Books by Blake Butler
Three Hundred Million
by Blake Butler
An unforgettable novel of an American suburb devastated by a fiendish madman—the most ambitious and important work yet by “the 21st century answer to William Burroughs” (Publishers Weekly).
Blake Butler’s fiction has dazzled readers with its dystopian dreamscapes and swaggering command of language. Now, in his most topical and visceral novel yet, he ushers us into the consciousness of two men in the shadow of a bloodbath: Gretch Gravey, a cryptic psychopath with a small army of burnout followers, and E. N. Flood, the troubled police detective tasked with unpacking and understanding his mind.
A mingled simulacrum of Charles Manson, David Koresh, and Thomas Harris’s Buffalo Bill, Gravey is a sinister yet alluring God figure who enlists young metal head followers to kidnap neighboring women and bring them to his house—where he murders them and buries their bodies in a basement crypt. Through parallel narratives, Three Hundred Million lures readers into the cloven mind of Gravey—and Darrel, his sinister alter ego—even as Flood’s secret journal chronicles his own descent into his own, eerily similar psychosis.
A portrait of American violence that conjures the shadows of Ariel Castro, David Koresh, and Adam Lanza, Three Hundred Million is a brutal and mesmerizing masterwork, a portrait of contemporary America that is difficult to turn away from, or to forget.
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There Is No Year: A Novel
by Blake Butler
"Butler is an original force who is fearless with form. . . . [an] inventive and deeply promising young author." —Time Out New York
"[Butler's] sentences. . . twist and evolve, and there's a perverse joy that comes from watching just how his paragraphs are shaped, of tracing their contractions and rhythms." —Flavorpill
With echoes of Justin Taylor, Tony O’Neill, and Dennis Cooper, breakout novelist Blake Butler delivers a wildly inventive, impressionistic novel of family, sickness, and the wrenching birth of art. Evocative of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves and the films of David Lynch, There Is No Year offers a fractured, dystopian parable about the struggle and survival of art, identity, and family. As the Toronto Globe and Mail says, “if the distortion and feedback of Butler's intense riffing is too loud, you may very well be too boring.”
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Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia
by Blake Butler
“If there’s a more thoroughly brilliant and exciting new writer than Blake Butler . . . well, there just isn’t.” —Dennis Cooper
From Blake Butler, one of the most challenging young writers of our time and the acclaimed author of the novel There Is No Year, comes a thrillingly wide-ranging and provocative book about insomnia—from its role in history, art, and science through its unexpected consequences on Butler’s personal imagination, creative process, and perspective on reality. Fans of David Foster Wallace, David Shields, and Dennis Cooper will be captivated by Blake Butler’s darkly evocative prose and his daring exploration of the challenges of consciousness.
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Alice Knott: A Novel
by Blake Butler
Named one of the Best Books of 2020 by Refinery29
A hypnotic, wildly inventive novel about art, violence, and endurance
Alice Knott lives alone, a reclusive heiress haunted by memories of her deceased parents and mysterious near-identical brother. Much of her family’s fortune has been spent on a world-class collection of artwork, which she stores in a vault in her lonely, cavernous house. One day, she awakens to find the artwork destroyed, the act of vandalism captured in a viral video that soon triggers a rash of copycat incidents. As more videos follow and the world’s most priceless works of art are destroyed one by one, Alice finds that she has become the chief suspect in an international conspiracy—even as her psyche becomes a shadowed landscape of childhood demons and cognitive disorder.
Unsettling, almost physically immersive, Alice Knott is a virtuoso exploration of the meaning of art and the lasting afterlife of trauma, as well as a deeply humane portrait of a woman whose trials feel both apocalyptic and universal.
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30 Under 30: An Anthology of Innovative Fiction by Younger Writers
30 Under 30 is an anthology of thirty top young writers publishing fiction today. Editors Blake Butler and Lily Hoang have compiled a collection of thirty stories from these thirty writersall creating work on the more innovative side of things; a great opportunity for a reader to dip into their various styles and see which authors to look for more from.
Includes work from authors such as Shane Jones (Light Boxes), Matt Bell (How They Were Found), Joshua Cohen (Witz), and Kathleen Rooney (Live Nude Girl) and twenty-six others breaking ground, many publishing with smaller publishers.
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Scorch Atlas
by Blake Butler
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 we’ve 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 Butler’s 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.
