass, yet imbued with Butler's own vision of the apocalyptic and bizarre.

PRAISE FOR BLAKE BUTLER "An endlessly surprising, funny, and subversive writer." -Publishers Weekly "If the distortion and feedback of Butler's intense riffing is too loud, you may very well be too boring." -Globe and Mail (Toronto) "Try Blake on. Lace him up. Wear him around your neck in wreaths." -Vice "If there's a more thoroughly brilliant and exciting new writer than Blake Butler . . . well, there just isn't." -Dennis Cooper PRAISE FOR SEAN KILPATRICK "This is a book you need. Language reset. Guidebook." -HTML GIANT on Sean Kilpatrick's fuckscapes "The violent, sexual zone of television and entertainment is made to saturate that safe-haven, the American Family. The result is a zone of violent ambience, a 'fuckscape': where every object or word can be made to do horrific acts. As when torturers use banal objects on their victims, it is the most banal objects that become the most horrific (and hilarious) in Sean Kilpatrick's brilliant first book." -Johannes Goransson on fuckscapes "Here is your I.V. drip of sphinx's blood." -CA Conrad