The author on pushing back against the overly simplistic narrative of addiction. 

Disaffected drifting in Erika Carter’s Lucky You

Voice, vulnerability, and putting the intellect to bed.

Originally published posthumously and recently reprinted by Melville House, The Drinker is Hans Fallada’s brutal account of provincial German shopkeeper Erwin Sommer’s loss of a business client, refusal to admit this to his wife, lightning-fast descent into sordid alcoholism, and incarceration in prison and an insane asylum.

Padgett Powell is one of the funniest men alive. If he weren’t such a great writer—Edisto, Edisto Revisited—he could always be a comedian. V. Hunt tracks the laughs.

If you ever saw them together, which people in Alphabet City could not help doing since the four spent every waking hour and some sleeping ones in each other’s company, you would come to the incontrovertible conclusion that in their case civilization had gone astray in its socialization process and having deviated so drastically perhaps stopped by the side of the road to make amends and give them, as would a benevolent welfare system, rudimentary instructions on behavior among members of the human race.