Blake Butler’s friend, the writer Juliet Escoria, brought Molly to my attention. Her defense of Blake and his writing of this book struck me profoundly. And when I gathered that the book had become somewhat controversial for perhaps accusatory, unsavory and exploitative reasons, I was smitten with the provocative idea of reading it.
Molly by Blake Butler; 320 pages, Paperback; Published December 5, 2023 by Archway Editions; ISBN: 9781648230370 (ISBN10: 1648230377); Language: English
I am only sixty pages into reading this book and I feel compelled to address a couple issues. One is I’ve never been a big fan of Blake Butler and I’ve only read one book of his prior to reading this one. Several years ago I read Sky Saw and wrote a basically neutral review regarding it. There were bits of it that were very good, but the basic premise of the novel was simply not my cup of tea. My biggest problem concerned Butler’s NY Tyrant connection, a back-slap-happy supportive group that I was really never a part of. There was just too much (unfounded in my opinion) emphasis within the group on connecting with the School of Lish and it seemed there were too many aspiring writers hanging on to the coattails of the infamous teacher Gordon Lish. Giancarlo DiTrapano was the founding editor of NY Tyrant literary magazine who collected a stable of writers meant to resemble something of a Lishian flavor previously found between the covers of Lish’s now-defunct The Quarterly magazine. Though my poems were published periodically within Gian’s pages there were others whose work I instinctively knew would not have met the great Lish’s approval for publication. So as much as I wanted to love and enjoy Butler’s novel Sky Saw I was already a bit jaded before even beginning to read the first page. And though I did find some good words and phrases within the book, it was not enough for me to continue reading Blake’s prior or even future work.
But Butler’s friend, the writer Juliet Escoria, brought Molly to my attention. Her defense of Blake and his writing of this book struck me profoundly. And when I gathered that the book had become somewhat controversial for perhaps accusatory, unsavory and exploitative reasons, I was smitten with the provocative idea of reading it. After perusing a number of critical reviews I decided I needed to get on with this business of finding out just who this Blake Butler really is. And after only sixty pages into this book I can assure you that Blake Butler is indeed a fine writer. He comes across as a humbly honest human being and certainly forthcoming in what he has set out to produce for posterity. There would be no doubt that I would read to the very last page.
In Molly Blake Butler comes across as such a disciplined and warm, understanding, and intelligent person that I couldn’t help thinking almost from the beginning that he undoubtedly chose the wrong girl. But I didn’t blame him. It just felt like fate would one day produce for him a five-alarm fire. The warning signs seemed to be everywhere. And as blind and naive as I’ve been in my own life I wished Blake could be somehow different from me and would make better choices. But in those first sixty pages it portentously felt as though he was desperately caught up in a somewhat wild and violent maelstrom. But I do get the attraction. What I abhor is all the deceit. I can’t stand being lied to or somebody falsely representing themselves. Seems both Molly and Blake were not totally honest with each other, and well before they were ever married to each other. Reading this book even created a bit of concern regarding my own marriage. To my knowledge my wife and I have always eventually shared our darkest secrets and most shameful acts with each other, but reading this memoir it is plain to see that couples are not always so forthcoming and vulnerable. Acceptable versions of ourselves are more important than the risk involved in coming clean. And sometimes this is suggested as protecting another from something that no longer pertains to the current relationship. Our pasts can sometimes be terrifying.
Blake has had his share of trouble. Both of his parents had serious health issues, and then living in the same city provided Blake too many familial responsibilities heaped upon himself. There was just too much piled on the poor man’s plate, and drinking to assuage his grief and unhappiness did little in the way of helping him cope. The strain on his new marriage to Molly became something clearly unsustainable in light of all the attention required in taking care of his sick mother.
And then things really piled on. It seemed as though the snowball had finally started to roll downhill. Fortunately, Blake moved away from his abuse of alcohol and was using marijuana to help him adjust to this new and creative sobriety. That made me glad because my own experience with cannabis has always been truthful. Weed enhances everything, even the bad. I call it a truth serum, unlike alcohol that lies and puts stupid ideas in one’s head. And granted, stupid ideas are not exempt while using weed. But when a stupid idea does erupt, cannabis recognizes it as such and asks the question, Where did this idea ever come from? Cannabis gives pause to stupidity and is the main reason users sometimes clam up when extremely high because who actually wants to be seen as stupid? And because cannabis enhances everything our rule at home is to only use it recreationally to enhance an already good situation, a policy something even normal healthy drinkers adhere to as well. But for Blake and Molly their emotional and mental pain was still mounting and had become quite severe within the home. One thing after another. Though Molly was certainly in agony, I felt worse for Blake and I also took him at his word.
