Thick Skin is an interview series featuring authors talking about negative reviews, from critics and (anonymous) readers alike

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Episode XXI: “I'm of no illusion that my writing is for everybody, even those who do show up and try”

Published 8/12/21
In this installment, I speak with Blake Butler. Topics include ideal (and not ideal) readers, pretentiousness, his editing process & more.

Today I’m with Blake Butler, the author of eight books, seven of them fiction, the most recent Alice Knott (Riverhead, 2020), which I thought was captured well by The New York Times Book Review, who called it "a meditation on art and perception whose form seems to serve as both a meta-comment on the function of the novel, and a challenge to the expectations that a reader should bring to one." And then: "It’s rare for me to enjoy and value a book on those terms, but this one worked for me. And even more to the point, I respected it for insisting that I rise to its challenge.”

For more than a decade you've been writing confounding, demanding fiction. Of course, not everyone likes to be confounded, and not everyone has thought your experiments in form successful. I'll start with quite an obnoxious question: Can you rank your six book-length works of fiction by what you perceive to be their reception (by both reviewers and regular readers)?

Thank you, Andrew. From well-received to least received:

1. Scorch Atlas 

2. There is No Year

3. Alice Knott

4. Ever

5. Sky Saw

6. 300,000,000

300,000,000 happens to be your lowest-rated book on Goodreads. Was it this or some of the professional reviews that stuck in your mind and brought the title to the bottom? (On Goodreads, what is the difference, really, between a 3.16 and a 3.47?)

Publishers Weekly wrote that your setup was promising, but it "gives way to embarrassing lists, clichés, automatic writing, and virtually no payoff. Seldom has a descent into insanity felt so inconsequential and ponderous."

Kirkus said, "It’s disturbing because it’s meant to be, but whether readers will enjoy it depends on their tolerance for Butler’s eclectic style and the novel's profane depictions."

Have I missed a prominent negative review?

I'd guess that mainly most people don't like to read things they feel they cannot understand. 300,000,000 provides the least amount of traction or grounding-information right out of the gate, which is by design. I remember thinking I wanted to make the opening section the most difficult, to make it hard to come to land, perhaps as a reaction to the fact that many books do the opposite: lead you in with everything you need, make sure you're okay along the way. I think this was meant partially as a kind of challenge, and also because this is the kind of book that I most like: rewarding those who look beyond the provided path, who are willing to do work. Part of the mechanism of the book requires that you step away from everything, including that which the book pretends to provide. I'm afraid that makes it the kind of book that most professional reviewing venues don't have much space for, in the short term; it's not a book that values time, but rather the experience of moving within time, then beyond time. I'm always a little leery of reviews that warn the reader of requiring 'tolerance,' or even 'enjoy,' as those are aspects of parsing entertainment, and I don't see the novel as entertainment; it is work, a process, a location. 

I like the word "ponderous" in the PW review, for instance. Is madness not always ponderous for the mad? Trying to imagine a light, breezy, connective experience of madness, one that doesn't resort to fragments, cliches, automatic writing. Those effects, to me, are part of the reflection of the mind state the book occupies, not meant to be a vehicle to help the madness feel more relatable, connected. I love elements in fiction that feel like dead ends, that get bogged down in their own networks, that burn out. To me, those are the places where a different kind of work gets done, a more elusive and itself maddening sort of state. I'm very aware of the fact that most people don't share this view. I'm simply not writing for those people, not directly; sometimes even the friction that gets produced between the two can be as satisfying as a function as someone believing that they got it and they loved it. There are so many different forms of paths. 

I can't remember other prominent reviews. They all bleed together in my mind into a kind of film.

It seems you're marking a fairly clean dichotomy between readers willing to do the work and those who aren't. In other words, you never planned on reaching readers like the one who, on Goodreads, said, "Couldn't finish it, it's just not my kind of book. I need the words and sentences of my novels to amount to something, to come together and move the story forward."

But what about readers willing to do the work? From Goodreads, again: "Some would call it 'artsy,' 'misunderstood genius,' 'pioneering,' and I'm sure a dedicated following would insist 'you just don't understand!' I call it unabashed fever dream rambling. It's completely incoherent, complete trash. If I could give it no stars, I would."

Or this: "Critics may call it poetry, genius, etc. but it is just a pretentious load of intense and vulgar dense writing from the mind of an arrogant author who is highly overrated."

