Blake Butler
Please Start Banning Books Again
I kind of miss the idea of cultural lines that one can’t step over. One of my most memorable high school experiences was getting a permission slip signed by my parents so I could listen to an audiotape of Allen Ginsberg reading “America.”
Suck on the Monolith
Ken Baumann is best known for his role as Ben on ABC Family’s teen drama show, 'The Secret Life of the American Teenager,' but offscreen he’s of a wholly other mode. Besides spending his TV dollars as publisher of Sator Press, an independent publishing...
Sarcophagi of Prisoners Covered in Cocaine
Johannes Göransson new book, 'Haute Surveillance,' is kind of like a novelization of a movie about the production of a play based on Abu Ghraib, but with way more starlets and cocaine and semen.
Tupac, Neck Braces, and Suicide: An Interview with Harmony Korine
In 1998, after his feature-length directorial debut, 'Gummo,' Harmony Korine published a novel called 'A Crackup at the Race Riots.' For years the book has been out of print, fetching prices upward of $300 online—until recently, when it was repackaged...
Shapes That Make You Dizzy
Coconut Books is the print arm of the longest-running online poetry publisher I can think of. In the past several months they’ve released a slew of wicked new books. Here are my thoughts on three of them, along with an excerpt from each.
One Hundred Literary Rumors
I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I’ve heard a lot of shit. People whispering in hallways and Gmail chatting about all kinds of dark secrets. People up in parties with their coats and hair all looking nice and their mouths just full of you wouldn’t...
The March Madness of Fast Food
After spending several days sprawled out watching men on TV throw a ball at a hole in an effort not to get eliminated from a competition, I decided to subject the glorious fast food restaurants of America to a similar contest. I seeded 64 of our most...
Scott McClanahan’s Animal Magnetism
I think of Scott McClanahan as a kind of reauthenticated version of everything that’s good about Southern writing. I’ve seen him silence a room at least five different times now with just the words that came out of his mouth. Scott just released his...
A Day in the Life of an Alzheimer's Caregiver
My dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s about three years ago. After an extended stay at the hospital and stints in two different rest homes, my mom brought him home to care for him herself. There is an unseen routine in the lives of most home caregivers...
Sergio De La Pava’s Narrative Mutations
Sergio De La Pava’s 'A Naked Singularity,' clocking in at just under 700 pages, seemed to appear out of nowhere near the end of 2012. It gained attention quickly for being initially self-published by the author and then picked up by University of...
The Disorienting Novels of Kobo Abe
I wanted to read all of the novels by one person in a short time, kind of like a rapid upload of someone’s whole career into my brain. I’d never read a whole book by Kobo Abe, frequently referred to as the Japanese Kafka, despite already owning three...
Social Work in the Tenderloin Will Kill Something Inside of You
My friend Lorian is a social worker in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, a neighborhood containing seven of the ten most violent crime plots in the city. Homelessness, public drug use, and prostitution are said to be as common there as the liquor stores and...