Since I've been enjoying writing comments on your substack, I'm going to add a comment here, despite the age of the post. A while back, I went through an intense episode of depression, where, in order to get through it, I had to recognize that I had been a failure at my career aspirations, and that was simply a fact. In the course of recognizing this, I discovered a couple of things about failure and success that relate to things you've written here, and which don't seem to be in common currency -
- Failure and success are not opposites, but are actually exactly the same until some event occurs that distinguishes failure from success. This event is often outside the control of the person seeking success. The opposite of both failure and success is inaction, esp. with respect to things that you value.
- A common consequence of success is that you are strongly encouraged to keep doing the same thing that you did when you achieved success. This is not necessarily an attractive outcome. If you are a failure, and you want to do something different, you are likely to be encouraged to do so. This can be an enjoyable experience in many ways, and in the case of multiple failures, can give you a much broader experience of the world than you would have if you were spending all your time working to go from success to success.
The kind of Success Story mentioned at the end is getting at (or moving at a tangent to) a genre I've been trying to outline in my head for a bit, 500 Days of Summer and Frances Ha being the top examples, stories that trick you into thinking they're about losers and people learning to live with being a loser, but which ultimately shift gears at the last second with some kind of cosmic reward to the loser. This guy was a real romantic loser-- he messed up his relationship, and couldn't get over his ex! But once he stopped trying to date, and focused on this other thing, the universe gifted him a new gf. This lady was a real artistic loser-- she never had what it took to really make it as a dancer, and she pursued the idea for far too long, embarrassingly too long-- but once she gave up on that and focused on improving her life, it turned out she was actually a gifted choreographer all along! The universe gave her artistic success as a reward for admitting she was a loser! And so on.
Romantic comedies of the kind where somewhere realizes, oh, of course, I've been pursuing the wrong person this whole time! are another tangent to it. Romances where someone has to give up a Pursuit but get Love in return are closer.
I've been looking for stories about losers-- true losers, people who accept that they won't win, and then go on living their lives-- for a while now, but your last paragraph makes me wonder if maybe that sort of story just isn't possible.
Oh, A Serious Man definitely is; i suppose the Cosmic Job Horror Story is a way of telling a Loser To The End story (even if Job itself isn't an example of it). I think the hereditary guy's most recent movie is one along those lines (though I have not watched it)
Sleepless Nights is one of those books that’s so good I can hardly stand it.
Your loser theory has a great deal in common with the Discordian-slash-GenX theory of “slack,” but I prefer your emphasis on excellence. I’ve been following a loser strategy my whole life, and I’m pretty darn content at this point.
Incidentally there *is* a plumber here on Substack who writes really good essays. I think he may have joined after you wrote this.
Oh, but at the end of Revolutionary Road, only one of them "loses" with any sort of grace--Shep, who doesn't hate every single thing around him. Although perhaps I'm being too judgmental about who is the "winner" of the book in the first place.
Yes, absolutely—I'm thinking more of how April calls her husband's bluff such that he realizes it's not that he wants to go live in Paris so much as he wants to be able to blame somebody for why he doesn't live in Paris. But it's one of my more questionable choices.
Since I've been enjoying writing comments on your substack, I'm going to add a comment here, despite the age of the post. A while back, I went through an intense episode of depression, where, in order to get through it, I had to recognize that I had been a failure at my career aspirations, and that was simply a fact. In the course of recognizing this, I discovered a couple of things about failure and success that relate to things you've written here, and which don't seem to be in common currency -
- Failure and success are not opposites, but are actually exactly the same until some event occurs that distinguishes failure from success. This event is often outside the control of the person seeking success. The opposite of both failure and success is inaction, esp. with respect to things that you value.
- A common consequence of success is that you are strongly encouraged to keep doing the same thing that you did when you achieved success. This is not necessarily an attractive outcome. If you are a failure, and you want to do something different, you are likely to be encouraged to do so. This can be an enjoyable experience in many ways, and in the case of multiple failures, can give you a much broader experience of the world than you would have if you were spending all your time working to go from success to success.
The kind of Success Story mentioned at the end is getting at (or moving at a tangent to) a genre I've been trying to outline in my head for a bit, 500 Days of Summer and Frances Ha being the top examples, stories that trick you into thinking they're about losers and people learning to live with being a loser, but which ultimately shift gears at the last second with some kind of cosmic reward to the loser. This guy was a real romantic loser-- he messed up his relationship, and couldn't get over his ex! But once he stopped trying to date, and focused on this other thing, the universe gifted him a new gf. This lady was a real artistic loser-- she never had what it took to really make it as a dancer, and she pursued the idea for far too long, embarrassingly too long-- but once she gave up on that and focused on improving her life, it turned out she was actually a gifted choreographer all along! The universe gave her artistic success as a reward for admitting she was a loser! And so on.
Romantic comedies of the kind where somewhere realizes, oh, of course, I've been pursuing the wrong person this whole time! are another tangent to it. Romances where someone has to give up a Pursuit but get Love in return are closer.
I've been looking for stories about losers-- true losers, people who accept that they won't win, and then go on living their lives-- for a while now, but your last paragraph makes me wonder if maybe that sort of story just isn't possible.
Ed Wood and Ishtar are both losers to the end movies. Maybe also A Serious Man, but I haven’t seen it in a while.
Oh, A Serious Man definitely is; i suppose the Cosmic Job Horror Story is a way of telling a Loser To The End story (even if Job itself isn't an example of it). I think the hereditary guy's most recent movie is one along those lines (though I have not watched it)
Been reading this repeatedly for the last few days, it's been really helpful. Thank you :)
Sleepless Nights is one of those books that’s so good I can hardly stand it.
Your loser theory has a great deal in common with the Discordian-slash-GenX theory of “slack,” but I prefer your emphasis on excellence. I’ve been following a loser strategy my whole life, and I’m pretty darn content at this point.
Incidentally there *is* a plumber here on Substack who writes really good essays. I think he may have joined after you wrote this.
a gloss https://thomasbrown.substack.com/p/can-you-forgive-her-for-loving-her
Oh, but at the end of Revolutionary Road, only one of them "loses" with any sort of grace--Shep, who doesn't hate every single thing around him. Although perhaps I'm being too judgmental about who is the "winner" of the book in the first place.
Yes, absolutely—I'm thinking more of how April calls her husband's bluff such that he realizes it's not that he wants to go live in Paris so much as he wants to be able to blame somebody for why he doesn't live in Paris. But it's one of my more questionable choices.
(or I can't remember if it's Paris… someplace)