Scorch Atlas

Blake Butler is the author of several books, including Ever (2009), Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia (2011), and There Is No Year (2011).^[1] Featherproof Books published Butler's Scorch Atlas in 2009,^[2] a 188-page collection of 13 short stories in the post-apocalyptic fiction genre.^[3] The book is designed to appear damaged; one reviewer writes that "the thing seems charred [...] splattered with blood and ink".^[4]

Literary critic Lee Quinby writes that although Scorch Atlas presents a powerful image of post-apocalyptic life, its descriptions are so despairing that readers may experience "boredom in the face of repeated anguish".^[3] Anne-Laurre Tissut, a scholar of American literature, writes that the text "absorbs the reader" through its language and its focus on the body.^[5] Tissut particularly comments on the representation of the body in "Television Milk", writing that in Butler's writing, "the essence of life is summed up here".^[6] Reviewer Nina MacLaughlin writes that the essential point of the novel is not "narrative arc or character development" but the accumulation of particular images and words.^[4]