The human head remains in a state of consciousness for one and a half minutes after decapitation. In a heightened state of emotion, people speak at a rate of 160 words per minute. Inspired by this, Robert Olen Butler wrote Severance, sixty-two vignettes each exactly 240 words in length, that capture the flow of thoughts that go through a person's mind after their head has been severed. Here are the imagined ultimate words of famous and invented figures - Medusa, Sir Walter Raleigh, Anne Boleyn, Jayne Mansfield, and a chicken, beheaded for Sunday dinner.
Following on from this, Butler addressed the question of: what goes through the mind of a person while having sex? Turning his daring imagination to the intimate, Butler lays bare the most flagrant, personal thoughts and feelings of fifty, often surprising, couples in Intercourse.
- ISBN10 1843447592
- ISBN13 9781843447597
- Publish Date 26 October 2016
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oldcastle Books Ltd
- Imprint No Exit Press
- Edition UK ed.
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 208
- Language English
- URL https://noexit.co.uk