Butler is an original force who is fearless with form... The design is appropriately disarming, an apt part of the overall barrage by this inventive and deeply promising young author.—Time Out New York
A novel of 14 interlocking stories set in ruined American locales where birds speak gibberish, the sky rains gravel, and millions starve, disappear or grow coats of mold. In 'The Disappeared,' a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. In 'The Ruined Child,' a boy swells to fill his parents' ransacked attic. Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butler's full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William Gass, yet turned with Butler's own eye for the apocalyptic and bizarre.
You can sample a bit of Scorch Atlas yourself in Blake's mini-book:
A few excepts:
'The Many Forms of Rain ___ Sent Upon Us In
Those Days Before'
@ DIAGRAM
(finalist in DIAGRAM's Innovative
Fiction Contest)
The Passionate Male Prostitute: Blake Butler’s “The Ruined Child,” as Remixed by Blake Butler, @ Barrelhouse
Visit Blake Butler's eye-opening blog, or the collaborative online lit blog of the future he edits HTMLgiant.com, his lit mag Lamination Colony, and print mag No Colony.
Visit Blake Butler's eye-opening 
