Blake Butler

Contributor at Freelance

Writer at Dividual

https://t.co/42bBprSwTl

Articles

issue no. 11: on lighting

2 months ago | loveandotherrugs.substack.com | Blake Butler |Lily Sullivan

The second volume of Love and Other Rugs is presented by Kaiyo. Love and Other Rugs is BACK… If you are new, be sure to check out the archive. I complain about ghosting and grey sofas and exes in storage units, among other things. Plus, limited copies of the print issue are available online. About a year ago, maybe it’s two at this point, I went to The River—a cocktail bar located just below Canal street—to meet a self-proclaimed Peter Pan.
from Spiral Gardens by Blake Butler — Terrazzo Editions

Dec 3, 2024 | terrazzoeditions.com | Blake Butler

They gathered the latest batch of children on a Stunday. They were only going to be gone for as long as would be required for the completion of their training, which itself remained dependent on the prep each family unit had pre-authenticated on their own. The Coalition for the Reclamation of Our State would not make any exceptions, including illness, slowness, or other biological distraction. Guidelines were sacred and could not be bent for any meant to live within our reach.
NO TITLE AS OF 18 NOVEMBER 2024 44,630 DEAD

Nov 18, 2024 | blakebutler.substack.com | Blake Butler

Unedited free writing composed while listening to Godspeed You Black Emperor’s NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD for the first time from beginning to end w/o pause over headphones in my office with a candle burning. Gathering in platitudes occluded through ritual deviance bypassing eternity, nothing stuns. Even the big boss at the end of the hall eats blood from his hair and calls it knowledge.
Maximizing Time for Reading

Nov 11, 2024 | blakebutler.substack.com | Blake Butler

There’s been a lot of online debate lately about literature as a product of elitism. Reading and writing requires time to be able to partake in, obviously, and yet most of the people who bring this up as a talking point appear to be doing so in bad faith as a means of denigrating desire for knowledge.
Eugene Marten, in Conversation With Blake Butler

Aug 15, 2024 | interviewmagazine.com | Blake Butler |Jake Nevins

Some writers are little more than perpetual motion machines of self-aggrandizement, playing off-the-page games to bait your dime. Others stand on business, letting their work speak for itself. Over the last two decades, Eugene Marten’s novels have been a gold standard of the latter approach, passed around by those in-the-know with the sort of reverent awe reserved for timeless pillars of their craft.
Publishing Field Report 4 - Online Literature (Part 2)

Jun 17, 2024 | blakebutler.substack.com | Blake Butler

Having found acceptance for the first time publishing online, my entire world began to open up. I became immediately obsessed with writing all over again, in a quite different way than I had than just writing on my own in relative silence—not only from feeling capable, now that someone else had seen merit in my work, but from finding countless others in a similar position all over the world.
Feel So Different

Mar 26, 2024 | samsodomsky.substack.com | Blake Butler |Sam Sodomsky

Hi everyone, Sam here. This is an introductory message to my new Substack enterprise, which I am calling “Electric Nebraska.” I am truly grateful for everyone reading, and I plan to make good use of your attention in the coming days, weeks, and months. I’ll have plenty of exciting announcements then, but for now I’ll simply alert you to an article I wrote last week for The Independentabout the Carnegie Hall tribute concert for Sinéad O’Connor and Shane McGowan.
A Memoir of a Marriage Cut Short and the Secrets Left Behind

Mar 24, 2024 | nytimes.com | Blake Butler

What to Read Find Your Next Book Spring Fiction Preview Spring Nonfiction Preview 22 Funny Novels March Releases What to Read Find Your Next Book Spring Fiction Preview Spring Nonfiction Preview 22 Funny Novels March Releases After his partner, Molly Brodak, died by suicide, Blake Butler found painful truths in her journals and personal items. MOLLY, by Blake ButlerThe first sign that "Molly" is not going to be a typical memoir arrives on Page 20.
Blake Butler On (Not) Finding Your Voice | Independent Newspaper Nigeria

Jan 13, 2024 | independent.ng | Blake Butler

BLAKE BUTLER I hate when I hear a writer talking about “finding their voice.” I’m sure they mean well, but for my money, confining yourself out of the gate beneath the idea that there’s a certain way you’ll need to learn to talk—much less to think, or to be—in order to have “something to say” is about as damning a condition as needing permission from Crest in order to eat. Or better yet, needing an Amazon account to educate yourself. No one has a voice once they are dead.
Patricia Lockwood

Jan 8, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Blake Butler |Patricia Lockwood

Molly Brodak stood at the side of my bed, unscrolling her long life like a nightgown. Nearly forty years was long. She had died on 8 March 2020, and now her husband, the novelist Blake Butler, had written a book about her. I had just spent the night reading it on my phone, squinting at the long scroll turned sideways until one of the headaches started. They were the geniuses of headaches.