Customer Reviews

Severance: Stories

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Robert Olen Butler has inspired writers in many ways over many years: via webcasts, workshops, lectures, readings, in manuals, and by the example of his work. "Severance" is the latest distillation of his talent and creative wit, served up for us as a gruesome but gorgeous imagining and garnished with bookmaking craft excellence. Any way one, well, slices it, "Severance," the book, is an object of haptic and visual beauty; "Severance," the stories (or, better, vignettes), is a master work of concept, research and passionate prose. As I did, you will read it quickly then find yourself going back for more, often. As a Writer and a Reader, I highly recommend "Severance" to those familiar with Butler's short stories, collections (Good Scent, Tabloid Dreams, Had A Good Time) and novels, but I especially envy those who pick up this book and discover the voices of Bob Butler for the first time!

Butler has created an incredibly interesting portrayal of human life and death in one amazing book. The book is based on the premise of Dr. Dassy D'Estaing in 1883 that after decapitation, the human mind remains conscious for 1 ½ minutes. In addition, people speak at approximately 160 words a minutes when in a heightened state of emotion.

Based on these premises, Butler creates a series of stories that represent the thoughts of real people who have been decapitated and their thoughts in the 90 seconds following that decapitation. These people are in fact real people who had been decapitated. Most of them were decapitated via the guillotine. Some of the people Butler portrays in the book are as follows: Marie Antoinette, King Louis the XVI, Jayne Mansfield, John the Baptist, The Apostle Paul, Sir Thomas More, Lady Jane Grey, Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots, Robespierre, Robert Kornbluth, Nicole Brown Simpson and many more.

Each story is exactly 240 words; representing the amount of words that would be spoken in 90 seconds, post decapitation. The stories are in essence the distillation of an entire lifetime, through the eyes of the deceased person. The elements of their life that are of significance to the victim are presented by Butler to the reader.

The book is experimental in its form. And the creation of the stories and their content are uniquely fascinating. Butler has in fact created a truly brilliant concept in this book. The people are mostly recognizable by name, but also Butler gives a very brief comment on each one of them indicating who they were. The book is highly recommended for readers who enjoy unusual and expertly written short stories with a surreal content that tickles the imagination. Severance is truly a cerebral experience for those readers who wish to be intrigued by what might flash before a person's eyes upon the knowledge that their death is imminent.

There are a lot of things to admire about this collection--Butler is very creative with his choices of heads and often tackles the question of what final thoughts may go through a mind in its final 90 seconds between decapitation and death (according to the famous epigram by Dr. Dassy D'Estaing) in intriguing ways . Butler manages to surprise often in this historical sequence, from convicts to unfaithful (maybe) spouses to beasts and myths to royalty. The premise itself is intriguing--a sequence of monologues from decapitated heads working on the conceits that a head can live for 90 seconds after decapitation and humans speak at a rate of 160 words a second when in a "heightened state of emotion," for a grand total of 240 words for each monologue. Butler also mixes humor and pathos through many of these choices, to deal with the horror of violence (as in the monologue from Nicole Brown Simpson) to the lighter side of decapitation (as in a chicken chosen to be an evening meal).

But despite all of this praise, I must admit that I found the basic motif a little tiresome in its less than stellar moments. Butler is very much of a formalist, and sticks to his guns when it comes to form rather than exploring within it. Butler's best book, _A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain_, suffers less for this and only stifles itself in minor moments. In collections like _Tabloid Dreams_, however, the conceit (in this one, Butler takes _Weekly World News_ headlines and uses them as the ground situations of stories) wears thin after some gems because he remains rooted to that premise rather than exploring the boundaries of it.

This book suffers the same fate. While the choice of subject matter is intriguing and promising, and his attitude of pathos and humor is wonderful, and monologues like Nicole Brown Simpson and Cicero and a mythical dragon are inspiring, and even though there are some thoughtful correlations made here between the French Revolution and Henry VIII and the modern 'war on terror,' it is the 240-word formula of the monologues that wears thin after a while. Rather than play with the limit, the monologues become 'just another 240 words,' and Butler doesn't seem to play with what defines 240 words but restricts himself to formality in this respect rather than creativity.

In the end, my attitude may just be curmudgeonly, but I would rather read the work and be delighted by it in all ways rather than be reminded constantly of its format.

Robert Olen Butler is such a fine, creative writer that his works can always be trusted by even the most discerning reader. The intial impact of his latest book SEVERANCE - from the strange but hauntingly beautiful cover art to the premise of the book - may put some readers off: has Butler found a writing gimmick for the sole purpose of getting another novel out on the stands while his glimmer of greatness still is alight?

The answer is easily resolved by reading a few of the vignettes that comprise this remarkable book. Butler takes his concept from two postulates: 'After decapitation, the human head is believed to remain in a state of consciousness for one and one-half minutes. In a heightened state of emotion, people speak at the rate of 160 words per minute.' Fascinating information this and Butler takes it and runs - but with his usual skills and care for the English language and his tireless imagination coupled with historical investigation.