“If you ever tried to go to church, I would divorce you,” Molly informed me out of the blue once back at home, as if in response to a running conversation in her head. She’d never liked that as a child I’d gone to Sunday School and been confirmed, despite the fact that church was as far from my list of interests as it was hers. That I wouldn’t come out and say for certain that I believed the same as she did—that there was nothing after death, and that at best my experience of anything otherworldly was afflicted, brainwashed, or just dumb—remained an easy way to separate us, a bait I often took, when in a bad mood, ready to bicker. Few things could set her off as much as when I’d say I considered atheism an equal extreme, as righteously self-assured as the evangelicals. Why insist on labeling as fact what can’t be proved? Why rely completely on logical rationale despite the course of human history, including science, having proved many times over how little we know?...
Granted I have previously failed to highlight any phrases or paragraphs to make note of before including the above reference to an ongoing problem Molly and Blake were having. But this bit about the belief in God, or not believing, struck me as remarkable and turned me into an immediate fan of Blake Butler. I never realized how smart and thoughtful he was, and I am glad to have repeatedly found this to be true even in light of such a heart-wrenching and tragic life story such as theirs. Do yourself a favor and ignore the critics who claim our verbose Butler could have employed a more tyrannical editor for this book, or even the wrongful accusations that Butler willfully violated some sacred trust regarding Molly’s personal journals seeing the light of day. Or those cheeky complaints of Butler’s use of cherry-picked segments taken from her published works. By my lights he has faithfully executed his research. He has used Molly’s own words to show us their life together and the degree of emotional and mental distress the couple was routinely faced with. In many ways this is the most important book I have read this year.
Theirs is such a heart-wrenching story. Though Blake has so far never complained or made himself out to be some sort of great guy who didn’t deserve this awful fate of finding his dead wife and then purportedly learning of her serial deceit in his discovery still to come, it certainly feels as though he is the victim here. Now 230 pages into this book, more than two-thirds mind you, and Butler has yet to offer any facts regarding Molly’s life that could be construed as throwing dirt or is in any way disparaging to her memory. And it also feels as though there just aren’t enough pages for Butler to be yet accused of being mean or vindictive. At most he becomes dispirited. And though there are few if any sentences or paragraphs that bear highlighting, the writing remains strong and I contend that every word counts. I am certainly getting the picture and it sadly never feels right. I have no doubt in believing Butler’s truth, it just feels like their marriage should never have happened. But some men, men such as me who are often considered by others smart in many considerable factions of our lives, can be at times just plain dumb. Regretfully, Blake Butler is no exception. And then Molly kills herself.
…To not be touched felt like there was nothing left to tether me to earth. I’d already been halfway living in a version of this shell for many months now—how after my mother died, my body hurt no matter what I thought or did, flooding heavy with what I’d described as waves of acid, a sickened feeling underpinning every breath, but after Molly, in comparison, even those waves of acid might have felt like a relief in comparison with the black wall inside my brain, so full of inexplicable emotions there was nothing left to do within them but exist…
When my wife of over forty years was suffering in her own anguish that began with a hard fall to the concrete while attempting to save her escaping puppy from being run over, followed by her tormented body trying to recover, and then her daughter being diagnosed with cancer and all the mental and emotional torturous years to follow until she too died, my wife’s neurological condition worsened to extremely violent and uncontrollable involuntary body movements. Suicide became what she believed to be her only alternative. That sick and terrible acid feeling Blake describes that courses through your body is in fact the truth. And sometimes it is the caretaker (or survivor) who suffers the most. It is so agonizing to watch someone you love be in so much pain. Butler’s words are not lost on me. I lived through a similar experience. However, my wife somehow survived. But she did try to end it all at least a dozen times. And I didn’t blame her.
Honestly, as I continued reading, I began to look and wait for dirt, this purported vengeance to come down hard as a heavy weight crushed upon the soul of his lost love. But it wasn’t the case, at least not yet, and less than fifty pages remain for me to read in this wrenching book. But total destruction now reared its ugly head as Blake engaged in a new and very personal spiraling into the abyss. What I noticed about Blake Butler was his vulnerability in composing and explaining his descent into this hell of his own making. Sadly, instead of celebrating within his grief a beautiful life he and Molly had once shared together Butler was faced with the relentless bombardment of hurtful lies and deceit proving the falsity of their love. And no amount of psychedelics or weed could, or should, ever be used to assuage or deaden the feelings associated with us being deceived. And I doubt they did so for Blake. Likely the reverse happened, and the intensity and rawness tormenting his nerves would certainly lead him into his own annihilation.
