"Molly" by Blake Butler

Raw emotion, existential reflection, and exquisitely long sentences

Almost exactly three years ago, I finished Molly Brodak’s memoir, Bandit, where Brodak shares about her father who robbed multiple banks while she was a child. In this she reflects about her complicated relationship with her father, while reconciling who she is in the face of all of it. Brodak was a poet, and while I haven’t read a ton of memoirs by poets, there’s something about them that is raw and gets to the point in ways that knock the wind out of you. It’s like a gift you always wanted and you didn’t know existed.

I forget if I learned that Molly died by suicide before or after I read her memoir, but it felt so tragic, especially at the age of 39. I learned how she had a baking business and was married to another writer, Blake Butler. But I didn’t know much else beyond that.

But I would soon learn so much more.

Even the book cover portrays Molly as mysterious.

Last year, I learned from

Fiza Pirani

, that Brodak’s widower, Blake Butler, released a memoir about his late wife titled Molly. Given that I had read her memoir, I was so curious to learn more about what happened and how it affected her husband. Aside from all that, I learned that people were questioning the ethics of Butler sharing some of Brodak’s journal entries in the memoir itself. Writing about anyone, dead or alive, brings about ethical questions about what you share, how you analyze it, and whose story is ultimately being shared - this is a perpetual question for memoirists, one that I wanted to get deeper with through this read. Though I’m not focusing on the ethics for this read, I will say that I understand why Butler wanted to write it.

Though not everyone agrees with his choices or the book, I feel more opened because of it. One Goodreads review refers to the book as “a long winded ‘am I the asshole’”, referring to the ongoing Reddit thread. I don’t agree - after all, memoirs are about your experience in relation to what’s happened to you, and I feel like that’s exactly what Butler did. As for the writing…

Deep is an understatement when it comes to Molly. The depths of Butler’s emotions are on full display, splat across the page through complex sentences, reflections about existence, and visual descriptions that make you never want to experience his pain while still wanting to know about it.

Butler starts the memoir with the end, the immense pain he experienced upon discovering his wife died by suicide. It follows with a re-telling of how they met, fell in love, their challenges, his reflections about their relationship, and his grief in the aftermath of her death. But that is only the what. The how is the magic of this book.

The most compelling part of this memoir is his use of language, the word choice combined with syntax was literally like reading art. And…he also wrote really long sentences that required me to go back and re-read them.

In describing his love and grief:

In spite of—or perhaps in light of—so much unknowing, so much anguish, so close up, I find the deepest reaches of my person hanging on as if I do know that what I don’t know shouldn’t stop me from imagining the possibility of something more—of change, if not of the whole world, then of myself, without a word to even frame it in my mind.

See what I mean? It’s so descriptive and thoughtful and raw. I re-read to understand it and to admire it.

His grief leaks in front of you, and through his writing.

…“safe pace," "trigger warning," "wokeness" have become more like placeholders, something mocked; like we're not even able to talk about what we're talking about but in code. We hear each other tell each other what has happened to us, what we fear, and we still stay stuck to what our mere survival demands. Get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go back to sleep. It's not even a secret; any fool knows this. It's written in our mortal souls like time itself. Sometimes it's like we're down here smiling for the camera, thinking the eye behind the camera is the thing that's going to save us after all-never mind how life feels in the meantime; and never mind who pays the cost.

And he still finds his way through, not blaming Molly for what he discovers about her after death, but loving and understanding her struggles while wrestling with what he believed the relationship to be.

I also loved Butler’s use of pictures of Molly througout the book. They were actually somewhat haunting, not in a scary way but in a sort of fated day. The cover above is a perfect depiction of Molly - mysterious, intriguing, and creative.

What I liked about this memoir was how Butler spares no vulnerability. He risks sharing his late wife’s journal entries, likely knowing he’ll get criticism for it. This is a place I’d like to go in my memoir, not necessarily to be question about my ethics, but to get more vulnerable than I have ever been. I’ve always seen myself as vulnerable. I’ve written about my ex-husband (scroll to 2nd story), my mom, and my dad with no huge fear of repurcussions. But the act of sharing what you wrote is not the same as the act of sharing while you write. Butler’s depth of emotion and reflection is something I’m going to strive for in my writing process.

Though I’d like to be published, it’s not the reason I write. Writing is an act of excavation, of connection, and of getting to know myself in new ways. While part of that is sharing it with the world, it’s the process, the remembrances, the frustrations, and the relief that make me feel like a writer and offer me a feeling of incomparable satisfaction.

I think if I go into my memoir with this mentality, admitting to myself that it’s in the things I may not want to share where the treasure will be found, not only will I grow, but what I share might be a treasure for others as well.

Butler’s sentences open up possibilities of where writing can take you, even if it’s ungrammatical and requires the reader re-read them. It’s like he wants to open you up, he wants you to know.

Sentence structure is not the only tool you can use to create different portals of knowing and understanding. I love to use and combine repetition, alliteration, and reflection to paint a picture that you can feel in your gut. And Molly will be an inspiration for me to go even deeper.

Tell me about book you’re read (memoir or not) with raw writing that just gutted you, I’d love to read your comments!