Scorch Atlas: A Belated Primer is a 2009 short story collection written by Blake Butler and published by Featherproof Books. It is a work of post-apocalyptic fiction with a despairing outlook.

Scorch Atlas
AuthorBlake Butler
GenreLiterary fiction
PublisherFeatherproof Books
Publication date
2009
ISBN9780977199280

Background and publication

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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]

Reception

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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]

References

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Citations

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  1. ^ Tissut 2012, p. 49.
  2. ^ Tissut 2012, p. 48.
  3. ^ a b Quinby 2013, p. 9.
  4. ^ a b MacLaughlin 2009, p. 30.
  5. ^ Tissut 2012, p. 62: "absorbe le lecteur".
  6. ^ Tissut 2012, p. 60: "l’essentiel de la vie se trouve ici résumé".

Works cited

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