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YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THIS IF YOU WANT TO LIVE
A creation myth. A complete list of ways to die. A prison that no one can escape from. You must understand these if you want to live.
“Naive and knowing, banal and apocalyptic, friendly and terrifying, simple and audacious, heartfelt and alien, buzzsawing and fluttering.” – Mark Leidner, Returning The Sword To The Stone
“With You Must Understand This if You Want to Live, Max Lavergne balances the lost art of comedy writing with a brutal and otherworldly satire that can feel like anything from Dr. Strangelove to Vonnegut or Paul Beatty's The Sellout... these stories are deft, precise and clever.” – Max Easton, The Magpie Wing
“Naive and knowing, banal and apocalyptic, friendly and terrifying, simple and audacious, heartfelt and alien, buzzsawing and fluttering.” – Mark Leidner, Returning The Sword To The Stone
“With You Must Understand This if You Want to Live, Max Lavergne balances the lost art of comedy writing with a brutal and otherworldly satire that can feel like anything from Dr. Strangelove to Vonnegut or Paul Beatty's The Sellout... these stories are deft, precise and clever.” – Max Easton, The Magpie Wing
202 pages, Paperback
Published August 6, 2025
3 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
Max Lavergne
3 books30 followersi have come to your house and knocked all your books on the floor and stomped on all of them with big boots. even the ones with hard covers where the spines are fraying. and i have spilt blue powerade on them. and now i have come to you with tears in my eyes. not because i am sorry. but because you will have to buy more books before i can stomp again
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 1, 2025
loved this so much, i took a vacation day just to finish these stories. i couldn’t even begin to pick favorites, feeling so inspired, heartbroken, comforted..laughed out loud many times and also cried!
October 4, 2025
I absolutely loved this book. Nothing could have prepared this for me for what was in here, and I found it making me laugh out loud and get really emotional at others. Highly recommend.
And I was lucky enough to get a signed copy!
And I was lucky enough to get a signed copy!
September 7, 2025
Max Lavergne never fails to delight. The off-balance lurch of Weird Twitter pervades these stories, which are often very funny and then occasionally rip your heart into ragged pieces and chew on the pieces. Max instinctively knows how to write wrong and I truly envy him for it, but also I get to read the stories while he has to write them, so in the end I get the better end of the deal.
Anyway, these are all incredibly great but all I really want is for him to tell me about his Saab.
Mainly because the zine is in a box somewhere.
Once you've read all the brilliant stories in here, and also read all of BLUE NIGHT AT THE CULT, you'll be itching for more, and that's great because there are 9, that's right, IX tales of Saabery, Saabitude, all a mere signing-up-to-his-newsletter away.
Anyway, these are all incredibly great but all I really want is for him to tell me about his Saab.
Mainly because the zine is in a box somewhere.
Once you've read all the brilliant stories in here, and also read all of BLUE NIGHT AT THE CULT, you'll be itching for more, and that's great because there are 9, that's right, IX tales of Saabery, Saabitude, all a mere signing-up-to-his-newsletter away.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews