Independent publishing is, I don’t have to tell you, kind of a shit place: first you lose your time, and then you waste your money, to paraphrase artist and ex-publisher Paul Chan, who would know. But it’s people like Gian—otherwise known as Giancarlo DiTrapano, the intrepid editor, publisher, writer, rabble-rouser, and West Virginian who founded New York Tyrant magazine and its imprint Tyrant Books and succumbed prematurely, monstrously last week at forty-seven—who remind us why it matters.