Three Hundred Million

August 11, 2014
Butler’s work ranges from hallucinatory nihilism (There Is No Year) to his polymathic memoir Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia. In his most recent offering, the title and the five-part structure both recall and (feebly) parody Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. The novel begins as the notebook of a mass killer, Gretch Nathaniel Gravey, who believes himself possessed by an entity known as Darrel, and we’re immersed from the first pages in unspeakable crimes. Assisted by an army of dissolute boys, Gravey commits and carefully records his murders, even as he dreams of a city called Sod that he longs to recreate on earth. Through footnotes and case files, we follow the detective assigned to Gravey’s case, E.N. Flood, who is drawn deeper and deeper into a madness that threatens to claim him as he explores the ruins of Gravey’s house and seeks the truth behind Darrel and Sod. Butler suggests that the real killer may be America—or rather, the American psyche of waste and noise—and that the killing may never stop. Unfortunately, this promising setup gives way to embarrassing lists, clichés, automatic writing, and virtually no payoff. Seldom has a descent into insanity felt so inconsequential and ponderous.

September 1, 2014
A police detective attempts to deconstruct the ruined mind of a mass murderer. Maybe. So when is a crime novel not a crime novel? When it's really a horror story by experimentalist Butler (Sky Saw, 2012, etc.), who here composes a novel that should appeal to people who thought Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves was a nice, straightforward read. The first of five sections purports to be the diary of one Gretch Gravey, who has been booked for the murder of more than 400 victims, some of whom were ingested, some mutilated to create an arcane altar in Gravey's home. Lots of this: "Blood helicopters chopped across my slim cerebrum like fresh diamonds, rings in screaming on small hands coming awake inside my linings, each after its own way to reach beyond me." In the margins, a disturbed police detective named E.N. Flood writes his own interpretations and notes about Gravey's rambling manifesto, continuing his investigation in the second section. As a supervisor and a police psychologist make other notes on Flood's notes, doubt begins to emerge about whether Flood or Gravey even exist at all. Flood's notes indicate that Gravey is possessed by some kind of evil entity called "Darrel" who desires a sacrifice to some imaginary kingdom called "Sod." This all falls apart in the novel's midsection, and we start to simply get explicit passages about a phenomenon of mass murder across America and the disintegration of Flood's fragile psyche, with entries like this: "FLOOD: My body full of spit and blood. My mind full of holes leading to rooms full of the dead. Through the surfaces conferred their final concentration in the film containing all other film, upon which there is no rewind, no eject. A world awaiting." It's disturbing because it's meant to be, but whether readers will enjoy it depends on their tolerance for Butler's eclectic style and the novel's profane depictions. A graphic horror story that aspires to repel its readers.

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September 15, 2014
Butler's new novel is presented as a series of excerpts from the journal of Gretch Nathaniel Gravey, a multiple murderer, with annotations by E. N. Flood, the detective working the case. The journal entries are deliberately, carefully crafted by Butler to sound like the psychotic, delusional ravings of a madman. As such, they are densely written: long paragraphs (sometimes they stretch to multiple pages) full of twisted imagery and bizarre statements presented as fact (but that clearly could not be factual). Reading the book requires a high level of concentration and a willingness to look closely at every sentence. Not for everyone, then, but it's a virtuoso literary performancehaving Flood's own words take on the feel of Gravey's, as Flood descends deeper into the man's psychosis, is sheer geniusbut the book is not something you pick up, read a bit, and put down for a while. It almost compels you to take in Gravey's lunacy is one great gulp and then spend a long time digesting it. A special book for a special kind of crime-fiction reader.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)