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Sky Saw
by Blake Butler
"If there's a more thoroughly brilliant and exciting new writer than Blake Butler . . . well, there just isn't."Dennis Cooper
"Blake Butler, mastermind and visionary, has sneaked up and drugged the American novel."Ben Marcus
I could go on at what these days were but the truth is I am tired. Would you even believe me if I did or didn't? Could this paper touch your face? I've spent enough years with my face arranged in books. I've read enough to crush my sternum. In each of the books are people talking, saying the same thing, their tongues thin and white and speckled.
I don't want to be here. I want to get older. I want to see my skin go folding over.
Someday I plan to die.
Books that reappear when you destroy them, lampshades made of skin, people named with numbers and who can't recall each other, a Universal Ceiling constructed by an otherwise faceless authority, a stairwell stuffed with birds: the terrain and populace of Sky Saw is packed with stroboscopic memory mirage. In dynamic sentences and image, Blake Butler crafts a post-Lynchian nightmare where space and family have deformed, leaving the human persons left in the strange wake to struggle after the shapes of both what they loved and who they were.
Blake Butler is the author of Ever, Scorch Atlas, There Is No Year, and Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia. He is the editor of the literary blog HTMLGIANT.
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Molly
by Blake Butler
A gripping, unforgettable memoir from one of the best, most original writers of the 21st century. Blake Butler has changed the world of language with his mind-melting literary thrillers, and now he brings his abilities to bear on the emotional world.
"Terrifyingly intense and eerily spiritual ...The best book I’ve read this year."
—LOS ANGELES TIMES
"These pages have a midnight sort of impact many novelists would kill to smuggle into their fiction."
—NEW YORK TIMES
"With Molly, Butler has created a towering tribute to Brodak, in all her complexities, and a harrowing document of unanswerable grief."
—VANITY FAIR
"[5 stars] ... Extraordinary and raw ... the triumph of his book lies in its compassion."
—THE TELEGRAPH
"Molly is a dark, gorgeously crafted read. It contains a tremendous amount of pain, and the loss of life, loss of potential, loss of what could have been weighs heavy. That Butler makes it out the other side whole enough to tell this story is the glimmer of hope that sustains the reader in the end."
—ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
“Molly is so vital, so full of force ... [it] guts the cliché description of someone with mental illness ... [a] gorgeous, sad memoir."
—SLATE
"A powerfully sad book ... Writers are often praised as 'fearless,' but Butler is not. In Molly, he makes fear his companion. That is the only way to write, and to live."
—THE NEW YORKER
"Shattering ... The result is a brutal yet beautiful look at the ravages of mental illness and the complexities of grief."
—PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been so totally consumed by any book—the way I was by Molly.”
—INTERVIEW
“As the story of a marriage, Molly sees that desire, like love, can be both ignited and fractured by the unknowability of the other.”
—BOOKFORUM
"The most immediate feeling of life I've ever had reading a book—a life lived at the desk and out in the world, a life of openness and secrets. "Make art for me," Molly wrote to Blake. "I will read it all." I breathed along with every word."
—PATRICIA LOCKWOOD
"How to praise a book of such wounded beauty as Blake Butler's phenomenal Molly? The same way one would a life lost early: with love and sincerity and anger and wonder and lithely elegant and observant insights that remind us and inspire us, as Butler precisely does, to live and to love ourselves."
—JOHN D'AGATA
"Molly is a brilliant and brutal book. Blake Butler fearlessly takes on love and grief and the mysteries of this world and the next."
—EMMA CLINE
"A dark miracle—actual evidence that what we can never know, what we could never imagine about the one we love, is what binds us to them, beyond death."
—MICHAEL W. CLUNE
"I was gripped from the start by this memoir's urgent honesty. Blake Butler turned a story that was almost unspeakable into a narrative at once brutal and loving, broken and solid."
—CATHERINE LACEY
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. A supremely important work that will be taught, loved, relied on and passed around for years to come, Blake Butler affirms now beyond question his position at th
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Pets
by Ann Beattie, DK Publishing, Blake Butler, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Christine Schutt, Tao Lin, Kathryn Scanlan, Sarah Manguso, Francesca Ferri, Sam Pink, Scott McClanahan, David Nutt, Mark Leidner, Annie DeWitt, Chelsea Hodson, Kristen Iskandrian, Nicolette Polek, Yuka Igarashi, Raegan Bird, Ryan C. K. Choi, Clune,Michael W., Patty Yumi Cottrell, Precious Okoyomon, Mallory Whitten
Puppies, kittens, hamsters, and goldfish are some of the pets that delight children. They�re all here in this warm and wonderful padded cloth book for baby, which comes in a clear plastic case with carrying handle. (Ages Infant�3)
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Pets
by Ann Beattie, DK Publishing, Blake Butler, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Christine Schutt, Tao Lin, Kathryn Scanlan, Sarah Manguso, Francesca Ferri, Sam Pink, Scott McClanahan, David Nutt, Mark Leidner, Annie DeWitt, Chelsea Hodson, Kristen Iskandrian, Nicolette Polek, Yuka Igarashi, Raegan Bird, Ryan C. K. Choi, Clune,Michael W., Patty Yumi Cottrell, Precious Okoyomon, Mallory Whitten
In Touch and Feel Pets, children will learn about their favorite pets through an engaging textured format, as they pet the silky dog, meet the whiskery cat, examine the glistening gold fish, and more. A sparkly irresistible jacket encourages toddlers to pick the book up, the bright bold interior pages help them develop object recognition, and the descriptive text builds their language skills — making this a favorite for both parents and children.
