The man collapsed in a heap in the background of this picture is a True Champ. His name is Thomas Simmons, and he is lying unconscious among hundreds of pages of his novel — a novel which he has just finished reading, in its entirety, to a surprisingly crowded and enthusiastic room of friends and fellow lovers of literature.

In true Modernist fashion (and because, frankly, the idea of reading your novel to a basement full of not-drunk-enough people you sort of know must be downright terrifying), he took a shot of Jim Beam at the end of every chapter.

There were fourteen chapters.

The spent heap of flesh you see here did a great service to Art and humanity on this night, for by his deeds and his craft, he inflated the languishing faith of at least one audience member — faith that someone, somewhere, still cares deeply enough about the intricate, heinous, gorgeous mousetrap of Human Existence to attempt to decipher even one small part of it, with mere words — words untainted by poisoned ironic detachment, art-school snobbery, or the idle urban faux-profundity rampant in today’s increasingly idiocized, neutered “creative” circles.

This man cares enough to try. And for many of us, some nights, that can sustain us through the worst of it.