Thursday
04Sep
Blake Butler's "The Gown From Mother's Stomach"
Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 05:59PM I just sat down with the newest Ninth Letter, and now I'm back up, after reading only three pages, because this story is something you have to read immediately. I'm a big fan of Blake's writing, but "The Gown from Mother's Stomach" might just be the best thing of his I've read. Here's the first ten lines or so:
The mother ate thread and lace for four weeks so that their daughter would have a gown. She was tired of not being able to provide her daughter with the things many other girls took for granted. Their family was poor and the mother's fingers ached with arthritis so she couldn't bring herself to sew. Instead she chewed the bed sheets until they were soft enough to go down. She bit the curtains and gnawed the pillow. With one wet finger she swiped the floor for dust. God will knit it in my womb just he did you, she whispered. When you wear it you will blind the world. She refused to listen to reason. She swallowed toilet tissue and sheets of paper and took medication that made her constipated. She stayed in bed instead of going to dinner. Carrots don't make a dress, she croaked.It's a great beginning, but the rest of the story is something even better: beautiful and horrible and mythic. Go. Buy Ninth Letter. Read this now.
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Reader Comments (9)
yes
that story.
man.
hey, i said so first! man, dan's going to be beside himself trying to find ninth letter now!! he was itching for it sunday...
Ha! I've actually read the story in manuscript form and it is truly my own favorite Blake Butler piece (unless it was drastically changed for Ninth Letter).
ahhh, but have you read Vacation, dan?
Not all of it yet. Eli gave me a galley at BEA and I read some while still out there. Based on the recent high praise, and my liking what I did read from it, I'm searching for my copy to finish it!
ya'lls nice. :)
btw, i'm pretty sure the ms version and the 9L version are exactly the same, they didnt change anyhting
What's so great about it?
I'm not being sarcastic, only serious -- I just read the quote you gave and do not see anything particularly great or important or compelling there. What is good or notable about the writing? Or about the idea expressed in the story? Why do you (all of you) like this story and this writer's work?
Thanks for replying.
Hi Jenn! I think you'd have to read the whole thing to see it, but the story is, in my mind at least, a pretty solid myth or fairy tale. There's all those elements in this first paragraph, but where the story goes from here is a lot of its strengths. The mother has a story to tell, and a quest to send her daughter on, and then of course there's what happens to the daughter. It's a big story, but contained in just three pages.
Without ruining the story, I don't know how much more I can say about it on a plot level. I do think it's deeply satisfying purely as a narrative, and worth reading.
Beyond that, I like Blake's prose here a lot-- That's a pretty amazing first sentence, for how it grabs you. After that you get two sentences of background--Why the mother is doing what she's doing, and what the state of the family is--and then its back to the action. It's just enough to give a poignancy to what the mother is doing to herself, to how she's sacrificing her life to make this gown for the daughter.
I'm not saying it's for everyone, and I don't really know what you like to read, so it's hard to say if you'd like the rest of the story. Ninth Letter's a great magazine, and you'd probably find something to like there. You should pick up a copy and check this out.
Or check out Blake's site and shoot him an e-mall. You never know. He might be willing to share the story with you, just so you can check it out. I'd be interested to know what you thought of the whole thing.