Blake Butler: There Is No Year

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

1Antonin Artaud died alone, seated at the foot of his bed, holding his shoe.

2Sharon Tate died tied neck to neck with another person while thirty-four weeks pregnant.

3Andy Kaufman died leaving the premonition in several others that he hadn’t.

4Heather O’Rourke died soon after completing a trilogy of films about a cursed family, after which several other members of the cast are said to have also died prematurely.

5Chris Farley died wearing sweatpants and an open button-down shirt.

6Heath Ledger died lying facedown on a bed.

7Krissy Taylor died despite more than an hour of attempted resuscitation.

8River Phoenix died after falling on the ground and convulsing for eight minutes.

9Bill Hicks died twelve days after ceasing speaking in his parents’ home in Little Rock, Arkansas.

10Cliff Burton died after winning the right to the bed he died in by pulling the ace of spades from a deck of cards.

11Christa McAuliffe died attempting to enter outer space.

12Robert Earl Davis Jr. died on the floor of the bathroom of his recording studio after his fifth heart attack, chemically induced.

13Timmy Taylor died in a one-car accident on the way home from a recording session during the production of his band’s major-label debut.

14Flannery O’Connor died thirty-three years before her mother.

15Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart died and was buried in a common grave with no mourners in attendance.

16Wesley Willis died having recorded more than a thousand songs.

17Marc Bolan died leaving a supposed curse on those he’d known, which thereafter has been associated with more than a dozen incidents of premature death.

18Bobby Darin died of blood poisoning from dental medication despite eight hours on the operating table.

19Charlie Parker died inside a body mistaken by his coroner to be twenty years older than it actually was.

20Tupac Shakur died as a result of gunshot complications after spending six days in a medically induced coma, and posthumously continued to release albums.

21Russell Jones died with a doubled plastic bag of narcotics hidden in his stomach.

22Simone Weil died refusing to eat more than small amounts of food, opening her body to her disease.

23William Burroughs Jr. died having returned to the state where he was raised in search of help.

24Srinivasa Ramanujan died after being incorrectly diagnosed and thus not receiving treatment for his infection, which could have easily been cured.

25Ian Curtis died after watching Werner Herzog’s Stroszek and listening to Iggy Pop’s The Idiot .

26Aubrey Beardsley died very early in the morning on a hotel bed sometime after having begged his publisher to destroy his obscene work.

27Bas Jan Ader died lost at sea while attempting to cross the Atlantic alone in performance of a piece he titled In Search of the Miraculous .

28Joan of Arc died by fire and then was burned twice again, to ashes, to prevent the preservation of relics of her flesh.

29Kaspar Hauser died of a stab wound inflicted on him by a stranger who also handed him a small bag containing a message written backward.

30Egon Schiele died three days after his wife and spent the time between their deaths drawing sketches of her.

31Bruce Lee died with his brain having swollen by 13 percent.

32Brandon Lee died on a film set almost exactly twenty years after his father.

33Tim Buckley died as a result of his response to the direct challenge “Go ahead, take it all.”

34Jeff Buckley died in a river almost exactly twenty-two years after his father.

35El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz died in sunlight standing before a crowd of more than four hundred.

36Pier Paolo Pasolini died on a beach that often appeared in his novels, after being run over several times by his own car.

37Ann Quin died while swimming out to sea.

38John Belushi died having recently filmed a cameo in which he was portrayed facedown in a swimming pool, dead.

39Jean-Michel Basquiat died having hid many of his best works to keep them from being sold.

40Jonathan Brandis died after his performance in one of his last roles was cut from the film.

41Keith Moon died a few weeks after the release of the album Who Are You , on the cover of which he appears seated backward on a chair to hide his weight gain.

42Rainer Werner Fassbinder died with a cigarette in his mouth and blood pouring from one nostril.

43David Foster Wallace died with a massive and uncompleted manuscript found bathed under light in his garage.

44[ All the phones inside the house were ringing, and in the next hour, and the next —

45 all the bathtubs overflowing while from the soft sky no rain could fall —

46 some large laughter spurting from the pinholes in the pillows and the quilts —

47each of these hours also named unnamed

48 the curtains in the living rooms changing their color and then back again, just off —

49 a ring of blood welled in the pages of the center of every instance of a certain book —

50 the mattresses filling up with hair or fire — the mirrors blanching briefly clear —

51 one white hair grown out on all dogs surrounding —

52 from all the keyholes in the house, an O-ing moan —

53 the pianos’ least played key becoming detuned — a spore inside the bass guitars —

54 some location in one wide ocean turning harder among the froth — a softest plot —

55an era without era; blank and silent light and sound

56a book that erupts water—

57a tone that shifts the lid of sky—

58a film of all film looped forever underneath the lip of ground—

59a room of rooms—

60 a sentence written in the center of the chalk —

61 backward laughter in the orange juice, frothing gently — drowned —

62 translucent mold inside the bread loaves —

63 cogs at the center of the sun —

64 a sticky syllable pronounced in our cerebrums, eating —

65 an alphabet dissolved —

66 the earth for one half second rendered flat and upside down —

67the father upside down and laughing, also — the son in 3 rooms at 1 instant—

68the mother again gushing, pregnant — the mother full of passing time—

69 more light —

70 houses kissed each with new rooms, days and hours —

71 neighborhoods each with new inches, walls —

72 cities groaned to grow around a pucker, scrying —

73 opened;

74father, mother, infant — worn—

75 another want comprised of nowhere —

76 another instant for the night ]