Friday Nov 22, 2024
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
POWERHOUSE Arena
28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street across from the Archway)
Brooklyn , NY
11201
About the Books.
Void Corporation
Following up the 2023 publication of Blake Butler’s smash hit memoir Molly, Archway Editions is proud to bring you Void Corporation, the revised and definitive paperback of his masterful 2020 novel Alice Knott, now with a new foreword from the author. The perfect introduction to Butler’s hypnotic and wildly inventive fictional world for his many new fans.
From Blake Butler, the genius author of Archway Editions’ smash hit memoir Molly, comes Void Corporation—the crowning achievement of his fictional oeuvre. Initially published as Alice Knott in 2020 by Riverhead Books, it now appears for the first time in paperback with its originally intended title, a brand new foreword by the author, and an unsettling, iconic cover painting by Seymour Rosofsky. The most accomplished and accessible entrypoint into Butler’s hypnotic, hallucinatory aesthetic, Void Corporation is the ideal next purchase for anyone who loved Molly.
Published right as the world changed in early 2020, Butler’s riffs on art, technology, inequality and the conspiratorial impenetrability of our bureaucratic world are more prescient than ever. The recent spate of protest action involving art even seems inspired by the book—people have said as much online—and the resonances keep coming. Reclusive heiress Alice Knott’s self-imposed quarantine is reminiscent of our own, and the mystery deepens after she discovers her family’s world-class artwork collection destroyed and videotaped.
Void Corporation features Butler’s stimulating, immersive linguistic acrobatics, but in following Alice’s journey through a world of memory and conspiracy, he brings a looming clarity. After the artwork is destroyed, copycat incidents proliferate around the world, and she becomes the chief suspect in what may be an international conspiracy. With essential questions raised about the meaning of art and the ramifications of trauma, this definitive edition is a must-have for anyone who has read Molly or wants to discover the exceptional written universe of Blake Butler.
UXA.GOV
“I once woke from surgery to find that a faulty spinal catheter had kept painkillers from getting into me: Blake Butler’s UXA.GOV brought this memory back. The book’s a shock to the system, a storehouse of what you’ll see and hear when it’s your turn to hurt and hallucinate-it’s visceral, inventively so, and visionary and filled with a feeling of inevitability. I found it both soothing and sick, a palliative in reverse.” – Derek McCormack, author of Castle Faggot
This text was composed and revised in fits and starts from 2010 to 2024, often in wildly different states, rooms, moods, modes, spirits, and epochs. It began as a response to John Zorn’s “Treatment for a Film in Fifteen Scenes” (composed in the 1980s; published in Arcana: Musicians on Music. Zorn, J. (ed), Granary Books, 2000, alongside work by Ikue Mori, Bill Frisell, Eyvind Kang, Marc Ribot, Mike Patton, etc.), a 7-page outline consisting of 254 ‘shots’ (or prompts) described by brief (1-12 word) lines of all caps text. As a novel, UXA.GOV is meant to be read as a film; perhaps the kind one might otherwise only be allowed to view through slits in a training helmet deep before being work-released into what remains of the land where America once was.
About the Author.
BLAKE BUTLER is the author of ten book-length works, most recently the bestselling memoir Molly from Archway Editions. His short fiction, interviews, reviews, and essays have appeared widely, including in The Believer, The New York Times, BOMB, Bookforum, and as an ongoing column at Vice. He recently began blogging on Substack at Dividual.
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