'pretend i am there but very little' scared the crap out of me and also i liked it very much

last night the literati discussed blake butler's chapbook from publishing genius,
'pretend i am there but very little.'

it is about a person that sells his teeth and uses part of the money to buy a dog. the dog has a giant blue tumor. these sentences are perfect. blake butler writes perfect sentences. the book is full of nausea and dull aches. it is like dreaming about the house you grew up in, only in the dream the house is creepy and full of ghosts and vomit. something is wrong and it feels like homesick horror.

here is one of my favorite paragraphs:

"In the living room I put him down again. He stood with his eyes open and legs shaking. I got the pink rabbit that had belonged to my prior dog and showed it to this one now. The dog did not blink. I pushed the rubber at his lips. I got down on my knees and put the toy in my own mouth. I did not realize I was crying. Each time I moved to match my eyes with his he turned away a little, just like that."

everyone's favorite part of the book is the emails that the main character writes to a girl named emily. emily emailed him once. she is most likely spam and not a real emily. the emails to her are genius and heartbreaking.

later he goes to visit his teeth in a museum. also a room appears. the room is full of the feeling of memory. it is not full of actual memory, but feels like the deepest part of someone's limbic cortex: dark, stale, boundless, insane. full of dead insects and breath like spaghetti.

i think blake butler is always typing something in this room.