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El Atlas De Ceniza (2013)

by Blake Butler(Favorite Author)

3.78 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

8492837640 (ISBN13: 9788492837649)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Alpha Decay

review 1: Scorch Atlas finds itself holding contradictory positions in my mind. On one hand, it is fairly brilliant: the surreal devastation of the world told by proxy; a random smattering of literary puzzle pieces that form a mind-numbingly grotesque gestalt. On the other hand, the postmodern zeal with which words are flung around this way and that can become top heavy and crush the quirky, macabre mood that the author works so hard to establish. There are only so many times something can be described as "loamy", "molded", or "burping" before the words begin to stale like recycled air. But despite the repetitiveness of some aspects, the individual stories of horrible damnation are intriguing, and the bits and pieces of this absurd carnivalesque world tend to stick in one's mind the... more same as a bitter taste lingers in one's mouth. I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend this book to people...but neither would I say that it shouldn't be read for those who are curious for the experience.
review 2: A review of this seems almost beside the point, as I think most people who pick up this small, dark, creepy-looking book from Featherproof Press know exactly what they're getting into and love it. Blake Butler's terse but poetic vignettes capture situations that seem to revolve around various apocalyptic scenarios involving disease, insects raining from the sky, and more bizarrely imagined scenes like glass or ink obliterating everything. Like the best experimental writers though, this doesn't seem to be what Butler's work is *really* about---I won't claim to know exactly, but the collapse of modern families, school systems, etc. also seems to be a prominent thread in the fractured narrative. Equal parts disturbing and lovely, as well as an interesting physical object, this book succeeds on pretty much every level as everything you always hope to find in an artsy small-press book, and rarely do. less

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