If You Should Fail: Why Success Eludes Us and Why It Doesn't Matter
Joe Moran
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
To fail is human. Get used to it . . . Failure is the small print in life's terms and conditions. Covering everything from exam dreams to fourth-placed Olympians, If You Should Fail is about how modern life, in a world of self-advertised success, makes us feel like failures, frauds and imposters. Widely acclaimed observer of daily life Joe Moran is here not to tell you that everything will be all right in the end, but to reassure you that failure is an occupational hazard of being human. As Moran shows, even the supremely gifted Leonardo da Vinci could be seen as a failure. Most artists, writers, sports stars and business people face failure. We all will, and can learn how to live with it. To echo Virginia Woolf, beauty "is only got by the failure to get it . . . by facing what must be humiliation - the things one can't do." Combining philosophy, psychology, history and literature, Moran's ultimately upbeat reflections on being human, and his critique of how we live now, offers comfort, hope - and solace. For we need to see that not every failure can be made into a success - and that's OK.
Product Details
Price
$19.95
$18.55
Publisher
Penguin UK
Publish Date
May 01, 2022
Pages
176
Dimensions
5.0 X 7.7 X 0.5 inches | 0.3 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780241988107
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Joe Moran is Professor of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University and is the author of seven books, including Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime, Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV, Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness and First You Write a Sentence. He writes for, among others, the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement
Reviews
"A beautifully written meditation on life's inevitable setbacks and what he sardonically terms "the failing well movement". Moran encourages us to accept our impostor syndromes, to avoid becoming a "sporting masochist" for whom winning is everything, and to admire the history of West End musicals that were instant, notorious flops." ― Guardian Books of the Year "There is an honesty and a clarity in Joe Moran's book If You Should Fail that normalises and softens the usual blows of life that enables us to accept and live with them rather than be diminished/wounded by them." --Julia Samuel, author of Grief Works and This Too Shall Pass "A calming antidote to the world of professionally failing... What Moran has created is a slim, lyrical and blessedly cool-headed reflection on failure as a universally shared human trial... What he provides, instead of the mechanical business strategies laid out in some popular failure titles, is a selection of fascinating and often moving lives, characterised in some way by their failure." ― New Statesman " Humane and witty . . . At the calm heart of Moran's rhetorically affable book is an idea of adroit aplomb. . . . As a primer in generous and lively writing, First You Write a Sentence is blithe and convincing." --The New York Times Book Review on First You Write a Sentence "His encyclopedic sensibility recalls the expansive musings of Thomas Browne."--Wall Street Journal on Shrinking Violets "Wonderful, . . . a sweeping work of history and anthropology and sociology. . . . Moran, in his book, has summoned insights from the ancients to their successors."--Atlantic on Shrinking Violets
