Quotant Qoutables vol. 39

"When I first started writing, I tried to follow more of those traditions, which generally meant trying to write like really awful versions of various popular literary fiction writers. And it took me a long while — namely, many years of trying to write a book an agent could sell to a major — but after a while I could tell not only was I not at all good at things like intentionally developing characters or constructing a linear, narrative plot, I also was not actually doing what came naturally to me, what really came out when I was angry, impassioned. So to make a long story short, after never writing that agent-sellable book, I kind of snapped, and started pouring out all the sound and mania that had welled up in me in trying to please a master I learned I didn’t even really respect. I think in order to really do something right, for me I have to be totally mystified by it to some extent, and most linear fiction is more interested in explaining or telling a story, rather than creating labyrinth, logical fallacy, mirage. I’ve always tended in art most towards not things that quantified the world or arranged it, or even provided a reflection, but ones that made it deeper, more terrifying or awe-inspiring, like where the fuck did this come from, and how do I touch it even more?"

- Blake Butler speaking with Decoder Magazine