Blake Butler
Sci-Fi Doesn't Have to Be Dominated by Horny Bro Wizards
In a genre where supposedly Anything Goes, where the boundaries of narrative and potential reality are not only immaterial, but also intended to be shattered with pure acts of what-the-fuck, I’ve always been baffled by how 90 percent of science fiction...
What Is This Terror Before Me: A Review of the New Taco Bell Grilled Stuft Nacho
Taco Bell is more like drugs than food. It beats you open from the inside with beef and cheese and bread, and in so doing makes things seem great for a while, until your body realizes what you've done to it. It’s like it’s going to save your life, and...
Brief Reviews of Every Movie I Saw in Theaters in 2013
I wasn’t a big fan of most of the movies I saw last year but that didn’t stop me from spending my hard earned money to sit in a dark room and watch glorified TV with a bunch of strangers.
All the Books I Read in 2013
The literature world was weird this year. I almost don’t remember it. It was rapid, and overflowing with so many new presses and faces and legs that it was hard to know where to look and who or what didn’t suck.
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.
Portrait of the Marquis de Sade as a Young Female Hacker
Trisha Low's The Compleat Purge is an honest record of what it feels like to grow up during the internet age.
Books I Gave Up on Reading
I have a hard time letting myself stop reading a book once I’ve started. I always have faith that even though something starts off difficult or boring or bad it can suddenly shift gears, making insane sense out of what had before just seemed tedious as...
Reviews of Churches That Won’t Stop Growing
Living in the South, I see a lot of churches. They’re fucking everywhere. And they keep growing. There’s so much money coming in, it’s almost like they don’t know what to do with it. Some have grown so much over the last decade, it’s like they’re alive...
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...