Of course, there’s a difference between hard things that build you up and hard things that tear you down. It feels silly to say you like getting compliments, but everybody likes getting compliments, and to have somebody tell you something resonated with them feels great. An Oregon hearing to determine whether the case will be heard in Oregon or Kansas is set for this week.

It’s one part A Do It Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad , one part Kerouacian travelogue and one part Southern Gothic life-as-it-is . I used to believe the most important thing was to survive, but when you start looking at your life as a war you inherit the bad traits of a soldier. Well, it was just a few years ago, so give me a decade or so then ask me about failing memory and drinking.I read it this year and liked it quite a lot, but maybe the title and his name are the best poetry of the whole thing.

He filed in Oregon knowing they [Duke and Pioneers Press] have no money and no way to defend themselves in the suit. Gnade’s recent fiction has featured characters digging themselves out of bad places with tactics very similar to what he offers in Simple Steps and Big Sad .We also have a pact that if we find a stash of cash when we’re planting crops, we’ll put it back in the ground. Ben Frank’s Kerouac-like combination of outward gregariousness and glimpsed inner torment made for my favourite character I think.

The continuity between the parts of Merc that are uptight, puritan and humourless and the ways in which Joey is also this way–-albeit differently-–makes for ten out of ten character work. He says, “Every single one of those interactions—I’ve left feeling stronger and more energetic and more hopeful. More and more, I look at what we’re doing that way: What value do we have, what can we do, and how do we share it?The title is sort of about survival, but it's also to remind people that most ends are really not ends at all—they're changes. But would any rational person say, ‘I’ll take over this distro company that consists of a bunch of zines in cardboard boxes, and in exchange you give me an incredible amount of debt that’s never been disclosed to anybody before’? The book is a perfect blend of literature and grit that reminded me a lot of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver. They’re the stars of their respective scenes, but they also coexist with all of the people associated with them.