Spotlight On…

Blake Butler Lake Utler Ake Tler Ke Ler E Er R

– Ethel Rohan Thel Ohan Hel Han El An L N

Writing wise, where are you now? Where are you going?

I’m in this little box of Crisco where I end up every day when I eat too much which is every day. Food is bad for writing, I wish I could be a little body with no holes and just shoot the language through my stomachs and have a bunch of those. I’m not going anywhere I hope daily and overall I know I’m turning into a brass instrument.

What informs your creative process? How do you keep inspired?

Seeing dogs take shits on my front step with their owners pretending like they aren’t letting their dogs do that, and then hearing the dogs later through the walls: that all informs me pretty good. I get informed by watching other people come into the gym room where I do the run or bicycle and they come and get on their own machines and make grunt noise or sometimes talk on phone or to their half-dressed lover who came with them to work out too. I keep inspired by never being inspired by anything.

How do you feel about the label writer, really?

I think the label writer is doing a good job because I buy a lot of cereal and canned soup and I feel like pretty often I get what I asked for when I open the box, I am happy the people who write those labels are getting paid to tell me what I am going to put inside my body, that is the most important thing, I don’t know what books are.

Do you struggle with self-doubt? How do you cope with those feelings?

I struggle with feeling like a total motherfucker about 100% of most every day, and that struggle is good for getting cake to come inside you and sit on your lungs and say words you have to learn to rub out or you will grow so fat you can’t move and that’s all I ever wanted to be. Every day is me coping with not becoming the lardman I am inside me, that is me, I have never been me. I cope by throwing creamer product at children in my mind.

What writer(s) do you most identify with?

If I ever identify with a writer I hope it’s because both of us are dead.

How has the Internet impacted your reading and writing? What is the future of print publication?

I get online a lot and open my email and read the email and sometimes my mom emails me to tell me someone is dead or something I have IM chats that make me feel like my face is coming off in my hands, more often tho I’m just looking at books when I am doing the bike move at the gym because it helps the sweat get out and helps my eyes feel like they aren’t mine. I feel like the future of print publication is turning more toward ham sandwiches, at least that’s what I hope, because then we’d really get busy.

Tell us something that most people don’t know about you?

Most people don’t know I’m 57 years old.

If you didn’t write, what would your life look like?

It would look like Cheryl Hines’s breastmilk.

Favorite:

Musical: Chardonnay Melazonia, because it is the closest rendering of how it felt to be born Chinese in a land where only the whitest of white child could ever run for Supreme Mayor of this town.

Fable/Fairy Tale: Passion Segments in Light White Custard For The End of Mammy, because I like anything with Lou Bexman in it.

Movie: Randy’s Soldier, because the longest time I could stand to go around in circles by myself over the long woods I came upon this machine playing this order of notes and when the men came with the injector I was already starring in this film and I could not get back out, it is my life.

Painting: I don’t look at paintings, I already have all this mayonnaise coming out of my backshirt, I can’t deal with anything anymore outside of fried bread.

Place: Dick’s on 11th makes a really great backrub with complimentary sandwich, I go there about once every seventh instance of me crying.

Please do a five minute free-write with the words “spinal injuries.”

Mees spines sds hurts I smell ya my dowg my spinesese hurts too wdo you dofu ydo you want eous to come bey an dh say the wbing a cat to you I anwa tho get rippinei aby the spine hruiu iud apiu

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Blake Butler lives in Atlanta and edits HTMLGIANT. He is the author of Ever and Scorch Atlas. In Spring 2011, Harper Perennial will publish his novel, There Is No Year.