FANZINE

There Is No Year hits the shelves today, April 5th. Blake Butler, editor of HTMLGiant and author of Scorch Atlas and Ever, has pulsed out one of the most terrifying and intensely poetic novels I’ve ever read. He’s tuned into the body and soul, meat, bees and bones of existence, non and betwixt. Like Bowie’s alien of “5 years”, everything’s crammed in this head, this house, this Babel library that’s thick but lucid, hot like the iron core of an orb shining on grass that never stops growing; if you could only lightly lift the layers, and you can, it just requires perception, the right tools anyway…and well, it’s already been called the opposite of Jonathan Franzen by David Haglund – ‘Hallelujah’ as a critic of that review has written in a clever blog; Haglund, unwittingly I think, has given a great compliment, and most writers I respect, experimental champions like Ben Marcus and Dennis Cooper are gaga over the fact that Butler’s drugged the American novel (Marcus) and that the literary axis has shifted today (Cooper). I don’t do reviews in the main section here on Fanzine, just edit, but can’t help myself for T.I.N.Y.. This is a reading thrill that occurs every ten years, maybe? and so I’m working on one now. Unless an earthquake hits Atlanta (tornados hit close last night, the wind snapped a huge tree in my mom’s backyard, big mess), I hope to have something longer and archival sometime this week, month at least (okay within the quarter). In the meantime, order or pick up a copy and we’ll compare notes later. -Casey McKinney

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/There-No-Year-Blake-Butler/?isbn=9780061997426