Blake Butler
I Have Voluntary Tourette’s (and Am Insane)
This is Blake’s 100th post for VICE.com, and to mark the occasion he told us he wanted to write “something more personal” than his usual fare. In that spirit, he sent us this peek inside his brain. It's crazy in there.
Implausible Literary Halloween Costumes No One Will Recognize
The Judge from Blood Meridian: One cool thing to do on Halloween is to act like a total dick to everybody and pretend it’s just part of your costume. Considering that the Judge is one of the biggest loudmouth brutes in all of literature, why not...
Learning How to Haunt Yourself
The more computers infiltrate our lives, the more fucked and torn apart people become. Where dicks like Whitman went off and lived surrounded with the trees, now we disappear into web browsers. Amina Cain, however, is able to turn the modern condition...
The Many False Floors of Harry Mathews
Since 1962, Harry Mathews has published more than 30 works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, many of which blur the lines between the three so effectively it’s difficult to say which genre they fall into.
Everyone Is a Plagiarist
In the face of all the recent discussion about plagiarism, I’ve been constantly thinking about inspiration, where anything comes from. It’s hard not to feel constantly affected by everything that surrounds us. After driving through Atlanta traffic, for...
Thirteen Alternate Endings for 'Breaking Bad'
Alternate ending # 12: No episode airs. The station says it has been postponed until next week. And next week, they say next week. On and on like that until everyone who was alive when the show began is dead.
Burning Bodies and Playing Dead with Jeff Jackson
An Excerpt from Jeff Jackson's New Novel, 'Mira Corpora'
What Celebrities Eat at Golden Corral
David Lynch goes over to the steak station where a guy in a white coat asks him how he wants his steak cooked. David Lynch asks if he can just have a raw piece of the meat. The cook says that’s not allowed. David Lynch asks why that’s not allowed. The...
If You Build the Code, Your Computer Will Write the Novel
Darby Larson’s new novel, Irritant, takes the utilization of computer generated speech to the next level. Or circuit board. Whatever. The book consists of a single 624-page paragraph, built out of sentences that seem to morph and mangle...
Windows That Lead to More Windows: An Interview with Gary Lutz
Gary Lutz is one of those talents who can write about anything he wants—office supplies, men’s rooms, skin—and still be able to keep you ruminating on any single phrase for hours at a time. His 2007 book Partial List of People to Bleach has just...
The Permutating Brain of Stephen Dixon
Stephen Dixon has published at least 27 books of fiction, yet he has somehow been overlooked as one of the masters of recording how a person thinks, how days go, what it feels like to be alive inside a brain.
What I Remember from Getting an MFA in Creative Writing
On my first day in the dorms I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and saw reflected in the mirror an older woman naked in a bathtub behind me. I’d heard the dorms at my school were haunted, having been built in the late 1800s or something, but when...