The Art of Failing: Notes from the Underdog

Anthony McGowan is not right. If you too, are of the not right variety (as I am), you'll find him inappropriately hilarious and hilariously inappropriate. I'd throw in some quotes from the book to prove it but I'm afraid I'd want to use so many I'd be charged with copyright infringement. This is a very British, very droll book. The cover is truly egregious and I'm only sad that its lack of appeal (it's a banana so lack of a peel, get it? Yeah, groaner for sure.) kept me from picking this up sooner.

Written as mostly brief, almost daily observational diary entries over the span of a year (plus a few days), there's little to no narrative arc here but, trust me, you won't care. And when McGowan does in fact refer back to something in a show more previous entry, the reader feels as if she is an insider, someone included in McGowan's private meanderings, like an old friend would be. Each entry is fairly short and generally highlights a happening in McGowan's marriage, his professional life, or just everyday life that could, quite probably, happen only to him. We all have that one friend who is one disaster and humiliation after another, right? The bits he records are funny, well-written, and oftentimes cringe-inducing (but in a good way--if there can be a good way of cringing). He focuses on the personal, the embarrassing, and the hilarious failures, inviting the reader to laugh along with him at these nutty and outrageous occurrences. His intelligence is clear to the reader paying attention, his wit is in sharp focus, and it is patently obvious that he adores his wife and children, even if he claims to have no idea why Mrs. McG. puts up with his shenanigans and less than ideal person. He does make fun of others on occasion but most of the time he's busy taking the piss out of himself. I truly laughed aloud at quite a few passages and thoroughly enjoyed my tenure in the pages of McGowan's life. If he'd write more diary entries, I'd happily read them, lack of narrative arc be damned. show less

For every silver lining – a cloud

You’d never know if from The Art of Failing, but Anthony McGowan has a pretty good life. Income from (mainly children’s) books in numerous languages, loving wife and two kids, lots of speaking engagements and free days. But he sees the downside to pretty much all of it and more. Every little thing smacks of failure, disappointment or sad reflection on himself. No small detail is too insignificant to be depressing. I think they coined the word downer after him. This is a man who describes sunshine as desolate. British understatement is not one his foibles. To describe himself, he pictures a void, shrugging.

He takes failure in his stride, as in this description of the aftermath of the annual show more publisher’s Christmas party:

The day after, my publicists will email me a list of the people I have to apologize to, along with a dry-cleaning bill and, not uncommonly, a comment too cryptic for me to decipher –‘The elephant with the white ears – it’s a no-no’; ‘she isn’t a lesbian’; ‘you realize he was in the SAS and could have cracked your skull like a walnut?’ and so on.

The book is a sort of diary, covering one year of failings, pointlessly divided into seasons. The entries are generally less than a page, making them highly structured and easily digestible. His descriptions tend to the scatological and ghoulish, as in a department store in Leeds: “The place was full of Yorkshire money: orange ladies, large men with tiny faces like anuses compressed into the middle of their huge, buttock heads.” A simple snack? “… a typical British croissant, assembled from flakes of psoriasis, held together with lard, and inflated with some kind of methane-like gas.“

A children’s book writer and school lecturer who swears like a sailor and adds smut wherever possible. McGowan’s as close to a Python character as one could reasonably fear. There’s no stereotyping Anthony McGowan.

David Wineberg show less

As the title of this book suggests, many of the author's observations and musings, as recorded in diary entries from September of one year to the following autumn, are about his perceived failings in social situations, in his career, in life, etc. Although McGowan is crude at times, he is more often simply humorous in a way that the Brits have perfected--self-deprecating humor about the awkward or embarrassing moments in life with generous doses of understated sarcasm. At times, his pondering reminds me of the hilariously hapless Karl Pilkington. He writes about everyday things, but in a very funny way. There were a few entries which fell a bit flat, but overall I truly enjoyed spending time with this book. I lived in England for three show more years, and like another reviewer here, this book made me a little homesick! show less

THE ART OF FAILING is a humorous glance into daily life in West Hampstead, London, with the author, Anthony McGowan. Structured as a diary and organized by season, there are daily-ish entries outlining something humorous/bizarre/unexpected that happened to the author that day, or at least a noteworthy observation. Sometimes it's a mundane activity where the author has an awkward encounter, other times it's something monumental. It's the author's employment of sarcastic and neurotic internal monologue mixed with his dry wit that makes THE ART OF FAILING highly entertaining to read.

In one entry, dated September 6th, the author is working on a writing project in a reading room of the British Library. Possible titles for his new book are show more "The Constituents of Glass, The Deaf and Dumb Sex Machine, Handlebar, Nigel's Adventures in Nymphland" so you can tell he's got the beginnings of a winning story. The library has a strict no-food policy, but McGowan sneaks a banana in with him for a snack. He talks about his banana-neutral feelings up until that point, but it became a symbol of the progress he was making in his writing, even if that progress was just coming up with more book titles. It was a well-deserved break, and he now relished that banana. He also relished the act of writing on the banana with a ballpoint pen, because of how the pressure allows the pen to sink into the peel in a satisfying way.