Does being called pretentious etc. make you flinch? When writing, do you ever fear you are allowing yourself too much artistic license?

I'm of no illusion that my writing is for everybody, even those who do show up and try. Most people come with presuppositions either way, and playing with those expectations for me is part of the pleasure of the work. As a reader first, I've never been attracted to "coherence," in that for the most part, on its surface, life itself is incoherent; to me, it feels dishonest, even pretentious, when a work of art bases its direction on whether or not something or someone outside it stays in step. It seems like there are always far too many rules, too many reasons someone finds to put their values on the work of someone else. I value when something confounds me maybe even more than that which makes me feel like there's a lesson or a model that we're supposed to see and understand. In my view, the work stands for itself. It's hard sometimes to stick to believing that after a decade of mostly hearing, "I do not understand." But, as I see it, that's the job. The rest is extra. 

I don't mind being called pretentious, no, though I do not feel pretentious. I put my whole self in my work, and I have always trusted if I do that, I'll end up somewhere. I do often feel misunderstood, but that's not new. I don't believe there's such a thing as "too much artistic license." Who or what could even issue an "artistic license"? 

I do want to stay focused on reviews, but what you said made me curious about what your editing process has been like. You've worked with both a few independent presses, Tyrant Books among them, as well as larger imprints (Harper Perennial, Riverhead). I wonder about the relationships between a writer who often strives for superficial incoherence and his editors, who often act as a proxy for the general reading public.

I don't know, I feel like the issue is being overblown a bit about incoherence. Do people not read poetry? Do we really need to imagine that everything must be spelled out somewhere to contain truth? Every line I write is written and considered many times over and has its reason to exist, whether the grounding of that function is language, image, sound, concept, or something less distinguishable in shape. I feel like this demand for where coherence begins and ends is a little bit like playing Pollyanna.

I've always gotten along well with my editors. Calvert Morgan, who I have worked with the most, is really great at seeing what is on the page and asking questions, pointing at places where more or less might be more effective than what's there, while allowing the work to breathe in its own way. Cal's editor letters often contain maps to the work, drawing out the interaction between layers in it and seeking paths to refining elements that benefit the work being refined, making sure that I'm aware of how things fall outside my mind, and helping guide the work toward being its best version overall. That's the ideal; to be able to work so closely with someone you trust and navigating through material that doesn't immediately lend itself to logic; it feels sometimes more like sculpting than outlining, for instance. Working by feel and logic side by side, while being comfortable with letting things that require intuition over logic. With indie presses, who have less resources usually, there's more reliance on my cleaning up the book myself, which I also enjoy, for how the blood of the book feels more raw and less examined. Every project needs something different, so it seems, and I've been lucky to have people in my corner who see and trust the shape behind the shape. 

In every case, it's less about the public and more about making the book what it's supposed to be. 

You bring up an interesting point about poetry, though I think it comes back again to reader expectations, doesn't it?

I wonder if you've read a negative review (professional or otherwise) and thought that the criticism was merited, or even that you might use it to think differently about your work in the future?

I'm always interested to see what others saw. A lot of my work is written in a way that relies heavily on the reader's consciousness, which is part of what makes it work for some and not for others, I believe. I feel like every interpretation in that way is valid, has its own shape, and it's fun to see what hit where and what remained obscure or alienating for that specific reader. Sometimes the criticism ends up highlighting what to me was a positive feature, and to them, pushed them away. There is often still some form of connection there, creating tension, disrupted mind. In that way, all criticism feels merited, if affected. I never for myself have one idea in mind of what should have been communicated: it's meant to be the way it is. 

I'm sure that I'd be lying if I said these responses didn't change me and my work. Sometimes they have made me want to only be more defiant; other times, the experiment of trying to write a way I wouldn't is exciting in itself. My last novel, Alice Knott, was an attempt on my part to write more clearly and directly, centering the narrative around a single character's mind. I was thinking about Thomas Pynchon and how he said he wrote The Crying of Lot 49 as a means to give him credence to do the work he wished to do. But I don't know; thinking too much about what an audience could want or understand feels like putting the cart before the horse. There's maybe a balance in there somewhere, internalized and changed by everything you do, like life itself. Every sentence is an opportunity to change. 

In a lot of the reviews I've read—mostly reader reviews—there are comparisons to other writers (mostly of the "this is derivative of X" or "he's a Y wannabee"). Have you seen what I'm referring to?