With a sparkling new look, these bestselling DK classics are sure to become favorites for a whole new generation of young readers. Babies and toddlers will be drawn to the captivating, tactile pages, and will want to touch, feel and explore every spread.
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Pets
by Ann Beattie, DK Publishing, Blake Butler, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Christine Schutt, Tao Lin, Kathryn Scanlan, Sarah Manguso, Francesca Ferri, Sam Pink, Scott McClanahan, David Nutt, Mark Leidner, Annie DeWitt, Chelsea Hodson, Kristen Iskandrian, Nicolette Polek, Yuka Igarashi, Raegan Bird, Ryan C. K. Choi, Clune,Michael W., Patty Yumi Cottrell, Precious Okoyomon, Mallory Whitten
This anthology collects original writing and art by novelists, poets, and academics about their pets, including a killer chihuahua, a catatonic toy poodle, a contraband cat, a backyard full of endangered desert tortoises, five forgotten parakeets, and a skinny ex-racehorse named Joe. From legends like Ann Beattie and Christine Schutt to cult figures like Scott McClanahan and Tao Lin, this anthology collects writing from some of today’s best literary talent. Edited by Jordan Castro with contributions by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Ann Beattie, Raegan Bird, Blake Butler, Ryan C. K. Choi, Michael W. Clune, Patty Yumi Cottrell, Annie DeWitt, Chelsea Hodson, Yuka Igarashi, Kristen Iskandrian, Mark Leidner, Tao Lin, Scott McClanahan, Sarah Manguso, David Nutt, Precious Okoyomon, Sam Pink, Nicolette Polek, Kathryn Scanlan, Christine Schutt, and Mallory Whitten.
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Void Corporation
by Blake Butler
Following up the 2023 publication of Blake Butler's smash hit memoir Molly, Archway Editions is proud to bring you Void Corporation, the revised and definitive paperback of his masterful 2020 novel Alice Knott, now with a new foreword from the author. The perfect introduction to Butler's hypnotic and wildly inventive fictional world for his many new fans.
“There’s an exceptional amount of intention and control on display in the telling of this story ... Don’t expect a conventional reading experience. [Void Corporation] is a meditation on art and perception whose form seems to serve as both a meta-comment on the function of the novel, and a challenge to the expectations that a reader should bring to one. It’s rare for me to enjoy and value a book on those terms, but this one worked for me. And even more to the point, I respected it for insisting that I rise to its challenge.” —The New York Times Book Review
“[Void Corporation] signals Blake Butler as our most imaginative writer.” —The Believer
“Timely and bold ... [Butler’s] fiction exhibits an alarmingly masterful grasp of language that effectively haunts readers ... The writing is challenging and transgressive, but it is also dripping with perfectly rendered imagery of the macabre ...[Void Corporation] uses language to carve through the darkness. Here, like with his earlier work[,] Butler has proven himself to be a cartographer of the psyche. A camera pointed on masked individuals drenching a painting with kerosene before setting a match to it; the modern American home, idyllic and clandestine on its exterior while inside, familiar spaces like bedrooms become war zones, morphing and shifting like a body flexing and contorting: These are the sorts of images that Butler leaves behind in your mind, never to be erased.” —The New York Observer
”[A] tangle of cosmic pandemonium ... For all its sleek neo-Gothicism and terrifying speculation on and remote past and near future of the human mind, [Void Corporation] carries within it the old-style haunting and paranormal shenanigans of a Poe-like captivity tale.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“A remarkable accomplishment ... [Butler’s] constant worrying at what’s genuinely personal, struggling to detach it from the endless play of light across wall and screen, strikes me as an undeniably contemporary project.” —John Domini, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Read this beautifully unsettling novel and prepare to be ravished—and ravaged—as it winds its way inside your psyche, snake-like and persistent ... Blake Butler’s latest is a meditation on trauma and art, creation and destruction ... It’s a profound, exuberant disturbance, just what you want all art to be.” —Refinery29
“Stunning and impressive ... With the novel’s humor, arresting voice, and pastiche of conspiracy, art, and paranoia, Butler brings to mind the work of Pynchon and DeLillo as he explores the complexity of artistic achievement and the unreliability of our own minds.” —ZYZZYVA