…Still stuck inside the story I couldn’t slow from unfolding even at dead end, continuously digging for even further information through any angle I could glean. I wanted to know it all, to hit some ledge where at least finally there could be no further to fall, and yet the more I looked the more there was…
And for several pages Blake then divulges a cascading river of lies and deceit kept secret between them. Coming to the surface are Molly’s extensive sexual dalliances with her students, her affair with another writer, her lending of money that wasn’t hers to lend. Discovering so many unsettling and hurtful emails, texts, and journal entries that Blake finally decides to let them go and closes down his search for more. It is obvious he was married to someone he did not really know. This reminded me of the great documentary film How To Draw A Bunny that examined the life of artist and underground icon Ray Johnson who had countless friends and associates who all knew different parts of Johnson with nobody even remotely knowing the same person. Johnson’s death for some was considered his last artistic performance piece. I wholly recommend this very important and entertaining film to all serious artists. But it doesn’t explain Molly, or perhaps in some ways it does.
…Does this all seem like one big mess? A vortex of betrayal and bad faith? I know it must, but it didn’t at the time, at least to me. It felt like life alongside someone I believed in more than anybody, and who I knew struggled deeply in herself, who I tried to fill with confidence against the tides, as the days went by like days do—full of sorrow and expanse, joy and creation, all moving past so fast sometimes it’s hard to remember anything at all. Do I seem like a fool, an ass? That’s fine. I got to share a life up close with one of the most brilliant and singularly stunning people I’ve ever met, good times and bad…
And the paragraph above went on for several more sentences expressing no regret even in light of how damaging and hurtful the truth would be. But the above statement is also proof that Blake was never bent on further soiling Molly’s name or dragging her down in any spirit of revenge. It makes sense to me that Blake may have considered his entire relationship as a necessary part of his growth as a person and writer who uses life’s experience in order to shape and create the work we artists must engage in. Sort of like a laboratory in which to further experiment and evolve.
…Judge all you want what Molly suffered and inflicted on herself as both a liar and a cheat, much less the myriad ways she might have owned up any moment, taken steps to regain control of her own life…She seemed surprised when I reported having cried for the first time during a session, slowly learning to let my guard down and open up. She cried every time, she told me; always had. Our therapist, however, describes it differently: “I don’t remember Molly even crying once.” Not a word, either, of all the struggling to piece together her hidden life, “her actual life,” the stress of keeping a whole half of herself secret, nothing much that really touched the deepest edges of her lies…
Even in therapy Molly could not help herself. I think of how frugal I am and the greed I harbored to get my money’s worth out of the therapy I needed in order to recover from my alcoholic stupor, all the bad choices, and beliefs I had tendered in order to maintain my fraudulent charade. There was no way I would not be digging into the deepest and darkest secrets of mine, hard as it was. Those counselors tell us, You are only as sick as your secrets, and I believe they are right. Seems Molly took all of her secrets to the grave. As for Blake, there is no helping somebody like Molly. He was not to blame. But I am all too familiar with that feeling of failure, of falling far short in saving someone you love, and having no answers in which to help her.
…The presence wore a mask, it said, that made it capable of mortal interpretation, for my safety. It could see I was in need, it said, and it could help me, if I wished…
I understand what trauma and grief can do to us. Back when I was thirty-two, and during my recovery from alcohol addiction, my cousin died. John and I grew up together in northern Michigan and I was nine months older but we were in the same grade and did almost everything together until we reached our senior year of high school and our interests began to change. Fifteen years later, and shortly after I quit drinking, he crashed his car on the freeway and was killed instantly. I never forgave myself for his dying. He had called me just a few weeks prior asking to come down to Louisville and hang with me as he knew I was sober and he needed some help himself. I refused his request as I was clinging to life by a thread and didn’t need somebody else to watch over. I think my wife and I were also in the midst of an eight-month separation. Shortly thereafter, having heard the sad news, Jesus, yes, the son of God, in the middle of the day made an in-home visit to the side of my bed where I was drowning in my despair. His visit felt real and in my mind he was just as real as real could get, except that he wasn’t, not really. I did realize sometime later that the mind can do a lot of things and conjuring up the son of God to come visit my bed was certainly not out of the question. I needed that vision then just as much as Blake likely needed his. And it’s possible Blake still feels that it was Molly talking to him and that’s okay. But it’s a hard pill for me, and one in my reading I wasn’t prepared again to swallow. I’m even thinking back to Blake’s earlier remarks in this book about science and the importance of facts over beliefs. I felt Blake had driven all of us a bit off the rails. But it was my hope that it was only temporary. And that he wasn’t gonna get all preachy on me. And then he did so a little bit. But what do I know? I’ll tell you what: Blake Butler has written a very good book about an extremely difficult subject. He is afforded his due. And wherever his grief and questions and eventual understandings and misunderstandings might lead to, may he feel alive and conscious of the myriad mysteries his life has yet to present to him. And by the way, if you’re feeling strong enough this book’s a five-star read.
Thank you for the restack
Revealing ourselves is what real human connection is rooted in. Can we find the universals that such revelations illuminate? Henry James: “We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”
Blake will avoid Molly's fate because he is capable of what Molly was not.
Thank you for this review. The book will find a place in my to be read pile, otherwise known as the reconciliation of infinite hope with limited means.