Scorch Atlas

When it comes to Blake Butler’s writing, I either love it or I hate it. There is never a middle ground when I read his work and perhaps that’s a good thing because no matter what I’m reading from Butler, I have an intense reaction. I feel something. I have an opinion.

I did not know what to expect from Scorch Atlas, out now from Featherproof Books, and on sale for $10 so really, that’s a bargain. I didn’t know if it was a novel, a short story collection, fragments, poems, images. I   knew Butler was going to eat his book one page at a time so I did worry about his constitution as book pages tend to be thick. I also knew you could order the book pre-damaged. I declined. I liked not knowing anything about the book. These days, we’re so saturated with information I often forget what it feels like to be surprised.

As I’ve mentioned before, I love my Kindle. It is convenient and useful and I’m totally into it but if ever there was an argument for the importance of the book as a physical object, that argument would be Scorch Atlas. The production values of this book set a new standard. As someone who designs (to call me a designer would be an insult to designers), this is the kind of book I wish I had designed. The aesthetic is so consistent and so well-executed that I could write an entire review on that alone. The book is taller than traditional books. It has a distressed look throughout like an old, well-used atlas. The interior pages look worn, wrinkled, soft like pulp. Holding the book with its slick to the touch cover is a tactile pleasure. I have rarely seen a book where so much thought was given to design and where design so effectively complemented the writing. You really cannot talk about the content of this book without a serious discussion of Zach Dodson’s outstanding design.

The fourteen stories that are the scorched atlas work together and individually. The stories feel the same and yet different. They are stories of physicality and human frailty and bodies and worlds given over to decay and blight. The ways in which the people and places in these stories are rendered are a grotesquerie but in the very grotesque there is beauty largely because of the strength of Butler’s prose and the depths of his imagination. There is a relentless obsession with the body, with fluids, with oozing, with homes and mothers and sons, with things that are bent or broken. Butler writes with a heavy hand in these stories. Every single word suffocates you both thematically and stylistically. The writing is tactile. It deliberately, profoundly engages the senses and more than that, it engages the mind, often in challenging ways.

Some might call the world(s) of Scorch Atlas apocalyptic but I would say the world(s) are dystopic because they don’t destroy life. Even amidst the bleak carnage, the rot, the melancholy and darkness, the world(s) of Scorch Atlas sustain.

Between each story, each turn of the atlas, is a vignette about a plague, a pestilence—glitter, glass, blood, caterpillars, gravel, dust, water, light. These horrors are detailed with well-crafted, dense and almost overwhelming prose. The ways in which these vignettes interrupted the narrative was, to my mind, very smart and I’ve found myself rereading them several times because in their way, they hold the stories they complement together.

As someone who loves the deliberate use of form in writing, my favorite stories were Damage Claim Questionnaire, Tour of the Drowned Neighborhood, Water Damaged Photos of Our House Before I Left It and Bloom Atlas but I could just as easily list the other ten stories. This book is a clear example of the whole as a sum of its parts.

Scorch Atlas is a fine example of experiment with purpose (writers, take note!), of world building, of decadent, detailed and innovative writing. This is a book that should be read, and widely.

We’ll do our part to make that happen by giving away a copy each to the first three people (no previous giveaway winners) who comment on this post.