A review by taitmckenzie
Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler

2.0

This is what happens when you let modern poets write fiction. There is no plot, there are no characters. There is only mood and setting, and these merely propped up by language. There are images, or more accurately the repetition of a small set of images, which have impact the first handful of times, but repeated this long quickly loose their significance without plot and character to drive them. There is a distancing with the voice that holds the entire construction of a ruined world at such remove that it is evident it is unreal—one can’t suspend one’s disbelief as there is nothing here to believe in. Compare this to earlier poets writing apocalyptic fiction—Patchen’s “Journal of Albion Moonlight” for instance, which succeeds where this doesn’t because it has plot, character, feeling. I think the key difference is that Patchen’s work has a theme; the author has a stance and an opinion about the apocalyptic (which is that mankind must do something to save our world). Butler, in contrast, merely says “look, some ruin,” without taking a stance, leaving the reader bored and detached.