An Inventory of Benevolent Butterflies: A Novel After Henry Darger, (Hardcover)

<p><strong>With the literary mastery of Samuel Beckett and Thomas Bernhard, award-winning author Lance Olsen presents a lyrical novelization of an artist's solitary, disembodied life, as dreamlike as it is captivating.</strong></p><br><p>At the end of his life in 1973, Henry Darger's mind is a series of recollections: of his decades spent working as a custodian mopping floors at various Chicago hospitals; of his nights writing and making hundreds of collages that would never be seen until after his death; of the man who may have been his lover; of his abuse as a child at the hands of his father and his boarding school staff.</p><br><p>Informed by the real writings, collages, and other fragments of Darger's solitary life, <em>An Inventory of Benevolent Butterflies</em> is a masterful and imaginative look into the life of a man who wasn't interested in attention, even less in fame, and created for no one save himself--and to save himself.</p><br><p>In this intense, chimeric first-person novel, Lance Olsen captures the radical interiority of an artist about whom extraordinarily little is known. Paired with the photo collages of visual artist Andi Olsen, this is a literary scavenger hunt for fans of Mark Z. Danielewski, Lidia Yuknavitch, and José Saramago.</p>

• An Inventory of Benevolent Butterflies: A Novel After Henry Darger, (Hardcover)
• Author: Lance Olsen
• ISBN: 9781938603921
• Format: Hardcover
• Publication Date: 2026-10-13
• Page Count: 242