Witchy Eye by Dave Butler

I have loved books since childhood. Worse, I continue to love science-fiction and fantasy novels into adulthood in an unironic non-detached way, where the caterpillars resting on my forehead called eyebrows will betray my joy. But most embarrassing thing of all? I love America. The United States, warts and all. The whole idea and ever-evolving messy practice of it. How cliche. How old-fashioned. How totally indispensable!

Before I spent several hours this morning making a really fancy series of funnel diagrams, I had the privilege to talk to author DJ Butler who sits in the middle of the Venn diagram of these two passions. I have been a fan of Dave’s for several years, particularly after reading his first novel Witchy Eye, which is a fantasy set in a reimagined early Revolutionary era America. As fate would have it, he is launching a new kickstarter to create Hardcovers for the entire Witchy War series, which you can find here. He also has a Substack, which I am linking only by way of luring more people to spend more of their time on Substack.

I did not confess to Dave that I am, in fact, His Purple Mountain Majesty, William of Rights, Father of the Founding Fathers, All-Powerful Separater of Powers, Amberer of the Waves of Grain, Blinder of Justice, the Trunk which Upholds the Three Branches of Government, North Star of the Constellation America, the King of the United States. Nor that I acquired these titles by the ancient kingly tradition of just deciding to give them to myself one day.

That may have seemed completely out of nowhere, but one of my favorite aspects of America is its eccentricity. It’s one thing to be told, intellectually, that a bunch of guys got together and decided to build a country based on some ideas they’d read about. It’s another to realize those guys were in fact actual people, if highly irregular, swept up in entirely contingent facts of history and that the world might have been another way entirely. Dave explores one of those what-if’s in this story that I found immensely enjoyable.

If you listen to the full interview, you’ll find my repeated praise for Dave’s work comes down to, “this shouldn’t work, but it does.” Much like Ruocchio —who Dave has edited, I think masterfully— these are masterworks of reference and allusion. Of course it’s ridiculous that someone has a magical acorn stuck in their eye that was also their Jewish-Druid-Christian father’s sperm. Who impregnates their wife by giving three acorns to their friend? That’s absurd, except that it happens to work. If you’ve read enough novels with a dragon on the cover, or a young woman with her back to the cover looking at a distant city for some reason, you get to appreciate the genius of someone who knows the style well enough to play jazz. Creative recombinations of fact and folklore melded so well that you don’t bat an eye when you meet the old German devout Christian witch who attaches a dog’s severed tongue to a New Orleans prostitute. It’s just the sort of thing that happens in this world. And it’s great.

I am also an enormous fan of Dave Butler as a person. He took a spearpoint position in raising money for the family of a man who died in a partially successful mass murder plot against an LDS church, despite being LDS himself. When Dave heard the man had a disabled child, he stepped up to do the right thing. Whatever his faith tradition, that tells me we know the same God. The same thumbprint, in the same clay, from the same Being.

We are in a period of transition as a civilization, if I may be dramatic for a moment. I think a lot of work will be automated. I think you’ll be able to create almost any fantasy situation you want. But I think the kinds of fantasies human indulge in is important, and I don’t think I’m steering you wrong by recommending these books. It’s good and irregular people are out there making things that we wouldn’t have dreamed up ourselves, showing us worlds beyond our own reflection.

When I saw that Dave was looking to get a project off the ground, I wanted to offer up some of my own meager efforts to help. I’d encourage you to consider doing so as well.

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There’s a joke in the Simpsons where someone mentions being from New York and one of Springfield’s finest responds, “New York? I heard there was a murder there once. Never caught the guy.” Which is how I feel about most of the negative charges leveled against the entire nation.

Much more enjoyable than looking at spreadsheets, genuinely. You hear that Dave? I think you’re better than pivot tables.

Not everything on the internet has to make you feel like you’re in a gas station at midnight.

I also held the sprig of yew and knighted all the states, but that does sound as funny written out. “He whose hand held the yew that knighted the states” requires someone to both catch the phonetic joke in yew-knighted and know what yew is.