What follows are black pages of introduction of people who have been decapitated from Mud man ca. 40,000 BC through the Roman times with the likes of John the Baptist and St Paul, the dragon slain by St George, the multiple beheadings surrounding King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth, through the French Revolution guillotine victims such as Robespierre, Marie Antoinette and Andre Chenier, to some grisly 19th century machine beheadings, black slaves, Vietnamese, the artist Mishima who requested beheading as part of his ritualistic disembowelment, down to more contemporary times such as the accident that made Jayne Mansfield lose her head to Saddam Hussein's machinations and unknown victims and ending with Butler giving his own elegy from his future beheading in 2008!, and after the black introductions are terse 240 word pieces of thoughts as these people died.

If this sounds like a series of 240 word essays on the horrors of dying then the reader has not read much Robert Olen Butler. What he has given us is a minute and a half flashback of history of each victim that traipses through the highlights of living and the expectations and disappointments that could so easily be imagined 'as your life flashes in front of you' at the time of death. Brilliantly written and endlessly informative and fascinating, this is a book not to be read at the rate that beheaded people speak: this is a series of moving pages of lives condensed and poetically arranged for perusing at various times when the reader hungers for something refreshingly new. Grady Harp, November 06

This little book is flat-out brilliant. Butler captures the final thoughts/fleeting images of 62 decapitations, some famous (John the Baptist, Anne Boleyn, Marie Antoinette), some ludicrously unknown (Mud, a prehistoric fellow done in by a saber-toothed tiger; St. George's dragon; an Alabama chicken).

These quick vignettes, each one exactly 240 words (the book's epigraphs and other Amazon reviewers will explain), capture with beauty and startling clarity that precious last moment. Often touching, occasionally humorous (the chicken! at long last we know that elusive answer!), these prose poems sing. Demented, yeah, but also wonderful, this book a roaring tour de force.

As one of the publisher reviews points out, Severance is really a series of prose poems, which is made obvious by the explicit device of keeping them the same length according to the formula (1.5 minutes x 160 words/minute). In the sense that they are meditative more than narrative, they work better when thought of as poetry. Then you can see the variety of language possible within the form, which shows the different kinds of reflections of the characters depicted using the form. These are, after all, meditations about language use in extremis (including what animals would say if they could speak and, pace Wittgenstein, what we would understand from them if they could speak), and together they create a haunting and beautiful depiction of lives remembered. If you had only 240 words to sum up your final thoughts, what would you say? Do it in a minute and a half, knowing they're your last seconds on Earth. That kind of evanescence--not necessarily rushed, not necessarily resistant to death--is what Butler captures so well. The set of poems has pathos without sentimentality, and charm without preciousness. Read it, and be glad your time is not yet up, and your head is still on your shoulders.

Robert Olen Butler has the creativity and ingenuity very few people can match. Severance is one of his many story collections that make us see the world in a different way. All 60 stories take place after a decapitation from the point of view of the severed head (thus the title) and after reading, we begin to think in broken fragments because that's how potent his writing is. You will not read another book like this, unless you buy Intercourses or another from Butler, and it is worth perusing through a few times, enjoying the fragment of beauty within the pages.

Severance is a book in which the author has set a tough restriction on himself - each story-poem is to be exactly 240 words long with the content reflecting the 90 seconds of thought between a head being severed and the lost of consciousness. There is no end of sentence punctuation - a technique that helps provide a sense of urgency / confusion / prattling. While the book itself labels the pieces "stories" I would label many of them as prose poems because the language itself moves to the foreground.

From Chin Chin Chan beheaded for "maintaining a romatic correspondence with an American girl ...": "moon no longer a blossom a pearl a lantern in a lover's door but a bodiless face, mine, in a train window, she on the platform trying not to look at me directly, as if she were there for someone selse, and the train hurtles in the dark and I stare into the stars and not even a poet could find the moon in this sky no even Li Po in a boat with quill and ink ..." Wonderful.

However, some story/poems I had trouble linking to the individual speaking because I knew too little about their lives to make the pieces fit. It was not the the characters were too obscure; rather that the pieces (rightly) focused on parts of their lives not taught in history books. Given the author's ability to provide sufficient background in many entries, this is not a failure of the form but a failure either of the reader or author. Labeling them prose poems would warn the reader that this stories require the close reading given poems not the casual reading often given prose.

"After decapitation, the human head is believed to remain in a state of consciousness for one and one half minutes."

"In a heightened state of emotion, people speak at the rate of 160 words per minute."

Using these two concepts, Butler writes a short story for each decapitated victim using only 240 words. Little to no punctuation was used, which made it slightly uncomfortable for me to read. The language, however, is very descriptive and poetic.

I was impressed at the cast of characters, fictional and factual, that Butler chose to write about. These characters included a dragon, Marie Antoinette, Medusa, a chicken, and even the author himself. Some of the characters were beheaded by accident, like John Martin, a boy who was "decapitated by subway after lifting sidewalk grate and falling onto the tracks below." Others were beheaded as punishment, most notably from the French Revolution. Each of these mini-narratives had an individual voice, unique to each character. Just by the language, you could tell what their education was, their place in history, and their culture.

My favorite passage was that narrative of Pierre-François Lacenaire, "criminal and memoirist, guillotined for murder, 1836." He described the guillotine as his fiancée, very eloquently. "...all her thin body is rouged for me, all but her bosom which is naked and unadorned, polished bright..." This unlikely juxtaposition was the most poetic and descriptive of all the stories.

Overall, this compilation of short stories was well written and strangely compelling. It was a very short, yet enjoyable read that I would recommend to anyone.

Clever and interesting concept, but it just didn't hold my attention like I thought it would.