First

Blake Butler has introduced his style of writing very straight forward. The seriousness of the passages in Nothing reflect his formal register. Everything he writes never breaks the seriousness he portrays. Only reading some pages, I have figured out that he is somehow working into finally making the transition from introduction to experience. Inferring that he is an insomniac, he compares objects, everyday-household objects with non-living things that never sleep. "The walls, doors, ovens, knives, etc.; they do not sleep, and they do not wish to." (Page 20).

When explaining something, Butler uses logos to back his descriptions up. An examples shows when he describes how people shift sleeping habits when changing from location to location. He backs this up with proof. " Subjects in sleep lab testing procedures have been found, out of their usual element, to exhibit the same mood and personality shift whether they had trouble sleeping their or not, despite the fact that the unsleepers did indicate higher heart rates, higher body temperature, and accelerated nervous system." (Page 21). He even puts foot notes at the end of some sentences to show where he got his information from. This makes me believe that this book is a mix between a memoir and a scientific essay.

The seriousness compares to his register and rhetoric mode. Logos makes the text more informative and serious and, the icing on the cake, formal register gives the final touches of a serious passage.