Ben Segal- 78 Stories

Ben Segal, the author of From Georges Bataille to Jesus Christ in Four Moves (which appeared in the first issue of Diet Soap) sent me a copy of his first book about a month ago, and I spent a good amount of time trying to solve it. “78 stories” is much like life in so much as the sequence and thereby the meaning of events has to be deciphered. Of course this book presents itself as a crossword puzzle and since it is in fact the story of a solver whose goal is to complete the unusually difficult puzzle of his own life and death as he fills in the spaces in a newspaper crossword this is entirely appropriate.This is the kind of book you might want to frame and hang on the wall, or alternatively fold up and stick in your back pocket to solve during your commute.Congratulations, Ben! And congratulations to No Record Press for picking out such an interesting and fun writer to showcase.