Instead of just listing the books I’ve read the previous year, I thought I’d revive this blog and write about the books I read. Of course, I may still talk about random items—I mean, really, don’t you want to know that I don’t think the heater is working properly in my house at the moment? Writing about the books I’ve read will at least help me keep the blog up to date, as well as help me remember why I do or don’t like some of the books. My analysis probably won’t be academic; it will primarily be stream-of-thought reflections on the books. I reserve the right to change my mind, and I’m open to your thoughts and debates about particular books.

The first book out of the gate for 2010 is Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler. I was drawn to read this book by Kim‘s review of it in Time Out New York. Her review sums up this short story collection best.

The 14 linked stories in Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas depict the fragility of the American family through relentless accumulation of apocalyptic detail. Parents disappear or are held captive by their children. Babies are born malformed and enormous. Homes are destroyed by water or fire or accreting dust.

Malformed babies! Apocalyptic landscapes! Sounds awesome. And it was for about two, maybe three, stories. Then it grew tiresome. Maybe that was Butler’s plan all along, and if so, then bravo to him for making the reader feel as tired and downtrodden as the characters.

While I enjoyed the bleak settings of most of the stories, what I found most frustrating was Bulter’s syntax. I never understood why he would use more words, primarily prepositions, than necessary. For example, in the story “Seabed,” there is this sentence: “The men he’d spent endless nights with pounding shots with, fly-licked blood now flooding from their mouths.” I know it’s the editor in me, but damn I want to cut out that first “with.” I can hear the poetic structure of the sentence, which I find good up to a point. But when I start noticing style over substance, then I start to get bored with the story. Do writer’s really want readers to be bored with their stories?

Maybe Butler is more interested in wordplay, and if so, then I think some of these stories would have worked more effectively as poems and short plays. I think that sort of variety would have kept me interested, seeing as how these apocalyptic stories all seemed to run together, pages and pages of full-justified text.

In the end, I remember some of the story ideas, but not the full story. The ideas I enjoyed most are the mother eating lace to so that her daughter would have a gown and the children holding their mother hostage so that they could feed on her. My favorite story was “Smoke House,” because it was the most straight forward and the most tender in its telling of the pain of losing a child. It was the one story I got caught up in, not once thinking about the syntax. It was the one smooth item in an otherwise charred book.

Speaking of charred, the book’s design is top-notch. It was designed to look like it went through hell and back, and it looks it. Still, shouldn’t a reader remember more of the stories instead of the design?

Send to Kindle