Do you ever feel like a failure? You do? Congratulations. Failure is very fashionable at the moment. Books and podcasts and TED talks tell us there’s nothing to fear from failure; failure is being repackaged and sold as your new best friend. And success? It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be – or so we are told, usually by the successful.
I like to believe I’ve reached an age where I’m above caring about such distinctions. I flatter myself in thinking that I can see success and failure for what they really are: illusions and entrapments created to keep the capitalist cogs of production and consumption going round. Let the young and foolish chase the glory of life’s glittering prizes; I treat these two “imposters” – as Kipling called them – with stoic indifference.
At times we can all see through the shallowness of success and the fallacy of failure – at least, until our latest book/film/record/play comes out and bombs. My last book Jack and I was a flop both commercially and critically. Even so, I tell myself that creatively it was the best thing I’ve ever written – so it wasn’t a failure. Or was it? I guess it depends on how you measure the concept of success and respond to failure. I’m deeply divided on the subject.
Enlightened Me says: Oh well, c’est la vie! It’s a great book. And just because you didn’t get rave reviews – the one exception was in this magazine – and big sales, and numerous invitations to literary festivals, and prestigious awards for non-fiction, that doesn’t mean it failed or you’re a failure. Honestly, how could you be so shallow! You of all people have fallen for the myth of success and failure! What matters is the quality of the work, not fleeting glory.
To which Un-Enlightened Me says: who are you kidding, you big phoney? You crave success and recognition just like everyone else! Face it: your book bombed, big time. Yeah, it hurts like hell. Take your failure like a man – go off for a major self-pity binge and a six-month sulk. Look loser, spare me the stoical shrug of the shoulders and the little, I’m-so-wise Zen smile!
I see failure everywhere. Most of my friends feel they’ve failed as a parent or as a partner. And yes, they’ve achieved various degrees of career success – but still feel disappointed they’ve never had the big hit or won the prize of their dreams. My mother once told me she wanted the following epithet carved on her tombstone: It Was a Good Life, But It Wasn’t Commercial.
Failure isn’t just for oldies, the young are haunted by it too. Teenagers watch their friends’ lives on social media and feel like duds before they’ve even started living! High-flying graduates think they’ve flunked when workplace rents force them back to their parents’ house. And you’d be forgiven for thinking that Britain today is one big failure – our politics, the economy, our schools and institutions have all failed to function as we expect.
The English have a history of finding failure funny and even admirable
The funny thing is we live in a time when failure is packaged as pain-free. Capitalism today – unlike the harsh 1980s when Greed Was Good – wants to appear all-caring and inclusive. We don’t like to see people as losers. There’s a trend in some schools to end competitive sports and academic distinctions so no one feels like an also-ran.
We still want individuals to follow their dreams, and we don’t want them to feel like failures when they fall short. But can you still get the intoxicating rush of success after failing? There’s a growing trend for books that say: yes, you can! They have titles like The Value of Failure and The Gift of Failure. David Brooks, columnist for the New York Times, has a bright new career writing books for burn-outs looking for life after success. No longer is failure anything to be ashamed of. It’s an opportunity for growth and enlightenment. If these titles are to be believed, failure is the new success.
But is there anything more irritating than a successful person telling you success doesn’t matter – or that every failure is just so much foreplay before the climax of success? There’s a whole sub-category of self-help books questioning the value and meaning of success, by very successful people. Steve Bartlett’s Happy Sexy Millionaire is a classic rags-to-riches-to-realisation story of how success doesn’t bring you happiness. The writer Elizabeth Day – who is very beautiful and talented – has made a successful career with two books and a popular podcast on failure, a schtick that has driven other less successful writers quite mad. I feel for them. There’s nothing worse than successful people trying to take over the failure thing. It’s a form of emotional gentrification.
The English have a history of finding failure funny and even admirable. The Book of Heroic Failures was a bestseller in 1979 and the nation’s heart is won by Great British Failures like “Eddie the Eagle” Edwards – the plucky Olympic skier who came last in all his events in 1988. But where the English find comedy, Americans have tended to see tragedy. It’s the stuff of their great national dramas: think of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront and David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross.
If in the past we have over-stigmatised failure, we now run the risk of sentimentalising it. So what do we do? Joe Moran gave a good bit of advice in his book If You Should Fail: A Book of Solace, when he said: “Failure is nothing to be ashamed of – but it’s nothing to be proud of either.” I hope I can remember that the next time I bring out a book.
Cosmo Landesman is a freelance journalist and author of “Jack and Me: How Not To Live After Loss” (Eyewear Press)