In regards to Scorch Atlas: "It's hard to say anything positive about this book. There's something very awkward about Butler's prose, something strained and forced that makes it very difficult to read. It's simply not very good writing. I can appreciate that he's trying to do something experimental, but even the best experimental writers—Barthelme, Barth, Coover, Gass—had an ear for the musicality of language. They reinvented the notion of what a story could be, but did so in a way that was clear, lyrical, and even beautiful at times. In contrast, Butler's prose is so dense and awkward that the reader has to stop every few sentences to take a break from it. On the whole, a very unpleasant reading experience."

In regards to Sky Saw: "Comparisons to Burroughs are sort of strange and bewildering. Burroughs was a cultural, social, and political critic who was hilarious while being shocking and innovative and playfully inventive. This is none of those things. It's prose, disjointed and cacophonous and sometimes interesting, but with nothing underneath it. It's simply prose. It's writing. This is sort of like the body horror of Cronenberg mixed with the repulsive strangeness of early Lynch but with nothing else there."

Why do you think you get compared to writers/artists you do? Do you find it flattering, frustrating, both?

I guess it's easier to parse something you don't quite connect with if you have a benchmark, and these big staple 70s postmodernists are where "experimental" fiction ends for a lot of people, maybe? A lot of the time when I read criticism of my writing I can tell they stopped early on and stuck with what it felt like from that first impression, like they simply didn't even finish reading, and still felt compelled to share their thoughts. So it ends up like cramming a bowl of jelly into a keyhole. 

One of my teachers in grad school, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, opened our workshop saying, "We are going to read each work as if it is right and we are wrong, until it forces us to decide otherwise." I try to stand by that as both a reader and a writer, for better or for worse, and I don't blame anybody who looks at what I do and says, I don't see it. At the same time, too, sometimes what readers offer back as criticism sounds like exactly what I'd like, even if it still feels to me to miss the point. "This is sort of like the body horror of Cronenberg mixed with the repulsive strangeness of early Lynch but with nothing else there." Sign me up.

It's fine to be compared to things, but I'm not trying to be anybody but who I am. 

Do you feel as though your peers took her advice? How did you feel about the feedback of other students (and teachers) in your MFA program?

It was instructive to see when the rule broke down and when it led us to somewhere bigger than expected. Lynne was very good at calling people back on track, reminding them to think beyond their gut. Wherever there became a question, she made sure we referred to what was on the page, rather than what we might be reading between the lines or drawing conclusions after. It's a good practice even if obviously everybody has their bias. 

Feedback overall was a mixed bag. I remember one notoriously tough professor banging the table with her fist insisting she couldn't picture in her head the description in my story, really yelling, which made me want to work with her even more. I craved someone ripping me apart, challenging my ideas so I could see what they really meant to me. There's something innate in me that craves the friction, maybe, feels akin to it. It also helped me understand what I do and do not want from art, however inarticulable that may be. 

It sounds to me, both here and above, that you need the reader to grapple with your work. That you're disinterested in not just the readers who reject your work, but those who engage with it in a facile way. Is that right?

Sure, that seems at least somewhat partially true, in that I'm not attempting to appease, and that I want to create a challenge in the work both for myself and for the reader. In my own reading, I'm often most attracted to that which I don't immediately understand, that asks me to work, to see a different way, to reckon with unknowns. If that's not on the table, I'd rather be doing something else. I probably also just enjoy fucking with people to some extent, because I enjoy art that fucks with me. It doesn't have to do me all one thing. There's a fine line between rationale and chaos, if there's even any line at all. 

"A fine line between rationale and chaos" sounds like a potentially ideal blurb for your work.

I've appreciated your conversation, and will let you go now—but have one last curiosity: How often do you read a review (and I especially want to know about reader reviews) and think: this person really got the book? Or, if the concept of "getting" a book doesn't align with your personal ethos, how often are you moved by a reader's response to your writing?

Something Andy Warhol said often recurs to me: "If everyone's not beautiful, no one is." I tend to think that every reading of an art object, however close or far from the work itself, has its own truth; that though I may completely disagree or even feel misrepresented by someone's interpretation of what appears on page, that's part of the life of the book, or the experience of the book. And though it feels impossible, really, that anyone could ever "get" all of anything, or that there's even anything definitively concrete to label "gotten" amid all the fluid parts within a body and their various psychological effects, taking part in the reckoning process is always moving in one way or another; always a privilege.