Blake Butler is the guest. (Just push PLAY below.) Or listen (and subscribe!), free of charge, at iTunes.
He’s the founder of the popular literary blog HTML Giant. He’s the author of the novella Ever (Calamari Press); the author of Scorch Atlas, a novel-in-stories, from Featherproof Books; the author of the novel There is No Year, from Harper Perennial.
And now he’s the author of a memoir called Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia – also from Harper Perennial.
Nothing is, um, really something. It’s Blake’s first work of nonfiction, a new road, and a fine complement to what he’s been doing for the past several years in fiction. An impressive book.
We talk about it. We talk about a lot of stuff.
Topics of conversation include sleep, lack of sleep, dreams, nightmares, fear, obesity, serotonin, David Foster Wallace, television, jogging, Don DeLillo, the Internet, abstract Tweeting, Twitter anxiety, Twitter obsession, Tao Lin, perspiration, dementia, writing rituals, and more.
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thanks for this interview brad and blake. was good having the voice in my ears.
after long hiatus i revisited work in progress today with renewed stoke, sense of possibility.
thanks for listening, david! much appreciated. -BL
I had insomnia last night. Now I’m bummed I didn’t have this on my iPod.
When I finally did drift off for about 45 minutes, I was at home that was similar to mine, but not exactly. I was standing in the backyard while a co-worker shot at me with a bb gun. She shot me in the forehead. I called her a motherfucker repeatedly. It was a struggle being civil to her this morning.
BL – this Other People thing of yours might just be my new favorite thing on the internet. You’re just a skosh behind Ira Glass. Well done!
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