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A review by marcnash21stc
300,000,000 by Blake Butler
4.0
I've seen this book compared with [b:2666|63032|2666|Roberto Bolaño|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1412644327s/63032.jpg|3294830] and [b:House of Leaves|24800|House of Leaves|Mark Z. Danielewski|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403889034s/24800.jpg|856555] but it actually reminds me more of William Burroughs' [b:Cities of the Red Night|23944|Cities of the Red Night|William S. Burroughs|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386921064s/23944.jpg|936760] and David Markson's [b:Wittgenstein's Mistress|51506|Wittgenstein's Mistress|David Markson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347696167s/51506.jpg|1278359]. Burroughs for the assault on conventional language and the construction of imagery through words that don't necessarily offer a visual image. Markson for the solipsism. Solipsism might be an odd thing to claim for a novel that is ostensibly about two characters, a death cult leader with the aim to kill all 300,000,000 people in America through a contagion of killing passed on like a virus, and the detective charged with heading up the case once the cult leader is in prison. The two merge into one, with the detective existing in an unspecified realm part afterlife, part madness (from the immensity of the insanity he is trailing) and part an Alice Through the Looking Glass type of existence within the video tape records made by the cult leader of his murderous activity, which are curiously blank and the viewer sees and projects whatever he will into the blankness. (This part of the novel actually put me in mind of Scarlett Thomas' [b:The End of Mr. Y|2153792|The End of Mr. Y|Scarlett Thomas|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347393900s/2153792.jpg|1535663]) It's in this realm that the detective seems to be searching for his dead wife and has tinges of a romantic sensibility among all the horror.
So what does it all mean? Hard to say. Reading this is a bit like being hit over the head with a baseball bat repeatedly. Nevertheless there are also some stand-out passages of writing which verge on the lyrical. But there are also plenty of chunks where you just glaze over at the impenetrable nature of the words. A tour de force for reader and author alike. It is an extreme work, therefore hard to recommend unconditionally. But I got plenty out of the read.
So what does it all mean? Hard to say. Reading this is a bit like being hit over the head with a baseball bat repeatedly. Nevertheless there are also some stand-out passages of writing which verge on the lyrical. But there are also plenty of chunks where you just glaze over at the impenetrable nature of the words. A tour de force for reader and author alike. It is an extreme work, therefore hard to recommend unconditionally. But I got plenty out of the read.