Wabash, Robert Olen Butler

I found this paperback wedged between some picture books on the mantle in my South Carolina room. I've never read it. Well, I take that back. I think I may have read, like, the first chapter or two when I first picked it up at the Sandhills Writers Conference back in 2000. Guess I never could really get into it.

Every year Augusta State University hosts the conference and that year I just happened to be a student there. I was fresh out of 11th grade, definitely a little on the quiet side and one of the best English students they had. I was in pretty tight with my 101 professor, Ray, and his department BFF, Tony, so naturally I was on the author host committee. Basically I just had to escort the visiting writers to dinner at the Partridge Inn on opening night and probably man a signing table or two during the weekend. Easy enough. Unless, of course, you get partnered with Robert Olen Butler.

Not that the Pulitzer Prize winner was rude or anything. He was just, well, creepy. I'd read a few of his short stories and they were good. Really good. I hadn't read the one about the false eye that watched from a glass of water yet. Good thing because I would have really been flipping out. There was just something super disconcerting about the way he stared at people. It was as if he was trying to steal your soul or, at the very least, plot your decapitation in a dark parking lot. I don't remember much of what was said at that dinner but I can remember Butler's stare as if he were sitting here across from me right now. Strange how things like that stick with you.

Back in December I picked up his newest novel, Hell, while I was working at the Brooklyn Barnes & Noble. I would say don't read it but its actually very well written. Amazing imagery, satire and depth of emotion. But, as I worked my way through it on the N train to Astoria every night, I kept imagining that blood-curdling stare only to look up to see some random lady paying absolutely no attention to me whatsoever. I finally had to quit reading it because I was getting mega skittish and borderline schizo.

Moral of the story, Robert Olen Butler freaked me the fuck out in a way that no one before or since has. Maybe I'll meet him another day and I'll change my mind. When I do I'll definitely be carrying a crucifix or tiny bottle of Holy Water or something. I'm not stupid.