On this particular day, he was in the reading room as normal when he felt an oncoming sneeze. In a hurry to empty his pockets, to locate his handkerchief, he absentmindedly set the banana on the table near to the man seated beside him, working. Just as he located the handkerchief, his urge to sneeze subsided. The man next to McGowan gave him a strange look, "an extreme wariness bordering on hostility", and that's when the author looked down at the banana on the table between them. That day, he had written "I love you" on its peel, because that piece of fruit had become a central figure in his daily work life. However, the stranger beside him assumed that the message on the banana was for him, and reacted as you might react if a strange man put a "banana love bomb" in your general direction. At this embarrassment, McGowan packed up his things and resolved to work in a different reading room for the foreseeable future.

Other entries involve encounters with possible-transsexuals at paint counters, musing on quantum physics via holey socks, and reading student reviews of his teaching courses. There's a lot of diversity in the topics that he selects, so it never feels like you're reading about the same things over and over and over. The strength of this book is its language; it's really the way that the author selects and employs his phrasing that makes the writing so good.

The narration has a strong neurotic and self-conscious vein, putting the author in good company with the characters on the TV show SEINFELD. That was known as the Show About Nothing, and I would argue that THE ART OF FAILING could be a Book About Nothing. McGowan's plentiful dry humor lends itself to close comparisons to David Sedaris' writing. I suspect that, like Sedaris, the work would be lifted to a whole new level by listening it in audio...if it's narrated by the author. There's something about humor authors that just enhance the whole experience, like taking a giggle to a belly-laugh.

Overall, I really enjoyed spending time with Anthony McGowan and his West Hampstead escapades and awkward encounters. His humor and self-consciousness play well within each story, and his wide variety of story topics keep the reading experience fresh. Because many of the diary entries are a full page or less in length, it's an easy book to pick up and put down at will. In fact, it would be great to keep by your bedside to read before nodding off to sleep, or when waking up. If you're a fan of the author David Sedaris, the TV show SEINFELD, or just humorous outlooks on life in general, you should check out THE ART OF FAILING by Anthony McGowan. show less

I received this book as part of the Early Reviewers giveaway.

From the start (the first entry is my birthday!), this novel of "diary entries" was amusing and compelling. If I had not forced myself to read only one month in a sitting (ok...I confess...I cheated on that rule a little) I would have burned through this book at one time.

McGowan makes humorous observations about the mundane in life. His quips about his kids, wife, the library, book parties, flirting with the girl at the drug store brought out responses that ranged from a chuckle to a guffaw. In fact, my own Mrs. O threatened to take the book away from me and throw it away if I didn't stop laughing so much.

Great book - highly recommend - little surprised I have not heard of show more Mr. McG before...but I'll have to look for some of his stuff.

My sincere thanks to the ER program for sending this gem along! show less

This was a rather unusual read.

First of all, my copy of The Art of Failing is an "advance uncorrected proof", so the final publication might be slightly different, although I don't expect large or significant differences. That said...

I didn't realize when I first saw this oddly-covered book (that banana does show up, BTW) that it would be in the form of a sort of daily diary of occurrences, presumably logged by the author as he went about his life over the course of a year, focusing on a wide assortment of odd and often embarrassing moments. One thing that would have helped enormously, IMO, is a brief forward giving some context for what I was about to read and why. Stepping right into diary mode on page one without explanation was a show more little disorienting; not seriously so, but a little preamble would have been helpful.

The dailyish stories themselves ranged anywhere from a paragraph to a few pages in length, and were quite eclectic, ranging from everyday sightings and happenings while walking his dog, to author publicity events, etc. The author either has a fantastic talent for thrusting himself into embarrassing situations or an artistic license that loves to embellish toward the humiliating, but either way, he does have a talent for depicting himself stumbling into all sorts of odds oopses large and small, like some sort of erratic sit-com series of one-acts, and for doing so with great tongue-in-cheek flourish.

The various stories vary in success, some of them quite entertaining, others much less so. In fact, I often felt as though each story was a bit of a dice roll, with random results along the lines of:
1: LMAO!!
2: Heh. That's some real crazy. Chuckle.
3: Surprise poignant moment. (Awww.)
4: Meh.
5: Euw.
6: What the heck did I just read?

Thus my middle-of-the-road overall rating. (YMMV.) In short, I did find it a reasonably entertaining read overall, with some real LOL moments.

Oddly, given the nature of many of the embarrassments depicted, this might be a particularly interesting reading experience for sufferers of significant social anxieties, although I'm unsure whether the experience would be more akin to a dark comedy vs. a personal horror vs. a voyeuristic sort of immersion therapy. Maybe all three. show less

In the format of short diary entries over the course of a year (September to September), Anthony McGowan records various moments of failure, awkwardness and eccentricity, as well as random observations, stray thoughts, and offbeat musings. It's simultaneously self-deprecating and self-indulgent, and the writing sometimes seems clever and original, and sometimes like it's trying entirely too hard to be clever and original. It's all reasonably entertaining for a while, but, honestly, 275 pages of it is way, way too much. I was getting pretty tired of it by about 50. I suspect it's a book that's really better just not read straight through.