Yesterday we learned that fiction makes us better people. Today we would like to examine some of the things fiction doesn’t do: pay our bills, keep us warm at night, prevent us from doing stupid things, block out unfortunate memories, cure the sinus infection we have had for 7 weeks, absolve our sins, stop genocide. Yes, fiction enriches our lives, but our lives are mostly characterized by a never ending cycle of humiliation and failure. Yes, we are 23 and “still young,” but we are also gripped by the sense that our best days are behind us and that this sinus infection will probably kill us/is a sign of a larger problem like cancer or misanthropy.*
So what to do with all of this shame? Bottle it up inside until it explodes like a supernova when you’re in your 40s? Take an improv class? Create a bunch of other twitter accounts for the sole purpose of praising and retweeting your regular twitter account? Write books about vampires? Thankfully, Wayne Koestenbaum and Steve Wilson are here to help.
Koestenbaum is a cultural critic and poet. He is also the author of Humiliation, a book which “considers the meaning” and history of the feeling, and the possessor of the top portion of Justin Timberlake’s hair from the 1990s. In anticipation of Humiliation‘s August 2 release, Picador has released an excellent series of videos titled “Dear Wayne, I’ve Been Humiliated.” Here is one of our favorites, in which someone who inadvertently insulted a “highly praised author” to their face asks Wayne for help:
Over at The Observer, Michael H. Miller sums up our feelings perfectly: if we “had to write a 15 pages every time we embarrassed ourselves in front of a highly-praised author, we’d probably have to quit our jobs and dedicate ourselves full-time to the endeavor.” Thankfully, we have gotten used to making a fool of ourselves in front of esteemed writers. It does not smart the way it once did. Still, this is an excellent series of videos for a book we’re very much looking forward to reading.
Steve Wilson is the founder of My Unfinished Novels, a site that collects abandoned novels. Here’s Wilson, himself a six-time failed novelist, explaining the project:
For most writers, any novel that is unpublished is a failure, since most authors don’t want their manuscripts to gather dust under the bed. But some novels never even get to the point of being unpublished. They are simply abandoned, sometimes because of material pressures (second job, third kid, fourth tour of Iraq), and sometimes because of creative illnesses, internal cracks in the author’s foundation. People change, but books remain static, and if a person changes enough, the book they were writing may no longer be their book.
My Unfinished Novels exists to explore that idea: why was this novel abandoned? The answers, hopefully, will elucidate and entertain.
Each Unfinished Novel gets its own post. Each post includes a reason for abandoning the novel, a summary of the story, and an excerpt of the book’s beginning. Rights to each of the novel excerpts on this site remain with the original authors.
My Unfinished Novel is a fascinating graveyard, a ghost town of projects that surely once excited but quickly (or not so quickly) fell to pieces. There’s also something strangely moving about collecting these aborted projects — failure is more common than it often feels (actually maybe that’s not so uplifting after all….) Over at Moby Lives, Nathan Ihara collects some of the best reasons contributors gave for ditching their novels-in-progress:
I realised that it was an immature, over-dramatic personal fantasy of a novel. I’m a bit disgusted with it.
I stopped writing it because I graduated high school and found myself with a lot less free time than I used to have.
After a while, though, I found out that this idea was too obvious and too boring to sustain a novel.
I also came up with a better idea for a novel.
I started my novel a few years ago, but after completing the first two chapters I ran of ideas, therefore I stopped writing.
The unfinished nature of this novel is not failure but rather a kind of catharsis – at least that is what I keep telling myself.
I just switched to flash fiction.
So there you have it! Two ways to deal with the shame that is paralyzing you: write Wayne Koestenbaum a letter or send your never-to-be-finished-or-published novel to My Unfinished Novels. We are feeling better already.
In related news, Blink 182, a band that proves tattoos do not, in fact, equal rebelliousness or awesomeness, will be releasing a new song this week. Here’s Mark “the one with the slightly less annoying voice” Hoppus on the release: “”And we have songs that are madly different and experimental. Prog-rock Blink music — taking a Blink song but adding stadium rock qualities to it. ” STADIUM ROCK QUALITIES.
*I am mostly being hyperbolic about all of this, though this sinus infection can seriously go fuck itself.
This post may contain affiliate links.
