an excellent notice

The New Pages Book Review looks at Richard Butner's chapbook, Horses Blow Up Dog City and Other Stories, and says you need it (which you do). How about this?

Butner gives the conventions of reality a hard twist to create his own far more entertaining netherworlds, filled with intellectual porn stars and world-famous puppeteers. But in the face of even the most absurd scenario, Butner’s writing remains cool and understated; he treats the bizarre as if it were commonplace, eventually convincing the reader that nothing is too far from the real. Indeed, many of the stories’ most bizarre moments are simply exaggerations of the inanities of our world, thrust into the forefront of the plot as a sort of social criticism.

Or this?

Small Beer Press presents just five of Butner’s stories here in a limited edition chapbook. The slim paperback is convenient for readers on the go, and indeed Horses Blow Up Dog City is literature for a world that refuses to slow down: Butner picks up the absurdities of high-speed America and throws them back in its face, reveling in the wild, wonderful mess he creates.

Buy it here.

Also, an apologetic belated Happy Birthday to Mr. Butner! I knew I was forgetting something! Must write down birth dates!

Leo the Portuguese upstairs neighbor is really, really, REALLY singing "Desperado" right now. Must've been a rough day for him.

worm "Desperado," Johnny Cash version

namecheck Richard "Never Wait" Butner