“A masterpiece ... I keep trying to come up with my favorite bits in the book ... the precision of descriptions ... the grainy-video feel of the atmosphere .. the way it feels like you might be losing your mind when you read it, the small bits of emotion and feeling that made me feel deeply sad, the hauntology of the whole thing, or maybe the end, where I said out loud ‘don’t do it’ and then he did it. I loved it all.” —World Literature Today
“Butler is a master of the American dystopic, language-driven novel, and here returns with his penchant for mining the unsettling national psyche, delving so deeply into its unconscious that the resulting delirium is uncannily close to truth.” —The Millions
“Heartbreaking and heady ... [Butler’s] manipulation of language is a thing of wonder, and the emotions it inspires are more akin to what a person feels while listening to an intricate piece of music as opposed to reading a book.” —LitReactor
“A bold and innovative existential mystery that moves us not towards resolution but deeper into the powerfully strange oceans of fractured memories, damaged love, and lost histories. This book is a thrill, a terror, a heartbreak.” —Laura van den Berg
“A strange and beguiling masterpiece, an immersive experience of psychic disorder that becomes ever more profound as you read on.” —Alexandra Kleeman
“A beautifully constructed maze full of trick mirrors that reminds us of how we find ways to exist inside our realities even as they change.” —Ilana Masad
“Devastatingly beautiful ... [Void Corporation] challenges us to remember how we might yet devote ourselves to life—and each other—differently.” —Lidia Yuknavitch
“[Void Corporation] is a thrilling, subversive novel, part fever dream, part high-culture acid trip, part dystopian masterpiece. A dazzling, dangerous book.” —Christopher Bollen
“Blake Butler is one of our most fearless insurgents against the numbing flow of contemporary life. With [Void Corporation] he’s created a Lynchian fever dream about the voracious march of capitalism and the vulnerable place of art in our society, with vividly crisp sentences and syntax that could cut diamonds.” —Catherine Lacey
“This book is an incantation—to read it is to be put under its spell. [Void Corporation] is ferocious, masterful, and truly unforgettable.” —Chelsea Hodson
Praise for Blake Butler:
“A mastermind and visionary.” —Ben Marcus
“Our premier literary shaman.” —Alissa Nutting
“[Butler’s work is] wild but elegant and smart.” —Roxane Gay
“An endlessly surprising, funny, and subversive writer.” —Publishers Weekly
“A powerful force in contemporary literature.” —3:AM Magazine
“[An] inventive and deeply promising young author.”—Time Out New York
“Try Blake on. Lace him up. Wear him around your neck in wreaths.” —Vice
From Blake Butler, the genius author of Archway Editions’ smash hit memoir Molly, comes Void Corporation—the crowning achievement of his fictional oeuvre. Initially published as Alice Knott in 2020 by Riverhead Books, it now appears for the first time in paperback with its originally intended title, a brand new foreword by the author, and an unsettling, iconic cover painting by Seymour Rosofsky. The most accomplished and accessible entrypoint into Butler’s hypnotic, hallucinatory aesthetic, Void Corporation is the ideal next purchase for anyone who loved Molly.
Published right as the world changed in early 2020, Butler’s riffs on art, technology, inequality and the conspiratorial impenetrability of our bureaucratic world are more prescient than ever. The recent spate of protest action involving art even seems inspired by the book—people have said as much online—and the resonances keep coming. Reclusive heiress Alice Knott’s self-imposed quarantine is reminiscent of our own, and the mystery deepens after she discovers her family’s world-class artwork collection destroyed and videotaped.
Void Corporation features Butler’s stimulating, immersive linguistic acrobatics, but in following Alice’s journey through a world of memory and conspiracy, he brings a looming clarity. After the artwork is destroyed, copycat incidents proliferate around the world, and she becomes the chief suspect in what may be an international conspiracy. With essential questions raised about the meaning of art and the ramifications of trauma, this definitive edition is a must-have for anyone who has read Molly or wants to discover the exceptional written universe of Blake Butler.
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